Loyal to the end, he had cried. The mantra of my Gens. My scars ache and the hollowed-out feeling in my chest makes sense.

“That’s Deci Veturius.” Livia looks at me like I might break, and it makes me want to snarl at her. “Faris’s replacement. Harper cleared him.”

“Empress,” Deci says again. “Forgive me. Captain Harper is here to see the Blood Shrike.”

I look around the room for an escape. The closet has a passageway. It’s guarded. But not by anyone who would dare to talk.

“She’s—ah—” Livia calls to Deci as I walk through the doorway to the closet. “She’s indisposed.”

“Very good, Empress.”

Livia scurries after me, ignoring Zacharias chewing on her knuckles. “Harper’s been worried sick.” She gives me a reproachful look. “I don’t think he’s slept since Quin came back.”

My heart twinges a little at that, fool that it is.

“Empress.” I feel for the passage entrance, and it opens silently. “If we are to solidify the loyalty of the Paters and lure over Keris’s allies, then we must win Antium for the Emperor,” I say. “I have much to do. By your leave.”

My little sister sighs, and Zacharias regards us solemnly, as if waiting to be let in on a secret.

“One day, sister,” Livia says, “you’ll have to reckon with all the things you try to hide from yourself. And the longer you wait, the more it will hurt.”

“Maybe,” I say. “But not today.”

I slip through the passageway and into the castle, which is as damp and chilly as ever, though humming with courtiers and soldiers and servants.

“It’s good to see you up and about, Shrike.” A Martial woman in a maid’s uniform smiles as she passes, a Scholar soldier at her side.

“Heard you gave Grímarr hell, sir,” he says. “I’m sorry he’s still alive, but I hope to be by your side when you kill him dead.”

All the way to Darin’s smithy, people call greetings or stop to talk to me about Antium.

“When are we taking back the capital, Shrike—”

“I knew you’d be back on your feet—”

“Heard you took down a hundred of those Karkaun thugs—”

The more people approach, the faster I walk. The people love you, Livia said. But it is the Emperor who they must love. The Emperor who they must fight for.

My injuries pain me, and it takes me longer than I anticipate to get to Darin’s smithy, a half-covered courtyard in the middle of the castle. The Scholar is stripped to his waist despite the chill, muscles rippling as he plunges a scim into the forge while Spiro Teluman works the bellows. As I step through one of the peaked archways into the courtyard, I notice a Scholar healer named Nawal watching Darin, steeling herself to approach.

“Not hard to look at, is he?” I jump at the voice next to me, my scim half-drawn. It is Musa, one hand gently nudging my blade back to its scabbard. He has a dozen bruises and as many cuts, most half-healed.

“So jumpy, Shrike. One would think you’d only just escaped a band of Karkauns by the skin of your teeth.” He chuckles darkly at his little joke, but his smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “Forgive me,” he says. “Laughing hurts less than facing what happened. I am sorry about Faris. I liked him.”

“Thank you,” I say. “And your joke was terrible, so naturally, Faris would have loved it.” I offer the Scholar a smile. “You’re no worse for wear, I hope?”

He pats his face, preening. “Everyone says I’m even more dashing with scars.”

“Piss off, you.” I shove him, surprised to find myself laughing, and move for Darin.

“How go the blades?”

Laia’s brother jumps, so immersed that he hadn’t noticed me.

“We’ve made two hundred since you left for Antium,” he says. “No beauty to them, but they won’t break.”

Spiro joins us, wiping melted snow off his shaved head with a rag. “The work goes more swiftly now,” he says. “You look better, Shrike.”

“I’m alive because of you.” I offer him my hand. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

“Get your men to wear the armor I’ve been forging for the past year.” He pulls me to the side as Darin and Musa converse. “The Empress Regent had it carted here at my request. But your soldiers say it’s unnatural.”

I have a vague memory of a glowing helmet. While Scholars attempt to find logical excuses for the supernatural, Martials are wary of it. It’s why I hid my healing powers for so long. I had no wish to be killed for practicing witchery.

“Unnatural,” I say. “Is it?”

