CHAPTER 1

The High Lord of the Soleth Court had very good furniture, and Solène had been noticing it for the past twenty minutes while he explained to her, at some length, why the fate of the entire empire required her personal and immediate attention.

The chair she occupied was amber-oak — real amber-oak, the kind that grew only in the deep groves of Soleth's eastern territory, where the trees had been drinking the court's golden magic for so long that their heartwood had turned the colour of mid-afternoon light and had, over several centuries, developed the useful property of being indestructible. The desk he sat behind was the same material. The wall panels. The floor beneath her feet, inlaid with paler strips in a geometric pattern that probably had some ceremonial significance she was not going to ask about because she was already going to be here long enough.

The High Lord's name was Bereveth. He was two hundred and thirty years old, which in Fae terms meant he was entering the confident middle of his expected lifespan and had developed the particular manner of someone who had been unquestionable for long enough that being questioned registered as a novelty rather than an affront. He was not unkind. He was simply accustomed to being listened to in the way that large, old things were listened to — reflexively, without anyone having consciously made the decision to comply.

Solène had been listening to him for twenty minutes. She had also, while doing so, quietly catalogued the fourteen objects in this room that contained active vows, identified the two that were holding structural wards on the building's foundations, and clocked the faint ash-taste at the back of her throat that told her at least one of the remaining twelve was badly frayed and would need attention before the year was out.

She kept her gloves on. She always kept her gloves on.

"— the Grand Convocation has set the assembly for sixty days hence," Bereveth was saying, his fingers steepled in the way of someone making a point they considered self-evidencing."With four of the five shards accounted for and in transit, the alchemists believe the reforging can proceed on schedule. The fifth —"

"Is in the Ashwalker's possession," Solène said."In Valdrath Court. Which has refused eleven previous requests for its release." She paused."I read the brief."

Bereveth's expression shifted by approximately two degrees. Not irritation. Something closer to the recalibration of a man who had expected to spend more time establishing context."Yes. That is why we require —"

"Me. Specifically." She tilted her head. Outside the chamber's enormous amber-paned windows, the Soleth Court's eternal harvest fields stretched gold and luminous to the horizon — amber-wheat swaying in a wind that smelled, even through the glass, of warmth and ripe grain. Beautiful. Aggressively, ostentatiously beautiful, in the way of a court that had built its entire aesthetic identity around the concept of abundance."Not an emissary. Not an alchemist's representative. Not another Convocation delegate."

"The Ashwalker has declined all of those."

"He's declined me as well, my lord. Three times, by letter." She held up three fingers in case the number needed illustration."I mention this not to decline your commission — I haven't decided yet — but because it seems relevant to managing expectations about my anticipated success rate."

Bereveth leaned back in his amber-oak chair. He looked at her with the careful, measuring attention of someone who had spent two centuries learning the difference between people who were being difficult and people who were being precise. After a moment, something in his posture settled into acknowledgment."The letters came before the Decay reached his southern border."

Solène lowered her hand.

She had seen the reports. Everyone had seen the reports — they were impossible to avoid, circulating through every court's intelligence networks with the grim momentum of news that nobody wanted and everybody needed. Three villages in Valdrath's southern territory, silent. The amber-wheat in the surrounding regions — the thin strips of agricultural land that Valdrath maintained in its eastern lowlands, the only place in the twilight court where anything much grew — blackened. The Seam between Valdrath's territory and the Pale widening by measurable distance each week, the way a wound widened when it was not tended.

She had seen the reports. She had not seen the thing itself.

"I'll take the commission," she said.

Bereveth blinked. In her experience, High Lords of ancient courts were unaccustomed to decisions that arrived before they'd finished arguing for them."You haven't heard the full terms."

"Sixty days. Retrieve the shard. Bring it to the Grand Convocation." She stood, smoothing her coat over her gloves with the habit of some