“We would not want to lose you in the dark, would we?” Immerez said. “No, I should think not. Greenies have ways of vanishing, don’t they?”

Karigan guessed he didn’t expect an answer, so she didn’t give him one. Not that she’d discuss Rider abilities with him anyway. She watched him pace before her, and again she saw the hungry catamount.

“You’ve no idea,” he told her, “what it’s been like. No idea. Hiding all this time as nothing more than a common outlaw, having my life and livelihood taken from me. My hand.” He waved his hook in front of her face, close enough she could see the tip had been honed to a sharp point.

He towered over her, gloating. “But who knew we’d meet again, eh? Who knew…”

“So you sold yourself to Second Empire.” The words were out of Karigan’s mouth before she could stop them.

“What else was I to do?” Immerez asked. “Run and hide in Rhovanny? No. The goals of Second Empire are not unlike that of Lord Mirwell’s.” The old lord, she assumed he meant. “To depose Hillander and establish a new order.”

“Are you sure that’s what you want? To become enslaved to the descendants of Arcosia? You know their history, don’t you, their desire to establish Mornhavon the Black’s empire here?”

“I am aware of their goals. And of course, they pay me well.”

“They’d destroy this land,” she said.

“What do you know of it?”

Quite a lot, actually, she thought. More than he could imagine.

“Besides,” he added, “their side is the winning side. The day will come and the world will see. I intend to be among the winners.”

Karigan sighed. She didn’t have the energy to argue with him. He’d committed enough treasonous acts that no amount of words would sway him. And really, what choice did he have? He’d be executed if King Zachary’s forces ever caught up with him—he was a hunted man so he might as well throw his lot in with anyone who offered him an alternative to being hanged. Odd that she was so understanding of his plight, though it had nothing to do with sympathy.

Must have jiggered my brain in the fall, she thought.

She wriggled her hands in their bonds, grimacing at the pain. Smoke spiraled up from the campfire and beyond it she could see Immerez’s men moving about, some cooking by another fire. She did not know what to do to help herself. Without the dark, she could not fade, and Immerez was not about to let her out of the light. Without the ability to fade, she could not make an escape.

“What of your allegiance to Mirwell Province?” she asked him.

Immerez slashed his hook through the air. “It died with the old man. The boy is a pup, an idiot.”

Karigan didn’t disagree.

“No more than a tool,” Immerez added.

That was interesting. “So he hasn’t joined up with Second Empire’s cause?”

“He complies,” Immerez said.

With “help” from Colonel Birch, I bet, Karigan thought. As long as Immerez was feeling conversational, she might as well try to draw him out. If she survived this and could bring information to the king, it would be worth the effort. “About the one called Grandmother,” she began, “what—”

He struck down on her and at first it felt as though she’d been stung on her head by a wasp, but then warm blood trickled down her forehead and dripped into her eyes. She blinked rapidly, stunned.

Immerez knelt before her, displaying his hook for her in the firelight, showing her the wad of bloody skin and hair on the tip.

“No more questions from Greenies,” he said, his voice low. “Before daylight, you will know what my life is like, one-eyed and one-handed.”

He wiped the hook off on her coat and his face filled her vision like a glowing orb, his features formed by darkness and flickering light. He rotated his head to fix her with his one eye, shadows shifting across his face. He smiled.

Blood blurred Karigan’s eyes and she blinked them clear. He showed her the hook again, turning it carefully and slowly so she might see it from all angles. A sensation like cat paws tiptoed up her back—or maybe it was someone walking over her grave. She’d been here before, had seen it all in the telescope of the Berry sisters long ago, and she knew what was to happen next.

He moved the hook toward her eye.

“No!” she screamed.

A whisper of memory in her mind: The future is not made of stone. She could change what was to come.

Karigan drew her knees to her chest and kicked out, catching Immerez in the belly with her feet. He flailed backward, landing on his buttocks.

A vision of the telescope crashing to the floor, its lenses shattered.

She flipped to her belly to crawl away, only to come eye level with a pair of boots. She gazed up to find Sarge glaring at her.

“I don’t think Captain Immerez is done with you.”

“I’m not,” Immerez said. “I forget how much fight this one has.”

Cold air streamed across the ground and over Karigan’s body. She shivered. Immerez grabbed her hair and hauled her back till she was on her knees.

“Sergeant,” Immerez said. His voice was cool, as if he were giving some common order. “I want her right hand here.” He tapped a stump that had served as a chopping block for kindling. A hatchet was embedded in it.

Karigan cried out and struggled, but Sarge clouted her in the head until she was too dazed to resist. The next thing she knew, her hands were unbound and another soldier had been called over to lock her left arm behind her back while Sarge clamped her right hand to the stump.