Relics of Ruin E-Book

Erin M. Evans

• Herausgeber: JABberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Serie: Book of the Usurper
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 779

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

2024 Endeavor Award Winner "Evans skillfully expands the world building while exploring the character depths, with delightful twists that resolve some conflicts while setting up the next book." — Booklist Within the Imperial Archives, the Chapel of the Skeleton Saints holds the ornamented relics of the Orozhandi protectorate's holy sorcerers. And the bones of one misplaced murder victim. Saint Hazaunu of the Wool has stood sentinel in the chapel for nearly a century—but the bones found beneath the floor of a crime scene are inarguably the saint's. While the first question Archivist Superior Amadea Gintanas must ask is how were the bones stolen, the second is who exactly is standing in the saint's niche? And how did they get there? All eyes go to Tunuk, the lonely bone specialist of the Imperial Archives—who isn't talking. Tunuk knows something happened to the saint twelve years ago—but not who took her place or why. But without answers, Tunuk's the obvious suspect for both the murder and the theft—something neither Amadea nor her new apprentice, Quill, believe. While tracing the rumors of a burgeoning attack from beyond the Salt Wall and keeping secrets that could shake the empire, Quill and Amadea must shine a light on a past Tunuk would rather keep in shadow. But when the bones of the saint are stolen again and a saboteur strikes too close to home, all three of them will have to reckon with the possibility all these perils are intimately connected. This edition includes a brand-new illustrated guide to the peoples of the empire. Praise for Relics of Ruin: "Relics of Ruin was a welcome return to a world I have grown very fond of. ... it was another twisty mystery that delved into the complicated politics and history of the empire..." — Fantasy Book Critic "Relics of Ruins is astounding, a worthy continuation to what is amping up to be a new favorite series." — Witty and Sarcastic Book Club "Relics of Ruin was another captivating read in this series that left me wanting to keep peeling away the fantastic layers of this story.... I think its going to be one heck of a thrilling ending that cements the Books of the Usurper as a must-read fantasy series for every fantasy fan out there." — Out of This World Reviews

Leseprobe

Relics of Ruin

Copyright © 2024 by Erin M. Evans

Published as an ebook in 2024 by JABberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.

Originally published in the US by Orbit in 2024

Excerpt from the third Book of the Usurper by Erin M. Evans

All rights reserved.

Cover art by Ivy Lee

Interior art by Jorge Santiago Jr.

Cover design by Lisa Rodgers

ISBN 978-1-625677-03-7 (ebook)

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

JABberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.

49 W. 45th Street, Suite #5N

New York, NY 10036

awfulagent.com/ebooks

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright

Table of Contents

Dedication

Dramatis Personae

Empire of Exiles Summary

Part I

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Part II

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Part III

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Part IV

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Part V

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Part VI

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Part VII

Chapter Twenty-Five

A Tour of the Imperial Federation of Semillan Protectorates

Acknowledgments

Sneak Peek: Book Three

About the Author

Also by Erin M. Evans

For Laura, who was exactly herself1981–2023

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

Ahkerfi of the Copper: a sorcerer of Kuali ancestryAlletet: the lion-headed Khirazji wisdom goddess; rules over the dayAlomalia of the Paint: an Orozhandi saint whose bones are kept in the Chapel of the Skeleton SaintsAlzari yula Manco: partner of the yula Manco nest; nest-mother of Tunuk; of Alojan ancestryAmadea Gintanas: archivist superior of the imperial collections (South Wing), of uncertain ancestry, mostly Semillan; previously Redolfo Kirazzi’s “Grave-Spurned Princess”Anarai of the Silver: a sorcerer of mixed ancestryAppolino Ulanitti: “the Fratricide,” a former emperor of Semilla; Clement’s second-eldest brotherAsla of the Salt: a martyred sorcerer whose affinity magic helped form the Salt Wall, an Orozhandi saintAungwi of the Corundum: a pre-Sealing sorcerer of DatongAye-Nam-Wati: the snake-tailed Datongu wisdom goddess

Bayan yula Manco: partner of the yula Manco nest; father of Tunuk; of Alojan ancestryBeneditta Ulanitti: the Masked Empress of Semilla and Grand Duchess by Custom of Her Protectorates; wife of Ibramo Kirazzi, daughter of ClementBijan del Tolube: corundum specialist; married to Stavio Jeudi, of mixed ancestry, Kuali and BeminatBiorni: a horned rabbit skullBishamar Twelve-Spider ul-Hanizan: reza of the ul-Hanizan clan and partial holder of the Orozhandi ducal authority; Nanqii’s grandfather; of Orozhandi ancestryBucella del Vodopma: a wood specialist of the Imperial Archives, sub-affinity for cedar; of primarily Beminat ancestry

Chizid del Hwana: a previous bone specialist of the Imperial Archives, of Kuali ancestry; married to Qalba ul-ShandiianClement Ulanitti: previous emperor of Semilla; Beneditta’s father and target of Redolfo Kirazzi’s attempted coupClotilda Ulanitti: former empress of Semilla; mother of Clement, Appolino, and IesperoConzi yula Manco: Tunuk’s younger sisterCorolia: a coffee shop owner of Kuali ancestry

Djaulia Ulanitti: daughter of Empress Beneditta and Consort-Prince IbramoDjudura of the Salt: a pre-Sealing sorcerer of KhirazjDoba of the Pottery: an Orozhandi saint whose bones were not safely translated; one of the wooden skeletons of the Chapel of the Skeleton SaintsDolitha Sixteen-Tamarisk ul-Benturan: reza of the ul-Benturan clan and partial holder of the Orozhandi ducal authority; Yinii’s great-aunt; of Orozhandi ancestryDushar Six-Agamid ul-Shandiian: reza of the ul-Shandiian clan and partial holder of the Orozhandi ducal authority; Oshanna’s grandfather; of Orozhandi ancestryDuwan yula Manco: Tunuk’s younger sibling

Egillio: a dog, deceasedEizem del Dolatemse: a seller of sorcerer-wrought charms; of Kuali ancestryEschellado Ulanitti: Semillan emperor who reigned during the Salt Wall’s sealing

Fastreda of the Glass (Fastreda Korotzma): a sorcerer of Borsyan ancestry; coconspirator of Redolfo Kirazzi

Golden Innocent: a Datongu household god who averts misfortuneGunarro del Hwana: a fabricator of the Brotherhood of the Black Mother Forest; half brother to Chizid del Hwana; of Kuali and Borsyan ancestry

Hazaunu of the Wool: an Orozhandi saint whose bones were not safely translated; one of the wooden skeletons of the Chapel of the Skeleton SaintsHezetha of the Sandstone: an Orozhandi saint whose bones are in the Chapel of the Skeleton SaintsHulvia Manche: the Kinship of the Vigilant Mother Ayemi’s imperial liaison; of Ashtabari ancestry

