WHEN ESOR MET WITH Lady Kit?anve for teatime, she wore a shawl to protect her robes from tiny yellow songbirds climbing on her arms. They hopped and fluttered up her shoulders to nip at her hair. Esor feared Kit?anve enough to resist asking why she had so many.

  She wanted to look at his palm again. “You dream of nothing?” she asked, glaring at the lines. A songbird alighted on his shoulder to peck angrily. “Nothing at all?”

  “Nothing,” he said, pulling back from the stab of tiny beak. “My apologies.”

  With neither keroterase nor other companions, the sitting room felt vast. Unlit braziers and half-closed curtains made the middle of Light feel like evening. On the side table, an almanac rested beside a single cup of tea that Kit?anve had served for herself. She had also eaten two cakes before letting him speak. Her tongue traced the flavor against her teeth while she considered Esor’s face, as if seeking secrets his palm concealed.

  “You should be dreaming more,” she said. “My daughters’ dreams became abundant in the thick of the herbs.”

  “Perhaps I am only having nightmares,” Esor said. “Any of us has every reason to fear the Dwarrow.”

  “Keep drinking the tea.” She gave him another jar with a songbird balanced on her wrist. It watched his every movement with a fixed black gaze.

  “Thank you, my lady,” said Esor, and he was dismissed.

  ~

  ONE NIGHT, THE LORD Mayor found Esor hunched over the alchemy table. A storm concealed the sound of Corvin’s approach. Esor only realized he wasn’t alone once he spoke. “I heard you were a restless soul,” said Corvin. Esor spun around by the third word, plastering his back to the table. “I did not expect such slavish dedication to your labors.”

  Esor stood within the protective circle of beakers as Corvin loomed large and dark on the other side. His antlers formed lines more sinuous than the metal frames holding flasks. His statuesque features were composed into a frown, but his words were accompanied by that secondary hum of amusement. Corvin often sang like that in Esor’s presence.

  Esor slipped his alchemy journal into a drawer. “I won’t be able to hunt for anyone if you cancel my contract, or if you—”

  “Flay you in a guard tower?” suggested Corvin.

  “I assume that’s never off the table,” Esor said.

  The Lord Mayor slid his arm between to beakers to proffer a letter. His sleeve dangled above unused heating elements and a scattering of salts. “I might flay my ignorant tutor if his mother had not attested to his innocence.”

  The letter was in Tasero an Amen’s tidy handwriting, as meticulous as her weaving. It said, in short, that Amen had brought the Heartbox back from a military tour, and she had given it to Esor as a sentimental parting gift. Esor’s hands were so tight on the letter that it crumpled.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “You look displeased,” Corvin said. A dark smile flitted over his lips. “Did you hope for the lash, Master Esor?”

  “Of course not!” His cheeks reddened hotter than any flame on the table. He almost set the letter down on one such flame, but yanked it back in time. Esor clutched his mother’s words to his breast. “I’ve heard nothing from my mother until this.” He laughed lightly. “Apologies. Of course, that is not your concern. May I keep this, please? I would quite love to—no, of course, yes, you’re taking it back as evidence, I’m sure. Excellent choice too. It’s your letter.”

  Corvin stepped between the lines of the table to pluck the paper from Esor’s hand. He slipped it into an inner pocket of his robes. “What have you found while touring the homes of our esteemed city Elders?”

  “A fondness for mid-Era decor and terrible wine,” said Esor. “Derkut of House Beow? drills me for poetry fodder, while most lords seek my company to brag, and the young ladies treat me as a deadly object with which to be toyed.” He might have said more if Corvin were not so near, drawing away the air so that the flames guttered and Esor could hardly catch his breath.

  “Have you learned anything from Lady Kit?anve?” asked Corvin.

  Esor became ever more flustered, stumbling over his words. “She invited me—she thinks—she wants to talk to me every week.”

  “Your charms took you directly to the Patrician’s wife. I approve, with caution. Do you know anything about the witch-hags of Vei?”

  “I’ve read about their plague upon the Frostland forests, but only in history books; the last were killed long ago.”

  “Vei was once unsettled land. Witch-hags fought occupation, but some bore the children of their colonizers. A few such children were raised by families who eventually became nobility, generations later. The witch-hag blood lingers in Vei. They’ve handed their rituals from mother to daughter for tens of thousands of vetone,” Corvin said. “Even a Levusàlvar from Vei—like Lady Kit?anve—will be viscerally superstitious and inclined toward...strange ways.”

  Esor put a hand over his suddenly churning stomach. “Thank you for the wisdom, my liege. I will bear it in mind. For now, our conversations have been as limited as my ability to explore her apartments. I have no suspicions toward House írsa or any other.” With a shaking laugh, Esor confessed, “The job is difficult.”

  “The job is the job, and the lash is never off the table,” said Corvin.

  The idea of Corvin’s lash haunted Esor while he took luncheons around the xilcadis, desperately seeking traitors where none could be found. He sometimes fell asleep sitting in a host’s garden, and he invariably dreamed of being in that guard room again, stripped to his waist, scars stroked by a Lord Mayor who seemed to contemplate adding more.

  At Night, alone with his alchemy table, the threat lingered over Esor in a different way.

  He napped while waiting for simmering potions to take their final form, or for the crucible to reach temperature. He was still drinking the tea. He did not dream of Dwarrow. But Esor did begin to dream again.

  Surrounded by waves of warmth and light, Esor dreamed of standing naked to the waist before the Lord Mayor, his skin caressed by the scarred hand of an ancient soldier with sloped features hinting at Tosvodos’s blood.

  Sometimes he was whipped again, as he had once been whipped by an apothecary. The moments had stretched endless while the blows fell. His skin had turned to fire. He lived a thousand of his minuscule lifetimes with excruciating self-awareness. With every breath, he had prayed to Nam? to let it end.

  The opposite of vero.

  In his dreams, it felt longer still—entire years spent tumbling down a blazing path of agony. The hand wielding the lash always belonged to Corvin.

  The dreams were not always nightmares, nor were they always painful. Sometimes the Lord Mayor brought down the lash and Esor cried for more. When he snapped awake from those dreams, he was drenched in sweat. He could barely stand. When he fell to his knees, it was alone before the table, unseen, unwounded, unable to sleep again.