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“It’s not a question of slaughtering,” the man stutters, his hands coming up as if to ward off an attack.

I don’t know this councilor’s name. I made it a point to stay out of the way of all council members other than Miriam, and I can’t seem to avoid her even though I long to.

“By tradition, the anointed families of the Protectorate are blessed with firstborn sons to carry on the sacred duty of protection with their legacy Divh.”

“Blessings and anointments,” Fortiss repeats with disgust. “Yet here we have a firstborn daughter of a noble holding.”

He rounds on Lord Lemille, skewering him with a glare. “A daughter who bears deep scars of abuse due to her birth order. So clearly, those births do happen and these Lords who are amassing on my doorstep may have committed such murders.”

“Well, I obviously didn’t murder my child,” Lemille snarls. “And as to abuse ?—”

“I can’t imagine why you think there might be a coup,” Tennet drawls, cutting off Lemille as it’s his turn to choke on his fury.

The Fifth House man steps forward. “Any warriors who fought in the Tournament of Gold will stand with you, Lord Fortiss,” he says staunchly. “And any lord who trusts his men will trust their word on that.”

Another of the councilors speaks up, a man perhaps double Fortiss’s age.

A contemporary of Rihad’s then? He’s as lumpy as a knob of garlic beneath his severe black robes.

“I suspect you won’t find those warriors among the retainers that they have brought to this assembly.

They have come looking for answers from you, not from their own men. ”

“Then they should have come to me directly.”

I speak up. “Maybe, but first, perhaps they wanted to get their stories straight.” I’m surprised at the strength of my own voice, but the others merely look at me, expecting me to go on.

I rock up on my toes and back again, considering.

“They weren’t here for the tournament, Fortiss.

They sent their best men in good faith, some of whom died along the way, many others who fell on that battlefield, their Divhs sent back to their fertile plane.

It’s all well and good to get the official report, but these aren’t men to sit idly by and protect their house while the Protectorate as a whole is at risk. You didn’t summon them immediately.”

“I’ve been a little busy.” Fortiss rejects that tack with a dismissive wave.

“These vaunted leaders that you speak of with such eloquence, how many of them have you met? How many of them traveled to the Tenth House to break bread with you, Lemille? Or to the Twelfth?” he asks, turning to Tennet.

“Because I’m here to tell you, they didn’t visit the First House, either.

The only time we saw the house lords of the Protectorate was at the Tournament of Gold, and those were generally the local ones.

The others came only once per year, right before the stormy season, or Rihad would go visit them.

These past several years, it’s been the latter. ”

“Really?” I ask. Steeling myself, I glance toward my father. “I don’t think he’s been to the Tenth House in all my years.”

Lemille glowers at me but doesn’t respond.

“The Twelfth, only once,” Tennet puts in.

“I was ten years old, and that’s the first time that I learned of my father’s duplicity regarding my birth.

He needed me to stay hidden, but I was entranced with the idea of meeting the lord protector.

I was having none of his attempts to shut me up in my room, especially with my baby brother being presented to Rihad like the prize of the east. I grudgingly accepted my lot once he explained I wasn’t supposed to exist, but that’s the only time that Rihad deigned to visit our holding.

I honestly think he wanted to see our Divh.

Father still held the band, and because we are so high up in the mountains, summoning the great beasts didn’t cause the stampede it otherwise might other than at the tournament.

So he gave a demonstration to Rihad, and he left. ”

He glances at the small group of warriors. “How do you practice, or even wage battle with the help of your Divhs out here on the open plains? Or are the villagers so used to seeing them that there’s no issue?”

The Fifth House warrior snorts. “Not hardly. Truth be told, newly banded soldiers can train when they first get the band, but we don’t call on our Divhs unless there’s an exhibition or a tournament.”

“It’s why the tournament was created.” Fortiss rubs a hand over his brow. “But that was when the Protectorate was a country more or less at peace, with no need to prepare for a greater battle that’s even now on our doorstep.”

“So I keep hearing.” Tennet waves a negligent hand around the room.

“But in this, I have to side with the assembling lords. I see no threat to the Protectorate other than Rihad, and you have effectively banished him to his own basement until the adjudicators of the Imperium come to decide his fate. Whatever stories he told himself about some threat from the West, how can you know it’s true?

How can any of us know it’s true? You want to convince the houses to rally around you, you’re going to have to give us more than whatever warnings you’ve found in musty old books. ”

Fortiss opens his mouth to speak, then thinks better of it.

Apparently, now isn’t the time to share that he has been indulging in magic from the blighted path.

“We need a gathering of warriors, these lords and their Divhs, all of us together. It should happen at the coliseum, that’s the only place that’s big enough, but even then…

” He grimaces. “Well perhaps not the Divhs together, not all at once. But a gathering, nonetheless. And it needs to be soon. It’s been almost a full moon since the Tournament of Gold and Rihad’s fall.

Whoever he was working with from the Western Realms may already be on the move. ”

“You would have gotten word of that,” Tennet counters. “The watchtowers would be lit from the borders all the way to the First House.”

“They should be yes,” Fortiss agrees. “But until I see that they’re all intact with my own eyes, how are we to know that the line remains unbroken? Especially when there may be enemies in our midst even now?”

He huffs out a breath. “Lemille, you need to be banded anew as well. We need every Divh we can pair with a warrior, and your blood is the strongest.”

“I’ll serve,” he grits out, but he appears to take no joy in that idea. But something else is turning over in my mind, a possibility barely taking shape.

“There’s a way you might be able to learn the truth about the houses without having to trust anything but your own eyes,” I begin, my voice hesitant. “But?—”

“Understood, Lady Talia,” he cuts me off, and when his gaze meets mine, I barely recognize him behind his mask of fury.

The speed with which anger overtakes him worries me.

Is this truly Fortiss’s nature? Or yet another effect of Rihad’s dark magic?

Whatever the reason, he can see nothing before him now but swords and flame.

“First, we need to find the traitors in our midst.”