Ibramo Kirazzi: the consort-prince; son of the Usurper, Redolfo Kirazzi; former lover of Amadea GintanasIchenda of the Pottery: a sorcerer of Beminat ancestryIespero Ulanitti: former emperor of Semilla; Clotilda’s eldest son; killed with Sestrida and their four children by Appolino; of Semillan ancestryIosthe of the Wool (Iosthe del Sepharin): a sorcerer of Ronqu ancestryIsecco of the Acacia: a pre-Sealing sorcerer of Semilla

Jautha Fourteen-Horse ul-Chavresh: reza of the ul-Chavresh clan and partial holder of the Orozhandi ducal authorityJeqel of the Salt: an Orozhandi saint whose bones are in the Chapel of the Skeleton SaintsJinjir yula Manco: partner of the yula Manco nest; nest-father of Tunuk; of Alojan ancestryJoodashir of the Salt: a sorcerer of Minseon ancestry

Karimo del Nanova: a scrivener of Parem; murdered by the machinations of the ShrikeKatucia Ulanitti: Iespero and Sestrida’s daughter; killed by Appolino; of Semillan ancestryKhoma Seupu-lai: advisor to the Duke Minseo; mother of Quill; of Minseon and natal Semillan ancestryKulum yula Manco: partner of the yula Manco nest; father of Tunuk; of Alojan ancestry

Lamberto Lajonta: former Ragaleate Primate of the Order of the Scriveners of Parem; Quill and Karimo’s superior; murdered by the ShrikeLireana Ulanitti: daughter of Emperor Iespero and his heir presumptive; presumed murdered by Appolino but claimed to be discovered alive by Redolfo Kirazzi; “the Grave-Spurned Princess”Lord on the Mountain: the supreme god worshipped in Min-Se, often depicted in a pillar of flames surrounded by his thirteen sage-riders

Maligar of the Wool: an Orozhandi saint whose bones were not safely translated; one of the wooden skeletons of the Chapel of the Skeleton SaintsManith ul-Chavresh: representative of the ul-Chavresh clan; of Orozhandi ancestryMelosino Ulanitti: Iespero and Sestrida’s infant son; killed by AppolinoMicheleo Ulanitti: son and heir of Empress Beneditta and Consort-Prince IbramoMireia del Atsina: head archivist of the Imperial Archives; of mixed ancestry, predominantly Ronqu

Nanqii Four-Oryx ul-Hanizan: a procurer of questionable goods; grandson of the ul-Hanizan reza; of Orozhandi ancestryNimar Eight-Myrrh ul-Shandiian: cousin of Qalba One-Fox; of Orozhandi ancestryNinaoku: a Beminat honored-spirit; the pet of the storm god, who fetched fire for humanityNoniva: the Ashtabari mother goddess

Obigen yula Manco: Alojan noble consul; partner of the yula Manco nest; nest-father of Tunuk; murdered by Karimo del NanovaOluali of the Marble (Oluali del Dizifia): a sorcerer of primarily Beminat ancestryOphicida: a former Empress of SemillaOshanna Eleven-Sand Iris ul-Shandiian: granddaughter and assistant of the reza ul-Shandiian; first cousin, once removed of Qalba One-Fox; of Orozhandi ancestry

Pademaki the Source: the Khirazji river god, as well as the name of the river that ran through that ancient kingdomPalimpsest (Imp): a catPer del Huigas: a former generalist of the Imperial Archives, assigned to the bone workrooms; of mixed ancestry

Qalba One-Fox ul-Shandiian: a previous bone specialist of the Imperial Archives; of Orozhandi ancestry; married to Chizid del HwanaQarabas of the Limestone: an Orozhandi saint whose bones are in the Chapel of the Skeleton SaintsQilbat of the Cedar: an Orozhandi saint whose bones are in the Chapel of the Skeleton Saints; the maker of the wooden skeletonsQuill (Sesquillio Haigulan Seupu-lai): third son of House Seupu-lai and Scrivener of Parem; of mixed ancestry, predominantly Minseon

Radir del Sendiri: a generalist of the Imperial Archives; of mixed ancestryRedolfo Kirazzi: the Usurper; former holder of the Khirazji ducal authorityRicha Langyun: member of the Kinship of Vigilant Mother Ayemi, of mixed ancestry, predominantly DatonguRosangerda Maschano (Rosa del Milar): the identity of Redolfo Kirazzi’s assassin, the Shrike; killed by Yinii Six-Owl ul-Benturan

Salva Nine-Scorpion Gaitha-hyu: a member of the Kinship of Vigilant Mother Ayemi road cohort; of Orozhandi and Minseon ancestrySenca yula Manco: partner of the yula Manco nest; nest-mother of Tunuk; of Alojan ancestrySestrida Pramodia: consort-princess to Iespero; killed by AppolinoShaliath of the Gold: an Orozhandi saint whose bones were not safely translated; one of the wooden skeletons of the Chapel of the Skeleton SaintsSigrittrice Ulanitti: advisor and seneschal of the Imperial Authority; “the empress’s sha-dog”; Beneditta’s great-auntStavio Jeudi: a bronze specialist of the Imperial Archives; married to Bijan del Tolube; of Ashtabari ancestryStellano Zezurin: a criminal of Caesura; of predominantly Borsyan ancestry

Tabith of the Copper: an Orozhandi saint whose bones were not safely translated; one of the wooden skeletons of the Chapel of the Skeleton SaintsTafad Mazajin: Borsyan noble consul and former holder of the Borsyan ducal authorityThunzi of the Iron: a sorcerer of mixed ancestryToya: a friend of Qalba One-Fox ul-ShandiianTunuk yula Manco: a bone specialist of the Imperial Archives; nest-child of Lord Obigen; of Alojan ancestryTuron Kirazzi: Redolfo’s younger brother; of Khirazji ancestry

Uruphi yula Manco: partner of the yula Manco nest; birth-mother of Tunuk; of Alojan ancestry

Vari yula Manco: partner of the yula Manco nest; nest-mother of Tunuk; of Alojan ancestryVigdza: an unsworn fabricator; of primarily Borsyan descentViolaria Ulanitti: Iespero and Sestrida’s daughter; killed by Appolino

Yakshooka: a Datongu household trickster god in the form of a birdman with one withered wing; worshipped to bring luckYanawa of the Gold: an Orozhandi saint whose bones are in the Chapel of the Skeleton SaintsYinii Six-Owl ul-Benturan: ink specialist of the Imperial Archives; of Orozhandi ancestry; Dolitha’s great-niece

Zara Kirazzi: current holder of the Khirazji ducal authority; Turon’s daughter and Ibramo’s cousinZobeii of the Gold: an Orozhandi saint whose bones are in the Chapel of the Skeleton SaintsZoifia Kestustis: a bronze specialist of the Imperial Archives; of Borsyan ancestry

EMPIRE OF EXILES SUMMARY

Stavio Jeudi, Specialist Archivist, Bronze Collection, Imperial Archives

You want a story? I’m gonna tell you a story.

