“The most dangerous enemy is not the one with the most wealth, influence, or mage talent. It is the enemy with a clear goal and a cunning plan.”

After a few hours worth of debate with my host and his closest advisors, Kelsor was admitted into the fortress as I’d expected. Like me, Lord Pym was curious. As Lonemount was his family’s ancient seat, his word coupled with mine carried the decision.

We’d spoken about the importance of maintaining Ahnlia’s honor and respecting diplomacy even in these dark days. Beneath those arguments was the shared understanding that we couldn’t hold out against this siege forever.

If Kelsor came bearing some offer that wasn’t death for our people, we had to consider it.

I waited for Kelsor in Lonemount’s state room. The great sandstone keep had been a happy, prosperous place a war ago. Pym and his family had been good caretakers, growing rich on the wealth of their mountain and sharing that fortune with their people. Now this state room was one of the few rooms in the fortress where the fabrics hadn’t been stripped to fashion extra clothes and bandages and the elegant wooden furniture hadn’t been repurposed as kindling.

A ghost of former prosperity to remind the residents of the good life they’d had before the Esteran army had arrived on their doorstep.

Marshal Tyrna Rendal, the fortress’s military commander, waited with me. Along with a squadron of her better guardsman, and a few of Pym’s more trusted courtiers.

I’d worked with Rendal since arriving at Lonemount seven months ago and been glad to call her a friend not long after. At her insistence, Pym had reluctantly agreed to wait for news of our meeting in the counsel room.

If Kelsor proved treacherous—as she’d argued he well might—there was no point allowing him to take out the fortress’s entire command structure in one fell swoop.

“Are you sure this be wise, Varsa?” Rendal whispered to me as the tromp of boots indicated Kelsor and his escort were approaching.

“I make no claims to wisdom,” I replied. “But we need to know how the rest of the war progresses.”

“You think we can trust a word that comes out of that Esteran dog’s mouth?” she asked, tense and serious.

I shrugged. “He’s a warrior, not a courtier, so the truth won’t instantly twist on tongue. And he was always honest in his dealings with me before the war.”

Though that was its own worry to me. Had Revan sent Keslor as an emissary because I might believe him? Did they even know I was here? Or had Revan merely dispatched Kelsor because he trusted him to subdue a difficult stronghold?

The second guessing made my head hurt. I hated the mind games that grew like carefully cultivated poisonous flowers in every court I’d ever encountered.

Revan had always excelled at them. Even back at the Citadel when he’d only been a boy, he’d had talent. Knowing that only worsened my headache and deepened the uncertainty in my belly.

Then the doors opened and Kelsor came into the room flanked by the fortress’s guards and the time for second guessing was over.

Physically imposing even by High Esteran standards, Kelsor stood head and shoulders taller than most of his Ahnlian escort. His wheat blond hair was bound back from his face in elaborate warrior’s braids. He was unarmed and instead of his usual combat-mage leathers, he wore a blood-red silk surcoat with the sun of Estera embroidered in gold thread across it. An envoy’s uniform, though he’d retained his gold Cloud Citadel pin and captain insignia. They glinted on either side of his high silk collar. A messenger’s bag was slung across his broad chest.

Our gazes met and his cool green eyes were not surprised.

He’d expected to find me here.

It took an effort of will not to rest my hand on my sword hilt.

“Mage-General Siveray.” He bowed hand over heart, ignoring the rest of the room.

“Mage-Captain Kelsor.” I nodded. “You have an offer for Lonemount from your emperor?”

Kelsor shook his head. “The offer I carry is not for those of this castle. The Emperor’s offer is for you personally.”

Dread joined the uncertainty digging a pit in my belly, but I kept my expression carefully composed. “Speak the terms.”

“I am instructed to relay them to you and you alone,” he said.

The pit behind my naval deepened.

“We’ll nae be leaving the mage-general alone with you, dog.” Rendal stepped forward, her hands drifting to the empty places on her belt that normally held her twin mage-steel daggers.

She was a big woman by Ahnlian standards, tall and heavy with muscle before the siege. But she stood a few inches shorter than me, my height a gift of my Esteran mother, and only came up to Kelsor’s shoulder.

