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E ven with our Divhs speeding us to Trilion, the shock attack of the skrill on the town is over before we get there. Our task consists mostly of plowing through fried snake guts, reassuring terrified townspeople, and putting out the last of the fires.

It’s another four hours before we finally make it to the First House, but despite the fact that it’s the middle of the night by now, none of us are destined for bed anytime soon.

Instead, Miriam and Dolor, and the lumpy councilor—whose name I’ve finally learned is Balric—stand in the center of the formal receiving chambers of Lord Protector Fortiss, their faces streaked with soot and sweat, their shoulders drooping.

Filling in the space behind them are representatives of eight of the biggest houses—those who can stand, anyway.

The rest of the lords and their soldiers remain under heavy guard in Trilion, too sick to be moved even to the privacy of the First House.

Between the newly arrived houses and Tennet, Fortiss, and Lemille, only the Eleventh and Eighth Houses aren’t represented.

“The house lords were targeted,” Fortiss says, more to himself than to the group as he continues to process the newest intelligence Miriam has shared. “They didn’t come here to mutiny…they came because they were summoned. Because they thought I summoned them. And then…”

“And then we were attacked.” The Fourth House lord stands with his thumbs tucked into his belt, but only because he’s apparently grown weary of standing with his arms crossed heavily over his barrel chest. “No matter how many times you ask for this accounting, Lord Protector Fortiss, it’s not going to change.

That abomination of snakes blasted into Trilion with a sole focus—the Inn of Levengers.

It’s where most of the lords were housed, where I should’ve been as well, but I have friends in Trilion, and never enough time to break bread with them.

I was in an ale house that should’ve closed down long since—but stayed open out of deference to the friendship I proclaimed—not a hundred paces away from Levengers when the swarm hit.

We gaped like village idiots as the snakes rolled up the street, ignoring us completely though there were plenty of souls within.

Instead, the lot of them hit the inn. There had to have been a thousand of them, all told.

From as short as your thumb to as long as your leg.

All of them with wings and pointy teeth and dripping with corrosive oil.

Your councilors had the right of it to set them on fire. If those things had kept going…”

I glance at Fortiss. He meets my gaze, and for a breath, we’re just two warriors on the edge of understanding. The world is shifting under our feet, but in this moment...we’re shifting together.

I blow out a steadying breath. By the time we arrived in Trilion, the Levengers Inn had flames leaping from every window, and smoke pouring out the front door.

Villagers had swarmed out to drench the buildings and grounds surrounding the inn with water and sand, but the fire that had so appeared to consume the property didn’t burn like any ordinary flame.

It seemed constrained to the snakes themselves, a spectral blaze that left little more than a streaky, oily stain on the walls and fixtures of the inn.

It’d be a blighted struggle to clean that mess, but at least the inn itself still stood.

The burnt snake carcasses were being hauled to huge piles outside the town, and very few people had been directly attacked—only the lords and their warrior knights who hadn’t managed to barricade themselves safely away.

Those unfortunates, however, were still lost in a thrall of pain and horror.

“You knew what they were,” Fortiss says, turning from me to eye the councilors directly. “You knew what they were, and you knew how to kill them. You didn’t think to warn me of this threat?”

“The threats from the Western Realms are a matter of ancient history, embroidered several times over,” Miriam protests, her voice as gray as her skin.

“We had no way of knowing that those threats would be summoned up again, and we had no reason to fear that they might come at us unprovoked, especially with Rihad safely imprisoned. To most of the current residents of Trilion, the idea of a monster made of snakes is nothing more than a bedtime story meant to scare children into staying in their rooms at night.”

“The skrill,” humphs a man dressed in Third house blue, Lord Alaric. “We know those stories well, but anywhere east of the Eighth, they’re just stories.”

Miriam nods. “No one would have taken it as a credible threat. Besides that, though we knew what the creatures were that bore down on the inn, we didn’t at first know their target, and we still don’t know why they came.

Or how they knew to split apart and distract you and your Divhs from coming to the town’s rescue right away. ”

“Not that Divhs could have stopped that horde anyhow,” the Sixth House lord huffs, a tall, hard man as pale as ash.

He’d managed to bar himself into his room, shuttering the windows and fending off the few thin snakes that had breached his stronghold with both shield and sword.

“These things are too small for Divhs to fight. Too small and too fast. We have no defense against enemies like this.”

I consider raising the idea of the weevishes I’d helped train…was that just this morning? But before I can speak, Fortiss interjects. “You say that, and to be sure—we have several good men down. But once our councilors understood what they were, they were able to neutralize them.”

Fortiss swings to face them again. “Why did you choose fire to attack them? I mean, that’s such a specific weapon, and to unleash it inside a holding, inside a village, you had to know it would work.”

I don’t miss his rapid repositioning of his original question.

Nobody in Trilion, certainly not the lords in the midst of being attacked, would have raised their eyes toward the coliseum to see the attack going on there, the bursts of fire from Ayne’s jaws.

The few lords who are still standing, the Fourth, the Sixth, and the Ninth, aren’t paying any attention to Tennet.

He isn’t encouraging their notice, either, and his skin is still far too waxy, his eyes dull.

I frown. His eyes are far too dull. There’s more than exhaustion at work here.

“What is the poison that these things drip from their bodies?” I ask sharply, drawing the attention of the councilors. “We’ve got four lords laid out on their beds, tended by our best healers, but what have they been poisoned with? How deadly is this toxin?”

Miriam sighs. “It’s closest to solana weed poisoning.

As to its danger, five hundred years ago, my answer would have been different.

When the Imperium first claimed the Protectorate for its own, the toxin was unknown to us.

Our warriors who fell to it weren’t poisoned intentionally but came upon the plant in their foraging.

Back then, the smallest taste could be deadly, but those who survived that first exposure proved to be hardiest in the fight against the skrill.

The connection wasn’t lost on the founders of the Protectorate. ”

Caleb huffs from his spot in the corner. “They made it into a medicine?”

“After a fashion. The earliest leaders of the Protectorate weren’t willing to let such a common plant destroy us—and the threat of the skrill was ever-present in those early days.

Children were given the herb in small doses, and over the generations, we developed a tolerance to its poison.

But that’s only effective in the case of chance exposure—and the toxin isn’t an exact match, especially after so many centuries.

With what these men were subjected to, the snakes wrapped around exposed skin, hissing and spitting, there’s no way of knowing.

Worse, there’s no way to counteract the poison once it takes hold.

The men who have been exposed will follow a similar pattern, if they mimic the victims from the early days of the Protectorate.

They will rave, then they will sleep, and then, after a period of hours or days, they will wake up again…

or maybe they will not. If they do wake, they’ll never fall victim to solana again.

It’s a poison with limited efficacy except for as a surprise. ”

“And the villagers?” Nazar asks as I swivel away from my position and move through the group, heading for Tennet.

He’s been nothing but a thorn in my side since he first opened his mouth, but he fought fiercely and well.

And there’s something about the way he’s swaying slightly on his feet that sets my teeth on edge.

What’s wrong with him? “There were enough still awake and milling around when the attack happened, even if they weren’t targeted.

It only takes a few voices to build to a roar of fear and outrage. ”

“Yes, what of the villagers, Miriam?” Fortiss’s tone is sharp enough that it distracts me from my quarry, but only momentarily. Still, I glance over to see a surprising flush skate across the cheeks of the normally stoic councilor. “You seem to be particularly skilled at managing their concern.”

“Lord Protector,” she begins with a placating tone that Fortiss quickly shuts down.