The interior of the yurt stank, but Eirik did not care. The wind outside had teeth, and the felt walls, for all their faults, kept those teeth from finding skin.

  A fire burned in the center pit. Someone had fed it with the splintered frames of Skarl furniture — carved wooden things that had probably taken some craftsman weeks to make and were now reduced to fuel. The heat reached Eirik where he sat on a pile of furs in the corner, his back against the felt wall, though it did not reach far enough.

  He ran the whetstone along Grave Drinker's edge. Shhh-shhh. Shhh-shhh. The sound was steady and mindless and that was the point. His hands could do this work without him. The rest of his mind was elsewhere.

  Across the yurt, Olaf gnawed on a charred mutton leg. He tore a strip free with his teeth and chewed it with his mouth open.

  "Ye know," Olaf said around a mouthful, "for a bunch of savages, these buggers knew how to live."

  "Keep your voice down," Kael shifted near the tent flap.

  Outside, the bodies of the dead Skarls were being dragged to a mass grave at the valley's edge. The Duke's soldiers had been at it for hours.

  Shhh-shhh.

  He had been thinking about Caelum's waterskin since the transport.

  Olaf swallowed his mouthful and wiped his greasy fingers on his trouser leg. "Aye, aye. Don't want to disturb the lads digging holes. Tell me, Commander, what's the plan?"

  Eirik stopped the whetstone. "The waterskin."

  Olaf grunted. "The prince's juice box. Aye, I saw him swigging from it on the transport. So what? The man likes his hydration."

  "It's not water," Eirik said.

  "And?" Olaf scratched his beard. "Ye want to steal it?"

  "Not stealing." Eirik set the whetstone aside and laid Grave Drinker across his knees. "Stealing it creates three problems. First problem, if Caelum loses his supply and collapses before we arrive, Velthan turns this expedition around and takes us back to Frostfall. Second problem — a more likely one — the Archmage gets suspicious and decides we're more trouble than we're worth and has us killed. Third problem — I don't think we can steal it anyways."

  Kael nodded slightly at the analysis.

  "Stealing it would be next to impossible. I've been watching him since the massacre. He sleeps with that skin. He eats with it. He pisses with it in his hand."

  "I can challenge him to a duel while Kael slits his purse." Olaf suggested.

  "Caelum is Glacier realm," Kael said flatly. "You'd be dead before your hand left your axe. And he has three personal guards on rotation — never fewer than two within arm's reach. Velthan has layered wards on his personal quarters. I tested the perimeter already. I got within fifteen feet before my skin started to burn."

  Eirik nodded. A direct approach was suicide, and suicide helped no one.

  "So we're fucked," Olaf declared, and took another bite of his charred leg. He seemed remarkably at peace with the conclusion.

  "No," Eirik said. "We don't touch the skin. We touch the supply."

  Kael's head tilted.

  "That skin holds perhaps a liter," Eirik continued. "He drinks from it dozens of times a day. In three days, maybe four, it runs dry. He doesn't produce that fluid himself. Someone refills it."

  "The quartermaster," Kael said immediately. "Serin. The thin one who handles the alchemy supplies."

  "You're certain he's the one who handles the refills?"

  "I watched him three times. Always the same routine. Caelum sends a guard with the empty skin. The guard brings it to Serin. Serin takes it into the logistics tent. Ten minutes later, the guard walks back to Caelum with the skin full. The guard never enters the tent."

  So Serin was the bottleneck.

  One man, handling the transfer between the Master Jar — wherever the bulk supply was kept — and Caelum's personal skin. If they could tamper with the Master Jar, Caelum would poison himself through his own routine.

  By the time he understood what was happening, it would be far too late.

  But first, they had to reach the jar.

  "Right," Eirik said. "Here's the problem. Serin keeps the Master Jar in the logistics tent. He's not guarded the way Caelum is, but he's not unprotected either. We can't just walk in and ask nicely."

  "A diversion, then." Olaf said, perking up. "Sounds ye have a plan already."

  Eirik stared into the fire for a long moment.

