No, I have to be more cunning. I click my horse forward. I can do nothing about Grímarr’s attacks. But I can weaken Keris—if I can get information on her.

“We’ll have a day or two of quiet while Grímarr figures out the Karkauns’ next move,” I tell Dex. “There are a few files on the Paters in my desk. All their dirty little secrets. Start cornering them discreetly. See if you can get them to talk.”

Dex leaves me, and when I return to the barracks, I find Avitas waiting, shoulders stiff with disapproval.

“You should not be traveling the city alone, Shrike,” Avitas says. “Regulation states—”

“I can’t waste you or Dex on escorting me everywhere,” I say. “Did you find it?”

He nods me inside my quarters.

“There are at least two hundred estates in the mountains beyond the city.” He rolls out a map on my desk, and the houses are all marked. “Nearly all of them are affiliated with Gens that are allied with Keris. Three are abandoned.”

I consider what Elias said of Quin’s whereabouts. Wherever Keris is, he’ll be close by, waiting for her to make a mistake. He’s not stupid enough to use one of his own estates. And he won’t be alone.

One of the abandoned houses is at the bottom of a valley—no water source and no forest around it for soldiers to hide in. The other is too small to house more than a dozen or so men.

But the third . . .

“This one.” I tap it. “Built into a hill. Defensible. Nearby stream. Easy tunneling for a quick escape. And look”—I point to the other side of the hills—“towns remote enough that he could send men there for supplies and he wouldn’t attract much notice.”

We set off immediately, two Black Guards trailing to make sure any spies are dispatched. By noon, we are deep within the mountains east of Navium.

“Shrike,” Harper says when we are clear of the city. “You should know that the Commandant had a late-night visitor.”

“The Nightbringer?”

Avitas shakes his head. “Three break-ins of her quarters at the Island over the course of the last two weeks. During the first, my spy reported that a window was left open. During the second, an item was left on Keris’s bed. A sculpture.”

“A sculpture?”

“A mother holding a child. The Commandant destroyed it and killed the slave who discovered it. During the third visit, another sculpture was left. My contact pulled this one from the ashes of the fire.”

He reaches into a saddlebag and offers me a rough sculpture of yellow clay, blackened on one side. It is of a crudely made woman, her head bowed. Her hand reaches down with strange plaintiveness to a child who reaches back. They do not touch, though they sit on the same base.

The figures have thumb indents for eyes and lumps for noses. But their mouths are open. It looks as if they are screaming. I shove the sculpture back at Avitas, disturbed.

“No one’s seen the intruder.” Avitas tucks the object away. “Other than what my spy saw, the Commandant has hidden the break-ins well.”

There are plenty of people who could get into the Commandant’s quarters unseen. But for her to then not catch them after they’d been there once—that indicates a level of skill I’ve known only one person to have. A woman I haven’t seen in months. The Cook.

I mull it over as we travel higher into the mountains, but it doesn’t make sense. If Cook can sneak into the Commandant’s quarters, why not just kill her? Why leave her peculiar statues?

Hours later, after winding through switchbacking mountain trails, we arrive at the foot of a sweeping, old-growth forest. Navium glitters to the west, a cluster of lights and still-smoldering fires with the black snake of the Rei winding through it.

We abandon the horses beside a creek, and I draw a dagger as we make for the tree line. If Quin is out there, he won’t take kindly to Emperor Marcus’s Blood Shrike showing up unannounced.

Harper unhooks his bow, and we slip cautiously into the woods. Crickets chirp, frogs sing—the wild sounds of a summer countryside. And though it is dark, there’s moon enough for me to see that no one has trod these woods for months, maybe years.

With every step, my hopes diminish further. I’m to send a report to Marcus tomorrow. What the bleeding hells am I going to say if Quin isn’t out here?

Harper curses, the sound sharp and unexpected, and I hear a hissing snick. It’s followed by a muffled grunt. A phalanx of axes swings down from the trees.

Harper only just dives out of the way, and I have never been happier to see an ally nearly have his head sliced off.

We spend the next two hours avoiding carefully laid booby traps, each one more intricate and well-hidden than the next.

“What a bleeding lunatic.” Harper cuts a trip wire that drops a net laced with razor-sharp shards of glass. “He’s not even trying to catch anyone. He just wants them dead.”

“He’s not a lunatic.” I drop my voice. The moon is high. It’s past midnight. “He’s thorough.” Glass gleams through the trees—a distant window.

Something in the air shifts, and the night creatures go quiet. I know, as sure as I know my own name, that Harper and I are no longer alone in this forest.

“Let’s get this over with.” I sheathe my blade, hoping to the skies that I’m not talking to a pack of highway bandits or some crazed hermit.