Weeping.

The women at the comfort house might not weep, but Nevo knew he would not be going there, and as he stood at his post through the long, dull night, it felt as if his true work and challenge—other than standing still for long stretches of time—was in keeping himself from wondering what was happening within. It was ridiculous, how that merest of glimpses had made this girl real in a way that all the women and girls of the past two months had not been. Well, they had been, certainly, but he had managed to overlook it. Would that he could now.

He indulged in a different folly to distract himself. It was equally futile but less likely to drive him mad, and it was: wishing that he had never been plucked from the army to join the Silverswords.

It was not a rational wish. The guards’ pension was better—it went to his family—and the chances of survival much better than in the army, but unlike most Silverswords, Nevo had been a soldier first and knew the difference, and the difference was profound.

Out beyond Astrae, across this land and the next, soldiers had kept the beasts at bay for centuries, fighting and dying and finally winning. There was honor in that, even glory, though Nevo would have given up the glory for simple honor—to feel right in his days and nights, to do something….

Of course, it was more complicated now. The Chimaera War was over and a new one was brewing, but it was hard to feel the simple righteousness there had always been when fighting beasts.

The Stelians were seraphim. Beyond that, he knew next to nothing about them; no one did. The Far Isles were, quite literally, on the far side of the globe, trading suns and moons with the Empire in turn, never sharing day or night or anything else; if they had wronged the Empire in some way, it had not been felt by ordinary folk, who bore no animosity toward their distant, mysterious cousins. Nevo’s gauge was his own family, and he could well imagine the talk there would be when it got out that Joram had declared war.

“On who?” his father would demand, looking dumbstruck. “On a people whose king he doesn’t even know the name of?”

“If there is a king.” His mother. “I’ve heard they have a queen.”

“Oh, have you now. And that the air elementals are her spies?”

“Indeed. And she can kill with a look, and cooks up storms in a great pot to send out over the seas.” She would be smirking. His mother had a laughing smirk and a love of nonsense, and his father had a booming laugh, but a dark furrow of worry, too.

“What a fight to pick,” Nevo imagined him fretting. “It’s like pelting stones into a cave and waiting to see what comes barreling out.”

And Nevo was waiting to see. Envoys had been dispatched with Joram’s declaration two weeks ago and hadn’t returned or been heard of. What did it mean? Perhaps they’d gotten lost searching for the Far Isles and hadn’t delivered the scroll at all. Saved from war by poor navigation?

Wishful thinking.

He stifled a yawn. It was finally morning, or nearly. His relief would be here soon—

Alef Gate crashed open.

Nevo leapt airborne. Chaos poured out. Noise and wings and sparks and rushing and shouting and… what was the protocol? He protected the gate from without. What did he do when chaos burst from within? No one had ever said, and who was this? Stewards and servants, and a handful of Silverswords, too.

“What’s happened?” Nevo barked, but no one heard him over the roaring coming from within.

The bellowing, the fury.

Joram.

The girl, thought Nevo. And while stewards and servants stumbled over each other trying to escape the path of the emperor’s rage, he pushed inside. Beit Gate was abandoned; where was Resheph? Had he been one of those to flee? Flee? Unbelievable.

Nevo rushed through the door and was deeper in the inner sanctum than he had ever been. He didn’t know the way, but Joram’s rage was like a river he traced upstream. When he took a wrong turn, he doubled back and found the right way. Minutes were lost to the glass labyrinth. The emperor’s voice came and went now. The howling gave way to words, though Nevo couldn’t make them out.

Gimel Gate, Dalat, Hei, Vav, all unguarded; the Silverswords had either rushed out or in, leaving their posts. Nevo’s first thought was to be appalled by the lack of discipline, but then he realized that he, too, had left his post, and he began to be afraid. It was the only time he wavered; he could still go back—maybe in the madness his breach would be overlooked.

Later, it would be some consolation to know that it wouldn’t have mattered. By now, nothing he said or did could matter. All was done and decided long before he burst at a flying run into the emperor’s bedchamber.

Plashing fountains, orchids, the chatter and squawk of caged birds. The ceiling seemed leagues overhead—all glittering glass spangled by constellations of lights that gave the illusion of the night sky. In the middle of it all, the bed was raised on a dais, like some monument to virility. It was empty.

Joram stood in the center of the room with his hands on his hips. He was powerful, thickened by age but toughened, too, and marked with old battle scars. His jaw was square, his face red with rage and hard with scorn. He wore a robe; it showed a triangle of chest, and seemed somehow vulgar.

A handful of other guards were here, standing around looking—Nevo thought—stupid and large. Eliav was one of them. The Captain of the Silverswords had himself been on Samekh Gate, and would have been the first on the scene—save Namais and Misorias, of course, Joram’s personal bodyguards, who slept by turns in the antechamber. They stood just paces from their master, their faces seeming chiseled from wood. Byon, the head steward, was leaning heavily on his cane, his palsy much more pronounced than usual.

“You didn’t place it there?” Joram demanded of the old seraph.

“No, my lord. I would have woken you at once, of course. For something like this—”

“A basket of fruit?” Joram was incredulous, and then—“A basket of fruit!”—his fury returned and flashed through the chamber as heat and light.

Nevo took a step back. He scanned for the girl. He hadn’t been thinking clearly, or thinking at all; it hadn’t even occurred to him until this moment that he would see her unveiled, and certainly not that she, like Joram’s chest, might be… exposed. As soon as he caught sight of her—peripherally, a blur of flesh on the far side of the dais—he realized this was the case, and his instinct was not to look, not to turn toward her, but only to back out to the door and be away from here.

“Explain to me how it came to be here.” Joram’s fury turned to ice. “Through so many guarded doors to arrive at the foot of my bed.”

It was her stillness that made Nevo turn his head.

She was young; he had been right. And she was exposed. Naked. There was a girlish fullness to her face, but her breasts were full, too, nothing girlish there. Her hair was red and wild, and her eyes were brown. She was slumped against the wall, making no effort to cover herself, staring at him—at him—without expression.

Without motion.

Almost as soon as Nevo settled his eyes on her, she tipped slowly sideways. He watched it happen, remembering how slowly she had walked across the skybridge. This was like that, his mind tried telling him, just like that. But then: the rubbery jounce and splay of limbs as she subsided to the floor, the tinkle of her bangles settling, and stillness. The fire of her wings dimmed. Died. On the wall behind her was a streak of blood which, traced upward by the eye, led to a red stain on the glass.

Her head had done that.

She had been thrown.

Nevo was hot and cold and sick. He thought of the Shadows That Live—his instinct was to blame beasts, and he knew the fabled assassins were at large again, somehow still alive—but this wasn’t what they did. The Shadows slit throats.