The aftermath went about how you’d expect: As news of the admiral’s grisly demise raced through Doskvol, the Strangford clan holed up on their Whitecrown estate and shrilled at the Lord Governor to “bring the culprits to justice,” i.e. execute them as soon as possible, preferably without the delay of a proper trial. In response, the Lord Governor ordered Timoth Bowmore’s arrest, infecting the nobility with general panic, especially the other four City Council families who suddenly realized that even a Bowmore, can you imagine? And not just any Bowmore, but Lord Bowmore’s own son! was susceptible to the legal system. According to Sigmund, the Clellands, Dunvils, Penderyns, and Rowans were spending many sleepless nights wondering just how much sway their rivals held over the Lord Governor – and calculating whether it would look more or less suspicious to accuse them preemptively.

Meanwhile, a mixture of rage and opportunism triggered a looting spree in Nightmarket, which in turn put the Bluecoats in every district on high alert and caused the Lord Governor to impose a strict curfew on the whole city. The citizenry hunkered down in their homes and avoided congregating in public, lest they be mistaken for rioters by twitchy Bluecoats, and even the scoundrels tried to stay off the streets. Irritation at this increased oversight prompted the more established gangs to crush the chaos as fast as they could, and after a few days, the city settled into a seething unease. Neither Bazso nor Mylera was pleased by the disruption, although Mylera was more vocal about it.

“Well, you certainly kicked the apple cart this time,” she remarked the next time I dropped by her office, her casual words belied by her far-from-casual tone.

Although I’d long since stopped reporting on the Lampblacks, we’d kept up our tradition of weekly coffee chats after I taught my beginner class. Sitting down primly in my usual chair, I cocked my head and feigned confusion. “What makes you say that?”

With a rueful smile, Mylera poured me a cup of coffee. “I can’t help but notice the particularly…picturesque way in which Admiral Strangford was found.” After a significant pause, which I did nothing to interrupt, she specified, “It seemed like your style.”

I hid my own smile in my cup. Spearing a famed leviathan hunter captain with his own leviathan-hunting harpoon had been poetic, hadn’t it? If Ian Templeton ever wrote a tragedy about a powerful, arrogant leviathan hunter captain’s downfall, he could borrow the idea.

Relaxing back in her chair at last, Mylera told me, “I assume you know what you’re doing. For my part, I am mostly amused.” Her tone warned, This time.

And would she be more or less amused if she knew why we’d done it? Although she’d overheard part of our discussion on how to assassinate Strangford, we hadn’t explained what an Ascendent was, and she hadn’t asked. Buying myself a bit of time, I said, “Thanks for your tutorial on how to sabotage a ship.”

She shook her head with a mixture of fondness and regret. “I really never thought I’d have to think about how to fire a harpoon again. But I’m glad I could be of use.”

In fact, she could be of use again, right now, because I needed her military expertise. After debating whether to bring up her studies at the Vaasu School, I opted for a more indirect approach. “What do you think of Demon Prince Khayat?”

Word on the street (in U’Duasha anyway) had it that all Vaasu graduates were bound to Khayat, to death and beyond, although I knew that Father had his doubts.

Bemused by the seeming non sequitur, Mylera shook her head again. “Khayat? Um, goodness.” Looking away, she stared blankly at her statue of She Who Slays in Darkness while she sorted through her thoughts. “That’s a very…open-ended question.”

Leaving it open ended, I waited.

After a moment, she said, stumbling over the words, “I mean…I was never…I never had that many direct dealings with Khayat.”

I took that to mean Father was right. “Are all the leviathan hunter captains bound to their Demon Princes?”

“Of course,” she replied at once. “But I wasn’t that important.”

That reminded me of something else I’d been wondering, and she seemed like a better person to ask than Sigmund – or Grandfather. “Do they ever unbind, after they retire?”

“No. Why do you ask?”

Because I wanted to know if the bond were permanent? But she didn’t know, or need to know, about the tangled triangle consisting of my Demon Prince, my twin brother, and me. So I reverted to my favorite answer: “It’s complicated.”

Mylera just blinked at me. “Well, when isn’t everything for your family?” she asked, rather prosaically.

True enough, but I was about to spread the complications and accompanying headaches. Setting my coffee cup carefully in its saucer, I sat up straight and leaned forward a little to signal the gravity of what I was about to reveal. Unconsciously, she echoed my movements. “Mylera,” I pronounced, “I recently came into possession of a very disturbing piece of information. This cannot go beyond this room.”