This starts in the summer, right at the end, when you can taste fall coming on, that chill on the breeze. It’s been about a hundred years since we sealed the Salt Wall, putting those shape-changing monsters, the changeling horde, on the other side. It’s been twenty-three years since anybody worried about Redolfo Kirazzi, the Usurper, that dashing duke with his Grave-Spurned Princess. The one who thought he could take the emperor’s throne and wound up only taking a noose—everyone knows this.

But then, last summer, what happens? These Paremi scriveners show up—you know the types, all forms and cassocks and official seals for the courts—requesting artifacts that belonged to none other than—guess who?—Redolfo Kirazzi. And if you thought that was bad, one of those Paremi, a boy called Karimo, immediately turns berserk and kills the Alojan noble consul and then himself.

This would be the whole story, the whole scandal, except Karimo’s got a friend—Quill—and he says, “There’s no way my friend”—this crazy murderer, remember, who everyone saw assassinate this very important man, before cutting his own throat—“no way my friend would do this.” Quill starts snooping. He tells the vigilants, he tells the archives, he tells the Paremi—all of them agree: this boy is a good friend, but he’s making no fucking sense at all.

Except, blessed Noniva and all the little fishes, here’s our Amadea, the heart of the Imperial Archives—Amadea remembers everything, and she knows there’s a poison called the Venom of Changelings that can put a memory in your head. She’s not going to tell anybody how she knows this, but I hear that, when she was a girl, she was close to Redolfo Kirazzi’s son, Ibramo. She maybe saw things, maybe knew to worry about Redolfo Kirazzi’s favorite poison? Maybe she’s even been dosed with it—I don’t know; it’s rude to guess. But she sees that dead boy Karimo has a mark on him, I hear, like a black star on his shoulder where the venom goes in, and she knows what’s happening: Quill’s right; that boy didn’t do it—someone made him.

And then there’s the vigilant—Richa, he’s called. He finds all the guests at that party, the one where the murder happened. And when he asks them about the murder, they all say the same things happened, in the same words exactly—like someone put those words in their heads. The empress’s people want it all closed up, but this Richa, he knows something’s not right: everybody got the venom that night.

And then there’s Yinii, the ink specialist, but it’s her business why she’s helping that boy Quill. (Although you look at how she blushes when she talks about him, you’ll know exactly what her business is. But I won’t talk about that.)

Someone’s a killer with a complicated plan, but the more they all look, the more it could be any of those people at that party: The Orozhandi merchant everyone knows deals in drugs. The angry old lord spitting bile about Alojans. The washed-up captain who betrayed the Usurper. The boy’s sullen rival. The Paremi’s mentor, who was keeping two books.

Quill finds in those books payments from someone called “the Shrike,” and here’s where it gets good: That’s the name for Redolfo’s changeling assassin, one nobody ever caught. The one who made the Venom of Changelings. They just took away all the memories of them with that poison and disappeared.

Then Quill’s mentor turns up hanged, but everyone sees that star mark on him. The assassin’s not finished, and here’s where the troubles get worse, and people don’t want to talk so much about what happened. I hear Yinii got the glass sorcerer, the one locked up in the Imperial Complex, to tell her all of Redolfo Kirazzi’s companions. I hear Richa spat on the empress’s great-aunt, her advisor Lady Sigrittrice, when she got him fired for doing his job. I hear, too, that Amadea got Ibramo Kirazzi, the empress’s consort, to come and help her—although don’t you believe anyone who says they’re making a fool of his wife. Our Amadea’s got more self-respect than that.

But what they do find out is someone’s pretending to be Redolfo Kirazzi. And the one who’s the Shrike? It’s the old nobleman’s wife, Lady Rosangerda Maschano, pretending to be a squawking hen all these days. She and the man pretending to be Redolfo—and I don’t think this is actually Redolfo Kirazzi, mind; everybody saw him hang—they manage to kidnap Quill and tell Amadea and the consort-prince to bring all the things the Paremi were supposed to collect out to the old Kirazzi family lands.

This last part, it’s hard to say what’s true and what’s gossip. I know a couple things. I don’t know it all. I know that down in those Kirazzi lands, they found a tunnel that goes under the Salt Wall, back out to the old world. I know that the Shrike died, and the way Yinii won’t talk about it, I think she had something to do with it, poor baby girl. I know there was a fire, and I hear there were changelings—I hear a dozen, I hear a hundred, but one is too many, if you ask me. And if you do ask me, I think that Redolfo Kirazzi everyone saw, well, maybe that was a changeling too.

What I know is that Rosangerda Maschano is dead. That Ibramo Kirazzi comes around the archives now asking for our Amadea, but so does that vigilant, and everyone’s got a story about one or the other. That Quill left the Paremi, and he works at the archives now—lucky Yinii—but he knows that what his mentor was doing, it’s not done, and it might mean a whole new coup.

And I hear, too, that Amadea and the empress had a chat after that, though that’s between her and the empress just now; but if anybody knows that story, you come and tell me. I’ll bet it’s a good one.

I

THE HEART OF THE WORLD

Year Eight of the Reign of Emperor ClementUnclaimed territory beyond the border of the Imperial Federation of Semillan Protectorates

Two weeks from the Salt Wall, Redolfo Kirazzi, once Duke of Semilla, stops to consider a crumbling map. Two weeks of walking is enough time, enough space, that if Emperor Clement has discovered that the Redolfo Kirazzi hanged by this time for treason and sedition is not Khirazj’s dashing duke but a shape-shifting changeling made to stand as his double—well, Redolfo doesn’t think Clement is that clever, but Redolfo has enough of a head start to make sure it doesn’t matter.

He has that two-week head start and a map from before the Salt Wall’s sealing. He has four wineskins now filled with water, a sword and a knife and a coil of rope. He has four companions, among them his brother, his assassin, and his sorcerer—but really none of these, because he is also carrying a large quantity of the poison known as the Venom of Khirazj.

This he checks—he thinks there is enough left to lock two or three more changelings, to trap them in a single form and identity, to bind them to his wants. He’s been lucky thus far—he’s run across the creatures singly or in twos and threes. Maybe scouts, maybe outcasts—their encounters haven’t been causes for conversation. He’s taken over three, and with these new-made allies, he’s left twice that many dead between the Salt Wall and here, and it’s many days until winter, when the torpor that takes their kind will make them useless.

But he has no idea how many changelings might be between him and his goal. And it’s many days until winter, when their numbers won’t matter.

He lays the old map on the ground before him, its surface shiny against the dusty ground. The papyrus is thick and yellowed, the map inexact and written in ancient Khirazji, a language he has studied hard to reclaim. But if one wishes to traverse the lands beyond the Salt Wall, this is as good a guide as one can get.

“We are here,” he says, and circles a place north of the isthmus that squeezes close before the once lonely and distant Empire of Semilla, the seas named unfamiliar things in glyphs above and below it. An entirely different world, he thinks, one that hasn’t existed for centuries.

