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“They’ve met Ava?” she guessed.

Erdene nodded. “They’ve spent a few hours with her on a couple of occasions. They know her voice.”

Talika nodded. She came to a stop and flicked Erdene’s hold off her arm. With her other hand, she made a chopping motion, as if making an angry point.

“What are you going to say we were fighting about?” Talika stepped back and threw both hands up into the air.

Erdene turned toward her and gave a smile at her dramatics, lifting her own hands, palms out, in a placating gesture. “That Lord Cynera has yet to present himself for questioning, and you consider them all potential traitors.”

“In other words, the truth.” The corners of Talika’s eyes crinkled in amusement.

With the necklace on, her eyes, her mouth, were Ava’s, but she used them in her own way. Erdene thought she would know Talika now, no matter whose face she wore.

The thought startled her and she frowned at her fancy.

“Perhaps try to placate me a bit more?” Talika suggested.

With a snort at her own distraction, Erdene patted Talika’s shoulder with a wink.

Talika winked back, a cheeky amusement in her eyes, and then she shrugged the hand off, turned on her heel, and stalked off, tossing her head as she went.

Erdene watched her go with regret. She didn’t like to examine why, but she was in a suitably irritable mood when the nobles reached her.

Most of them ignored her, their eyes tracking Talika as she stalked out of the garden and through the doors to her private apartments.

“Lords. Ladies.” Erdene eyed the group. They were dressed in silks and fine cottons, in line with their wealth, but these were not the frivolous young nobility, they were the harder-headed realists.

She had to deal with them sometime, she decided. Might as well be now.

“General Ru, we hoped to speak to the queen.” Lord Haster’s gaze was still over Erdene’s shoulder, although Talika was long gone.

“Unfortunately, she didn’t want to speak to you, Lord Haster.” Erdene let her lips quirk into false regret. Haster glanced up in surprise that she knew his name, but Erdene had made it a point to learn the names and backgrounds of every one of the nobles since Luc had sent word of what was going on.

“And why is that?” Lady Elna’s words were stiff. She saw Erdene as a foreign enemy, and she hated that she had to deal with her.

Most of them did.

Erdene smiled, because she enjoyed being a thorn in their side after what they and their queen had done to Venyatu.

“Because some of you are insurgents. You are bribing disaffected soldiers from the city, setting them up to attack Rising Wave units in the countryside, and trying to shift the blame to local villages. And then you have the gaul to spread rumours in Fernwell that the Rising Wave is behind the disappearances. That the soldiers who are missing have been killed, rather than living in your mansions, doing your bidding.” Erdene drew herself up, not having to reach far for outrage. “Neither the queen nor I are very happy to have lies spread about us.”

There was a beat of stunned silence.

“What are you talking about?” Lady Elna was the first to recover.

“I’m talking about Lord Cynera having arranged for some of the soldiers he’s enticed from Fernwell into his service to lie in wait for the Commander and his unit to pass his estates on their way to Jatan, and then attack them.”

“That fucking idiot.” Lord Haster muttered the words softly, but Erdene heard them clear enough.

“Those soldiers could be anyone,” Lord Frin said. “They could be locals retuned from the war. Who said Cynera had anything to do with it?”

Erdene looked at him pityingly. “The soldiers themselves said it. They took the Commander to Lord Cynera’s mansion, where they were staying.” She let the silence run for a long minute. “You seem well-versed in the story the soldiers told the Commander they were ordered to spread, Lord Frin.”

He reared back. “Are you saying . . .” His bluster ran short.

“She’s saying we are all suspects.” Lady Elna drew herself up. “I had heard you wanted to speak to Cynera. I didn’t know why.”

“Cynera must have sent a rider out to his estates the moment he heard the Rising Wave was sending a group out to Jatan. They were ready and waiting for Luc’s unit.”