Mark by Destiny.
He sank to the flagstones and, with his head bowed, told the story of the last weeks: how he had wormed his way into Moonspire’s kitchens and store rooms, how he had watched Liora move among her people and wondered at the brightness they gave her, and how, beneath that brightness, Theodore had been patient and terrible.
He spoke of contacts bought with gold and fear, of merchants who owed loyalty in the form of favors, of a small ring of thieves and river–folk bound to Nightfang by debts paid in blood. He named places where letters were left in secret — a hollow at the old elm near the east gate, a pack of two–faced fishermen who pretended to sleep in the boats but were paid to listen, and t