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“One certainly is, going off what they said about the tracks on the edge of the battlefield,” Bodhi replied.

“How do we lose something that enormous?” Celia groused.

“The Third Century is getting restless,” Kat declared before the highborns could turn this whole line of thought into an abstract classroom exercise. “They’re asking me for answers I can’t give them, and they trust me less and less every time I come back empty-handed.”

“So tell them to knock it off,” Daya suggested.

Kat bit back a scathing reply. She’d grown comfortable enough with Adrien’s companions, but it was another thing entirely to contradict them, especially with her token’s metal warm against her chest beneath her shirt.

Thus far, they’d tolerated her presence, but she knew that tolerance was wholly dependent on her good behavior.

They wouldn’t understand the difference between a centurion and a hinge—between someone who could command a unit like it was her own arm and someone whose authority was only ever a shadow play of her centurion’s orders.

Kat’s promotion to representing the century’s interests hadn’t come with any authority to manage those interests in turn.

“Frame it as a good thing,” Faye offered before Kat could work out a more diplomatic reply. “As long as the scouts report no signs of the Lesser Lords, they don’t have anything to worry about.”

“I hope that’s true,” Kat said, thanking the angels that there was at least one highborn at this table capable of giving her reasonable advice.

“As do I,” Adrien added, pulling back from the carafe he’d been fussing with. “Well, this has been lovely. See you all at dinner.”

Before anyone else could get a word in edgewise, the prince turned tail and bolted.

Kat snatched up her napkin, folded it around one of the pastries, and stuffed it in her pocket.

She had few advantages around Adrien’s companions, but none of the highborns could spare the indignity of rushing out on his heels the way she could, and Kat pressed her edge with aplomb, leaving the rest of them to resume their fussing.

“Your Highness,” she called, knowing he’d hate it. Though the prince had taken off at a good clip, her longer legs made up the difference easily. “I have something I’d like to discuss with you.”

It hadn’t been a sure thing until just then.

Until her powerlessness ran headlong into the highborns’ clear-cut assumptions of agency.

She was sick of the past two weeks of dodging her fellow soldiers, of not being able to help them with what ailed them, of knowing that every unanswered woe or worry would bite her when the next Lesser Lord struck and she’d need them to trust her command.

She didn’t have blood or Aurean power to back up her authority.

She’d need to cultivate it some other way.

“I always find your perspective fascinating, but I’ve got a bit of a busy day ahead,” Adrien said, taking a swig from the mug of horrid black coffee he’d stolen away with.

His taste for the commanders’ swill ran completely counter to everything Kat understood about the prince.

He seemed to not only accept but crave the discomfort of a strong, bitter drink in the morning.

Kat couldn’t relate. She’d drink the vile stimulant mixture passed around in waterskins on the battlefront, but only because the alternative was the possibility of a thrall getting past her spear.

In peacetime, she’d wait for sugar and cream or pass entirely.

“This is quick,” Kat said. “And important.”

Adrien only shrugged as if to say, What isn’t?

“For when the next Lesser Lord strikes.”

That, at least, got his attention like few things could. “You’ve got my walk to the command tent,” he said.

It was early enough that the majority of the camp was still getting their wits about them, but the ninth and tenth decades were on guard duty, dogging their steps as they strode into the heart of the administrative core.

Kat eyed them warily over her shoulder. The instant she lost the prince’s focus, they’d be on her like wolves—especially now that their camp had landed on the outskirts of Palomar.

With a town in sight, there would be ceaseless requests for evenings off, too many to grant at once.

Kat could practically see one brewing in one of the hinge shield’s eyes as he caught her gaze.

“It may be better to have this talk in confidence,” Kat suggested.

She couldn’t outright demand Adrien’s time, but she’d discovered over the past two weeks that sometimes it was enough just to pique his curiosity, and from the sudden sharp look he gave her, she’d managed it.

“I suppose I did leave the breakfast tent a little ahead of schedule, but who can blame me when Daya and Celia were being such nuisances? Very well,” Adrien said with a beckoning flap of his hand.