Though Rendal had never traveled to the Cloud Citadel or been through the formal training necessary to earn the title of Mage, she was gifted, used that gift with deadly instinct, and fought like a wolverine.

She’d go for his throat if he pushed her, and her soldiers would follow her lead.

That would not end well.

I knew how Kelsor fought. We’d come up together through the Citadel and worked together often during our mage-knight days. He had been forced to leave Ferrë, his great mage-steel halberd, back in the Esteran camp. Even so and even had I been at my full strength, I’d have avoided fighting with him in earnest.

Kelsor didn’t so much as twitch at her implied threat. He kept his gaze on me, unmoved by the hostility surrounding him.

That kind of confidence spoke volumes.

“Peace.” I grasped Rendal’s shoulder and exerted gentle pressure. “The mage-captain and I will speak alone. He will not do me any harm.”

She allowed herself to be turned toward the door. “Are you sure about this, Varsa?” she asked, voice low. “I do nae like it.”

I walked with her to the door. “Neither do I, but I want to hear whatever information he’s prepared to give us.”

“I still do nae like it,” she growled, but left as I’d asked and took her people with her.

I closed the door behind them and turned back to Kelsor.

“What are the terms?” I asked quietly.

Kelsor inclined his head. “Mage-General Varsa Siveray, High Lady of House Siveray, formerly sworn vassal of the now deceased royal line of Ahnlia, former Mage-Knight of the Cloud Citadel, friend of the Seafolk, Necromancer slayer—”

I grimaced and held up a hand to ward off the list of my titles. Being reminded of those past victories merely sharpened the sting of my current failure. “Please don’t. It’s only us here. Take the titles and honors nonsense as read.”

His face turned even stonier at the interruption. “It is the protocol.”

Kelsor took protocol seriously, a reaction to being the well-known son of an infamous courtesan. He operated on the principal that if he followed established manners and form, the small-minded fools who were concerned with such things were less likely to call him ‘the upstart bastard son of a whore.’ Thereby reducing the risk of him being forced to paint the walls with their blood.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

I sighed. “Can you at least skip the less relevant ones?”

He inclined his head a fraction. “This message is addressed to you as the head of your house, one of the most decorated mage-knights in the history of the Cloud Citadel, and the rumored killer of Imperial Prince Arik Solothar of Estera.”

The stress he put on the last surprised me.

“Rumored?” I repeated as black amusement prickled to life. “I did kill him. There were enough witnesses who saw me do so. Including your emperor.”

A flicker of emotion passed across Kelsor’s face. The first he’d shown since he’d entered the room. But it was there and gone so quickly I couldn’t catch it. “The Emperor has commissioned an investigation into his brother’s death. A formal trial will begin once your arrive at the imperial court.”

A picture began to build.

“Revan wants me to stand trial?” I immediately understood the value of the farce. Though I would undoubtedly be found guilty, Revan would use it to prove both his power and his commitment to justice.

He’d turn my execution into a political triumph.

With an almost dispassionate curiosity, I asked, “Under Esteran law, is the punishment for killing a member of the imperial family being flayed alive or drawn and quartered? I forget.”

Estera’s laws were older and more brutal that Ahnlia’s legal code. They dated back to a time when the two countries had been one. That had been part of what had led to the split two hundred and forty-six years ago. Ahnlia’s ports and trade routes and exposure to other cultures had made our people more progressive. While landlocked Estera’s harsh climate and vast wealth of rare metals and minerals had concentrated power in the hands of the traditionalists.

Under Ahnlian’s more lenient law, the murder of a member of the royal family merely called for a beheading.

“Should you be found guilty—”

I snorted.

“—the method of your execution will be at the Emperor’s discretion,” Kelsor answered almost gently.

I needed to know the worst now. Bracing for the answer, I asked, “And what has he chosen?”

“No method has yet been decided on.” Kelsor hesitated. “I am instructed to inform you he will be taking bids for a death price.”

Horror closed my throat like a giant fist.

“A death price?” I repeated, the words wheezing out past the tightness. “You mean the barbaric, backward, morally bereft custom where the imperial crown sells the manner of my execution to the highest bidder? That death price? Am I remembering it right?”

Kelsor nodded once, sharp and maybe a little shamed.

“Please tell me you’re not serious,” my voice shook.

He met my gaze and said nothing.

