Denth pushed the broken door open, sticking his head out. “Oh,” he said. “It’s you.”

“What happened?” she asked. “Were you attacked?”

Denth glanced at the door and chuckled to himself. “Nah,” he said, pushing the door open and waving her in. Through the broken door she could see that furniture had been ripped apart, there were holes in the walls, and pictures were slashed and broken. Denth wandered back inside, kicking aside some stuffing from a cushion, making his way toward the stairs. Several of the steps had been broken.

He glanced back, noting her confusion. “Well, we did say we were going to search the house, Princess. Figured we might as well do a good job of it.”

VIVENNA SAT DOWN VERY CAREFULLY, half-expecting the chair to collapse beneath her. Tonk Fah and Denth had been very thorough in their search—they had broken every bit of wood in the house, it seemed, including chair legs. Fortunately, her current chair had been propped up reasonably well, and it held her weight.

The desk in front of her—Lemex’s desk—was splintered. The drawers had been removed, and a false back had been revealed, the compartment emptied. A group of papers and several bags sat on the desktop.

“That’s everything,” Denth said, leaning against the room’s doorframe. Tonk Fah lounged on a broken couch, its stuffing sticking out awkwardly.

“Did you have to break so much?” Vivenna asked.

“Had to be certain,” Denth said, shrugging. “You’d be surprised where people hide things.”

“Inside the front door?” Vivenna asked flatly.

“Would you have thought to look there?”

“Of course not.”

“Sounds like a pretty good hiding place to me, then. We knocked, and thought we found a hollow space. Just turned out to be a section of different wood, but it was important to check.”

“People get really clever when it comes to hiding important stuff,” Tonk Fah said with a yawn.

“You know the thing I hate most about being a mercenary?” Denth asked, holding up a hand.

Vivenna raised an eyebrow.

“Splinters,” he said, wiggling several red fingers.

“No hazard pay for those,” Tonk Fah added.

“Oh, now you’re just being silly,” Vivenna said, sorting through the items on the table. One of the bags clinked suggestively. Vivenna undid the drawstring and pulled open the top.

Gold glistened inside. A lot of it.

“Little over five thousand marks in there,” Denth said lazily. “Lemex had it stashed all over the house. Found one bar of it in the leg of your chair.”

“Got easier when we discovered the paper he’d used to remind himself of where he hid it all,” Tonk Fah noted.

“Five thousand marks?” Vivenna said, feeling her hair lighten slightly in shock.

“Seems like old Lemex was storing up quite the little nest egg,” Denth said, chuckling. “That, mixed with the amount of Breath he held . . . he must have extorted even more from Idris than I assumed.”

Vivenna stared at the bag. Then, she looked up at Denth. “You . . . gave it to me,” she said. “You could have taken it and spent it!”

“Actually, we did,” Denth said. “Took about ten bits for lunch. Should be here any minute.”

Vivenna met his eyes.

“Now there’s what I’m talking about, eh, Tonks?” Denth said, glancing down at the larger man. “If I’d been, say, a butler, would she be looking at me like that? Just because I didn’t take the money and run? Why does everyone expect a mercenary to rob them?”

Tonk Fah grunted, stretching again.

“Look through those papers, Princess,” Denth said, kicking Tonk Fah’s couch, then nodding toward the door. “We’ll wait for you downstairs.”

Vivenna watched them retreat, Tonk Fah grumbling as he had to rise, bits of stuffing sticking to the back of his clothing. They thumped their way down the stairs, and soon she heard dishes rattling. They’d likely sent one of the street boys—who passed periodically yelling that they would bring food from a local restaurant—for the meal.

Vivenna didn’t move. She was increasingly uncertain of her purpose in the city. Yet she still had Denth and Tonk Fah, and—surprisingly—she was finding herself growing attached to them. How many soldiers in her father’s army—good men, all of them—would have been able to resist running off with five thousand marks? There was more to these mercenaries than they let on.

She turned her attention to the books, letters, and papers on the desk.

SEVERAL HOURS LATER, Vivenna still sat alone, a solitary candle burning and dripping wax onto the splintered desk corner. She had long since stopped reading. A plate of food sat uneaten by the door, brought by Parlin some time before.

Letters lay spread out on the desk before her. It had taken time to put them in order. Most were penned in her father’s familiar hand. Not the hand of her father’s scribe. Her father’s own hand. That had been her first clue. He only wrote his most personal, or most secret, communications on his own.

Vivenna kept her hair under control. She deliberately breathed in and out. She didn’t look out the darkened window at the lights of a city that should have been asleep. She simply sat.

Numb.

The final letter—the last before Lemex’s death—sat on top of the pile. It was only a few weeks old.

My friend, her father’s script read.

Our conversations have worried me more than I care to admit. I have spoken with Yarda at length. We can see no solution.

War is coming. We all know that now. The continued—and increasingly vigorous—arguments in the Court of Gods show a disturbing trend. The money we sent to buy you enough Breath to attend those meetings is some of the best I have ever spent.

All signs point to the inevitability of Hallandren Lifeless marching to our mountains. Therefore, I give you leave to do as we have discussed. Any disruptions you can cause in the city—any delays you can earn us—will be extremely valuable. The additional funds you requested should have arrived by now.

My friend, I must admit a weakness in myself. I will never be able to send Vivenna to be a hostage in that dragon’s nest of a city. To send her would be to kill her, and I cannot do that. Even though I know it would be best for Idris if I did.

I’m not yet sure what I will do. I will not send her, for I love her too much. However, breaking the treaty would bring the Hallandren wrath against my people even more quickly. I fear I may have to make a very difficult decision in the days to come.

But that is the essence of a king’s duty.

Until we correspond again,

Dedelin, your liege and your friend.

Vivenna looked away from the letter. The room was too perfectly silent. She wanted to scream at the letter and her father, who was now so far away. And yet, she could not. She had been trained for better. Tantrums were useless displays of arrogance.

Don’t draw attention to yourself. Don’t set yourself above others. He who makes himself high will be cast down low. But what of the man who murders one of his daughters to save the other? What of the man who claims—to your face—that the switch was for other reasons? That it was for the good of Idris? That it wasn’t about favoritism at all?

What of the king who betrayed the highest tenets of his religion by purchasing Breath for one of his spies?

Vivenna blinked at a tear in her eye, then gritted her teeth, angry at herself and the world. Her father was supposed to be a good man. The perfect king. Wise and knowing, always sure of himself and always right.

The man she saw in these letters was far more human. Why should she be so shocked to learn that?

It doesn’t matter, she told herself. None of that matters. Factions in the Hallandren government were rallying the nation for war. Reading her father’s candid words, she finally believed him completely. Hallandren troops would likely march on her homeland before the year was out. And then, the Hallandren—so colorful yet so deceptive—would hold Siri hostage and threaten to kill her unless Dedelin surrendered.