When they reached the command tent, the ninth and tenth took up their posts on either side of the entrance and Kat ducked through on Adrien’s heels, biting back the urge to let out a sigh of relief as she found herself once more out of sight of any infantry.

This tent had formerly played host to the administrative operations of the First Legion, but Adrien had wrenched it into his orbit and turned it into the hub of his road operation.

On the campaign, Kat had always been fascinated by the mysteries that must have been held within it.

Here was where the commanders plotted their stratagems. Here was where the war would someday be won—or so she thought.

It had very quickly lost its charm. Maybe some of its grandeur was forfeit in peacetime, where the urgency of troop movements had given way to the mundanity of land use negotiations, deals with local quarries, and preparing for the administrative ordeal of releasing thousands of soldiers from their contracts at once.

Behind these canvas walls, the high command was less a group of shadowy architects plotting ten steps ahead, more a chorus of petty, squabbling highborns more interested in their own personal glory than the defense of Telrus, pecking ceaselessly at one another while their staff picked up after them.

At the heart of the command tent was a map—the biggest map Kat had ever seen in her life—painted over a sturdy canvas that stretched in a wooden frame nearly four times as wide as Kat was tall.

She wasn’t used to conceiving of the world as something this big, especially when her own place in it was nothing but a little wooden marker that stood for a hundred soldiers, nestled against an equally sized marker that stood for the entire town of Palomar.

The whole of the continent was staggering to think about—and more staggering, still, when she saw the progress of the road that had been made since they’d departed Kaston.

A faint painted line marked the proposed route, winding through the towns and cities, stringing the war-torn duchies together until it found its way to Rusta, whose wooden marker included a gilded crown to signify the kingdom’s capital.

In some ways, the length of that line was a profound relief. Yes, it sketched out an absolute mountain of work to be done, but every day it took to do it was a day Kat didn’t have to face what taking her release might mean.

Adrien cleared his throat, startling her. “I’m guessing you’ve noticed the part that doesn’t add up?”

“The—huh?”

“I’ve been thinking about it too. When the first Lesser Lord struck, it was bound straight for the scribes’ tent, and we were lucky enough that you spotted it on its way.” He tapped his Luck of Angels token twice to underscore the point. “But how did it know where to find me?”

“Can demons sniff out Aurean gold?” she asked, nodding to his array.

“If that were the case, wouldn’t it have still needed to scout to be sure it was targeting me and not Bodhi?”

“Maybe demons can sniff out princes.”

“Again, the previous point stands.”

She hesitated, reeling for another theory.

“Don’t you see? They have an informant. ”

Kat couldn’t help the laugh that burst out of her. “You think someone would be stupid enough to ally with demons?”

The past two weeks had forged a strange rapport between the two of them—one that was going to get her in deep, deep trouble one day.

She’d never dare to speak to Adrien like this out in the open, but in private he’d pestered his way into getting her to treat him like an equal instead of a walking weapon and the realm’s future ruler.

From the consternated look that flickered over his face now, she wondered if scorning him like this had finally crossed the line.

“You haven’t met some of the political minds involved in my parents’ administration.

Practically demons themselves, and if they could use a rogue Lesser Lord as a tool to further their own ends, they’d do it in a heartbeat. ”

Kat shook her head. “Not possible. Even if you could reason with one of these generals, even if you knew you could get it to do what you wanted, no one would betray the material plane just for power. ”

“Then how are they evading our scouts so well?” Adrien countered.

She didn’t have a good answer for that, but she also needed to get this conversation back on target before something else grabbed the prince’s attention.

“I actually had a different concern I wanted to discuss with you,” Kat hazarded, and she thanked the angels when it got nothing more than a go on wrist flick out of him.

“I’m honored, obviously, to have been given the privilege of representing my fellow soldiers’ interests.

I don’t deny that it’s important work, especially with such an abrupt shift in operations.

And in fact, because it’s such important work, I want to be doing it as effectively as possible—only, what I’m doing right now isn’t working. ”

“Is there mutiny on the horizon? Desertion?”

“Well, no, but—”