That was such a perfect distillation of his own thoughts on Varallo Thray that Ammas had to smirk. "Then, your highness, I will do you one better than the Grand Chancellor. I know exactly what must be done to cure Carala. I may not be able to lay hands on what I need, but it is neither impossible nor a mystery."

A strange expression, one not seen often on Silenio's face, began to form beneath the bruises and blood. It took Ammas a moment to recognize it as hope. "You know?"

Ammas nodded. "I need a werewolf's heart. Not any werewolf, but the first one to be infected with the strain that afflicts Carala. A werewolf born not of blood but of a vile ritual."

"Swiftfoot," Silenio whispered.

"Yes," Ammas replied. "And that brings me to my other request, your highness. I need to know why you came here, what you were seeking, and I need to see everything you found."

Silenio looked from Ammas to his sister. Again an expression foreign to that handsome, brutalized face surfaced for a moment: affection, even love, and pity for Carala's circumstances. "You believe him?" he asked, his voice still thick and indistinct with the abrupt changes Barthim had made to the landscape of his jaw.

"I do, Silenio," she murmured, kneeling at her brother's side and stroking his hair. "He has proved himself over and over again. He would not hurt me."

Silenio nodded slowly, seeming to absorb this, then twisted his head around to leer at Denisius. "And you, Gallis? You trust this man to cure my sister?"

Denisius half smiled, something vaguely sorrowful in it. "Ammas has saved my own life more than once. I don't think there's anyone alive who might take better care of Carala."

Ammas tried not to wince at that, wondering what Denisius himself might suspect of him, or why he would speak of it so carelessly. There was no time to think of it now, though, not with Prince Silenio's agreement hanging in the balance.

Silenio bowed his head, not saying anything for a long time. When he did speak, it was slowly, and as deliberately as he could manage to make himself understood through the marks of the beating he had taken. "We got Gallis's message not long ago. Thray was upset, my father even moreso. They had rounded up all the Swiftfoot they could find weeks ago, but now it looked like there were more -- that there was some conspiracy of these wolves. I don't know what they learned from the Swiftfoot we arrested. I was not allowed to question them. My father only allowed a very few to speak with them, and as far as I know they're still locked up in Talinara. Even Thray only questioned them briefly. But now I was told to come to Gallowsport with half a dozen of my men, see what was left of Swiftfoot. See if there were more wolves, what they knew of Carala, take them alive if I could. Thray said something about finding the knowledge needed to cure Carala here, but my father wouldn't like it, so I had to be careful."

Carala frowned. "Father wouldn't like it? What did he mean?"

Silenio shrugged, looking off to one side. Ammas had been on either side of enough interrogations, human and otherwise, to recognize a stalling tactic when he saw one, but he let it go for the time being. Silenio's words only strengthened the suspicion that had been growing in his mind ever since Vilais. "And what did you learn, Silenio?"

"Not much. Someone burnt out their office the day we arrived. We seized the warehouse, but there was no one here. We took what we could find. Ledgers, cargo, useless things they had left behind." He pointed his chin toward the wagon where Barthim had found the rope that now bound Silenio and his men. "It's all there, in those chests."

Ammas stood up. "That will do for now. Barthim, give me a hand with those."

Barthim, Ammas, and Vos wrestled two large ironbound trunks from beside the wagon and hauled them over to the soldiers' former gaming table. They set a chest at each end of it; the heavier one proved to be full of dozens of books, mostly business ledgers. Ammas took one out and began poring over it, while Vos and Barthim laid a blanket over the table and began setting out the objects they found in the lighter trunk. Most of them were simple tokens bearing the Swiftfoot mark, but they also found a few daggers, keys, and pieces of jewelry.

Carala knelt by her brother's side, asking Casimir if he would be so kind as to find a cold cloth. After looking to Ammas for approval and getting a nod, he ran off, quickly finding a water pump beside a partitioned area that had likely been the warehouse boss's office. She murmured thanks to the boy when he returned with the cloth and began gently daubing Silenio's injuries. "I wish it had not come to this, Silenio," she murmured. "He is not what we've been told he is. Please, please, believe it."

Silenio said nothing, staring morosely at the floor.

"Please, Silenio?"

"It doesn't matter," he said thickly. Carala suddenly realized he was struggling not to weep. "When Father finds out I didn't kill him, he'll take my head, same as he did Ursus."

"No, no," Carala insisted. "Not if he cures me. If he cures me, Father will have to understand."

Silenio laughed bitterly. "Will he? Thray said something like that, how if I found a cursewright and forced him to cure you, it would change Father's views on things. Do you believe Thray?"

