The officer's screams had died away an hour ago.

  Eirik stood in the small chamber they'd claimed beneath the outer wall, rinsing the blood from his hands in a basin of cold water. The water turned pink, then red, then dark.

  Behind him, the Khorath commander sat slumped against the wall, his fingers, what remained of them, wrapped in cloth that had already grown wet.

  Eirik dried his hands on a piece of cloth and turned to Olaf, who stood watch near the door.

  "Feed him," he said.

  "Aye, Commander. The information's good?"

  "Good enough."

  He went to a small table where he'd spread out a rough map of the area, something he'd drawn himself. The situation with the timber, however, had been more difficult than he'd thought.

  The Khorath hadn't just been burning through the wood that they'd brought with them, something that would have been impossible in a siege this scale. Instead, they'd created a network that reached almost forty miles to the northeast, where the forests provided limitless wood.

  Three timber camps operated in rotation, each of which employed perhaps two hundred men—mostly prisoners from previous conquests.

  The supply caravans departed every three days. Each one comprised approximately fifty wagons, which were escorted by a cavalry force of two hundred horsemen. The trip took two days to complete one way, with a stopover at a fortified waystation halfway through the journey.

  The waystation was the linchpin.

  It served as a distribution hub, a rest point, and a defensive position all in one. Destroy it, and the entire supply chain would collapse.

  The timber camps would continue cutting wood, but the caravans would lose their protected rest point, making them vulnerable across forty miles of exposed terrain.

  He marked the waystation's location on his map with a small X.

  "Commander."

  Kael had entered without sound, a habit Eirik had grown accustomed to but still found unsettling.

  "What is it?"

  A folded piece of paper lay in Kael's palm.

  Eirik took it, and the message was brief:

  You are in danger.

  The Archmage and his companion are meeting with the General as you read this.

  No signature.

  Eirik read it twice, then a third time.

  "Where did you get this?"

  "Found it tucked into my belt. Didn't notice until just now. Someone's good."

  Someone was very good indeed.

  Eirik's jaw tightened.

  He had warned Corvinus. He had laid out Velthan's treachery in explicit detail. And despite all of that, the General was meeting with the Archmage in secret.

  The note crumpled in Eirik's fist.

  He stood motionless for a moment, staring at nothing.

  Of course they were.

  Eirik had presented himself as a military asset. He had done everything a good soldier should do.

  And that was precisely the problem.

  Good soldiers followed orders. Good soldiers submitted plans to their superiors and waited for approval. Good soldiers trusted their commanders to make the right decisions with the information provided.

  Good soldiers were pawns.

  His stomach turned.

  He thought of the detailed notes he'd compiled about thinning enemy numbers. Hours of work.

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  Work that would become worthless the moment he handed it over.

  The General didn't need Eirik to execute the plan. Once the strategy was known, any competent commander could implement it. Eirik would transition from irreplaceable asset to expendable resource—useful for his ice powers perhaps, but no longer essential to the city's survival.

  And then Velthan would whisper his poison.

  The choice would be obvious from the General's perspective.

  Eirik unclenched his fist and smoothed the crumpled note against the table.

  You are in danger.

  Someone in this city wanted him alive. Someone with the skills to plant a message on Kael without detection—no small feat. The same someone who also knew about the secret meeting between the General and Velthan.

  That someone was his path forward.

  The military planning could wait. He needed to seize power. One way or another, immediately.

  ———

  Eirik returned to his quarters and dismissed the Talons.

  "Get some rest," he told them. "We move again tomorrow."

  Olaf gave him a long look but said nothing. The big man had learned to read Eirik's moods over their time together.

  Once alone, Eirik extinguished the oil lamps. The room plunged into darkness, lit only by the faint glow of moonlight through the single narrow window.

  He sat on the floor with his back against the wall.

  And he waited.

  The hours passed slowly. Eirik let a thin layer of ice spread across the floor of his chamber, extending beneath the door and into the corridor beyond.

  Any movement, he would feel it.

  Midnight came and went.

  At the third hour past midnight, he felt a vibration.

  Eirik rose silently and moved to the window.

  Below, the city slept. He saw only guard posts glowed with lamplight at regular intervals.

  There.

  A shadow moved between the spaces between the main thoroughfares. It paused at the corner of a building and seemed to look back toward Eirik's window.