Her face was as still and severe as the statue’s. “All right.”

“Do you remember the Lancer?”

She had think about it, confirmation that she tracked Iruvian matters much more closely than Akorosian ones. “The leviathan hunter,” she recalled. “The one with the court case?”

“Yes.”

“I’d heard about it.”

Here we went. “The Lancer was supposed to transport the spires of the Demon Princes from U’Duasha to Doskvol.”

As she processed the sentence and its implications, her eyes flew wide. “What?” she yelped. “How?”

Mimicking Father, I folded my hands on her desk and kept my voice level and sober. “As you’ve noticed – ” as she’d been the one to alert me, in fact – “there’s a diplomatic frenzy going on, and the Imperium is edging towards war with Iruvia.”

“But – but – that doesn’t even – ” she sputtered, then burst out, “That makes no sense! Wouldn’t the Demon Princes fight back?”

“Presumably?”

“But why?” she demanded. “Why though? Just to get them out of Iruvia?”

Her automatic trust in my intelligence was gratifying – not to mention one of the few times when being a scion of House Anixis actually worked in my favor where she was concerned. “It’s a little more complicated than that,” I explained. “But if you have any thoughts on how the Imperial military could seize, remove, and transport the spires across Iruvia to Bright Harbor, I would appreciate them. It doesn’t have to be now,” I assured her when she only gaped at me. “I realize that this is a lot to process.”

“I mean…,” she began, sounding dazed, “just to transport a large column of stone – there are options….” Her Vaasu education kicking in, she continued with more confidence, “All of the spires would require enormous manpower to move, but if you’re talking about the Imperial military, if they really set their minds to it, they could do it.” Briskly now, she ran through the options: “You could transport the spires over land. Although the logistics of getting something that big through the deathlands would be unpleasant, it’s certainly not impossible. Um. You’d need a lot of horses – and it would have to be horses, goats aren’t strong enough – and a lot of people in a lot of protective gear. You might be able to send the spires down the river. You’d need a very large barge….” She trailed off, rapidly calculating. “I suspect that the Asha’va River is deep enough that you could just barely pull that off. But – the real problem would be the demon. You’d have to find some way to subdue it.”

Disingenuously, I pointed out, “But the Demon Princes are contained in their spires, right? How would they exercise their powers?”

Picking up her coffee cup again, she drained it in one gulp and gestured with it. “Assuming this conversation never leaves this room, everyone knows that they exercise their powers despite being contained inside the spires. All of them do.” (Yes, and it would be convenient if we could force the Anserekhs to admit that, so they’d stop publicly offering to repair Ixis’ cracked spire. But that was a problem for House leadership.) “Maybe the Demon Princes could exercise more power if they were free, but when it comes down to it, I doubt they’re defenseless.” She shrugged. “Besides, they’re demons. They might try to subvert the people transporting them.”

I barely suppressed a glance at Grandfather, which I’d somehow started carrying around with me all the time. “All right. Thank you. Let me know if you think of or hear anything else related to Iruvian-Akorosian relations?”

“I will,” she promised at once, although she sounded dubious that she’d learn anything useful before I did. “They’re certainly not great right now, although obviously no one’s been talking about that in the last few days. But I’ll let you know.” Then, at long last, she connected some dots: “Why did you kill Strangford?”

I saw no reason not to tell her, especially since he was already safely dead. “He was part of this plot. Also, he was just in Imperial City trying to convince the Immortal Emperor to go ahead with the invasion.”

She heaved a long, weary sigh. “Yeah, that’s reason enough then.” She sighed again, forgiving me and my crew for all the bother we’d caused, and pulled a wistful face. “These are interesting times. I don’t think I like interesting times.”

Some impish, Faith-like part of me prompted me to protest, “But then they wouldn’t be quite so interesting.”

As a measure of her distress, she didn’t even glare at me. “You know, I could honestly do with boring times. Nice, quiet….”

“Is that why you became a leviathan hunter officer?”

This time, she fixed me with a stern look, displeased by the reminder that I’d pried into her past. “That’s hardly fair. I was a lot younger then.” Then, in an obvious dismissal: “If you need anything, do let us know.”

I could take a hint – plus I had what I needed. “I will.”

Leaving her to her brooding, I strolled back across the park to Strathmill House, feeling much more relaxed than I had when I went over to the Red Sash Sword Academy.

Ash – or one of the orphans – must have been keeping a lookout for me, because as soon as I reached the door, he flung it open.

“Isha, they sent an Inspector after us!”