“The Augurs taught me to make the armor. It will help our fighters blend in with the darkness. It will turn away arrows. It’s resistant to fire. And it loses that glow as soon as it’s put on.”

I regard the smith thoughtfully. “I don’t remember much about the journey out. But I do remember you saying you’d been waiting for me.”

He turns to a scim awaiting polish. “The Augurs warned me you’d come,” he says. “Told me much depended on me working in that damned cave, making armor until you showed up. I was starting to think they were crazy.”

“Why you? And . . .” I glance at Darin. “Why him? You knew the risks in taking him on. In sharing our secrets. It’s a miracle you weren’t both executed.”

“The secrets never should have been ours alone.” Teluman’s voice is harsh, and he glares down at the scim. “I had a sister,” he says after a moment. “Isadora. When she was sixteen, she fell in love with a Scholar girl. They were discovered together by an Illustrian who had been courting Isa.”

“Oh,” I say. “Oh no.”

“I tried to get her to Marinn, where she could love who she wished. I failed. The Empire used one of my blades to execute her. Or so they told me. They didn’t let me see her, before the end.”

His look of self-loathing is as familiar to me as my own face. “Do you know how many blades I made for them before Isa died, Shrike?” he says. “Do you know how many were used to kill innocents? But it wasn’t until it affected my family that I finally did something. That fact will haunt me until I die.”

“What happened to the Scholar girl?”

“I found her. Put her on a ship south. She lives in Ankana. Writes to me sometimes. Anyway, I met him a few months after.” Spiro nods to Darin. “Curious, just like Isa. An artist like her. Full of questions like her. And he told me he had a little sister.”

The smith gives me a level stare, snow dusting his many piercings. “I waited for you because the Augurs said you’d set things right. That you’d help to forge a new world. I will hold you to that, Shrike. I’m done siding with tyrants.”

“Shrike.” Darin interrupts us, a furrow between his brows. “Musa says one of his wights just returned from the Tribal desert. Aish has fallen to Keris. No one’s seen Laia. She’s been missing for days.”

“Missing?” Worry gnaws at me, and I turn to Musa. “I thought you had eyes everywhere.”

“I do,” Musa says. “The wights can’t find her.”

“Which means I need to,” Darin says. “I know we need weapons for the Scholars, but she’s my sister, Shrike.”

I cannot lose him now. We need his smithing skills—not to mention the fact that if he leaves and Keris gets to him, Laia will murder me. “Darin, give me until after we take Antium—”

“What if something’s happened to her?”

“Your sister,” I say, “is tough. Tougher than you. As tough as me. Wherever she is, she will be all right. I’ll have my spies in the south keep an eye out for her.”

As it happens, I already sent Laia a message, asking her to tell the Tribes that we’ll offer support in their fight against Keris if they swear fealty to Zacharias. “When I get word of her—and I will get word of her—I promise, I’ll let you know.”

The Scholar is about to protest again, but if I have to argue further, I might lose my temper. “Musa.” I grab the Beekeeper by the arm and walk him out of the forge. “Come with me.”

“Now, Shrike.” Musa follows me reluctantly. “While I do like my women tall and bossy, and while I know this face is difficult to resist, sadly, my heart belongs to another—”

“Oh, shut up.” I stop when we’re far from the courtyard. “You’re not that pretty.” He bats his eyelashes at me, and I wish he were just a bit uglier. “I need eyes in Antium, Scholar. Mine have all gone to ground.”

“Hmm. Humans are sadly unreliable.” Musa pulls an apple from his cloak and pares off a slice. Its sweet scent cuts through the damp, and he hands me the piece. “What do I get for helping you, Blood Shrike?”

“The thanks of the Emperor and his Blood Shrike,” I say. At the distaste on his face, I sigh. “What do you want?”

“A favor,” he says. “At a time and place of my choosing.”

“I can’t promise that. You could ask for anything.”

He shrugs. “Good luck taking back your capital.”

Of course. He wouldn’t make things easy. Then again, if it were me in his shoes, I’d ask for the same. “Fine,” I say. “But nothing . . . untoward.”