The fourth of his companions kneels down beside him. “What’s that?” she asks, pointing at the center of the map, where proud gods have been inked over a thick river, binding reeds over a blue-domed city.

“That is Khirazj,” he says. “The Heart of the World.”

“Is it really?”

“Maybe once,” he says. But mighty Khirazj was bled dry by the changeling horde, just as every land on this map was: the canyons of Orozhand, the Black Mother Forest of Borsya, the endless kingdoms of martial Bemina, and all the other birthplaces of the survivors who would become Semilla’s protectorates. Diminished at the end of the world, but alive—the map is peppered with names he’s seen only here, on this map, kingdoms and nations whose fate was to vanish utterly under the changeling menace.

“Is that where we’re going?” the girl says.

“Would you like to see it?” he asks instead of answering.

“Yes,” she says. She traces a finger up the river path, along the glyphs there. “Pa-de-mah-kee?”

“The river’s name.” The first king of Khirazj—tradition holds that every king and queen thereafter is the descendant of the river, that all the Dukes and Duchesses Kirazzi with their leashed authority are actually the children of gods. Redolfo smirks and thinks what they’ll say when he returns, as if from the grave.

He hasn’t got a plan—not yet—but he will. He might not have succeeded in seizing the throne of Semilla, his coup in the name of the emperor’s niece crushed and his armies overtaken, but let no one ever say Redolfo Kirazzi was a man easily bested.

And let them not say Redolfo Kirazzi was an impetuous man either—he has time now to consider what it is he really wants. Is it the throne of Semilla? Or is it Khirazj? Or is it something much greater? What a gift Clement has given him, when you think about it, this time and this space.

And when you think, really think, could one not say Redolfo Kirazzi himself might be the Heart of the World, the axis it turns on, as much as anyone?

“Where are we going?” she asks. “You didn’t say.”

He searches the map to its limits: Orozhand, Borsya, Bemina, Semilla. The high mountains that come before Aloja. The roads that lead to iron-rich Min-Se and the glittering cities of the Datongu.

Unnamed, unknown nations, he thinks. Changeling fortresses and monarchs.

“Where would you go?” he murmurs.

The girl leans over the map, frowning, her hands tucked into her lap. “We should find more food. Water. More of that stuff that makes the changelings behave. They must have more of it out here than they do in there.”

“Practical,” he says, folding up the map. “Though not very imaginative.” But he considers: the Venom of Khirazj and the Venom of Changelings, two things easier to obtain out here than within the walls of Semilla, and then … She’s picked up the thread that leads through these lands to a purpose, a goal. What can he gain, after all, out here, beyond the Salt Wall in the graveyard of the world? What advantage can he seize that Clement cannot?

“A place to begin,” he allows. “Through Orozhand first,” he declares, and he smiles. “That’s the clearest road. Would you like to see what remains of their saints? I find myself quite curious.”

She strokes the inked trade road that passes through Orozhand. The Hidden Kingdom. The Canyons of the Horned Ones, the glyphs say. “I don’t know about those,” she says.

“Then your education continues,” Redolfo says, rolling up the map.

CHAPTER ONE

Year Eight of the Reign of Empress BenedittaAn imperial relay station on the road south of Ragale, the Imperial Federation of Semillan Protectorates(Twenty-three years later)

In the fading light of evening, Quill considered the array of charms spread out on the peddler’s blanket: Iron thistle flowers. Iron long bones and arrows. Iron masks with serene, implacable faces. He pointed at one, a creature, its teeth bared in a horrible grin.

“What’s that one?” he asked.

The peddler craned his neck to see. He was an elderly Orozhandi man with charms wrapping his down-curved dark horns nearly to the tips. His third eye sat half-open and weary at the edge of his white hairline, but his smile was wide ad joyous, showing a gap in his lower teeth.

“Ah! It’s called a ‘jaguar,’” he said. “If you are Beminat, they’re lucky. And iron, of course, so this one is lucky even if you’re not Beminat!”

“Oh,” Quill said. “I’ve read about those. It’s like a cat?”

“A fierce cat,” the man said merrily. “A big cat. It could maybe eat a changeling!”

For a century, the Salt Wall had stood, a barrier against the changeling threat that had destroyed the world, a monument to the magic of the sorcerers who had sacrificed themselves in its creation. In those days, people had known that salt and iron were poison to the shape-changing creatures that might otherwise have replaced their loved ones, sown discord in their communities, brought down their civilizations. They had worn iron charms like these to prove their safety or to test a stranger’s, but the accessory had fallen out of fashion in Quill’s grandparents’ youth.

How things had changed.

Several other travelers had stopped and purchased the hitherto unstylish iron charms as Quill carried in his and Richa’s travel gear from the relay station’s enclosed courtyard to the inn—one trip for the bags, and two for the crates full of documents he’d secreted out of the tower of Parem in Ragale a week ago. The documents might hold the secrets to what Primate Lamberto, his former mentor, had been doing when he agreed to assist not only the fabled changeling hunter of the Usurper’s coup but a man claiming to be Redolfo Kirazzi himself, back from the grave.

A second coup, staged beyond the Salt Wall. This one riddled with changelings.

The Imperial Authority had quickly hidden everything they could about it, sworn Quill and the others to secrecy, and continued on as if it could be safely ignored.

And now people were buying iron charms again.

“I have amulets for the saints as well,” the peddler said. “Do you need protection?”

Like you wouldn’t believe, Quill thought. To be fair, though, nothing else had happened in the intervening months. They were approaching winter, the turn of the new year, and there had been no other attacks. No incidents of unexplained murders, no new breaches in the Salt Wall. The assassin they’d called “the Shrike” was dead, and so was the changeling pretending to be Redolfo Kirazzi, and Primate Lamberto besides. The tunnel beneath the Salt Wall they’d been intending to use had collapsed, its contents burned. The Imperial Authority was aware of everything that had happened—most everything.

But the Shrike’s words to Quill before her death wouldn’t let him relax: I hope he never told you he was an innocent in this … Lamberto was never blackmailing me. I was paying him.

Whatever was happening, whatever the primate had been hired to do, it wasn’t finished. The risk was still there, the coup incomplete. Someone on the other side of the wall still held the reins.

Quill lingered over the rows of painted saints’ medallions, some portraits of the Orozhandi sorcerers in life, some their posed skeletons. He recognized Saint Asla of the Salt, the Martyr of the Wall prominently among them, her hands spread to raise the salt out of the earth and the sea, by the strength of her affinity, her tiny beatific face still fleshed, her bare bones silvery. He wondered if Yinii would like one. Or, really, if she would like one from him.

“Do you make these yourself?” he asked.

“The saints’ amulets yes,” the peddler said. “I cast them of lead, paint them. The iron charms are the gifts and blessings of Thunzi of the Iron. I make a pilgrimage to the maqu’tajii once a year.” He pressed his hands together in a fist and bowed against them, honoring the absent sorcerer.

