neck. So different from Elias’s song. But not discordant. Livia and Hannah took singing lessons—what would they call it? Countermelody. Laia and Elias are each other’s countermelodies. I am just a dissonant note.
“I know you’re here for your brother,” I say. “Darin of Serra, Resistance spy—”
“He’s not a—”
I wave off her protestations. “I don’t bleeding care. You’ll probably end up dead.”
“I assure you, I won’t.” The girl’s gold eyes spark, and her jaw is set. “I made it here despite the fact that you were hunting us.” She takes a step forward, but I give no ground. “I survived the Commandant’s genocide—”
“A few patrols to round up rebels is not—”
“Patrols?” Her face twists in horror. “You’re killing thousands. Women. Children. You bastards have an entire skies-forsaken army parked in the Argent Hills—”
“Enough,” the redhead says sharply, but I ignore him, my mind is fixed on what Laia just said.
—an entire bleeding army—
—the Bitch of Blackcliff is planning something. . . . It’s big this time, girl—
I need to get out of here. A hunch has taken root in my mind, and I need to consider it.
“I am here for Veturius. Any attempt to rescue him will result in your death.”
“Rescue,” Laia says flatly. “From—from the prison.”
“Yes,” I say impatiently. “I don’t want to kill you, girl. So stay out of my way.”
I stride from the cave into the heavy snowdrifts, mind churning.
“Shrike,” Faris says when we’ve nearly reached our camp. “Don’t take off my head, but we can’t just leave them alive to carry out an illegal prison break.”
“Every garrison we went to in the Tribal lands was short on soldiers,” I say. “Even Antium didn’t have a full complement of guards for the walls. Why do you think that is?”
Faris shrugs, bewildered. “The men were sent to the borderlands. Dex heard the same.”
“But my father told me in his letters that the border garrisons needed reinforcements. He said the Commandant requested soldiers too. Everyone is short. Dozens of garrisons, thousands of soldiers. An army of soldiers.”
“You mean what the girl said about the Argent Hills?” Faris scoffs. “She’s a Scholar—she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”
“The Hills have a dozen valleys big enough to hide an army in,” I say. “And only one pass in and one pass out. Both of those passes—”
Avitas swears. “Blocked,” he says. “By the weather. But those passes are never blocked so early in winter.”
“We were in such a hurry, we didn’t think twice about it,” Faris says. “If there is an army, what is it for?”
“Marcus might be planning to attack the Tribal lands,” I say. “Or Marinn.” Both options are disastrous. The Empire has enough to deal with without a full-scale war. We reach our camp, and I hand Faris the reins to his horse. “Find out what’s going on. Scout the Argent Hills. I ordered Dex back to Antium. Have him keep the Black Guard at the ready.”
Faris’s eyes shift to Avitas, and he tilts his head at me. You trust him?
“I’ll be all right,” I say. “Go.”
Moments after he leaves, a shadow steps out from the woods. My scim is half-drawn when I realize it’s a Fiver, trembling and half-frozen. He silently hands me a note.
The Commandant arrives this evening to oversee the cleansing of Kauf Prison’s Scholar population. She and I will meet at midnight, in her pavilion.
Avitas grimaces at the look on my face. “What is it?”
“The Warden,” I say. “Coming out to play.”
• • •
By midnight, I ghost along the base of Kauf’s high outer wall toward the Commandant’s camp, eyeing the friezes and gargoyles that make Kauf almost ornate when compared to Blackcliff. Avitas follows, covering our tracks.
Keris Veturia has erected her tents in the shadow of Kauf’s southeast wall. Her men walk the perimeter, and her pavilion sits at the center of the camp, with five yards of clear space on three sides. The tent backs to Kauf’s ice-slick wall. No woodpiles, no wagons, not even a bleeding horse to use as cover.
I stop along the far edge of the camp and nod to Avitas. He takes out a grappling hook and heaves it at a pinnacle atop a buttress about forty feet up. The hook catches. He hands me the rope and silently backtracks through the snow.
When I’m ten feet up, I hear the crunch of boots on snow. I turn, expecting to whisper-shout at Avitas for being so damned loud. Instead, a soldier lumbers out from between the tents, unbuttoning his pants to