Carala sighed. Youngest of the Imperial family she might be, but she had known since she was just out of her clouts that only her father or a fool could trust the Grand Chancellor. Thray's loyalty to the Emperor did not apply to his children, as Ursus could attest if he were still alive. "Silenio?" she murmured, softly enough so only Casimir heard, lingering nearby. "What happened to Sarai? We -- we heard rumors -- "

"Thray sent her off to Losris Nadak, the week after Mother went to Leusenia. Thought she was in danger, that whoever was responsible for -- for you taking ill wanted her, too." Carala smiled a little at his choice of words. "She's safe with the Kerrells. But Thray didn't want it known, so he had her escorted out of the Palace in the middle of the night and never told the captain of the ship she was supposed to take back to Aznia she wouldn't be making the journey. Or any of the palace guard, for that matter. There was an uproar. He wanted an uproar for some reason. Maybe make people forget about what happened to you, I don't know."

Whatever schemes Varallo Thray was pursuing Carala did not care a whit about. Sarai was safe. Almost weepy with relief she embraced Silenio tightly, pressing her cheek to his shoulder. The Prince grimaced, his bruised ribs aching under his sister's tight grip. She remained there until Ammas called to her, "Carala, come here a moment, if you would."

With a kiss on Silenio's cheek she rose and joined Ammas at the table. Denisius was rummaging through the Swiftfoot tokens, remarking to Vos how wealthy they must have been, to have signet rings of gold and such an array of recreational herbs and spices. "Unless this was pilfered from someone's shipment," he said, holding a little phial of powdered aardgold up to the light.

"I thought you might like this." Ammas held out a thick volume. His lips were curled into a strange, cynical smile. Puzzled, Carala hefted the tome in her hands, reading out the title stamped on the spine.

"The Collected Works of Hedrathua Macil -- why, this is a copy of the same one we found in the Vilais office." She frowned at Ammas. "Why do they have this?"

"A good question." Open in front of him was the freshest ledger, its pages only about a third full. "Apparently he was a client, after a fashion."

Following Ammas's finger, Carala saw the playwright's name inked on the most recent line, alongside a sum of four thousand gold talents and the notation Imp. The entry was incomplete, but then she supposed the Vilais office had been wiped out before they could update their Gallowsport brethren, assuming any were left after the initial arrests. The entry was dated long before those arrests, however.

"What in the world could he have been shipping for such a price?" she asked.

"An even better question." There was a sly, contemptuous edge to Ammas's voice. Denisius and Vos heard it too, watching Ammas with a keen curiosity. "And would it surprise you to learn that's not the only name you know in this book?"

"It would," Carala replied, her brows knitting together. "Who else is in there?"

Ammas flipped back a few pages, pointing to a name she didn't recognize at first. Tomas Rial. A sum of two thousand talents was inked beside his name, along with the notations priv. and complete. It took Carala a moment to remember. "Lady Greythorne's husband?" she asked, astonished.

Ammas nodded, slamming the book shut and turning to the pile of jewelry and other various objects. Lightly he plucked up a small ring, smaller than the one in his pocket, a woman's ring. "Take a look at this. You too, Denisius. You should both educate yourselves about objects like these, considering how much time you spend in the company of men like Varallo Thray." He tossed Denisius the smaller ring and handed Carala the one in his pocket.

Denisius frowned, toying with the ring's setting, which held a small pearl. It didn't take him or Carala long to find the little compartments secreted within them.

"That's a poisoner's ring," Vos said wonderingly. Ammas nodded.

"The second one I've found. Carala has the other, which came not from here but from a dead Swiftfoot in Vilais, one who did not have the wolf's blood." Suddenly he broke off, bending close to the table and curling his fingers around a small brass key, its fob engraved with a symbol he knew very well. This was an even deeper mystery than the collection of objects and books whose meaning he finally understood, but it would have to wait.

"Poisoner's rings, bottles of powdered aardgold, ledgers full of the names of dead men and vast sums of gold beside those names." Ammas turned to Silenio and crouched before him once again. "Your father told you a little more about Swiftfoot than you've admitted, didn't he, your highness?"

Silenio bowed his head. "I couldn't tell you, gods damn it. See it from my view."

Ammas sneered and rose up, turning to face his companions, one hand clenched tightly around that key, even more unanswered questions bound up in its cold metal surface. "Swiftfoot Carting was never a caravan company. I don't know when werewolves got involved with it, or how, but their function really hasn't changed that much. Has it, your highness?"

Silenio remained obstinately silent.

"Ammas," Denisius said uncertainly, "what are you trying to say?"

Vos's face had gone pale, and Ammas knew the soldier already understood, maybe from the moment he saw the poisoner's ring engraved with the Swiftfoot emblem.

"Swiftfoot Carting was a house of assassins. And based on their targets, their chief employer was the Emperor himself. Is that not so, your highness?"

Finally undone, Silenio Deyn nodded. Carala stared at him, horrorstruck, understanding at last that the man who had taken her virginity and condemned her to life as a werewolf was nothing more than a paid murderer who worked for her own father.