While we were whispering, Jeb snuck in from another door. “Anyone here need a crap cake?”

I smiled, surveying him head to foot. He was the only one among us who cared about the season’s latest fashion and whether his buttons were polished. Now he was dressed in rags, his hair filthy, and he fully looked the role of a patty clapper. “How’d you get stuck with that job?” I asked.

“Everyone’s happy to open the door for a patty clapper making a delivery. Happy at least for a few seconds.” He made a clicking sound out the side of his mouth, like the snapping of a neck. “We may need to take a few out quietly in their rooms before we make our move.”

“And he speaks Vendan like a native,” Sven added.

Jeb was like Lia, gifted at languages. He seemed to enjoy their exotic feel on his tongue as much as exotic fabrics on his back. But Sven had learned Vendan the hard way—a few years into his service, he was imprisoned, along with two Vendans, in a Lesser Kingdom. They were captured for slave service, as he called it, working for two years in their mines until he and the Vendans finally hatched an escape.

“I gathered that you’re somewhat conversant now too?”

“I get by,” I said. “I don’t speak it well, but I can understand a fair amount. As you saw, the Komizar and some of the Council speak Morrighese, and Lia helped me with some phrases.”

Jeb stepped forward, cracking his knuckles. “I talked to her,” he said.

He had our undivided attention now, including Orrin, who looked back at us over his shoulder. Jeb said he saw her just before the evening meal in Sanctum Hall. He’d managed to make a delivery to her room. “She knows we’re here now.”

“All four of you?” I said. “She wasn’t impressed by our numbers when I told her.”

“Can you blame her? I’m not impressed either,” Jeb answered.

Orrin snorted. “It only takes one person to skewer—”

“The Assassin’s mine,” I reminded him. “Don’t forget that.”

“She gave me useful information,” Jeb continued, “especially about paths in the Sanctum. The place is crawling with them, but some are dead ends. I’ve already been stuck in a few and almost fell down one. She also gave me her winnings from a card game for supplies.”

“That’s what she called it? Winnings?” I said. “More like what she swindled. I lost five pounds of sweat that night.”

Sven rolled his eyes. “So she’s good at cards and tearing off faces.”

“Certain faces.” I looked back at Jeb. “Did she say anything else?”

He hesitated for a moment, rubbing the back of his neck. “She said your mother was dead.”

The words hit me again. My mother was dead. I told them what the Komizar had said, and his claim that the funeral pyre had been witnessed by Vendan riders. Sven balked, saying that was impossible, that the queen was hearty and wouldn’t succumb so easily or quickly, but the truth was we had all been away for so long we had no idea what was happening at home, and a new wave of guilt hit me. They all refuted the story, saying it was only a Vendan lie to torment me, and I let them hold on to that thought—maybe I wanted to hold on to it too—but I knew the Komizar had no reason to lie. He didn’t know she was my mother, only my queen, and telling me had helped strengthen my claim.

“One other thing,” Jeb said, then shook his head as if thinking better of it.

“Go ahead. Say it,” I said.

“I like her, that’s all. And I made promises to her that we’d all get out. We damn well better keep them.”

I nodded. I couldn’t consider any other option.

Orrin blew out a puff, ruffling his straggled hair. “She scares me,” he said, “but I like her too, and hang me, she’s—”

“Don’t say it, Orrin,” I warned.

He sighed. “I know, I know. She’s my future queen.” He went back to the door to watch for the cook.

We caught Jeb up on other details, including the loss of Dalbreck soldiers, the match between me and the Assassin, and how Sven’s face was almost fed to the hogs.

“It was a sealed kettle ready to explode in there,” Sven said. “But it’s safer that she genuinely hates us for now—safer for her and us—especially since Orrin and I are so visible. Let’s keep it that way for a while.” Sven ran his hand along his scarred cheek. “She’s only seventeen?”

I nodded.

“She carries a lot on her shoulders for someone so young.”

“Does she have any other choice?”

Sven shrugged. “Maybe not, but she came close to revealing her hand tonight. I had to shove her back in her chair.”

“You shoved her?” I said.

“Gently,” he explained. “She started across the room to come between you and that Assassin.”

I leaned forward, raking my fingers through my hair. She acted impulsively because I did. The strain was making us both careless.

“Here she comes,” Orrin whispered and sat back on the bench next to me.

The door swung open, and the cook eyed the roomful. She mumbled a curse and plopped down a pair of tongs and a steaming bucket at the end of the bench. She pulled a stack of rags from under her arm and dropped them next to the tongs. “Five layers. Leave it on overnight. Bring back the cloths when you’re done. Clean.”