  The problem was not getting the camp's attention elsewhere. That was simple enough — any emergency would do. The problem was getting Serin to move the jar outside the tent, into a position where Kael could reach it.

  What would make an alchemist move his most valuable supply?

  The answer came to him.

  Contamination.

  An alchemist would tolerate many things — cold, discomfort, poor lighting, hostile company. But the one thing no alchemist could tolerate was the corruption of his materials. If Serin believed his workspace was contaminated — if he smelled something in the air that threatened his compounds — he would not sit and wait.

  "We need Serin to leave his tent." Eirik said slowly. " And we need him to carry the jar when he does."

  "How?"

  "Chemical smoke. If a fire starts near the logistics tent — far enough from the Archmage so that it didn't draw immediate attention, while being close enough that the smoke blows through — Serin's first instinct will be to protect his supplies. He'll grab the Master Jar and run."

  Kael's eyes narrowed. "And during the run?"

  "That's your part."

  Olaf leaned forward. "And where does Serin run to?"

  That was the right question, and it was the one Eirik had been turning over in his mind. If Serin ran to the command tent, to Velthan, the plan was dead.

  "Caelum's quarters are warded and ventilated," Eirik said. "That's the obvious choice for an alchemist trying to protect volatile compounds. If the path to the command tent is blocked—"

  "A second fire," Kael said.

  "A second fire. Between Serin and the command tent. Just enough smoke and heat to make the path impassable. Serin looks left, sees fire. Looks right, sees the officers' yurts. He runs right."

  "And in the officers' quarter, I'm waiting." Kael's voice was quiet.

  "In one of the vacant yurts along the path. You have perhaps sixty seconds before someone comes looking."

  Eirik paused.

  "The difficult part is Caelum. If the Duke's son hears the commotion and teleports to the logistics area before Serin moves, he takes the jar himself."

  "So someone needs to keep Caelum busy," Olaf said.

  "Not busy," Eirik corrected. "Redirected. He needs a reason to go somewhere that isn't the logistics tent."

  "The supply wagon," Kael offered. "The big one near the eastern perimeter. It holds three days of rations for the entire expedition."

  Eirik thought about it. Even a man who could freeze blood with a thought could not conjure grain from empty air. The loss of three days' rations in hostile territory would be a crisis that demanded immediate attention from the expedition's highest-ranking noble.

  "If Olaf's first fire at the trash heap sends smoke toward the logistics tent, and the second fire blocks the path to the command tent, then a third incident — the supply wagon — draws Caelum east. Three fires might be excessive. It strains belief."

  "Two fires and an accident," Kael suggested. "The supply wagon just needs to look like it's about to. A lantern knocked from its hook would do."

  "Olaf. Can you manage both fires?"

  The big man grinned. "Can and will."

  Eirik did not grin back. He was running the sequence in his mind, looking for the places where it broke.

  Olaf starts the trash fire. The smoke rolls toward the logistics tent. Serin panics, grabs the jar, runs. Olaf — or one of his people — triggers the supply wagon incident to pull Caelum east. The second fire, somewhere along the path between the logistics tent and the command tent, forces Serin toward the officers' yurts. Kael is waiting in a vacant yurt. Serin enters. Kael follows.

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  Sixty seconds. That was all they would have.

  "We need someone else," Eirik said. "Olaf shouldn't be doing this alone."

  Olaf raised an eyebrow. "Who?"

  "I'll leave that to you." Eirik answered. "Someone discreet enough to not get spotted. Choose wisely."

  "I suggest Brenn. Very reliable sort."

  "Brenn it is."

  Eirik turned it over in his mind. It was not elegant. There were a dozen places where it could fail — if the wind shifted and blew the smoke the wrong way, if Serin ran to the command tent instead of the officers' quarter, if Caelum ignored the supply wagon, if a guard wandered into the vacant yurt at the wrong moment, if the substitute's color was wrong and was detected immediately.

  But elegant plans were for people who had time and resources. Eirik had neither.

  "The swap itself," Eirik turned to Kael. "You need to pour out the original and pour in the substitute without Serin seeing anything. If the jar has a seal—"

  "It does," Kael said. "A wax seal stamped with Serin's personal mark. I saw it when the tent flap opened."

