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“The animalia—” I stopped, not sure what to say. Did I tell this man who had spent his entire life devoted to them that they thought the goblins were merely animals they had trained to defend the animalia’s secret realm?

Even Tallu respected his Dogs more than that.

“I warned you about gifts that the animalia give,” Zoigei said. He called out for them to stop, declaring it time for breakfast and, after that, time for rest.

I moved closer to Tallu, letting his Dogs lead us back to the living quarters. The Bemishu twins and Empress Koque came near as quickly as decorum allowed. Koque and Tallu huddled together, and I knew they were discussing some political undertaking and I should join them.

Instead I watched as General Saxu knelt in front of Prince Hallu. He smiled at the boy, the expression wrinkling his face.

“My mother says that soon you will be fighting the last of the traitors and you will win and we will be able to go home.” Hallu’s speech was always so formal, but I could hear Koque in his words as though she spoke through his voice.

“All battles have danger, but your brother, the emperor, has seen fit in his wisdom to give us a strength we otherwise would not have had.” General Saxu patted his own shoulder. “I thought my days on the battlefield were over, but your brother has given me a chance to use this old body once again to defend the great House Atobe.”

“Will you keep us safe?” Hallu asked, glancing back at his mother.

“With my life. House Atobe and the emperors it produces will allow the Imperium to fulfill the promise given to us by the dragon seer. I have spent my life in service of that goal, and now it is closer than ever.” General Saxu stood as Commander Rede approached. He bowed formally to Prince Hallu and waited until the prince dismissed him.

The two military officers went to speak with each other, and I continued to watch the men. They were enjoying their new powers, the expressions on their faces filled with wonder, while I felt nothing but a cold anxiety fill my stomach.

This was the power that Bemishu wanted. Somehow he had found out about it. Somehow he knew that it was possible to turn men into something greater than themselves. Whether that was because he had met an animalia or one of the changed goblins, he would not give up on this new power, just as I was sure that Saxu and the rest of his men wouldn’t either.

How could they?

“What are you thinking about so seriously?” Lerolian asked from beside me.

“It is now more important than ever before to learn what is in the hearts of these men.” I looked around the room. Most of the beds sat close together, and servants had sectioned off part of the room with what was left of our tents, presumably as a room for Tallu. “They have been given a fraction of an animalia’s power and for men who were recently defeated and shamed by that defeat? I cannot imagine how heady that new power must be.”

“You think they will betray Tallu for a chance to serve his enemies?” Lerolian asked, but he didn’t sound incredulous; instead I could hear the thought begin to take root.

“You have spent all your time watching imperials of the court. These soldiers are not the same. The court only saw things in terms of power and strength, in terms of who could help them achieve their goals. Soldiers have their own goals, but they also operate because of their belief.”

I remembered the temples that still dotted the outer edges of the grounds at the Mountainside Palace. Traveling south, we had seen statues of the animalia. They may have been covered in moss, their faces chipped away by time, but they were recognizably the animalia. Ox in farming provinces. Crane in the fishing villages.

“They have heard their whole lives that the Imperium killed the One Dragon, and yet here are the creatures of legend, giving them powers beyond human imagining,” I said.

“Giving them the belief that they will not be killed as easily as they slaughtered their enemies in their quest to fulfill the Imperium’s promise,” Lerolian said, and he gestured to himself and the wounds he had received when imperial soldiers killed him.

“Prince Airón.” Nohe approached from the side, bowing low, her skin pink from sunburn that hadn’t faded. “The goblins have provided us with enough water for a sponge bath if you care for it.”

I let her lead me away and was grateful to see Terror, Dawn, and Ratcatcher perched on the bed frame in the narrow tent she had put up for me. The birds looked tired, and when Ratcatcher shook himself, feathers fell free from his body, landing on the floor.

Nohe and the last of my servants bathed me quickly, dressing me in clothing that was clean, but damp. She’d clearly washed it before coming to find me, and I was grateful to be finally wearing something that didn’t smell like sweat and panic, that didn’t have sand in the seams to scratch every part of me.

I wanted to rest, but as soon as I sat on the bed, a bell for dinner sounded and goblins fetched us to a larger room with long tables. The goblins ate in a loud chaos of noise that had half the soldiers wincing, either from their new senses or because they were trying not to call it crude.

At first glance, you couldn’t see what the animalia had done to the imperial soldiers. They looked the same. Maybe they looked healthier, given that most of them had arrived malnourished and sunburned.

But overall, the difference was under the skin.

General Saxu had quietly explained the changes he felt in his own body to Tallu. It was strange to hear, stranger still to see the older man looking younger and stronger, as he must have appeared and felt when he first became a soldier. Tallu told me that he didn’t feel any changes in himself, and I wondered if that was spite on the part of the animalia, or if the curse was preventing them from changing anything about his body.

Over the next two days, Tallu’s soldiers trained, discovering their powers through use. It was almost peaceful. Then the alarm sounded.

It woke us in the middle of the day. We had been copying the goblins’ habit of sleeping through the hottest part of the day, when the sun was directly overhead and even the elephants shrank from the heat.

A gong sounded, so loud that it shook the walls and sent salamanders scurrying into hiding places. The goblins were shouting, running toward their assigned positions. Archers found windows, while the rest flooded out the front.

I followed Tallu, who was striding out of the safety of the barracks, despite the protests of Sagam and the rest of his Dogs.