said Janto. He sat with Iolo and Sirali in a forest clearing beneath the meager light of the orange Soldier moon, pooling his information with theirs and finding it depressingly scanty. “Maybe there’s another prison,” said Sirali. “Could be,” said Janto. “But he’s not in the one beneath the palace.” “Right, and the war’s going well from a Kjallan perspective,” said Sirali. “Augustan’s men were crowing about the progress they’d made.” Everyone was silent. That was not good news. “I think Ral-Vaddis is dead,” said Janto. “You can’t give up yet,” said Iolo. “We give our spies a poison pill. They’re to use it if they’re captured, so they don’t give up their informants when they’re tortured. I think he must have used it. Otherwise he’d have given up Sirali.”