Quill’s Orozhandi had improved a little over the last two months. He knew enough to know “maqu’tajii” was the word used for sorcerers who weren’t Orozhandi and therefore didn’t quite fit into the connection the horned people felt their own sainted sorcerers made between their gods and their people. Holy enough to visit, to honor, to resell the tokens made from the magic of their affinity. But not saints.

“I’m seeing a girl who counts Saint Asla as her personal saint,” he said to the peddler. Then: “Sort of. I’ve been away. And she’s been busy. She works at the Imperial Archives. We both do, I suppose.”

The peddler blinked up at him, bemused, as if he couldn’t imagine what Quill meant. He reached over and picked up one of the amulets, laying it across his wrinkled palm. “This is Saint Hazaunu,” he said. “Of the Wool. The guardian on the clifftop. The eye that watches the weft and the sentinel that guards the flock. A most holy lady.

“This is my saint,” he added in a lowered voice.

Richa came up behind Quill, carrying the last of the boxes of Primate Lamberto’s papers. He wore the deep-blue uniform of the Vigilant Kinship, the watchful order that kept safe the cities of Semilla from fire, crime, and destruction. The silver-gray fur of the long cloak’s collar fluttered against his close-cropped dark hair and his tan cheeks as a cold autumn breeze snaked down the entryway to the courtyard.

“You all right?” Richa asked.

“Shopping. Do you want an amulet?” Quill asked.

Richa frowned at him, as puzzled as the peddler had been when Quill had brought up Yinii. “No, I’m set. We need to get these locked up,” Richa said, lifting the box of papers. “Excuse us, esinor.”

Quill rolled his eyes and bought the jaguar pendant from the man, then followed Richa into the inn that made up one wall of the relay station. The building was almost a small fortress, arranged around a central courtyard with a fountain at its center, a design formed in far-off ancient Khirazj. They dotted the network of roads that ran throughout the empire, improved by engineers brought by the Datongu and the Beminat when they’d fled to Semilla a hundred years before. The pale walls that rose up two stories to a red-tiled roof were Semilla itself’s favored style, although the Ashtabari innkeeper had hung nets festooned with small charms from the corners, to bring luck and safety and good fortune.

After he and Richa deposited the last of the boxes in the relay station’s storeroom, where they’d be locked up safe overnight, they collected their servings of pilaf studded with smoky meat, pistachios, and dried fruit.

“Haven’t been here in a while,” Quill said as he sat down.

“You stop at this station often?” Richa asked.

“I have,” Quill said. “When I was traveling with Primate Lamberto and … Karimo.” A flush of sorrow washed over him, but it was easier now to talk about his murdered friend. “But the primate hated staying in these station inns. We’d usually stop in one of the villages back toward Ragale if we were heading to the capital.” Richa nodded, and Quill went on. “It’s a nice one. Fountain and all. And the peddlers—I wonder if they sell much here?”

“That’s for them to say,” Richa said slowly.

“Do you think I ought to buy Yinii one of those amulets?” Quill asked as he scraped up the last of his supper. “There were some nice ones.”

The older man sighed. “Does she need one?”

“Seems like a nice-enough present. I think. I don’t actually know,” Quill admitted. “It might be the kind of thing your aunt gives you when you take your oaths. Do you know?”

Richa prodded at his rice. “I don’t.”

Richa was many things, in Quill’s estimation: he was a dedicated vigilant, caring about the safety of the city even when it went against his superiors; he was steady, thoughtful, and unruffled in a way that Quill envied sometimes; he was clever and good at figuring things out, people and problems.

He was also, however, a horrible traveling companion.

“You should get Amadea a gift,” Quill said pointedly. “She likes those little animal figurines.”

Mentioning the archivist superior had worked before to spur Richa into conversation, and Quill was pleased when Richa sat up, his mouth working a moment, before he said, “How are you liking working at the archives?”

Quill wrinkled his nose. “I barely have. The training was fine. It’s not that complicated on paper. It’ll be what crops up day to day that’s tricky. Amadea said they’re going to set me up with Tunuk when we get back, and I don’t get the impression he likes me much.”

“Give him a chance,” Richa said. “You didn’t meet under the best circumstances.”

Quill looked down at his plate, a sudden plunging grief yanking on his chest. Karimo’s death was a horrible thing to face, but in his madness, Karimo had killed Tunuk’s nest-father Lord Obigen yula Manco.

“Fair,” Quill said. He dragged his spoon through the dregs of the sauce. “It was sort of strange. Being back in Ragale. Being in the tower with all the Paremi and … not being one. Made me sort of wonder if I made the wrong decision rescinding my oath.” He sat back and folded his arms. “Do you ever feel like that? Like you shouldn’t have sworn to the Kinship?” When Richa only shook his head, his eyes on the pilaf, Quill pressed on. “How did you decide to join the Vigilant Kinship?”

Richa looked up, his expression … oddly still. “Why?”

“Making conversation?” Quill said. “We hardly talk while we’re riding. I’m going mad. Give me this: ten minutes of talking. How did you come to take your oath with the Kinship?”

Richa drew a long breath through his nose, looking up over Quill’s head, and for a moment, Quill wondered if he’d somehow hit on something Richa was more sensitive about than what was going on with Amadea, and Quill nearly apologized.

But then Richa looked down, smiled vaguely, and said, “It’s not that interesting. I saw a need in the city, and I had a need for myself—I wanted a vocation, and that was something I cared about. Probably similar to you and the Paremi or the archives.”

Quill made a face. “Not really. To begin with, my mother pointed me at the Paremi. Did you have family in the Kinship?”

“No.” The older man stood, still smiling vaguely. “I’m going for a walk before I turn in. Feeling antsy.”

Quill stood as well. “Mind if I come out with you? I think I do want that amulet after all.”

They went back out, but the peddler was gone, the courtyard still and quiet but for the nickering of horses in the stable opposite the inn’s entrance. Quill followed Richa to the gates and went up to the vigilants posted there, a trim dark-skinned woman pulling down the iron grate that barred the entrance and an Ashtabari man, his mottled green-and-gray tentacles coiled under him as he leaned on a spear.

“Do you know where the peddler who was selling amulets went?” Quill asked.

“The old man? He just left,” the woman said. She nodded at the half-down gate. “You can probably catch him.”

Quill frowned. “He doesn’t live at the relay station?”

“Nah,” the man says. “Just sells here.” He nodded to Richa. “We’re locking the gate so we can take our duty breaks. Pull the bell if no one’s here when you get back.”

“Much obliged,” Richa said, ducking under the grating. Quill followed him, trailing several steps behind, until they were out on the wide road.

“If I don’t see him, maybe I’ll just walk with you,” Quill said.

Richa stopped and turned, raising a hand. “Quill, I know you need to talk, but I … I am used to the peace of my own silence. I just want a walk.”

“All right,” Quill said. “I wasn’t going to stop you.”