But what was there to say? Of course he was serious. Kelsor would not consider this either an appropriate time or subject for a joke.

The giant fist gripping my throat squeezed a little tighter.

I’d known Revan was angry, but this?

Not every enemy I had would jump at the chance to determine how I died. Some would merely celebrate the day when it came and move on. But enough of them would care, and some had deep pockets.

Allowing a death price all but guaranteed me a vile end.

“By the Seven’s mercy,” I breathed, closed my eyes, and opened them. I’d be better off climbing to the top of the battlements where I’d first glimpsed Kelsor from this morning and jumping. “And you want me to surrender? Why would I agree to this?”

“You have no alternative.”

I snorted. “How long have we known each other? There’s always an alternative.”

“Not this time.”

My stomach lurched uneasily. This was the opportunity to probe for information I’d been seeking. I wished the thought of hearing it didn’t make me feel sick.

I shoved my unease down and lifted the shoulder on my good side in a half-shrug. “You would have me believe our situation is so bad? Those are not the reports I have received.”

Of course, the last report Pym had received from outside these walls had been over four months ago. We’d heard nothing since the Esteran mages had managed to lay a siege circle around Lonemount.

They’d not managed to break the generations-old protective magics woven into the stones and bring down the walls or defeat us in battle. But communication with what allies we might have remaining had been cut off with typical Esteran efficiency.

I hadn’t taken that silence as a dire sign. Even at the best of times, magical communication was tricky this close to Woodmote Forest.

“Your reports are long out of date,” Kelsor said, like he saw straight through my bluff. “Ahnlia’s five great cities surrendered within three months of the invasion. The other three Stalwart Forts and the Seaward Citadel have fallen since. Lonemount is the only resistance to our occupation still remaining.”

A lesser man would have gloated in his side’s triumph, especially when relaying it to an old rival. But Kelsor merely laid it out factually. Like a battlefield sawbones explaining to a soldier that her limb was already lost and the only option was amputation or gangrene and death.

It was horrifying.

And for it to have happened so quickly…

Over two centuries of Ahnlia’s hard-won independence washed away in less than three years.

“That can’t be true,” I said, numbly.

“The Emperor thought you might say that.” Kelsor unslung the bag he carried and began laying its contents across the wooden writing desk. They were rings, some of gold, some of silver, some studded with gemstones, some quite plain. One had been carved entirely from a solid chunk of amber. The only thing they had in common were the intricate symbols carved into the raised flat bed of each rings.

The signet rings of Ahnlia’s great houses. Not just symbols of power, but the legal marks of the oldest and richest families.

I wore one such ring on the third finger of my left hand, though I’d had to tie a leather chord around the underside of the band to keep it on my hand after so many months of starvation. It was made of heavy silver and had Siveray bees inlaid with gold upon it.

I imagined it added to the collection laid out before me and a new flavor of despair tightened my chest.

Trying to cover how badly Kelsor had startled me, I picked up the amber ring and inspected it. The oak leaf emblem carved into was exactly as I remembered it. As I felt along the band, I found the slight nick in the amber where the ring’s former owner had nearly cut off her own finger in a particularly stupid tavern game.

A stupid tavern game I had gone on to win.

The memory of Jessamin Wyborn’s infectious laughter echoed in my ears.

This ring, at least, was not a forgery.

“Are they dead or foresworn?” I asked through deadened lips as I dropped the ring back to the table.

“Re-sworn for the most part.” A subtle shade of contempt entered Kelsor’s voice. He’d die for his emperor and expected like honor from others. “The Emperor felt it would… help strengthen loyalty if his new subjects redefined themselves. New names in the Esteran style, new mottos, new legal marks. Some were…excited.”

A fresh opportunity to rebuild their influence and curry favor? Yes, revolting as it was to realize, some of Levi’s former court would be excited by the opportunity. The rest would go along with it because their only other option was death.

Ahnlia had fallen.

Could I blame her people for adapting to survive?

With difficulty I refocused my attention on Revan’s envoy. “Your emperor has shown surprising mercy.”

“Yes.” Kelsor met my gaze. “He’ll grant Lonemount the same grace. The lives of those who have harbored you will be spared in return for your unconditional surrender.”

The terms stole the breath right out of my lungs.

As Revan had undoubtedly intended.

