torturer and the Commandant’s spy.” Immediately, Faris clamps his mouth shut. “Harper is also assigned to this mission, so beware of what you say around him, as it will all be reported back to the Commandant and Emperor.” Harper shifts uncomfortably, and a bolt of triumph shoots through me.
“Dex,” I say. “One of the men is bringing in the reports from the night Elias escaped. You were his lieutenant. Look for anything that might be relevant. Faris, you’re with me. Harper and I have a lead outside the city.”
I am thankful that my friends accept my orders stoically, that their training keeps their faces blank. Dex excuses himself, and Faris follows to procure horses. Harper stands, his head tilted as he looks at me. I cannot read his expression—curiosity, perhaps. He reaches into his pocket, and I tense, remembering the the brass beaters he used on me during my interrogation.
But he only pulls out a man’s ring. Heavy, silver, and embossed with a bird, wings spread, beak wide in a scream. The Blood Shrike’s ring of office.
“Yours now.” He takes out a chain. “In case it’s too big.”
It is too big, but a jeweler can fix that. Perhaps he expects me to thank him. Instead, I take the ring, ignore the chain, and sweep past him.
«««
The dead Mask in the dry flats beyond Serra sounds like a promising start. No tracks, no ambush. But the moment I see the body—hanging from a tree and bearing clear signs of torture—I know Elias didn’t kill him.
“Veturius is a Mask, Blood Shrike. Trained by the Commandant,” Harper says as we head back to the city. “Is he not a butcher like the rest of us?”
“Veturius wouldn’t leave a body out in the open,” Faris says. “Whoever did this wanted the body found. Why do that if he doesn’t want us on his trail?”
“To throw us off,” Harper says. “To send us west instead of south.”
As they argue, I mull it over. I know the Mask. He was one of four ordered to guard Elias at his execution. Lieutenant Cassius Pritorius, a vicious predator with a taste for young girls. He’d done a stint at Blackcliff as a Combat Centurion. I was fourteen then, but I kept one hand on a dagger when he was around.
Marcus sent the other three Masks guarding Elias to Kauf for six months as punishment for losing him. Why not Cassius? How did he end up like this?
My mind leaps to the Commandant, but it doesn’t make sense. If Cassius angered her, she’d torment and kill him publicly—all the more to build her reputation.
I feel a prickling on my neck, as if I’m being watched.
“Little ssssinger …”
The voice is distant, carried on the wind. I whirl in my saddle. The desert is empty but for a tumbleweed rolling past. Faris and Harper slow their horses, staring back at me quizzically. Walk on, Aquilla. It was nothing.
The next day of the hunt is equally useless, as is the one after that. Dex finds nothing in the reports. Runners and drum messages bring false leads: Two men killed in Navium, and a witness swears Elias is the murderer. A Martial and a Scholar reportedly checking in to an inn—as if Elias would be fool enough check in to a bleeding inn.
By the end of the third day, I’m exhausted and frustrated. Marcus has sent two messages already, demanding to know if I’ve made any headway.
I should sleep in the Black Guard barracks, as I have the past two nights. But I am sick of the barracks and particularly sick of the feeling that Harper is reporting my every move back to Marcus and the Commandant.
It’s nearly midnight when I arrive at Villa Aquilla, but the lights of the house blaze, and dozens of carriages line the road outside. I take the slaves’ entrance in to avoid family, and run straight into Livvy, who is supervising a late dinner.
She sighs at my expression. “Go in through your window. The uncles have taken over the bottom floor. They’ll want to speak with you.”
The uncles—my father’s brothers and cousins—lead the main families of Gens Aquilla. Good men, but long-winded.
“Where’s Mother?”
“With the aunts, trying to keep a rein on their hysteria.” Livvy raises an eyebrow. “They’re not happy about the Aquilla-Farrar alliance. Father asked me to serve dinner.”
So she can listen and learn, no doubt. Livia, unlike Hannah, has an interest in the running of the Gens. Father is no fool; he knows what an