Richa blew out another breath. “You didn’t ask for my opinion, but we’ve been at this long enough that I think it needs to be said. You clearly miss Karimo. You need a friend. And, Quill, I think highly of you, but you and I are … in very different places in our lives. And even when I was twenty, I didn’t really want to talk about what the first consuls were advocating for when they … did the thing you were talking about yesterday.”

“All right,” Quill said again. “We can talk about something else—”

“I need the quiet of my own head,” Richa said, “and I’m sorry I’m not giving you what you need here, but it’s not … if you want to talk about Karimo, I can talk about Karimo—I’ve lost people, and I know it’s hard. But I’m not going to talk about what you think I should be saying to Amadea or what you want to buy Yinii, and I don’t want to talk about anything right now, all right?”

It was more words than Richa had said to him in days. Quill stiffened, disliking how abruptly Richa had cut into something Quill himself hadn’t been completely sure of. Disliking how sharp that hurt was, he took a step back, and Richa started to say something, maybe apologize.

Quill raised a hand. “That’s fine. I’ll just—”

Rising voices cut off Quill’s reply. Both he and Richa turned toward the sound.

Down the road, out of the range of the relay station’s lamplight, a tangled shadow writhed, like a many-armed monster. It took a moment for Quill’s eyes to pick out the details of them in the shine of the moonlight: two people struggling, shouting.

And then Quill’s heart nearly leapt from his chest as the moonlight caught the knife between the two.

Richa took off running, and what could Quill do but chase after him? A scream rang out, and the mass of shadows split into two—one falling and one running for the forest that lined the road.

“Get the vigilants!” Richa shouted back at Quill as he sped after the fleeing form.

But Quill was coming up to the fallen body—the peddler—and there was so much blood. He dropped down beside the old man, his hands going to the wound on the man’s stomach, trying to hold the man’s guts back.

Quill was kneeling on the road, but suddenly he was sure he was also in the yula Manco house, in the aftermath of Karimo’s attack. The old man stared up at him, panting, his third, parietal eye wide, seeing the shape of Quill’s body heat in the darkness.

“You must,” the old man gasped. “You must … ”

“Don’t worry!” Quill said. “It’s all right!” And in his mind, he was on the floor beside Karimo again, trying to put his throat back together, while a little part of him said, That didn’t work before. This isn’t working now.

Quill screamed for help. He must have. Where were the people in the relay station? Where was Richa? Where was the man with the knife?

“You have to … save her … ” the peddler gasped.

“Who?” Quill gasped back. Yinii, he thought numbly. Amadea. The empress. The Shrike. “Who?” he managed around his panicking brain, his hands sunk into the wet of the man’s gut. “Who?”

The man’s day-eyes fluttered open, but when he looked at Quill, they did not focus. “In the woods,” he said. “Upon the hill … Beyond the white rocks … You must protect her.” He coughed, rackety and desperate, and blood spattered from his mouth, then poured. Quill automatically reached to push it back, to hold it in, and felt the man’s last breath rattle across his hand.

Quill stood up. He couldn’t catch his breath. He ran a bloodied hand through his hair, growing loose and shaggy since he’d begun the process to renounce his vows as a Paremi. Where was Richa? Where were the vigilants from the relay station?

Where was the woman he needed to protect?

Richa burst out of the same woods, furious and scowling, holding a small Borsyan cold-magic lamp in one hand. “Lost the bastard,” he said. “Where are the vigilants?” He stopped, taking in Quill, the blood, the dead man on the road. “Shit,” he said.

“We have to go,” Quill said. “There’s someone in the woods. A woman. That might be where the killer went. He said she’s in the woods, up the hill, beyond the white rocks.”

For a moment, the world felt too large, the sky unable to contain Quill to hold him down—the horror endless and the problem impossible and Richa was about to say, Look, you’ve been through a lot. You’re still figuring this out. It feels like Karimo, but do you really think a dying man raving about a woman in the woods makes sense? We should go back. We should wait for day. You should not be involved.

But Richa cared beyond his basic duty, Richa wasn’t ruffled by the unexpected, and Richa might not want to unburden himself to Quill, but he looked back toward the woods, scanning the tree line as if looking for a hint of a rise, and believed Quill. “Come on,” he said, and plunged toward the woods.

The energy that surged in Quill to move, to do, to stop all this madness seemed to grip Richa just as strongly, and the younger man kept his eyes on the ghostlike patch of silvery fur as Richa moved ahead of him through the gloom and moonlight, along a path Quill couldn’t see. In the woods, up a hill …

The white boulders were deep in the shadow of an ancient fir tree with deep, craggy bark, but even there they glowed faintly as if the moonlight sought them out. Richa stopped in the little clearing there, looking up the steep slope the boulders were set into.

Richa handed Quill the glowing orb. “Stay here.”

He started to climb, scaling the smooth-sided rocks as if they were a ladder and moving up the bare earth slope beyond. Quill looked around, suddenly aware of the possibility of the man with the knife. He moved closer to the rocks, closer to Richa. Surely the vigilant, trained and dedicated to the protection of the Imperial Federation, had a knife on him? Quill only had a little blade for sharpening styli …

As he searched the woods, the rocks, the shadows, he found the gap between the rocks and the little cave beyond. In the woods, upon the hill, beyond the white rocks …

Quill squeezed through the gap, sweeping the light around the space beyond. The cold-magic lamp spread a thin bluish light around the small space. The ceiling had been dug out enough for Quill to straighten up, the beams of the tree’s roots standing out here and there, and the peddler had dug into the hill, pounded the walls smooth.

There was a bed, a box full of dishes, a box full of battered books. A knife on hooks on the wall. A marked-up map. Portraits of saints everywhere. A cushion before the largest portrait of the saint, a quiet personal altar. The stink of a seldom-washed body.

There was no woman in the little dirt room.

Quill let out a breath. No rescue, no action—just standing in a dead man’s home, all his things waiting for him to take them up again, the scent of his living fading already. The shock of Quill’s adrenaline drained away, leaving him weak and grieving.

The portraits of the saints—fleshed and skeletal—stared down at him, and it took Quill a moment to realize they were all the same one. The woman with the shepherd’s crook and the date palm. Saint Hazaunu of the Wool. In different hands and shifting styles, but the same woman. He approached the portrait over the little altar, stepping around the cushion. Her three black eyes regarded him solemnly.

This is my saint, the man had said. The one he’d chosen to venerate, to pray to for his own cares and worries. Quill swallowed and wondered if Saint Hazaunu knew, somewhere, somehow, that her follower had died. He turned away.

The ground beneath his foot gave a hollow thump.

Quill stepped back, shining the light downward. The ground was pounded dirt, but—he stomped against it again—here there was something beneath the dirt. A box, a chest, a wooden barrier—his imagination raced ahead, picturing some frightened hostage hiding beneath. He set aside the cold-magic light and started digging his bloodstained fingers into the dirt.

“Quill?” Richa shouted. “Quill?”

