the task for weeks, and Sev was just one of many moving pieces. Trix’s role as a bondservant was to manage the messenger pigeons, and Sev had no doubt she read the captain’s letters. She had the cooks and the craftsmen, the young runners and the old washerwomen—people from every facet of camp life—reporting to her, including Captain Belden’s personal attendant. They gave Trix every scrap of information they had, and she weaved them all together like Anyanke, goddess of fate, spinning her tangled webs. Everyone in the camp was caught up in it, including Sev.
“What makes you think you can even pull this off?” he asked her several days after Trix had first recruited him.
The only time Sev could really talk to the woman was late at night, when everyone’s duties were done and most of the soldiers were either passed out or so deep into their cups that they didn’t notice a soldier fraternizing with a bondservant.
Fires were still forbidden, but the bondservants had set up an area to sit and work, with logs ranged in a rough circle in the barest scraps of moonlight filtering through the trees. Trix was seated there, humming to herself, and Kade was next to her, mending a bit of broken harness. Though his hands were large, they were graceful, too, and capable of delicate work. His head was bent over the strap, a tool held between his teeth as he carefully took the buckle apart.
Despite Kade’s apparent focus, he snorted at Sev’s question.
“What makes you think I can’t?” Trix asked, grinning slightly. Sev gave her a sidelong look, taking in every inch of her bent, gray, and less-than-intimidating form. Sure, she was a good gossip, but gathering information was one thing, and acting on that information was something else.
Trix was calm as she patted the log next to her, inviting Sev to take a seat. “Not all battles are fought with ax and arrow. Some say the war ended sixteen years ago, when the sister queens died. Not me. I’ve been fighting this war every day since. This,” she said, pressing a hand against the metal chain dangling from her throat, “is my armor, and this”—she swept an arm over the quiet campsite—“is my battlefield.”
A shiver ran down Sev’s spine. He cast his gaze over the prone soldiers, imagining them not as sleepers, but as corpses.
“You’ve been a bondservant all this time?” Sev asked. “For sixteen years?”
“Six,” she said. An icy chill emanated from her, so Sev decided not to ask her what she’d been doing before that. Living life on the run? Blackmailing other careless empire soldiers? He supposed it didn’t matter. Whatever Trix had done, no one deserved bondage. No one.
“Did you fight in the war?” he asked. “As a warrior? A Phoenix Rider?” He couldn’t help the way his words sped up at talk of the Riders, the way they tumbled from his mouth in excitement or fear—he couldn’t be sure which one.
“Does that surprise you? Not all of us were fit to grace palace frescoes and temple mosaics like Avalkyra Ashfire, with her crown of feathers. Some of us were best suited for the shadows.”
“Did you know her, Avalkyra Ashfire?”
“We were acquainted,” she said offhandedly.
Sev’s eyes widened, and he stared at her with newfound respect. To actually have met the queen meant that Trix was no lowly conscript like his parents had been. “Does that mean . . . were you a part of her patrol? Were you a famous Phoenix Rider too?”
“If I were, that would have quite defeated the point,” she said dryly.
Sev frowned. “The point of what?”
“No more questions, soldier,” Kade interrupted, but Trix quieted him with a hand on his shoulder.
“I was an adviser, of sorts.”
“An adviser to Avalkyra Ashfire?” Sev asked incredulously. It was one thing to fight alongside her as a soldier, and quite another to give her council. He lowered his voice. “How did one of the Feather-Crowned Queen’s own advisers wind up here, in service to Captain Belden, who’s been charged with the destruction of whatever is left of the Phoenix Riders?”
“That’s none of your—” Kade began, but Trix cut him off.
“They have no idea what I did or didn’t do in the war,” she said disdainfully, jerking her chin in the direction of the captain’s tent. “To them I am an old animage woman past my prime, meek, slightly mad—and nothing more.”
“That still doesn’t explain how you wound up on this mission. Dumb luck? A happy coincidence?” asked