On or around this time, returning spies warned General Duralamayre that Kuinkazner, or one of his soulish vessels, had escaped from the religious capital of Anzukar. Based on current maps, scouts believed the only place Kuinkazner and his men could rest and refresh their horses was Khel Marjon, a well-watered oasis currently beyond the reach of the Sablers.

The first name that came to the General was Orland, the daughter of Camino Yale, the governess of San Sabé. Orland had distinguished herself many times, but alas, she had disappeared recently and was feared captured or killed. Yet, there were no ransom demands for her return nor boasts of her death from Kuinkazner’s operatives. When Saxallen inquired of the Yales, they gave no impression of alarm or worry but regarded her absence as a “needful thing.”

The second name the General considered was Kazandria, daughter of Allessia. If he was being honest, she was his preferred choice for secret missions. Kazandria walked in the footsteps of Lady Skythorn, a prophetess whose mighty works were reshaping the philosophical landscape of Sanzakarth and the Sabler Commonwealth as well: Proya was moving. There was a saying among his soldiers, one the general had heard many times. It was a rebuttal to another popular expression: Do prophets cast shadows? The rebuttal, now only months in the minting, argued: Prophets do cast shadows, and the shadow of Lady Skythorn is Kazandria. This statement was far from a slight. It was, philosophically speaking, the highest praise, for it suggested that Kazandria walked the holy path of Lady Skythorn so faithfully that she might as well be the saint’s shadow.

Yale princes — Camedelon and his younger brother Cenodorn — had fathered Tristanué and her cousin Kazandria. Nevertheless, they had wildly different looks. Where Tristanué possessed a classic Khytherian complexion (save for her blue hair and blue eyes), Kazandria’s irrepressible Saarkan — that is, semi-elven — ancestry on her mother’s side blanched her island hues. Her skin was warm like honey, her hair a fiery fusible red, a shining profusion of steely wishes: like fury cast into a wave. In her gentler moods, her malachite eyes were bright and believing, in war, more so.

It was well known the Nuon Jion had rewarded Kazandria for her faithfulness, for she possessed the wonder-working White Hand: a piece of paradise in her palm. Adorned in the black Syperion of Edessa, she worked out Proya’s will in the world by the Ender of Princes: Drae Selenè.

Those were the noticeable differences, but there were subtle ones too. Kazandria played the long game, the patience of men and nations, the weave of kingdoms yet to come.

Tristanué, not so much.

Kazandria’s devotion had moved her into the company of wizards, including one by the name of Avataranthis. Something as sweet and sweeping as romance was on the table: the proposition of a king. And nothing, not even a war, could squeeze into the compressed space between the virgin Kazandria and the queen-sized dream she held in her heart. So, entrusting Anzioch’s defense to her cousin, Kazandria left the city.

When Duralamayre reflected on Tristanué’s former victories, he could not, despite her youth, deny her cunning and resourcefulness. So, just as Hoel had before him, the general summoned the wild Tristanué for his savage errand.

When she arrived, the General almost did not recognize her. Sephragelo’s armor cast the young black beauty in an entirely surer light. Though she walked in her approval far more proudly than ever before, she recognized his authority and honored it.

She did this by the Sign of Shartochan, which he returned.

Despite all she had won for him, the General could not shake the fact she was, like her cousins Orland and Kazandria, not even twenty years of age. Other famous families introduced their eligible sons and daughters at soirees and political banquets and dances; the Yales preferred battles in which to make their debuts. He had seen her as beautiful, but a girl, for months. But now, standing not ten feet from him, was another creature entirely. He recognized the Ecclesiarch style of her armor at once. Though quick to remind Tristanué of his obligations — the life of every man under his command — the General nevertheless gave her much leeway, for, despite her youth, she stood a legally appointed ambassador from the House of Yale.

Moreover, not being a Sabler, she was not now, nor ever was, truly under his direct command. Nonetheless, she knew better than to challenge a seasoned commander in so precarious a position as the General was commanded to win. It required little skill to recognize the five thousand Sablers entrenched at Anzioch (plus the five thousand Sablers under Bishop Malabranca) totaled ten thousand men. This was one-twentieth the size of Kuinkazner’s two-hundred-thousand-man army that was presently heading south to greet them with something other than kisses.

After pleasantries, the general revealed intelligence suggesting Kuinkanzer, or one of his murdering soul-vessels, was near Khel Marjon. The General knew this lusting Kuinkazner was beyond his reach but not Tristanué’s.

“I make no request of you on this matter, young Lady Yale. You are not mine to command,” the general said. He was tall, lean, and commanding. His thinning hair had been white for decades, yet he remained handsome. He spoke with perfect pronunciation, emphasizing all the right syllables, before and after all the right pauses, to make whatever point was presently on his lips inescapably clear. He appeared an affable but disciplined grandfather, if not a bit stern. Military decorum prevented him from those softer words and kindlier gestures he wanted to show his young guest. “These reports are unconfirmed, so I will not request that you go,” he said, raising his chin. “But neither do I request that you stay.”

A sly smile curled the right edge of Tristanué’s lips. She pulled the Prism of Orlandra off her hip and held it to her mouth. “Kuinkazner,” she said. In the glass ring, seven golden slivers appeared: one for each of the seven soul-vessels of Kuinkazner. Five were here, in Anzioch, captured in the previous months. Two remained free. His vast army in the north surrounded one soul-vessel (wrath). The last soul-vessel (lust) was thirty leagues northwest of Anzioch, in or near Khel Marjon.

She gave the general a nod.

He returned it.

