“Enough.” Aeduan pushed Evrane aside.

“She is no use without the stone.” Evrane tried to grab for Iseult again, but Aeduan deftly blocked her. His Threads, like Evrane’s, burned with frustration. His impatience, however, was not directed at Iseult.

“You forget our orders. We are to leave her unharmed.”

Evrane laughed, a shrill sound. “Oh?” she mocked. “You bow to one of the betrayers now, do you? You always were the weakest of us.”

“It is not weakness,” Aeduan clipped back, “but self-preservation. This”—he motioned to Iseult—“is to be my body. You will leave her untouched.”

Iseult didn’t like the sound of that, This is to be my body. But she also dared not ask about it. Not while the two monks stared at each other like dogs in an alley, hackles high. Threads twined between them, clotted and confusing. There was hate, there was love. Trust and mistrust and a hundred other contradictions she could not understand.

For the moment, at least, they weren’t looking at her. “Owl,” she whispered, canting toward the child. Her mouth was silty from the rag; any moment now, they’d stuff it back in. “Don’t be afraid. I will take care of you, all right?”

Owl didn’t acknowledge Iseult. Her Threads did not change. And now Evrane was scowling and spinning away. “Fine. You find out where the stone is.” She stalked toward the horses, her stride all wrong. Stiff and jerky, as if her clothes did not fit.

Iseult’s eyes itched. Stasis, she told herself. A useless word that she had given up weeks ago, but sometimes training ran deeper than truth. Especially now that Aeduan was studying her with an ice-blue stare.

Iseult met his gaze. She wasn’t sure what she hoped to see, what she hoped would happen, but she found herself speaking in Nomatsi anyway. Saying: “If it’s my Threadstone you seek, it is in Praga.”

There was no recognition on Aeduan’s face. Only whispers of tan confusion and clay frustration in his Threads.

So she repeated in Arithuanian, “If it is my Threadstone you seek, it is in Praga.” She didn’t know why she changed languages for him. She didn’t know why she was making it easier. It was as if her heart wanted to help him—had to help him—even as her brain warned her away. “Emperor Henrick took the stone from me,” she went on. “I can only assume he destroyed it.”

“Hmmm.” Aeduan’s lips twitched with an unnatural smile. “Such items, Dark-Giver, are not so easily destroyed.”

Dark-Giver. Her skin crawled. Her spine shriveled. Stasis, Iseult. Stasis in your fingers and in your toes. “Why do you want it?”

Aeduan ignored her. “Get up.” When she made no move to obey, his Threads flashed crimson. He dug his hands into her armpits and lifted her savagely to her feet.