Valerie woke to the rhythm of iron wheels and discovered that grief could travel.
It travelled in the bruise behind her eyes. It travelled in the blood dried beneath her nose and in the ache that tightened from her jaw to the base of her skull each time the carriage crossed a rut. It travelled in the memory of Sergeant Lavin screaming through a relay while Kavie watched her listen.
Her hands were chained before her.
K sat beside her with his head against the wall of the carriage cell. Someone had replaced the ruined bandage around his palm with grey prison cloth and bound it badly enough that blood had already reached the knot. His borrowed guard coat was gone. Black lines lay beneath the skin at his throat like cracks in cooling glass.
Opposite them, Kavie held a white cloth to his broken nose.
The carriage had been built to move condemned people through a city without allowing the city to see them. Iron covered the windows except for three narrow vents. A barred partition divided the prisoners from the forward bench, though Kavie had chosen to sit inside the cell. He occupied its only unchained seat with one ankle across his knee and his sword resting beside him.
The cut K had opened along his throat was shallow. It had stopped bleeding.
Valerie regretted that.
"You break a man's nose," Kavie said, "and then sleep through his effort to forgive you."
Her mouth tasted of metal. "Try harder."
The cloth lowered. His nose had swollen across the bridge, spoiling the neat balance of his face. The injury made him look more ordinary. It also made his pleasant expression more obscene.
"There she is."
Valerie tested the chain without looking at it. One length ran between her wrist cuffs and a floor ring beneath the bench. K's chain entered the same ring from the other side. The lock was enclosed in an iron housing with no exposed hinge. Four soldiers rode outside by the pattern of hooves. Two more sat above the rear axle. A second carriage followed close enough that its wheels sometimes answered theirs.
The city changed around them in sounds. Narrow stone in the garrison quarter. Market boards under the wheels. A bell somewhere to the south. More voices with every turn.
The arena road.
K's eyelids opened.
His eyes moved once around the cell and stopped on the sword beside Kavie.
"How close?" he asked.
His voice was rough but awake.
"Close enough to disappoint you soon," Kavie said.
K examined Valerie's face. His gaze rested briefly on the swelling above her temple.
"You look terrible."
"You look dead."
"Then terrible is winning."
The attempt at humour cost him. His breath caught, and the black lines at his throat darkened before receding again.
Kavie watched the exchange with open interest.
Valerie had seen interrogators use silence to make frightened people fill it. Kavie did not use silence as a tool. He enjoyed it as a room in which other people became aware of him.
She refused him the pleasure.
"Why?"
K's attention sharpened. Kavie's did not need to.
"You will need a smaller question," he said.
"Why any of it? Mira. My father. The Gauntlet branch. Twenty soldiers sent to torture men who served with him. Why do you go this far?"
"That is several questions wearing one coat."
"Answer the one that frightens you."
K turned his head slightly toward her. Approval, or warning.
Kavie folded the stained cloth into a clean square. "You believe I am frightened of motive?"
"I believe men like you call yourselves complicated because the simple answer is ugly."
For the first time since she woke, his smile thinned.
Outside, the carriage took a hard turn. Light cut through the vents and crossed his hands.
"The Aldin Swords serve the Father," he said. "Not the throne."
K became very still.
Valerie looked at the open hand worked into the clasp at Kavie's collar. "The Church serves Stornia."
"The Church permits Stornia to print that sentence."
"Thedra carried the king's authority."
Kavie's eyes warmed with private amusement. "Authority is often a seal placed on another man's intention. The Swords appear at royal ceremonies. They enforce crown orders when crown orders agree with the Father's. They kneel because people trust a kneeling weapon more than one that admits it has selected its own target."
"Does Hamrick know?"
"Kings know what power tells them when it needs a door opened."
"And the chancellor?"
"Chancellors know that asking the correct question in the wrong room shortens careers."
He spoke without boasting. That made the admission worse. Valerie thought of the open-hand agents at the garrison, of Church observers searching city guards, of Kavie standing in her home before royal soldiers could have known she was there.
"Who else knows?" she asked.
"Knew," Kavie corrected. "Very few."
The carriage rolled over a bridge joint.
Iron struck iron beneath them.
"Most are dead."
K leaned forward as far as his chain allowed. "Welhemdor?"
Kavie's gaze shifted to him.
"Some died there."
The cold answer settled beside the screams from the garrison.
Valerie held Kavie's eyes. "So the Father ordered Mira killed."
"No."
The word came too quickly to be an evasion.
"Then Hamrick?"
"You keep searching for a man above me so you can make my choices feel borrowed." Kavie rested both hands on his knee. "Your sister died because I decided her death would open you correctly."
The chain bit Valerie's wrists.
K's boot pressed against hers.
Not enough to restrain her. Enough to remind her of the corridor and the door Kavie had wanted.