“In the cave! Between the rocks!” He found the wood quickly, swept it free to the edges. He took out the little penknife and fitted it into the uncovered groove, the grit of the dirt grinding the fine edge.

“It’s all right,” he said to the possible girl. “It’s all right.”

Richa came up behind him. “Did you find—”

Quill levered the penknife up against the edge of the box, snapping the blade but breaking the wood free. He grabbed the edge and pulled up, scattering more dirt across the floor, and looked down into the darkness he’d just revealed.

There was, indeed, someone in there.

Only they were very, very dead.

A skeleton lay curled on its side, its hands clasped before its face, as if sleeping. The bones of each browned finger glinted with caps of gold. The horn that curved away from the down-turned face sparkled with charms, and fine wires wrapped the arm bones, strung with pearls. Pillowed beneath its skull were pages of parchment intricate with layers and layers of writing.

The peddler’s medallions flashed through Quill’s thoughts again, the gem-encrusted faces in the Imperial Archives’ Chapel of the Skeleton Saints.

In the woods, up the hill, beyond the white rocks, lay the lost bones of an Orozhandi saint.

CHAPTER TWO

Amadea Gintanas, archivist superior of the southern wing, sat in the prison tower of the imperial compound, reminding herself she was not twenty years away, young and fearful before the sorcerer known as Fastreda of the Glass—forcing herself to keep her attention on Fastreda Korotzma where she sat now, aged and isolated, tapping her glass leg against the chair and facing one of Amadea’s specialists on the other side of the little table.

Fastreda’s eyes glinted—one blue and whole, one paler and fashioned of glass. The scar that took the eye raked up her face from the middle of that cheek, full of crystals and ending in a tuft of spun glass that tangled in her red-blond curls.

“So,” she said, her smile still cruel, still dangerous, as she poured coffee into tiny wooden cups, “do you have an answer for me this time, little shredfinch? How did I know I was a sorcerer?”

Yinii bowed her head, horn charms jingling as she brushed her clasped knuckles to the closed third eye on her brow. Her reddish hair had been braided into a knot at the nape of her neck, her dark blue archivist’s tunic neatly pressed for the occasion.

“Maqu’tajii,” she said. She looked so small, so delicate sitting opposite Fastreda—Amadea was abruptly aware Yinii was only a little older than Amadea herself had been, when she had been afraid and uncertain and used by powerful people like Fastreda.

But at the same time, Amadea thought of Yinii two months ago, caught in the spiral of her affinity, swathed in terrible power and endless ink. A specialist could speak to the worked material they held an affinity for, uncover flaws and histories and find ways to improve it. Amadea knew Yinii could date a scroll, could tell if fading ink could be protected, could identify writers by the faint trembling of the lines, could name the components—where the pigments had come from, what the solvent had been. She was a talented specialist and a very intelligent young woman. But an affinity strong enough to crumble wood into char, to pull water through stone, to dismember an enemy and distill her into gruesome ink …

How did you know you were a sorcerer?

“Oh no, little shredfinch,” Fastreda had said when Yinii initially asked. “You must tell me the answer to that.”

That first time Fastreda turned her question back to her, Yinii was startled—guessed without thinking.

“You couldn’t control the spiral?” The pulling force of affinity magic, the dangerous tide that Amadea had to stay alert to, making certain her specialists weren’t dragged into madness.

Fastreda snorted, waved that away. “Ah, I see you’re just being nosy. No, goat-girl, there is no spiral for the sorcerer. You cannot control it any more than you can control the air around you, and it’s only the weak who pretend otherwise. Go home. Think about this question.”

Yinii returned to the archives, keeping to her rooms. Her hands—the touch of her affinity—she wrapped in cotton gloves. A few weeks later, she and Amadea returned. Fastreda poured the coffee, offered cakes, and asked again, “How did I know I was a sorcerer?”

“You could feel it, all the time. Calling,” Yinii blurted. “It’s supposed to come and go, but you heard it all the time.”

Fastreda rolled her gaze toward Amadea. “This is not my responsibility, my sparrow. To hold your specialists’ hands and tell them they are going to be all right because they enjoy their affinities. Perhaps you are no shredfinch. Go home.”

Another month had passed, and that morning Yinii had come to Amadea in her office, where Amadea was fretting over letters from Ragale and the palace, and asked for a third time to see Fastreda.

Amadea was powerfully reminded of old Borsyan stories, tales from Fastreda’s ancestors’ homeland. The hero always gained his gifts from entering the Black Mother Forest, appeasing her crow-winged daughters and fulfilling their tests, and thereby bearing magic out of the strange, otherworldly wood. There were always three tests in those stories. Three tasks, three trials, three questions.

In the little wooden room in the tower of the Imperial Complex, Yinii lifted her head and tried a third answer: “You knew you were a sorcerer because the sand answered when you called the glass.” Her voice was fragile, her little hands weaving together in anxious patterns. Amadea held her breath.

But Fastreda’s disappointment pinched her face. She looked Yinii over, as if she were a dried-out joint of meat. “If you are this curious,” she said, “there is an easy answer.”

Yinii blinked up at her, her green eyes fearful and hopeful. “What is it?”

Fastreda held up a pinky finger. “Cut it off. Or a toe if you like. When it lands as only flesh, you’ll know. Only sorcerers’ bodies transmute.”

Yinii made a soft sound of alarm.

“Fastreda,” Amadea said sharply.

“What?”

“We’ve come to you for help,” Amadea told the sorcerer sternly. “Frightening her is not helpful.”

“What she is might be frightening,” Fastreda said. “You know this.”

Amadea made her face a mask to hide the thoughts that split her mind in two.

What she is might be frightening. You know this— because Amadea was an archivist superior, and how many specialists had she shepherded through their affinity magic, through the difficulties of its surges and droughts? Even if she had never worked with specialists whose powers approached the strength and reach that made someone a sorcerer, Amadea understood that if Yinii’s abilities were that strong, it would not merely mean she was quicker at dating inks and identifying handwriting. The glass specialists in the archives could note inclusions and mineral stains, sense the marks of the furnaces and the molds—the best could re-fuse cracked artifacts.

Fastreda could stand on a beach and raise an army of glass soldiers if you asked nicely, reshape them as they shattered. If Yinii were a sorcerer, managing her affinity would only be the beginning.

But: What she is might be frightening. You know this—because Amadea had not always been an archivist superior, and when she’d known Fastreda of the Glass, it had been because she was a young girl held up by Redolfo Kirazzi as the true heir to the throne. She was dosed with memory-altering poisons, placed in danger, threatened and raised in turn. And when the coup had collapsed, when the Imperial Authority had spared her but made clear that she remained a danger and would not be allowed to imperil the empire again, Amadea had fled to the archives and remained hidden.

Until two months ago, when a changeling wearing Redolfo Kirazzi’s face had lured her out, had promised her the world, had shown her the bodies of four changeling doubles, each wearing her face exactly.

What she is might be frightening—a lost princess … a hidden monster … something worse.

