---
Thea smiled back with exactly the right amount of teeth and moved her small army through three doors and a shadow and then out into the city like any other set of men going to do their job.
No one saw the sixth tail that left half an hour later with a satchel of meat and two casks of water. It took a wrong turn on purpose and then a right one on accident and ended up where Thea had told it to be all along: at the edge of the old east waste where no one went except men who did not like being watched.
Somewhere Hoorius signed the writ with the iron rod because that was the ritual for expeditions that might not come home: the rod taps the lacquer; the lacquer gets rubbed in circles until it shines; the regent says a word that binds the wax to more than wax. She kept the writ long enough to press a thumbprint under her sign. Then she handed it to Om without looking at Mia.
"Bring my glass back clean," she said.
"Yes," Om said.
"Bring our princess back safe," she added.
