Chapter 29: Read It Aloud

The song went on round him, and Kael reached for what it had taken. It was the forty-second, and the Bureau's party was due in Ash tomorrow. He tried the hostage first, because he had named it. The Quill bout was whole. The click and the rise of the shield, a hand too high, the porch seats calling Habit, the wet rim coming across: it sat in his head as it had sat on the morning of the twenty-fourth, and it was no use to anyone now. Then he reached for what should have stood beside it, and the reaching stopped early, as a hand stops on a stair that isn't there. Mira came down from the rail through the pen gate with the Veyran lamp lit in her hand and Tessa a pace behind her. From the passage gate came the Marshal's officers in their black leather, three of…