The young woman turned and left.

Smiling, the general calmly poured himself a cup of cinnamon brandy, stirred in some nutmeg and sugar, and sipped his last cup of the evening.

✦ ✦ ✦

Tristanué entered Ashen Garde as quietly as she could in her armor, realizing her hard block heels were not ideal for sneaking across hard mirrored surfaces. Still, she softened her walk as much as possible until she arrived at a tremendous vaulted chamber with twelve high and mighty gates in a circle.

Slung diagonally across her back was her strange blue scabbard, the Sinister Minister. She carried a black recurved horse bow far shorter than the Sabler longbows guarding Anzioch. The grip was stylishly molded to an archer’s hand while the upper and lower limbs were faintly ribbed, like horns, but smoothing away before reaching their respective nocks. Her arrows were also black, with eagle tail feathers for fletching and shiny three-bladed broadheads on the killing end. Mingled with these were some enemy arrows fired from Kuinkazner’s archers collected after every attack.

Choosing the seventh gate, she touched the bright gem in the center of the door. The jewel recessed, triggering outer steel radials of runes and glyphs which turned in their order, some clockwise, others counterclockwise, until every pin clicked into place, not loudly nor stridently, but more like the music of chimes. The doors opened with a loud sigh. Wafting out at once was the warm and wet balm of a primeval mist — a Raima forest.

Walking into the undergrowth, she came to a moss-carpeted meadow pierced by a great spur of silver-streaked rock. Whistling loudly, she searched the weeping canopy until Mr. Midnight burst through the upper crowns, wings spread across thirty feet, black as doom, and lighted down in front of her. An emirisupal or “titan falcon,” Mr. Midnight was a vypern. Believed extinct for a thousand years, they were recently discovered in a strange, gated plane within Ashen Garde. The very one in which she was standing. When Tristanué realized vyperns had survived the hunts of the Rovian Kings, the dream she had as a child of women warriors riding brightly colored vyperns high above the clouds came rushing up from the past. When she originally entered Ashen Garde’s strange aviary, Mr. Midnight nearly killed her. Still, her royal guest, King Wyngard, tamed the colossal raptor with some secret persuasion for which his ancestors were rightly revered. Whether it was a spell or not, she could not tell, but the flesh-eating vyperns of Ashen Garde acknowledged Wyngard’s ancient authority and acceded to his primal but unspoken appeal. There was something in this man, this wandering Wyngard, that every creature — dogs, horses, vyperns — recognized even if they could only prove their fealty by not eating him. Or his friends, which now included Tristanué. She wanted to ride Mr. Midnight that night, but Wyngard waved her off that notion.

“It will be a few days, princess,” he told her. “These are proud creatures. They do not give their loyalty quickly. But have faith: I am here to negotiate for you,” he said, running his hand over the creature’s giant beak. “I pray you do not return for three days,” he added.

Tristanué began to speak—

“Three days,” he repeated.

And so Tristanué left Ashen Garde. For those three days, she prepared for her trip to Kimjudeya. She would have spent time in the hospital aiding in the recovery of wounded Sablers, but they were in far better hands than hers: Lady Skythorn, the healing daughter of Andruin, had come to them. So on the last day, she returned to the aviary where Wyngard greeted her. “Be at peace, Princess Yale; I have sold them on your quality,” he said with easy confidence, setting down a strange saddle and tack, neither of which were for horses. Whistling loudly, Wyngard summoned Mr. Midnight. High above leaves burst away from their branches as Mr. Midnight spiraled down to the pair. Throwing his wings out, he landed ahead of the strange king and the ebony princess.

In something of a mystical formality, Wyngard presented Tristanué to the great plumed sky-hunter, who accepted her on the king’s behalf. Better than any pony, this mighty falcon, whom Tristanué called Mr. Midnight for his raven-black hue, was a legend, ten centuries dead, that had suddenly come to life. That night, after hours of instruction and admiration, a young woman, in name a Yale, in image an Ecclesiarch, took to the skies over Anzioch for the first time in a thousand years.

Never had Tristanué Azhora Yale felt so unconditionally free.

That long night, spent among the clouds, with only the stars for witnesses, remained one of her most treasured and invulnerable memories.

Having returned to Anzioch, Ashen Garde, and her beautiful Mr. Midnight, he impressed her as much as before. She knew falcons ate other birds such as pigeons, game birds, starlings, waxwings, waterfowl, small geese, and other small creatures, but also bats, grasshoppers, crickets, other insects, mice, rodents, and even fish. Mr. Midnight, however, was a vypern: his diet consisted of virtually every other living thing: dogs, goats, rams, sheep, horses, lions, tigers, boar, elk, moose, bison, camels, giraffes, apes, giant boas, seals, sharks, dolphins, and even men. Legend told of vyperns felling small dragons and hunting manticores. Such claims were not easily dismissed when one realized Mr. Midnight’s talons could pierce through the thickest hide or easily punch through plate armor. His bite could snap the spine of a rhinoceros, and his beak could strip a hundred pounds of hot muscle from the bone with an undemanding twist of its neck. For these most dangerous facts, Tristanué was grateful for Wyngard’s intervention, for the young woman would scarcely be a morsel for the colossal raptor should its mood ever turn against her.

When Mr. Midnight lowered his head, Tristanué laid her forehead against his polished beak, her fingers softly tracing the Vyn Vanir runes carved in shallow lines along its edge. After a time, she stepped back and tied her long blue hair into a ponytail with a black leather thong. She looked back to the vypern saddle and then to Mr. Midnight.

“Time to hunt,” she said.