He doesn't say complicity. He doesn't need to. I study his expression. "I'll take that under advisement, Senator. Enjoy your evening."
I return to the estate before the wine runs out, which is the only honest reason anyone ever leaves Varek's gatherings early, and I do not sleep.
Midnight passes, and I hear the east servant entrance change. I know they are assassins before the second ward breaks. They avoid the obvious routes. They planned around my guards. Five of them. Masked, armed with blades and warding-break tools that scatter the door seals on contact.
I'm already moving by the time the second ward fractures. Not instinct—preparation. I've been sleeping in partial armor for days, since the first assassination rumor reached me from those I trust more than official intelligence.
Two move toward my chambers. Three move toward the west wing. I process this split while engaging the nearest: she's fast, trained, going for the side of my neck. I break the angle of her arm before the strike closes and put her into the wall, hard. The second comes from the stairwell behind and catches me across the ribs before I've turned.
Their tools are made for her door. This isn't coincidence. Whoever wants her dead wants me dead too. That tells me more than they meant to.
I clear the corridor in the direction of the west wing without making it a decision. The sounds from inside are wrong—too many, too close. When I reach the door it is already damaged from the outside, the lock ward shattered. Inside: one assassin down with a head wound from the wall basin. Another pressing Corrine against the far wall with a blade at her throat while the chain from the wall ring pulls her. The exit the lock provided is real. The gap between her chain's reach and the door is two feet. She could have used the one on the floor, but she hasn't.
The standing assassin doesn't hear me until I'm already there, and by then Corrine has driven the heel of her palm up into his nose with the chain swung behind his neck as leverage.I take him the rest of the way down. She drops her weight back and watches me with her chest heaving and her wrists raw from the restraint. The second body on the floor moves. A blade comes up from beneath the fallen cloak, angled for the gap below my ribs. Corrine sees it first. She jerks the chain hard across the assassin's throat, dragging his arm wide just before the strike lands.
We look at each other across the downed body. I can't understand why she didn't leave. I measure the distance in two seconds. She has been mapping this room since they locked her inside it. She stayed. She killed the one I would have taken, but I do not thank her. I do not know what it means yet. So I give it nothing.
"Move to the other wall," I demand, and check the corridor.
When the estate is locked down and the bodies are processed, dawn is pressing gray against the high windows. I am in the corridor outside her door with Theren at my shoulder and the estate quiet around us, and I run through the variables until they arrange themselves into the only pattern I can. The fire. The capture. Varek's pressure this evening—the careful heat in his voice whenever the outpost was mentioned. Five assassins with floor plans and warding tools.
"Someone knew she was here before any official report could move," I tell Theren.
He is quiet for a moment. "Yes."
"Get me the records. Then wake the four people whose loyalty I trust enough to risk."
Theren's eyes sharpen. "You're leaving the estate."
"The assassins had floor plans, warding tools, and her door marked. If I stay here, I'm waiting for the next blade."
"And the council?"
"The council can discover I've left after I'm already gone."
He holds my stare for one second longer, then nods. "Where are we going?"
"East first. Away from official roads. After that, I decide who still owes me enough fear to talk."
He goes. I stay, looking at the closed door and the splintered wood around the lock frame. The version of Corrine I've had for seven years didn't save lives. She burned things. She vanished. She haunted me from a safe distance across every border in Protheka.
The woman on the other side of this door held her position when the exit opened and put a man's nose through his skull with a prisoner's chain. My armor has not broken. But standing here in the gray half-light, I know something beneath it has cracked.
5
CORRINE
The estate is still burning in one wing when Leoric gives the order to move. Not the main structure—a guardhouse caught during the fight—but the smoke threads through the courtyard and I breathe it in and my body decides it's seven years ago before my head catches up. I lock my jaw and keep walking.
No one calls it flight. Powerful men rarely use the honest word when a cleaner one is available. But that is what it is. The estate has walls, wards, guards, rank, and still someone reached my door with tools made for the lock. Leoric does not say that aloud. He does not have to. Every person in the courtyard already knows it has stopped being safe.
Theren hands me a cloak without looking at me. Dark wool, heavy, plain enough to pass on a city street. No explanation, and I don't ask for one. I put the cloak on, still in a manacle—lighter now, the chain cut to a short length that keeps my wrists close without dragging—and Leoric hasn't returned the knives they stripped from me at the checkpoint. I note both facts and file them where I put everything I intend to use later.
There are four besides Theren. Two I recognize from the estate corridors and two I don't. All of them move quietly like they've done this before, which tells me Leoric has fled his own compound at least once and planned for the next time while the last time was still fresh. He walks ahead of me. His military coat is traded for something darker and unmarked, but the height and the stillness are not things a cloak fixes.
I keep three feet between us and watch the city open around us as we filter through the servant gate into the outer streets. Protheka at night is a different animal. The markets are shuttered, the public lanterns are low, and the streets narrow to the routes that only people with purpose use after dark. That means soldiers. I count two patrols before we've crossed the first block and adjust my posture—head down, movement deliberate, nothing worth stopping here.
We're four streets from the estate when I hear it. Two dark elf soldiers have a man pressed against a building wall. Human, older, the kind of worn-down look that says he's been living on bad luck, and it's just weather now. They're going through his pockets. Not searching—taking. The man's hands are up and his mouth shut with discipline because he understands that speaking will make it worse. One soldier is laughing at something the other said.
