“Burn it,” Anna said, turning away and settling her eyes on a row of Moraharem suttas. “I’m sure it was a plant.”
“The state—” Yatrin caught himself, grimacing. “Nahora has no reason to lure us.”
“He had no reason to leave a message written in something we can’t even read,” Anna spat.
“Volna would be even blinder to it than us,” Yatrin said. “I would caution you against destroying it too soon, Anna.”
She considered the Nahoran’s plea, wondering if and how such information would ever be useful to them. There was no comfort in the idea of Konrad materializing within the Nest, nor in chasing what was likely another brick in an endless wall of misinformation.
But the desperate crinkle in Yatrin’s eyes plucked her hidden strings.
“Tell the breakers to start an archive entry,” she said. “Anything we recover should be matched against that, in case we start to fill in a set. We can try to break their constructs with enough samples.” Countless hours in the company of breakers and planners had made the business of war easier to track and operate, but everything had its price. Blossoming logic had a habit of bleeding empathy, of withering the living cost of every decision.
“Understood,” Yatrin said. He inclined his head and took in a long breath, his shoulders rounding with tension. “Are we still ruling out making contact?”
Anna’s jaw ached under the pressure. “So you did speak to them.”
“Not directly,” he explained, sheepish with the curl of his fingers and the craning of his neck. “The barracks are just chattering, but truth slumbers within prattle. I’ve no doubts about their loyalty, but even adorers can grow disillusioned in time.” He looked away. “Some of the units said Mesar’s vying for leadership. In tactics, anyway.”
“He’s certainly trying,” Anna whispered.
“Don’t dwell on it,” Yatrin said. “None of this could exist without you.”
“Of course not. So I know how it feels, watching them try to sharpen its claws.”
“Everybody wants what’s best.”
That miserable fact burned in the notch of her sternum. “Nobody knows what’s best,” Anna countered, tucking the pleats of her robe closer and tightening the sash. “I’ll meet with the breakers before we deploy Ramyi’s unit. In the meantime, tell Baqir to rest. He has a deployment coming up.”
The Nahoran nodded, giving way to shadows that appeared as black smudges beneath his brow. His stance was always dignified, vigilant, unshakeable.
At times she began to form an image of how she imagined he truly was, without hallucinations of a bright-eyed man and jade necklaces playing through her mind. She was crafting it as he stood before her, an avatar of deference, waiting for her dismissal despite claiming the breaths of a hundred men. His pride never drowned him. Perhaps he was immune to lures of glory and self-worship, and perhaps even wickedness.
Perhaps.
Anna found herself studying his lips, wondering how coarse they were after so many days of smoke and sand. How it might feel to touch them. “Sleep with a hawk’s lids, Yatrin.”
He bowed and departed. Alone again, she could not still her mind. War was an exercise in constant thinking, pitting memories against predictions and assigning fates to those within a banner’s shade. There was no time for affection and no place for attachment.
That night she awoke to darkness, her skin clammy and lungs convulsing, holding the maelstrom center of a violet flower in her mind’s eye.
Chapter 3
Silence spoke in different ways, and in the breakers’ den, it meant that nothing had been cracked. Drafting boards were littered with unfurled scrolls, all of them crowded with painted pins and strings, tracking patterns that seemed to shift every cycle. Missives bearing the names of Volna captains and field wardens and marked fighters formed mosaics on the den’s high walls, which were scoured and rearranged by Azibahli breakers employing all six limbs. Veteran breakers like Anim, who’d studied under Gideon in the crucible of the Weave Wars, sat in the clutches of grotesque magnification apparatuses, staring through countless rings of focusing glass and poring over letters’ tails in the hopes of understanding their writers’ intentions. Every shelf was crowded with khat stalks and vials of distilled efadri sap, and not merely for decoration: When the breakers’ eyes snapped up from inspecting scrolls, they were bloodshot, dilated to fat tar droplets.
And yet, between ruffling papers and mumbled northern greetings, the den was silent.
Gideon Mosharan was hobbling along the railing of the second level, smiling absently at the Azibahli breakers that skittered across the ceiling’s darkness and clicked at one another in bottomless cylindrical pits. He carried his years well, as any respectable Nahoran did, but his levity reflected true acceptance of death, of the gradual creep toward nothingness.
Everyone reconciled with the end in different ways, Anna supposed.
“Staying swift on your feet?” Gideon asked, pausing mid-step and shuffling to face Anna.
His faint, careless smile unnerved her. “Certainly staying busy,” she said. “I need to see everything you have about the coordinates.”
“Everything.” Gideon wandered to the railing and draped his hands over the edge, watching breakers and runners move in quiet swirls below. “Such a curious word for so little.”
Anna moved closer and took in a scent like fermenting apricots. “You took your jabs at the High Mother’s table.”
“Oh, come now,” Gideon sighed. “Kuzalem’s fur, ruffled by a helpless old man?”
Anna bristled at the title. Once it had been Kuzashur, the Southern Star, a reminder of her worth in a horrifying world. Now it had been corrupted to both a rallying cry and a curse, a hushed fear on the lips of thousands who’d never glimpsed her face.
Kuzalem, the Southern Death.
“What did your sulking bear tell you?” Gideon continued.
“Is it true, what he said about the Foreign Guard?”
“Not so keen to speak about it, is she?” he asked, smirking. “Viczera Company’s stain is all over it.”
“We should be able to parse it.” Anna glowered at the old breaker. “Your men covered the passes during the spring. They tracked everything.”
“Well.” Gideon chuckled and shrugged. “Everything Nahora was willing to show.”
“Your job is to unearth everything it wasn’t.”
“Gaze with fresh eyes.” Gideon swept a vein-wreathed hand over the den. “We do our work tirelessly, Kuzalem, as do the butchers of Volna. Each dawn brings a new harbinger of their savagery. What stands to be gained from the death of a single malefactor? One whose very name has been lost to the southern winds?”
“One aim shouldn’t usurp another,” Anna snapped. “It doesn’t need to.”
Gideon’s lips spread into a slow, indulgent smile. “Precisely. We seek to pick apart the tapestries of our enemies, not dissect the strings.”
“Codes are all about strings.”
“Ah, but you’ve not seen the tapestry.” Gideon shrugged once more. “Some of the runners from the Ganhara region said your unit was set upon by the Toymaker.” He paused, letting the stain of the name from past strikes sink in. “They’re amassing more men, it seems.”
“One of their top lieutenants,” Anna said. “In a downpour, all waiting hands are fed equally.”
“Aphorisms do little to