The moon hung low and white over the prison tower, its light pooling on the twisted crown of an ironwood tree that rose almost level with the arrow slits.
Skyling stood on one of its upper branches, wings tucked close against the chill. Her head tilted this way and that, reading the wind, searching the stone for a weakness. Her talons flexed against the bark, silent as thought.
A figure stepped from the shadowed undergrowth below.
No rustle, no crunch of leaf — only the slow unfurling of shape: black cloak, the faint gleam of chainmail, the knife spinning lazily in his hand. The same hand that had sent steel humming through the night toward her two weeks ago in the forest.
Vaeryn.
His voice reached her as though it had been waiting there all along."You never answered my question."
Skyling's feathers ruffled, eyes narrowing.
"The one I asked when you dodged." The knife made another slow circle between his fingers, catching moonlight. "Do you always flee… or only when it's wise?"
Inside the prison cell, Eliakim's head lifted.
He had been dozing, back against the wall, but that voice — even muffled by stone and distance — he knew. The tone was the same as it had been on that chase through the night forest: amused, measuring, as if every word weighed a fraction of some larger equation.
He rose silently, crossing to the narrow slit of a window. Cold air licked in, carrying a sound like faint bird-cries.
Gideon stirred. "What is it?"
Eliakim didn't answer. Through the slit he could just make out the glint of feathers on a branch — Skyling. And below her, the unmistakable silhouette of a man with a knife.
Caleb moved beside him. "That's—"
"Vaeryn," Eliakim finished. His eyes narrowed. "He's not here for the King's orders."
The branch shuddered faintly under Skyling's weight as she shifted, wings spreading a fraction.
Vaeryn stepped closer, the knife's tip grazing the bark as if drawing a line between them."Two weeks ago," he said softly, "I wasn't aiming for your throat. A feather, maybe. Enough to see what choice you'd make when death brushed close."
Skyling let out a low, rasping note, more hawk than woman.
"I was… curious," he continued. "You dove. That tells me something."
Eliakim's hands clenched against the stone sill. The distance was too far for any spell he had memorized, and the walls between them were warded in three layers of dark elven seal-script.
He hated the helplessness.
But helpless did not mean idle.
He shut his eyes, breathed, and in his mind the Codex of Imreth unfolded like an enormous, ancient map. Its pages shimmered in the dark of his skull, ink glowing like molten silver. Words and diagrams rearranged themselves, taking the shape of a web — a lattice of lines, nodes, and shifting arcs.
The combat web.
Center Node — Zaryth, "The Unbinding Edge"From him, silver lines radiated outward:
To Raviel — a thin, cutting line, annotated aftercut window: 1.7 seconds. Perfect for following Zaryth's disarms with invisible wounds.
To Korras — a thick, immovable bar. Deadlock on destabilized limbs. Zaryth unbalances, Korras binds.
To Selvas — dotted arcs representing the curve of arrows mid-flight. These arcs intersected with Dravik's range zones, creating kill funnels.
To Veyth — spiraling lines, unpredictable angles. Chain-blade repositioning allows midair ally rescues.
To Dravik — short, hammer-shaped nodes. Shield-crush after Selvas pins.
The web pulsed as his mind replayed the Spire battle. Every line had been used with surgical precision. None of it had been improvised — or if it had, the improvisation was practiced.
At the lower edge of the web, he placed Vaeryn.
Not a straight line to any one fighter — instead, a shadow lattice around the whole formation.Role: Field Manipulation.Special note: Appears to move pieces on both sides.Danger rating: Variable.
Outside, Vaeryn's voice had lowered to something almost conversational.
"I don't work for the King," he said. "Not really. Nor for the Queen. Nor…" He flicked the knife upward, catching it by the tip. "…for anyone who would claim me."
Skyling tilted her head, a quick avian motion.
"That's why you interest me," he murmured. "You aren't chained either."
Eliakim's brow furrowed.
He flipped a mental page in the Codex, finding the Imrethian proverb: The knife that cuts both ways serves only its own hand.
If Vaeryn had chosen this moment to appear, it wasn't to harm Skyling — not yet. This was a probe. A test, like before. He was studying how she reacted when cornered without allies.
And if he was testing her, that meant the real move was still ahead.
Eliakim marked three possibilities on the combat web:
Extraction — Vaeryn might remove Skyling from the field entirely, placing her in a third-party holding.
Recruitment — If he believed her loyalty could shift, he'd begin the slow turn.
Message — Using her survival or capture as a signal to someone else.
The web tightened around these points. Every future maneuver Eliakim could make to save Ezra would now have to account for Skyling's altered position in the board.
"Why are you here?" Skyling's voice — still edged with the rasp of her bird-form — was low, suspicious.
"To see if you're worth the trouble I've been taking," Vaeryn replied.
He stepped back into the shadows. One blink, and he was simply gone.
A low whistle drifted up through the night air — three short, one long — a pattern Eliakim knew from the old merchant roads. Not warning. Not threat. A marker.
Eliakim drew back from the window.
"He left?" Gideon asked.
"Yes." Eliakim's voice was flat. "Which is worse than if he'd stayed."
Caleb frowned. "Why?"
"Because it means we're already in his plan. We just don't know where."
Malachi shifted, muttering, "Then we'd better find out before it snaps shut."
Eliakim's gaze flicked back to the slit, to the empty branch where Skyling had been.
His mind returned to the Codex, to the glowing web. The lines twisted, re-knotting themselves as he began sketching the counter-threads — the places to cut, the pressure points that could unravel the Talon formation.
Skyling's new position on the board glowed faintly at the edge. Ezra's was still fixed in the center — the key piece.
He had to get them both out. And now, he suspected, he'd have to do it under the eyes of not one double agent… but two.