I glanced at the man immortalized in paint, and snorted.

“You were too stupid to understand the weight on your shoulders,” I told him. “Too short-sighted to contemplate just how heavy it would be.”

He said nothing, of course. Even if it wasn’t just a canvas, that man was long gone.

Painted Cirri just smiled at me. Telling me to do what I had to do.

I exhaled, tearing my eyes from the portraits and putting my mind back to use where it was needed. This was no time to ponder past mistakes.

“East,” I murmured, touching the map. The fortresses would have legions to defend them. Hakkon would expect me to scout north to south, and back again; instead I would take the fight directly to him, pick off the young wargs one by one, thin his numbers.

The door to the tower crashed open, far below. At first, I felt a flicker of pleasure at the idea of seeing my wife, but those were not her footsteps on the stairs.

I swiveled an ear, listening to the echoes bouncing off the stone walls. A pair of feet in hobnailed boots, stomping steadily; a softer pair, scuffing along, mumbled protests.

The upstairs door slammed open next, and I was greeted with the sight of Visca, her blue eyes blazing cold fury, one of the maids held in front of her, her arms twisted behind her back.

I squinted at the girl… Ellena. Her hair was wild, a gag tied around her mouth. She stared at me, wide-eyed, struggling against Visca’s iron grip.

My commander marched the girl forward, heedless of her useless protests.

“Here we are, then,” Visca said, and her voice was cheerful in a way that meant blood was coming.

“What is all this?” I eyed Ellena warily. Cirri didn’t like her, but she wouldn’t take well to one of the women she’d worked with being manhandled.

“This—” Visca kneed the maid in the thigh, hard, and Ellena went to her knees with a muffled cry. “Is the reason everyone in Tristone is dead.”

I looked from Visca, her face taut with anger, to Ellena.

Ellena, a useless, spoiled girl. She could hardly handle mucking out the stables.

How could she be responsible for such a thing?

“Explain.”

Visca held Ellena’s arm with one hand, brushing her hair out of her face with the other. “I decided to dig around a little after that mess. The steward mentioned an unusual volume of letters going out from one person. The next time the courier came around, I questioned him. Ellena started with a few letters to Argent, addressed to the Cathedral. And then she started sending letters elsewhere.”

I nodded, still not seeing how this childish maid related in any way. “Perhaps she has family.”

Visca stared at me. “Come now, lad, do I strike you as the type to overreact?”

“No,” I admitted.

“Very well, then, let me say my piece and you can be the judge.” Visca pulled Ellena’s arm a little tighter. “So I had a little peek for myself before the next round of letters went out. And what was it, hmm?” She nudged Ellena in the back with her knee. “Was it sweet nothings to lovers, happy tidings for family members?”

Ellena was breathing hard, snorting air through her nose over the gag. She tried to pull away, whimpering wordlessly.

“Of course it wasn’t,” Visca said sweetly. “It was maps. It was the location of our legions, with fairly accurate numbers. It was the details of the security kept on Cirrien lai Darran, not to mention quite the dossier on her lineage and family’s estates. It was details on our schedules, where you or the Lady can be found in the keep.”

A touch of frost crept over my heart. “Who were these letters addressed to?”

“Well, that’s another strange thing, isn’t it?” Visca smiled at Ellena. “I’d think a girl from the Cathedral would be sending these letters to Argent, but no, they’re addressed to a man in Port Coran to the south.”

Port Coran… a sprawling seaside city south of the Rift. It lay half in Foria, half in the Rivers of Veladar. It was where most of the goods came in from Serissa, and traders from Nordrin came down through the Rift to deal freely in that market.

It was also its own territory. It might be half settled in the Rivers, but even Wroth allowed it to maintain its sovereignty. In Coran, there was no care for one’s nation, only for trade and gold.

And information.

“I sent a trusted man down to Coran to have a look for himself. All of these girl’s letters were sent to a Forian man, by the name of Makariy Agripin. Sounds familiar, no?”

I closed my eyes. I remembered one Captain Agripin, one of Hakkon’s right-hand men. I also remembered tearing a leg from his body. Seemed he must have lived. A shame.

I looked down at Ellena, her eyes downcast now, cheeks and cloth soaked with tears.

“What could you gain from selling information to Foria?” I asked her, my voice quiet. “What could Hakkon give you that I could not? I would have released you from service with handfuls of gold, had you asked. I would have given it simply to get rid of you.”

She shook her head, sobbing through the gag.

“Agripin still had some of the previous letters,” Visca said grimly. “Detailing just how behind schedule Tristone was on repairing those fortifications, how the mines and quarries have gone abandoned for the last year. She sold them to Hakkon.”

“Does he live?” I asked, still watching Ellena quiver.

“Not any longer.”

“Good.”

The maid tried to pull away from Visca, and my commander tugged her arm up sharply. “I’ve got one of her letters. Go ahead and cross-compare, but after forcing her to write, I’m convinced of it.”

“Visca.”

My commander, my creator, gazed up at me, eyes so cold with fury they no longer looked vampiric, let alone human.

“Leave her here. I’ll question her.”

Ellena sucked in a snotty breath as Visca released her, dropping her bodily to the floor. The maid curled in on herself as my commander drew herself up, nodding to me. She withdrew a letter from her pocket and handed it to me.

“Make it hurt, my lad,” she said softly. “Those women, those children… even the damn pups. All of that suffering is on her head.”

It was unlike Visca to editorialize when execution was at stake. She walked stiff-legged from the room, shoulders drawn up, fists clenched.

Ellena peeled the gag from her mouth with shaking fingers. “I never…” she whispered.

“Shut up.” I knelt, staring at her like I’d never seen her before. “And sit up when you speak to me.”

In a way, I hadn’t seen her before. I hadn’t paid any attention at all to the woman sent with Cirri. I supposed she was thought of as pretty, but the little I knew of her made her ugly in my eyes.

The Eldest Sister had probably sent her as a spy. Both Wyn and I had known the sour bat wouldn’t be able to resist having eyes in our house, and any knowledge the girl had sent on would have been useless to the Sisterhood. It was worth letting the old woman’s spy live, where we could keep an eye on her.

But to ally with Foria… that was unforgivable.

“When did you start sending letters?” I kept my tone low, soft, reasonable.

Ellena scrambled to obey, straightening her back, her shoulders and chest quaking with suppressed sobs. She gasped for breath between words, her voice strangled. “When we got here, my lord. I sent letters to Argent, to the Cathedral, but I never—”

“What did you send, in these letters to the Cathedral?”

Her face crumpled, and she made an effort to calm herself. It crumpled again almost immediately. She started with halting tentativeness, and the words quickly turned into a flood. “I told… Eldest Sister… about the keep. She wanted to know. I was supposed to tell her everything, what Cirri was doing, if she was… if she was getting on with you or if she might agree to send information back to the Sisters, but then she was getting on, and I told Eldest Sister that she wouldn’t agree to be a spy, she was too much in love with being the Lady—”