Lady Tamalsen scratched out a report to her queen. Her cramped handwriting already poputed half of the page, the ink drying in stages as new text soaked into the parchment, its finish dulling while she contempted what else to add. The st few nights had seen a great deal of progress made in Lady Therien’s work. Though her mood worsened with every passing day, a byproduct of the Emperor’s visitation upon her, Queen Meredith could only be delighted by the recent happenings.

  She certainly was. A new batch of servants to guide meant new challenges. No two were exactly alike, and each new batch provided her with myriad puzzles to solve, selections to make, and paths which would follow them through the rest of their lives to set. If they were lucky, those lives would be long and fruitful, in the way they could be.

  If they were lucky.

  The bitch needs something to keep her occupied. She has been dwelling on these rebels far too much.

  Her doorknob rattled and the door came open. Without looking up from her report, she said: “I have a knocker for a reason.”

  She scribbled a few more words, dropped her pen into the open ink pot beside her message, and then looked over the silver rim of her gsses at the newcomer.

  Anger welled up inside her.

  The woman who loomed before her was dressed in a uniform stained with various kinds of grime—the most arming, a splotchy mass of blood stiffening the wrinkles across her chest and sleeves.

  She had known the brats would send someone for her eventually, and had no intention of going the way Haman Bran did.

  “You.” She breathed.

  Sami observed her through lightning-blue eyes, her expression cold and impassive. The girl let the door fall shut behind her.

  The electrified whisper of a death rite hung like a cloud around Lady Tamalsen. She held it ready, a bead of darkness clinging to the underside of her cquered fingernail.

  “They must think to have set you up for a great win with me, young woman.” She said. “But they have grievously miscalcuted.”

  She unched herself over the desk.

  A bst of wind struck her in the chest, smmed her against the wall. At the same time, the melody filling her ears faltered. Papers fluttered in the air around her, cascaded whimsically to the floor.

  “Where did you learn magic, armorer? They don’t teach your kind.” She said, reaching for the rite again.

  The melody remained well out of her reach. She could no more will it forward than she could will herself down from this wall.

  Silenced, too.

  “Who do you work for? The emperor’s bitch daughter? The Cross?”

  “You oversaw the conditioning of those children your people stole, alongside the te Haman Bran.” The words issued from Sami’s mouth, but it was not her voice that came through. She watched from within as the Watchers riding her body closed the distance, gripped the edge of Lady Tamalsen’s desk with her fingers. “For the countless deaths on his hands, the failures as you call them, we slew him. For your part, in releasing them, you will be spared his fate.”

  “You expect me to believe you will not kill me?” she said.

  Sami shook her head.

  Her eyes pulsed brighter, and the wind broke.

  Lady Tamalsen slid onto the ground.

  Her body moved of its own accord. Her fingers unbound the buttons holding her bodice closed, as electrified light flickered behind her irises. She peeled her dress off, turned her chair backward and mounted it, resting on her knees, leaning over the backrest, clutching it in both hands.

  What is this? She wondered. Her faculties rapidly caught up with her. She looked again into Sami’s eyes, recalled their usual color. It had not been so long ago that the woman before her was a girl readying to take her pce in what department would have her. She had been successful in steering her to the pce she would be of most use, a decision met with levity from the servant. A servant who was no longer in control of herself, who was as cy in the palm of another entity…or several. Surely she couldn’t have found that pce. They wiped her memory.

  Yet clearly, she had. Even those that knew about the nursery were not permitted to enter it except under very specific circumstances. Lady Tamalsen had never so much as been beyond the entrance. No one with any knowledge of it was ever to be in the direct line of sight of the Watchers ensved there, so how did this girl find it? How did she find them?

  “You’re possessing her.” She whispered coldly, and was surprised at the ease with which she spoke. “You unnatural beasts are using her. Maniputing an innocent girl.”

  “As have you, more times than any mortal could know.” Sami crossed the room to a tall cupboard, wrenched the door open. Inside was a series of canes of various sizes. She took one out, tested it by bending it. It yielded rather easily. “You’ve terrorized hundreds of children, forced them to believe the very people who captured them are their saviors, that those who murdered their families are protecting them.”

  “I gave them better lives than they could have dreamed of. Most were in poverty when our Wraiths took them. Half would have died within the year.” Lady Tamalsen said. “You know nothing of what they have been through!”

  Sami repced the cane, removed another and tested it.

  “And the other half?”

  Her jaw clicked shut.

  “Yes, we thought so. It is all right there in your mind’s eye. You have no secrets from us. Your Wraiths work often with poachers. Poverty…perhaps they were living in squalor, but they were free then. Able to live on their own terms.

  “The rest, and do not waste our time with falsehoods, were prisoners. Hostages. You took many from important families to secure their compliance with your demands. No different than Gyarval or Arganon were your aims. To crush dissent in the bordernds. To prevent more allies from amassing around the one you call Reaper. To see that man dead in favor of his psychopath lieutenant when you could not keep him under control.”

  She returned the cane she was holding to the cabinet, removed another. This one was as thick as her thumb and beveled along its length, not unlike the leg of a chair.

  “You beat them with this?” she asked, shedding a look of hard judgment on the dy.

  Lady Tamalsen held her silence, gred back defiantly.

  “Yes. I suppose it is better if you do not lie to us.” She gave it an exploratory swing. It made a whooping noise as it sailed through the air.

  She moved around the desk, positioned herself behind and to one side of Lady Tamalsen, so that her dominant arm was on the outside, ready to dole out pain.

  “What do you think to accomplish?” Lady Tamalsen watched the cane as Sami brandished it. “Beating me will change nothing. Nor will killing my associates. You could kill the queen herself and the cycle would remain, untouched save for a superficial changing of faces.”

  Sami sneered. “We require a witness, Lady Elira of House Tamalsen.

  She swung the cane hard, earning her a pained yelp from Lady Tamalsen. The cane came down again. A sheet of tears blurred Lady Tamalsen’s vision.

  Again.

  Again.

  Again!

  With each brutal swing, Sami flinched away from the image cast in front of her eyes. She could not look away, could not ignore this violence. Could not flee into herself and thus avoid bearing witness to this cruelty. The Watchers held her before the event, compelled her to remain still and watch as they executed judgment on the dy who had raised her. The closest thing to a mother she had ever known.

  Lady Tamalsen’s jaw clenched tight around the scream she refused to let loose. The pain must have been unbearable. The degradation humiliating even in these private quarters, in this intimate, dangerous setting.

  Again and again the cane came down, driving rational thought to a far corner of the dy’s mind.

  What a way to die. She thought absently. Beaten bloody with her own cane.

  The door to her study burst open. There, standing in the doorway, looking terrified, was Rashanna.

  “Help me!” Lady Tamalsen screamed.

  Sami dropped the cane.

  Rashanna pitched out of the way as she bolted from the room.

  “L-dy T-tamalsen.” Rashanna stammered.

  “Run girl. Find a Wraith. Alert the guard. She is still close.”

  Rashanna did run, then. She did not go immediately to any Wraith or Thorn, anyone who might help the woman. She pelted down the hall until rationality caught up to her, until there was room within her to process what she had just witnessed, to recognize the danger was well and far removed from her.

  Panting, she leaned against the wall near a crossing where two halls met. “What in the Pits. What in the name of….”

  She straightened up, shook herself. A Wraith. Need to find a Wraith. Let them know what I saw.