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lordling’s trade.”
    “Does he know you’re borrowing his name?” Harp said.
    “He’s dead, idiot. I was the only one who saw the ogres kill him. When they asked, I told everyone the ogres had killed Amhar and from then on I was Boult.”
    “That worked?” Harp asked.
    “You remember how it was. We were so filthy we might as well have been made of mud. And no one looked at anyone else’s face for long. Put the two of us in a pack of dwarves and no one could have said which was which.”
    “Didn’t you want to clear your name?”
    “Didn’t you?” Boult said, glowering at Harp.
    “Oh, I committed my crime, and I’d do it again. You, on
    the other hand, are innocent. I would think you’d want the truth to come out.”
    “Amhar’s dead, as far as I’m concerned.”
    “What does your family think?’
    “He’s dead to them as well.” Boult gestured impatiently at the ladder, and Harp climbed one rung higher but stopped again.
    “It’s as easy as walking!” Boult said. “One foot in front of the other and you’ll be topside in no time.”
    “You told me you were in prison for desertion,” Harp said.
    “I deserted the children.”
    “In what way? You went out to protect—”
    “I’m done talking about it,” Boult interrupted. “You know as well as I do that Cardew being here is no coincidence. Everything happens for a reason.”
    “I don’t believe that,” Harp replied and started climbing again. “Everything is coincidental. We’re just blind men stumbling around in the dark.”
    “That’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever said, and you know it.”
    “You’re right. We’re just hunks of meat being slowly boiled to death in the stewpot of existence.”
    “You’re not as clever as you think you are,” Boult growled.
    Harp grinned and turned back to Boult. “Nope, but I’m still smarter than your average foodstuff.”
    “Tell me. If we’re not searching for Cardew, are we searching for his wife?” Boult asked.
    The grin disappeared from Harp’s scarred face. “Avalor would like us to bring back her body. If there’s enough left to bring to back.”
    Boult watched his friend climb up to the daylight. No man should have to talk about the woman he loved like that.

CHAPTER SIX
    30 Hammer, Year of Splendors Burning
    (1469 DR)
    Winter Palace, the Coast of Tethyr
    Tie night’s formal dinner was a yearly tradition even though the Winter Palace wasn’t the ideal place for entertaining, or the night outside the ideal weather to do it in. An austere stone fortification on a cliff overlooking the ocean, the palace had survived the harsh winters and driving storms for generations. It was notoriously drafty with cavernous high-ceilinged rooms and strange noises that spawned endless stories of hauntings. The cold, foggy weather only fed those old stories.
    Even though the palace was chilly and damp, her annual visit to the Winter Palace had always been seven-year-old Ysabel’s favorite because it was the only time her cousins were all together. Their family’s nicest residence was the Violet Stone House outside Riatavin, and her father’s
    ancestral manor outside of Darromar was much warmer. But the starkness of the cliff-top palace, with its black-roofed turrets, lion-headed gargoyles, and serpentine corridors appealed to Ysabel’s imagination.
    She walked down one of the corridors, trying to find the room her brother Teague had disappeared into. Room after room lay empty and cold, their doors locked.
    Except one. Just past a suit of old armor, the door was ajar. She pushed the door open.
    A shadow lunged from the darkness. Ysabel screamed and released the heavy wooden door, which swung back on its hinges, scraping against her bare foot.
    “Teague!” she yelped.
    Teague grabbed her arm to steady her as she stumbled backward in surprise, trying to catch her scraped foot. “Are you all right? I didn’t mean to make you hurt yourself.”
    When she regained her balance, she punched