  "Can you forge the stamp?"

  "Not in a night. But I can melt and reset the existing wax if I work fast. The stamp won't be clean — it'll look like it was jostled during the move. That might actually help. If Serin finds a slightly disturbed seal, he'll blame the panic."

  Eirik considered that.

  It was a risk. The entire plan was a risk. But the alternative was doing nothing, and doing nothing meant arriving at the Sunless City with Caelum at full strength and Velthan's leash firmly buckled.

  "Olaf, you need oil and grease. Check the Skarl cooking supplies — they'll have rendered fat stored somewhere near the fire pits. Three containers should be enough. Kael, prepare the substitute mixture. Any idea on the replicating the blue color?"

  Kael thought for a moment.

  "The frost flowers," he said. "The ones growing on the shaded rocks north of camp. Crush them and steep the extract in warm water. It produces a pale blue tint that fades slowly — slowly enough to survive a day or two before Serin notices the color shifting."

  Eirik stood.

  "Go. Both of you. I want everything in position before the second watch change."

  They left.

  Eirik sat alone in the yurt, listening to the fire crack and the wind howl and the distant sounds of soldiers burying the dead.

  He picked up the whetstone and returned to Grave Drinker's edge.

  Shhh-shhh.

  He thought about what would happen when the substitute took effect. The withdrawal would be gradual. Caelum would feel it first as irritability, then the tremors would start. Small at first, a quiver in the fingers, a twitch beneath the eye. Then worse. Probably much worse as the time goes by.

  It was a vile thing to do.

  Eirik acknowledged that without flinching from it. The Duke's son was an arrogant prick and a casual murderer, but he suspects the addiction was Velthan's doing. Caelum was as much a victim of Velthan's schemes as anyone else in this expedition, even if the Duke's son would never see himself that way.

  None of that changed the calculation.

  If Caelum remained at full strength when they entered the Sunless City, Eirik and his Talons were entirely at their mercy. Velthan could dispose of them whenever their usefulness ended.

  Shhh-shhh.

  He finished with the blade and sheathed it.

  The fire was dying. He fed it another piece of Skarl furniture — a stool, from the look of it, with carved legs that had once been someone's pride — and watched it catch.

  ———

  The night deepened.

  Eirik crouched behind the ruins of a collapsed yurt sixty yards from the logistics tent. The felt walls had been torn down during the earlier fighting and left in a heap that provided decent cover. The snow had covered most of it, and in the darkness, a man lying flat against it would be invisible from ten feet away.

  He could see the logistics tent clearly. Serin had erected it near a row of iron braziers that the expedition's soldiers used for warmth during the night watches. The placement made sense — the heat from the braziers would keep the alchemist's compounds from freezing. A frost-proof chest was visible through the half-open tent flap.

  Two assistants sat on camp stools outside the tent's entrance.

  Eirik felt his heart beating in his throat. He pressed his hand against his ribs and willed it to slow. A racing heart made for shaking hands, and shaking hands made for mistakes.

  For a long moment, nothing happened.

  Then, at the far edge of the camp, near the area where the Skarl dead had been stripped of their possessions before burial, a small orange glow appeared.

  It grew.

  Olaf had done his work well. The trash heap — a mound of splintered furniture, torn hides, cracked bones, and other refuse from the day's looting — had been soaked with rendered fat from the Skarl cooking stores. The grease caught the flame and multiplied it. Within seconds, the glow had become a blaze, and the blaze had begun to produce exactly what Eirik needed.

  Smoke.

  It rose in a thick column, caught the wind, and rolled across the camp in a low, choking wave.

  "FIRE! FIRE IN THE CAMP!"

  The shouts began. Soldiers stumbled from yurts, pulling on boots and grabbing weapons. The camp was already on edge from the massacre — fire was a new threat, and men who had just spent the day fighting were not inclined to be calm about it.

  Eirik watched the smoke.

  It was moving the right way. The wind was carrying it southeast, directly toward the logistics tent. He could see the two assistants on their stools — they had risen and were looking at the fire with confused expressions.

