But she hoped Attrebus—he’d asked her to call him Attrebus!—she hoped he was all right.

Attrebus closed the little door on the bird. This was the first time he’d seen her face; her green eyes and generous, sensual lips, a nose that some might consider a bit large, but belonged perfectly on her face. Hair like dark twists of black silk.

The face of the woman he’d failed.

“Well, she, at least, is alive,” he told Sul, who sat on the other side of the small fire they’d built.

“So I gather,” Sul said. “Interesting, that bird. The dwemer used to make similar toys, before the world swallowed them up. Do you know where it’s from?”

“She said it came from her mother, and I gather her mother was middling nobility from Highrock.”

“Well, things move around,” Sul grunted. “Let me see it.”

“See here—” Attrebus began, but the look in the Dunmer’s eyes stopped him. He stood and extended Coo. Sul took her, examined her a bit. The little door wouldn’t unclasp for him.

“Smart,” Sul said. “Only opens for who it was sent to.”

“I believe so,” Attrebus replied. “Radhasa couldn’t make it work.”

“Why didn’t you tell her?” Sul asked, prodding the fire, snapping a swarm of sparks toward the sky. “This Annaïg. Why didn’t you tell her you’ve lost all of your guard?”

“I don’t want to discourage her.”

“You’d rather give her false hope?”

“I don’t intend to give up.”

“That’s good,” Sul said. “It’s better that way.”

“As opposed to what?”

Sul didn’t answer right away, but instead drew his sword and examined the edge a bit before resheathing it. Finally he looked up at Attrebus.

“Here’s my worry,” Sul said. “I’ll make it plain right away, so it’s not between us from here on out. Let’s start with this: I’m going to find Umbriel. When I do, there’s going to be slaughter, pure and simple. I’m going to bring it down. It’s been suggested to me that you can help me, and that’s why I followed you, that’s why I killed your captors. But I saw your fight with the Redguard—I was waiting to be sure of where the others were before I made my move, and it was clear she had no intention of killing you. I heard the conversation.”

“She was lying,” Attrebus said.

“She wasn’t,” Sul replied. “You’re telling yourself that now because you’re too weak to face it. But like she said, you’re not fundamentally stupid. The branch already has too much weight on it—it’s starting to creak. You barely managed to get through your talk with the Breton girl without getting weepy—”

“My friends have just been killed!” Attrebus heard himself shout. “Friends, lovers, companions, all dead. Of course I’m not myself!”

Sul waited for him to finish, then started again.

“In days or weeks that branch will crack, and down you’ll come. You’ll realize how right she was, and the world will turn over, and my worry is, will you be any use to me then? Will any of these principles you think you adhere to—honor, courage, honesty—survive it? Or are you just a child, playing at these things, as you played at being a warrior and commander?”

“You’re wrong about this,” Attrebus snapped. “Based on one conversation you overheard, you conclude she was right? Granted, she could outfight me—”

“A child with palsy could outfight you.”

“I’d been wounded, tied to a horse for days—”

“This isn’t an argument, Prince Attrebus.”

“Look, I’ll swear it even now. I will stop Umbriel, or I will die trying.”

“You’re not listening to me,” Sul said. “I’m trying to help you.”

“By telling me that everything I believe about myself is a lie?”

Sul’s eyes were fragments of the fire, lifting up to burn him.

And yet when he spoke, it wasn’t to Attrebus, and it wasn’t in Tamrielic. The only part of it the prince caught was the name “Azura”—one of the daedric princes. Then the Dunmer sighed harshly.

“Everyone faces that, you spoiled child. Most simply turn away and continue with their delusions—only a few are forced to accept the truth.”

“Not everyone, not like this,” Attrebus said. “I’m a prince—I’m supposed to be Emperor one day. If what Radhasa says is true, I’ve been mocked my whole life without ever knowing it.”

“Your ‘whole life’ is a heartbeat,” Sul said.

“Maybe to you. But if people have been laughing at me—”

“Enough,” Sul snarled. “Enough. I’ve done far more for you than I should. I’ve tried to warn you, but instead I’m just going to have to wait and see what the baby does. How’s this, then? With or without you, I’ll do what I’ve set out to do. If it comes to it, I’ll cut off your head and revive it now and then to talk to the bird. Would that be a fair price for you breaking that vow you pledged so earnestly just now?”

Attrebus couldn’t meet those eyes anymore, and turned instead to the living heart of the fire, which was certainly cooler.

“Yes,” he mumbled. But now he was afraid. What did this man really want? What did Sul really need from him? Was it even true they had the same goal?

But then he suddenly understood that didn’t matter. Every single thing Sul had told him could be true, but that still wouldn’t put Sul on the right side of things. Maybe he was planning something even worse than whatever the master of Umbriel was up to.

In the end, they might be enemies—that would certainly explain this attempt to undermine him even more than Radhasa had. Maybe he and Radhasa had been working together and then had a falling-out.

Maybe Sul was the man she had been planning to sell him to, and this was all part of some elaborate game of his, breaking the will of a prince, reducing him to believing he was nothing …

He felt like screaming. He wanted to be alone, to think, to be free of fear long enough to sort through the confusion. He had a horse now …

But then again, running might be exactly what Sul wanted. Sure, he could keep his vow and go after Annaïg and Umbriel himself, but Sul would be at his back the whole time. Hadn’t his father always said it was better to have your enemies where you could see them?

For now, that was probably his only choice. He had to keep his wits about him, think for himself, and not let Sul toy with him. He would work with the Dunmer as long as their goals appeared to be the same, and be ready the moment they weren’t. He was a Mede, after all. A Mede.

Annaïg thought that the first explosion was a vat shattering; it had happened before, especially at the Oroy station.

But the second was much louder, while sounding somehow farther away.

And then the screaming began. Some of it sounded like warlike howls, some like shrieks of terror and pain, but everything in Umbriel was still frightfully strange, and none of it gave her any purchase on what was happening.

Luc hopped down from the shelves and crouched behind her. For her part, Annaïg climbed up onto the table to get a better view, but the wavering air above the fire pits obscured the far end of the kitchens. Still, the scamps were all swarming in that direction, leaping through the wires, grills, and racks above the pits. Beyond, a black curtain of flame and smoke occluded what the shimmering air did not. Only in the central aisle could she see anyone, and there the cooks and their helpers were black silhouettes, crowded shoulder-to-shoulder.

“You,” Qijne snapped, from off to her left. “What are you standing about for?”

“What’s happening?”

Slyr was with her, and the rest of the staff from Ghol’s station, along with a motley collection of the largest and most dangerous-looking cooks in the kitchen, including Dest, a hulking ogrelike fellow with black and yellow fur. They were all armed to the teeth with butchering knives and cleavers.

“Don’t ask stupid questions,” Qijne snapped. “Come, now.”