There was no answering flare they could see, but in the river valley, with trees draped over every shore, they hadn’t expected to.

“Quiet from this point on,” Cruxer ordered.

They went silent, leaving only the whupping noise and burble of the reeds as luxin pushed water and trapped air into the water behind the boat. Kip saw Ben-hadad looking annoyed at the noise—already designing a quieter propulusion unit for Blue Falcon III, no doubt.

A few minutes later, they pulled the skimmer into the lee of a downed tree that would conceal it while letting the reeds remain in the water. They loaded the muskets and checked their other weapons.

The Blood Foresters had shown them how to camouflage themselves for the woods, breaking up their silhouettes by binding twigs to their clothing, dulling the bright gleam of metal or luxin, and adding streaks to their black clothes so they looked like shadows dappled with sun rather than man-shaped darknesses.

Stealth was vital for the plan. If they were spotted before the attack at the warehouse pulled away the defenders, the whole ruse would be for naught. On the other hand, they still didn’t even know if they were looking for barges or wagons or even both. They didn’t know how many defenders there would be. They were going in blind.

The element of surprise is no advantage if you’re surprised, too.

But the longer they took to attack, the more Ghosts were going to die below.

So, quietly, as they double- and triple-checked everything, Kip reviewed their rendezvous points if they got separated, the likely fallback areas if they had to retreat, and so forth. There were only the seven of them, and Kip wished again that he had Goss, Daelos, and Teia along.

Best not to think about any of them, though. Especially Teia.

Damn, but Teia’s cloak would have made scouting easy.

Then they heard it, a single, distant musket shot.

“Could still be a hunter,” Cruxer said.

“Who hunts with a musket?” Winsen asked, as if every archer in the world could reliably down a stag at two hundred paces with a single arrow the way he could.

There was a rattle of another dozen shots.

“Aha,” Big Leo said, breaking into a huge grin for the first time in several weeks. “That sounds like our song.”

They put on their spectacles and filled themselves with their colors, luxin curling like smoke under their skins.

Kip got ready to lead them out, only to see a reproachful look in Ferkudi’s eyes. “What?” he asked.

“You know, I’m not as smart as you, Breaker, but sometimes you’re just plain dumb.”

“What?” he asked again.

“The hell is wrong with you?” Big Leo said. “We’re going into battle. Vastly outnumbered. May all die… and you’re not gonna give your wife a kiss goodbye?”

“Oh!” Kip said. “Oh.”

They bickered, but in an overarching sense, Kip and Tisis were actually becoming friends. And for all that they’d tried to consummate their marriage any number of frustrating times, they hadn’t really… kissed much.

The Mighty think I’m being dumb because I’m leaving without patching up a fight, but I think I’m actually a lot dumber than that. He’d kissed her neck—she’d liked that a lot. He’d kissed her breasts—they’d both liked that a lot. But the last girl—the only girl—he’d kissed on the lips had been Teia.

Had he really never kissed Tisis on the lips?

It was as if without really realizing it he’d been holding on to that for Teia, holding back one intimacy because he’d given away so many others. To kiss Tisis—his wife, for Orholam’s sake!—seemed to finally let the latch fall closed…

The woman’s voice says, ‘You Guile men, so intelligent with your brains, and so cluelessly, hopelessly stupid with your hearts.’

My cheek is stinging from Zee’s slap. Give the woman this, even at fifty, she’s got arms and shoulders to make many young warriors jealous. I’m just glad she hit me with an open hand.

She says, “Our houses and our nations need heirs to knit together the Oakenshields and the Guiles, else this war will never die. We’ve talked this all through. We’ve agreed on this course. We had our chance, Darien, all those years ago, and we missed it through our own pride. It’s a closed door. Don’t make us both pathetic by banging on it. You’ve married my daughter to give us an heir. None of us liked that choice, but we all made it. Now you act like a spoiled child, not willing to pay the price of your choice, and making everyone else miserable with you. Darien, if you give my daughter a child but not your love, you’re treating her like a whore, a broodmare, nothing more than a receptacle for your seed. She’s my daughter, and I won’t have you treat her like that. You will treat her like a lady, like your wife, like a woman making the best of a bad situation, like a woman offering you not just her body but also her heart. If you spurn that, you never deserved my love in the first place.”

“But I love you hopelessly, helplessly.”

“The seeds of love may sprout where they will, but we choose whether to water them and give them light or to pluck them like weeds from the soil. We always have a choice.”

“This choice seems impossible.”

“Seems,” she says, her back straight and eyes pitiless.

And in the mirror of her eyes, I see how callow, how selfish, how self-absorbed I’ve been. This marriage puts me in the arms of a young woman, willing to give me children and love; it puts Selene with an older man who loves her not, and breaks her relationship with her mother at the same time; it puts Zee alone, with her daughter married to the man she herself loves. As a lover, how can she wish her daughter happiness with the man she herself once loved? As a mother, how can she not?

“Is he having one of his fits?” Ferkudi asked.

“No,” Kip said, coming back to the moment. “Just feeling ashamed for my stupidity.” Darien Guile had been more than fifty years old, and he’d loved Zee Oakenshield for more than three decades. When they’d finally made peace, she’d been too old to give him an heir, and he had no sons. He’d had to marry her daughter Selene. Darien had had an excuse for being an idiot.

Kip had been in love with Teia for a few months. Before that, he’d been infatuated with Liv Danavis. Before that, it had been Isa. Always, he’d panted after the safely impossible.