She let the chain go slack.
Kavie's eyes dropped to it. Disappointment barely touched his face.
"The Father wants me alive," Valerie said. "You said so."
"He does."
"Why?"
"He did not explain."
"And you obey without knowing?"
Annoyance appeared at last. Small. Real.
"I obey the objective. I decide the route."
"Mira was your route."
"Among others."
K shifted. The chain gave a soft metallic click near his left hand.
Valerie did not look.
K had not been resting his injured hand in his lap. His fingers were working at the grey binding. Something narrow moved beneath them, hidden by the cloth.
The needle Kavie had used on him in the garrison.
He must have taken it while falling.
Valerie kept Kavie's attention on her.
"You said I amuse you."
"You do."
"That is not an objective."
"No. It is why I volunteered for it."
He leaned back as the carriage climbed. Through the vents came the rising noise of thousands of people gathering around one place.
"Before Stornia," he said, "I lived in the Astverozan Empire. There are six jurisdictions there that still preserve rooms for me. Three governors have promised rewards for my living capture. One has promised a province to whoever delivers my head."
"Serial murder," K said.
The needle paused between his fingers.
Kavie looked pleased. "The Gauntlet keeps impolite records."
"Seventeen confirmed," K said. "More suspected. Imperial officers, merchants, two judges, families attached to all three."
"Twenty-one confirmed. Their archivists remain sentimental about missing bodies."
Valerie watched him describe it. No pride. No shame. Memory alone softened his voice.
"The empire has not forgiven me," Kavie continued. "Fortunately, Astveroza possesses limited jurisdiction in Stornia, and Stornia discovered that a man's objectionable habits become talents when pointed beyond a border."
"You killed for pleasure," Valerie said.
"At first."
The wheels climbed another stone joint.
"Then men began asking me to do it for causes. Crown. Church. Nation. Justice. Each word made the same act respectable to someone. The difficulty was finding anything in it that remained mine."
His gaze moved over her face with the intimacy of a hand.
"You remind me."
Valerie's stomach tightened.
"Of what?"
"Of how hunting felt before everyone began calling it service."
K's needle entered the floor lock.
The sound of the crowd covered the scrape.
Kavie smiled at Valerie. "You know what I am, and still you come closer. You know which wound I will touch, and still you offer it. Grief makes you predictable, but never dull. I had forgotten the distinction."
"You murdered my sister because you were bored."
"I murdered your sister because it moved you where I needed you. I enjoyed being correct."
Valerie imagined driving both thumbs into his damaged nose.
She imagined Lavin trying not to beg.
She imagined Mira with flour on her cheek.
Then she did what her father had trained her to do when anger wanted command.
She counted.
Four riders. Two rear guards. At least one driver. A following carriage. K at the lock. Kavie within kicking distance, sword at his right, weight balanced despite the appearance of ease.
The chain housing clicked once.
K coughed over it.
Kavie's eyes moved to him.
"And the prince?" Valerie asked.
His attention returned.
"What prince?"
"You said you could not wait to hunt him."
Kavie considered her as if deciding how much harm an answer could do.
"Aldric's surviving boy has spent six months beneath a noble roof believing walls are loyalty. The Father changed his interest before I could test that belief."
"Eugert," K said.
Valerie knew the name from palace service, from wanted notices never displayed where the public could compare dates, from whispers after the coup. A sixteen-year-old prince who had become more dangerous to his uncle by remaining alive.
"You were ordered away from him," she said.
"For you."
The answer carried resentment.
"I was looking forward to hunting the young prince."
"That troubles you."
"It confuses the order of interesting things."
"Then you do not know why the Father wants me."
Kavie's pleasantness returned like a blade sliding into its sheath. "I know he expects you to matter."
"To what?"
"If I knew, this journey would be less entertaining."
K's chain came free inside the housing.
He kept both wrists low.
Valerie tightened her legs, ready to rise when he moved.
Something struck the carriage roof.
Not an arrow.
A man.
The impact bowed the iron inward and threw all three of them from their balance. One of the rear guards screamed. Hooves shrieked against stone. The carriage swung left, struck a street post, and lifted onto two wheels.
Kavie caught the barred partition.
Valerie drove both feet into his chest.
He released the bars, turned with the blow, and struck the opposite wall shoulder-first. K ripped the opened chain through the floor ring. Valerie's remained caught.
Outside, steel crossed steel once.
The sound that followed was not a clash. It was a blade cutting through the carriage's rear axle.
The cell dropped.
Wood burst beneath the iron shell. Valerie hit the floor. The bench tore free and crushed the chain housing between it and the wall. K rolled against her, shielding his wounded hand.
The carriage skidded through the street in a storm of sparks.
Then it stopped.
For half a breath, nothing moved.
Kavie rose first.
Blood ran from his nose again.
He looked annoyed.