  Then it moved again.

  Eirik reached to his storage ring and grabbed an item that had sat unused for a long time, the Skyfrost Cloak, which had helped him sneak past the trolls during one of his earliest fights.

  He activated the Skyfrost Cloak's camouflage function.

  [MANA EXPENDED: 1]

  [MANA: 199/200]

  [ACTIVE CAMOUFLAGE ACTIVATED]

  His body shimmered and faded, blending with the night sky behind him.

  Eirik climbed out.

  The pursuit was unlike anything he'd experienced. When Eirik accelerated, they accelerated. When he slowed, they waited. The distance between them remained constant.

  They wanted him to follow.

  The route wound through the city, avoiding main streets and guard posts with an intimacy that suggested long familiarity. Past shuttered workshops. Through a narrow alley where overhanging eaves nearly touched. Across a small plaza dominated by a frozen fountain.

  Eirik recognized where they were heading before they arrived.

  The tower.

  Four guards still stood at the entrance.

  His quarry had stopped at the edge of a shadow perhaps fifty yards away. For a long moment, neither of them moved.

  Then the figure raised one hand and pointed—a window near the summit.

  The figure vanished.

  Eirik stood alone in the snow, staring up at the tower.

  And then he heard it again.

  The singing.

  The same melody he'd heard that afternoon, carrying notes of sorrow so profound they seemed to bypass his ears entirely and settle directly into his chest.

  His curiosity had been piqued before. Now it burned.

  Eirik spent ten minutes observing the tower from various angles.

  The walls were indeed smooth, but not featureless. Decorative stonework provided occasional handholds—enough for a skilled climber.

  Eirik reached into his spatial ring.

  The Skill Enhancement Crystal materialized in his palm. He'd been saving these for emergencies. This qualified.

  [SKILL: CLIMBING (C-RANK)]

  [APPLY SKILL ENHANCEMENT CRYSTAL? Y/N]

  Yes.

  The crystal dissolved against his skin.

  [SKILL UPGRADED: CLIMBING (A-RANK)]

  He placed his palms against the wall.

  The A-rank climbing skill hummed through his consciousness. There—a crack in the mortar. And there—a slight protrusion where one stone sat higher than its neighbor. And there—a section where wind had roughened the surface just enough to provide friction.

  A path materialized in his mind.

  Eirik began to climb.

  His fingers found the first crack and gripped. His boots pressed against the minute protrusion. He shifted his weight upward, reaching for the next hold, and the next, and the next.

  He could see the window ahead. The source of the singing.

  He moved toward it with excruciating slowness.

  The last few feet took mere minutes. He positioned himself just below the window's edge, pressed flat against the stone, invisible in the shadows.

  Then he raised his head and climbed inside.

  The chamber beyond was beautiful. That was Eirik's first thought, and he hated himself for thinking it once he saw what they held.

  Chains hung from the ceiling in the room's center. They descended to manacles, and the manacles were attached to wrists, and the wrists belonged to—

  A girl.

  She knelt on the floor, naked, hair hanging like a curtain around her face. The chains held her arms raised just enough to prevent her from lying down, forcing her into a posture of perpetual supplication.

  Blood covered her.

  Her song continued for three more heartbeats. Then it stopped.

  The girl's head rose slowly.

  Her eyes found his.

  They were blue. A blue so pale they were almost white. They held no fear, only a weariness.

  Eirik couldn't speak.

  Movement behind him.

  Eirik spun, ice forming instinctively around his hands, prepared to fight—

  A young man stood in the doorway. His armor marked him as one of the General's guard, the dragon-masked helmet absent but the rest of his uniform unmistakable. Eirik recognized him: one of the soldiers who had wheeled Corvinus's chair during their meetings.

  It was also the same person who had been watching him from behind a wooden pillar at the banquet.

  The young man raised both hands, palms outward.

  "Peace, Lord Stormcrow."

  "You—" Eirik's mind raced. "You left the note."

  "Yes."

  "Why?"

  The young man looked past Eirik to the girl in chains.

  He gave no answer.

  Eirik turned back to the girl. She had resumed singing, softly now, as if their presence was irrelevant.

  "Who is she?"

  The young man stepped into the chamber. He moved to stand beside Eirik, his eyes fixed on the singing girl.

  "This is Lyanna," he said. "The General's only daughter."