known she snuck about the castle, evading guards, fooling even his shinhounds, and yet he still looked at her and saw a little girl, scared and lost.
“Why do you smile?” said the magister.
“I have no weapon,” said Iren. The men waited. “And so I pray to the daughter of Vaspata.”
She was surrounded.
The grip on her throat was tight and the hand armored.
She could dislodge it, at a cost.
Maybe not even then.
Her knee ached.
Another race would be foolish.
Time—maybe time could save her, if someone arrived to see the men assassinating a future queen.
But the blast must have been part of a plot.
Screams could be heard coming from the ball.
Clanging.
War song.
No one would come.
“The goddess of diligence has many daughters,” said Hiram.
Always a fool for correcting.
“The daughter untimely born, who built the first bridge in the Corentine snowcaps.”
She had no weapon.
And neither did Hiram.
He would never again be so exposed.
“The daughter of diligence. Preparation,” she added.
They were confused.
She must have been delirious.
But Hiram was a prideful man, eager to show his learning.
Weakening himself, by speaking too much.
“Ismata,” said the magister. Preparation’s true name.
A fool for correcting.
He must have kept his shinhounds near, in case he needed them.
He was unarmed.
And he had given over his only weapon.
“Ismata!” shouted Iren, just before the masked man’s grip clenched around her throat. “Latch!”
The scrabbling sound of heavy paws on stone.
Hiram may have known of the name but not its meaning.
Just a little girl, naming beasts.
She had nurtured them for years with new names and alternate commands.
Ismata reared around the corner, growling.
Iren felt her body slacken.
She needed air.
The hound leaped at the man holding Iren, gnashing at the face.
The man went down.
He nearly pulled Iren down with him.
His glove burned as it tugged at her neck.
She wrenched back.
The man hit the stones, screaming.
The second man approached from the left.
Her mouth had filled with blood.
She had been saving it for him.
He jumped forward to grab her.
Iren spat a surge of blood at his eyes.
The man startled.
He was blinded for a short instant.
Iren dashed the other way.
A few steps.
Her knee held.
Then pain.
Lightning.
Fire.
Thunder.
Pain.
The sound of rushing water filled her ear.
Iren fell against a tapestry hanging on the wall.
She didn’t think Hiram could move so quickly.
He had kicked her knee from the side just as she’d put her weight on it.
Iren panted.
Hiram grabbed the cuff of her shirt.
She gouged at his eye.
Quicker once again.
He caught her wrist.
Was he a wartime magister?
In all her investigating, had she missed some secret history?
Iren had never been assigned to investigate Hiram.
So many pressing matters.
Seemed he had his own secrets.
His grip crunched her bones together.
She wouldn’t squeal. Never.
“What’s this?” said Hiram. He roughly pulled back the sleeve. It revealed the leather bracer along her forearm. Tiny rolled-up parchments tucked into pockets. A lockpick set. A thief’s kit.
The second man wiped away the blood on his face and joined them.
The first was losing to the hound atop him.
Iren pulled but couldn’t free herself.
She feared for an instant that she’d die and wondered who would tell her mother.
Down the hall, around the corner, a figure approached.
Footfalls.
The clicking of braided seashells.
Blessed relief. Iren recognized the noise.
Hiram unstrapped the band with deft fingers and pulled it off her arm.
“You’re a spy,” he said. A statement and a question.
“And you’re the mouse,” said Iren.
Someone had finally come.
An arrow flew between them and struck the masked man in the collar. He reeled backward and fell. Frantic. Grasping at the feather.
Hiram retraced the shot.
Cadis stood at the end of the hall, another arrow nocked and ready.
Blood covered the lower half of her torn blue dress and splattered all the way up to her shoulders. A butcher’s smock.
Hiram let go of Iren.
Cadis had made no sense of the scene.
The magister turned and ran.
“Take the shot,” said Iren, her voice hoarse.
“What happened?”
The question was enough.
Hiram turned the corner. He still had her notes.
Seven assignments, lost.
Declan’s schematics for new cannon. Diverted trade routes of Findish caravans. General Hecuba’s rumor of war. Iren strained to remember them all.
She would transcribe them again. On the road.
She was found out.
Soon Declan would know.
Even a future queen could be executed for spycraft.
Her mind raced with an order of operations.
Cadis had run up to her.
Iren turned to her, and together they said, “We have to leave.”
Cadis was surprised by their unison statements.
“I mean forever,” said Cadis.
“I know,” said Iren.
“They’re killing everyone.”
“Even Rhea?”
“I think so.”
Iren doubted it. But Cadis didn’t need to know to comply. Iren’s mother always said that information should only ever be given to convince an ally or to