  Eirik counted his heartbeats. One. Two. Three. Four.

  The smoke reached the logistics tent. One of the assistants coughed. The other pulled his collar over his nose.

  Then Serin burst from the tent. His head whipped from side to side as he took in the smoke rolling toward his workspace.

  "GET ME WATER! NO — NOT WATER, YOU FOOLS! SAND! BRING SAND!"

  The assistants scattered. They ran toward the supply area, leaving Serin alone in front of the tent.

  The alchemist ducked back into the tent.

  Eirik waited.

  The smoke was thickening. From the far side of camp, the sounds of the fire-fighting effort were growing louder.

  Serin emerged again. This time, he carried the frost-proof chest against his body.

  Good. Now the question is where.

  Serin turned left, toward the command tent where Velthan was.

  A second fire flared.

  It was smaller than the first Olaf — or Brenn — had done what he could with a single flask of oil and a smoldering brand from one of the braziers. The fire itself was no threat to anyone. But the smoke it produced joined the thickening haze from the trash fire, and the path that Serin had been running toward disappeared behind a wall of bitter gray.

  Serin skidded to a halt. The chest nearly left his arms. He staggered, regained his balance, and stood in the dark with smoke closing in from two directions.

  He turned right.

  The officers' yurts lay that way — a line of larger tents reserved for the expedition's senior personnel. Several were already vacant.

  Serin ran toward them.

  Eirik was already moving. He came around the collapsed yurt at a low crouch, keeping the smoke between himself and the nearest cluster of soldiers.

  He could not see Kael. That was expected and comforting. If Eirik could not see the assassin, no one else could either.

  Serin reached the third yurt in the row. He fumbled with the entrance flap and shouldered his way inside.

  Eirik slowed his pace. He was thirty yards away. Twenty. He could hear the faint sound of Serin moving inside the yurt — a lantern being lit, the solid thud of the chest being set on the ground.

  Then silence from within.

  Too much silence. A thud. Then nothing.

  Kael's hand appeared from beneath the rear wall of the yurt. Thumb raised.

  Eirik broke into a run.

  He reached the yurt and dropped to his knees at the gap Kael had cut in the felt.

  Serin lay face-down on the ground.

  His eyes were closed. A thin line of blood ran from a gash above his left temple. At his feet, a length of thin cord stretched taut between the base of two support poles. Serin had caught his boot on it.

  It was the kind of injury a man gave himself.

  Kael did not look up from his work.

  "The seal has two layers," Kael whispered. "Outer wax and an inner membrane. I can cut it and reapply, but it won't be clean."

  "How long?"

  "Another thirty seconds for the seal. Then the pour."

  Thirty seconds. Eirik positioned himself near the entrance, listening through the felt for sounds outside. Soldiers were shouting, but the voices were distant. The fires had drawn everyone's attention the other way.

  Then he heard something that turned his blood cold.

  A crack of displaced air. The particular sound that spatial magic made when it folded the distance between two points into nothing.

  Caelum had teleported.

  Eirik pressed his ear to the felt.

  Ten paces from the yurt entrance, perhaps less.

  "Caelum‘s coming," Eirik breathed.

  Kael's hands did not stop moving. "Then stall him."

  Eirik scrambled through the entrance flap and stood up outside, directly in the path of the approaching footsteps.

  Lord Caelum emerged from the swirling haze. His white cloak was untouched by the ash that was falling over the camp.

  "Lord Caelum!" Eirik called out, striding toward him. "The fire — it's spreading toward the horse lines. We need to relocate the animals before the smoke reaches them."

  "The guards can handle the horses," Caelum said. His head turned toward the yurt that Serin had entered. "I heard—"

  A deafening crash tore through the night.

  Both men spun.

  The supply wagon — the large one near the eastern perimeter, the one that held three days of rations — had buckled. At its base, a pool of grease from a ruptured barrel had caught a spark from a drifting ember.

  "TEATS OF THE FROST MOTHER!" Olaf's voice exploded from somewhere near the wreckage. "THE WHOLE FUCKING WAGON'S GOING UP!"