“He will spare them all?” I repeated just to make sure I’d understood correctly. “The Ahnlian’s who sought refuge here as well as the local born? All my people? And no harm will come to them?”

Kelsor inclined his head. “That is the Emperor’s offer. You surrender and he will spare the life of every Ahnlian under your protection.”

“No reprisals?” I asked still disbelieving.

“None. I can pledge this with his honor.”

“All of them? Those were his exact words?”

“The Emperor’s exact words were, ‘Tell her I will spare every single pitiful life under her protection if she agrees to my terms.’”

That sounded like him. The words, the impatience, the contempt for everyone but the handful he respected. I’d been part of that small group, once upon a time.

I’d thought I was too tired to feel such surprise. Mercy on this scale was distinctly un-Esteran.

Distinctly un-Revan too.

But a pledge of honor was a sacred thing in Estera. Kelsor would sooner slit his own throat than use his emperor’s word as false coin.

I played for time. “Your offer is unexpectedly generous.”

“It secures an outcome that the Emperor has long desired.”

“To torture me for however long he wishes and afterwards to have the pleasure of mounting my head on a pike to better scare his enemies?” I rubbed at my temples. “Yes, I can well believe he has long desired that.”

Kelsor’s expression turned even blanker. “The terms are what I’ve stated. Will you agree to them?”

On many levels this offer was better than we could have hoped. The siege could not stand much longer. Not with a harsh winter coming and stores running low. Not now that we knew no help would arrive.

All I had to do to secure this unexpected mercy was walk willingly to my death.

Death, in and of itself, didn’t troubled me. At least, not in the main. I was a combat mage, had served as one of the Citadel’s mage-knights for decades before becoming Ahnlia’s Mage-General at the start of this gods-cursed war. My death had always been a possibility. In these last months, almost a certainty.

But the idea of this death left a bitter taste in my mouth. I could all but feel Revan’s hand on the back of my neck forcing me to bow.

It was one thing to kill me.

It was another to make me lay my head on the executioner’s block myself, to turn me into an example he’d use to cow his other enemies. But Revan had always had a gift for finding a person’s pressure point.

He’d certainly found mine.

A sudden weariness washed though me. “If I were to accept, what would happen to the people here? I want details, not vague promises.”

“Lord Pym will be required to surrender his signet to me.” Kelsor gathered up those damning rings. “He may then appoint a chatelain of his choosing to watch over his home while he accompanies us to Free Haven to swear his allegiance.”

So Revan and his court were currently occupying Ahnlia’s fallen capital.

I raised a weary eyebrow. “That’s all you demand? The army will turn and march away with us? With none of your loyal Esteran soldiers or courtiers left behind to ensure compliance?”

And to ensure the Ahnlians who had defied them suffered appropriately.

Kelsor shrugged. “Why bother? Aside from the mage-steel mined here, this stronghold has little strategic value. If not for your presence, we would have been content to starve them into surrender.”

Then his journey here had been solely because of me.

“How did you know I was here?” I asked.

A ghost of a smile crossed Kelsor’s face. “We knew you were here because Lonemount held when all the others fell.”

I shook my head. “Lonemount held because of her people, and not just her soldiers and mages. The miners who learned how to wield the tools of their trade as weapons. The cooks who became quartermasters and made rations last far longer than should have been possible. The seamstresses and tailors who clothes stuffed clothes with straw to confuse your archers and steal your arrows. The artificers who discovered new ways to use mirrors and sun crystals to shine light into enemy eyes. The farmers who turned their skills with repairing fences and plows to repairing weapons. Even the children gathered loose stones to be dropped from the walls.” My passion ran out as I realized despite all their resourcefulness, the only way forward was surrender. “That we held so long was not even half my doing.”

“Who told them to do those things?” he asked with a note of quiet irony.

“Directing is not the same as doing.” I let out a tired sigh. “Though I suppose I should be flattered that you think so.”

“The Emperor knows your value to Ahnlia, Mage-General.” Kelsor hesitated for a long moment. Another flicker of something crossed his face. A moment of sympathy maybe. A flash of the man I’d known back at the Citadel before he’d sworn himself Revan and the other side of this war. The one I once would have called a friend. “And, Varsa, you would be wise not to underestimate your value to him.”