Did Fastreda know who Amadea really was? Amadea’s memories rushed over clandestine meetings, Redolfo’s inner circle, Fastreda Korotzma in conference by candlelight. She was as close to the Usurper as anyone alive. If Amadea asked, she might let something slip.

If Amadea asked, she might have to know the truth.

“What do you think, my sparrow?” Fastreda asked. “Is she something frightening? Or just a little … strong?”

“I think we should leave,” Amadea said, standing. “Yinii?”

“No,” Yinii said. “I want to ask something.”

The Orozhandi girl raised her gaze from the table, the charms wired to the horns that curved back from her round face all tinkling as she moved. She drew a deep breath, her shoulders rising with the effort, and turned her green eyes on the sorcerer.

“Is it very terrible? Your power?”

Fastreda’s sly look turned curious. “This is the wrong question. I cannot be more or less than the glass. That would mean I am not myself. What I was before it woke up … that is gone. The glass is mine until I am old and ready to be fed to the forest. And I, for one, would not trade it—though I suspect Her Imperial Majesty would love to return me to my prior state.” She turned back to Amadea, her sharp smile returned. “Wouldn’t that be so much easier?”

“I find,” Amadea said, “that the idea of remaking a person for one’s own convenience and preference turns my stomach. You shouldn’t rewrite people.”

“‘Shouldn’t,’” said Fastreda grimly, “is different than ‘cannot.’” She said to Yinii, “Little shredfinch, you don’t have much stomach today, for cakes or for talking. Why don’t you go? Let me talk to my Amadea for a moment.”

Amadea nodded when Yinii looked up at her. “I’ll be quick,” she promised, as the girl stood, made her obeisance. To the Orozhandi, after all, sorcerers were something holy. Fastreda smirked as she did, watching Yinii leave the room.

When the door closed, she spoke to Amadea. “You have not told me how your hunt for the Shrike went. You come, you go, but I find myself curious over and over. What was so important that you came to me, after all these years, my little sparrow, and you don’t even tell me how you fared?”

“It didn’t seem relevant.”

“Nothing else on this side of the Wall or the other was enough to make you come and see me,” Fastreda said. “So I am very invested. Did you catch her?”

Yinii’s haunted look. Quill’s halting retelling. She took the Shrike apart. She just … set a hand on her, and then there was screaming and heat and then … ink. Just ink.

“She’s dead,” Amadea said flatly.

Fastreda tilted her head. “I don’t think that’s all. You would have told me, if that were all. ‘No, Fastreda, no friends are coming for you.’ Who was she?”

“You knew her as Rosa del Milar then, but she was Lady Rosangerda Maschano.” A prim noblewoman, a doting mother—but really the assassin who’d wielded the Venom of Changelings for Redolfo Kirazzi, erasing and revising memories.

Fastreda frowned. “Hmm. Maybe it will come back to me. What was she doing? A foolish thing—sticking your head out of your hidey-hole.”

Redolfo—or something like him, something from over the Salt Wall—murmuring in that dark cave: I won’t say that this was all for you—I wouldn’t dream of it—but the plans did turn on you, on how to draw you out.

Amadea folded her hands together, let her gaze drift across the room. White icing. Blue eye. Red chair. Red jacket. She took a long, slow breath, then nearly lied and told Fastreda she had no idea.

“Did you know about the tunnel?” she asked instead.

“Which tunnel?” Fastreda asked.

Amadea’s pulse churned, Ibramo’s assurances that there were no other tunnels a rope she clung to in the sudden storm of panic. “Under the Salt Wall. Near Sestina.”

“Ah!” Fastreda nodded. “This makes sense. Redolfo … he was always so smug, so coy about how he got his poisons.” She gave a little laugh. “I will tell you a secret. I thought the venom was a big man’s gambit. A lie. I didn’t believe in that poison, not until I realized someone had given it to me. That Shrike. Rosa.”

“What tunnels did you mean, then?”

Fastreda waved this away. “Tunnels, tunnels—Redolfo had a hundred secret strongholds. Or at least more than I want to think about. I know they found some full of notes and coin and weapons. What was in this one? Just a dangerous door?”

Four bodies on the biers. Four women, with long dark hair, shafts of silver along their brows. Four arched noses, four pairs of eyes that weren’t so wrinkled really. Four pairs of high cheekbones scattered with freckles she could never quite cover. Four pairs of lips she had been assured were her best feature. Four changelings wearing the form of Amadea Gintanas, hidden away for years and years. Waiting.

“It’s gone now,” Amadea said. “Collapsed.”

“Probably best,” Fastreda said.

Amadea studied her a moment. “Before, what you said about the empress remaking you, did you mean that the venom …? Could the Venom of Changelings make a specialist forget their gift? Could it …? If someone had given that to you …”

Fastreda’s shard-sharp smile grew very slowly, her living eye as cold as the glass one. “I would cut my own throat first. And I’ll bet the little shredfinch would, too.”

When Amadea reached the entry courtyard, Yinii was standing beneath the bright-washed bricks of the tower, buttoning her cloak against the chilly autumn wind. She stared down at the stones and straightened her gloves with a distracted expression, a frown pulling her mouth and eyes, tightening the third eye nestled closed along her hairline.

Amadea sighed and pulled her own cloak back around her, thinking of Fastreda’s cold eyes. She exchanged her shoes with the guard and paused beside Yinii, watching as she fastened the quartz charm back to one horn—the guards had held it when they entered, knowing it would trigger Fastreda’s affinity.

“We don’t have to come back,” Amadea said. “If you’d rather.”

“We don’t have an answer,” Yinii said.

“It’s … not always a clear-cut thing. You aren’t having problems now. You could take the gloves off—”

“No,” Yinii interrupted.

Amadea reached out and took Yinii’s arm, folding it around her own as they walked into the city. “I would not ask you to risk coming here if I were worried you weren’t out of danger.” She squeezed Yinii’s arm. “You have always had a strong affinity. Stress makes affinities more erratic.”

“Fastreda acts like there’s an answer I’m missing.”

“There is always the possibility that Fastreda isn’t being entirely forthcoming.”

“She’s maqu’tajii,” Yinii said hotly.

Amadea thought of the rows of skeletons in the chapel, the holy remains and relics of Orozhand’s saints, and wondered if any of them had tormented innocent children in life like Fastreda had.

“I don’t think we ought to have this argument again,” Amadea said gently. Yinii only sighed.

Amadea squeezed her arm once more as they came out into the square the archives sat on—the building rose up five impressive stories. A colonnade of caryatids—ten figures for the ten nations that formed the empire after the Salt Wall was sealed; scholars and knowledge gods and noble rulers—framed a walkway on the second and third floors, and above them, the Datongu wisdom goddess, Aye-Nam-Wati, perched in marble on all the red-tiled corners of the roof.

Amadea felt a weight lift off her at the sight. Whatever dangers Fastreda posed—whatever still lurked beyond, in the hands of changelings or Redolfo Kirazzi—the archives remained a refuge.