  Three days of food for the entire expedition, burning.

  For one heartbeat, Eirik watched Caelum stood between the yurt and the burning wagon.

  Then he was gone.

  The crack of spatial magic split the air, and the Duke's son materialized beside the wagon, ice already forming on his hands.

  Eirik did not wait. He turned and ducked back through the tent flap.

  Inside, Kael was pouring.

  He had the Master Jar tilted at an angle, the thick blue fluid flowing in a slow, reluctant stream into a leather bladder pressed against the jar's lip.

  "Time?" Eirik dropped beside him.

  "Fifteen seconds. Maybe ten. Hand me the substitute."

  Eirik pulled the vial from inside his coat. The mixture Kael had prepared was close to the original — a pale blue, slightly thinner than the real fluid but close enough in the poor lantern-light. He uncorked it and held it ready.

  The last of the genuine medicine drained into the bladder. Kael sealed it with a leather tie and reached for the substitute.

  He poured it into the empty jar.

  It was not the same shade but the lantern cast everything in amber tones, and the distinction was subtle enough to survive a glance.

  "The seal," Eirik said.

  Kael pressed the softened wax back into place. Then, he placed the jar back in the chest and closed the lid,.

  Done.

  Eirik took Serin's limp hand and pressed it against the wound at his temple.

  A man who found himself on the floor of a strange yurt with blood on his hands and a headache would construct his own explanation — I hit my head on something in the dark — and that explanation would be more convincing than anything Eirik could fabricate.

  Kael produced a small vial and held it beneath Serin's nose.

  The alchemist's eyelids fluttered.

  "Go," Kael whispered. "This'll wake him."

  They went.

  Inside, Serin was stirring. Eirik heard him move, followed by a sharp intake of breath.

  A pause. Then a long exhalation of relief.

  Serin had found the chest. It was where he had left it. The seal was intact, or close enough.

  The world was still making sense to Quartermaster Serin. He would reseal the jar himself, curse his own clumsiness, and return to his duties.

  Footsteps approached the yurt's entrance from the front. The two guards had come looking.

  "Quartermaster?"

  The flap rustled.

  Eirik was already gone. Kael moved beside him for three steps, then peeled away and vanished in a different direction without a word.

  The smoke was beginning to thin. Behind him, Eirik heard Serin's nasal voice, groggy and irritated, telling the guards that he was fine, he had slipped, the chest was secure, would they please stop hovering over him and go help with the fires.

  No one would think to question a loyal servant's dedication to his duty.

  They gathered in the yurt.

  Olaf was already there. His beard was singed on one side and his eyebrows had taken damage and his face was black with soot, and he was grinning.

  "Did ye get it?"

  Kael produced the leather bladder.

  "Roughly two-thirds of the Master Jar's contents," He said.

  "How long before he notices?" Eirik asked.

  "Depends on his tolerance. If he's been using for years — and from the way his body responds, I believe he has — then by the third or fourth day, his body will begin rejecting whatever residual effect the diluted mixture provides."

  Eirik nodded. That was enough.

  "Ye're a cold bastard, ye know that?" He clapped Kael on the shoulder hard enough to rock the smaller man sideways. "Both of ye."

  Eirik did not disagree.

  A commotion outside interrupted them.

  A pulse of energy rippled through the camp. The flames froze, then collapsed inward, before it winked out of existence.

  Archmage Velthan stood at the center of the camp. His staff was raised, and its tip pulsed once with a light that was too white to look at directly.

  Eirik felt the skin on the back of his neck prickle.

  "Commander."

  "I see it."

  At the far edge of the camp, near the smoldering remains of the first fire, a cluster of the Duke's elite guards had formed a tight circle. They were gripping someone by the arms and hauling him toward the center of the camp.

  Brenn.

  The grizzled Talon was struggling against the grip of four armored soldiers.

  "GET YOUR HANDS OFF ME! I DIDN'T DO NOTHING!"

  They dragged him before Velthan.

  Olaf had stopped chewing. The mutton leg hung forgotten in his fist.

  "Shit," the big man said quietly. "Shit, shit, shit."