Prologue

“What a nuisance! Anyrespectable assailant would have the decency to let that slow her down a little!”

I, Regina Rondoiro, clucked in irritation as every one of the Divine Water Spears I’d set along the spiral staircase leading underground evaporated harmlessly in the face of my pursuer’s potent barrier. The last rays of the Lightningday sun fell through a window on the sneering face of my attacker—an attractive woman in a black dress wearing a broad-brimmed black hat and carrying a black umbrella.

Despite the fury her scorn inspired, I tightened my grip on my staff and took off down the stairs, strengthening my limbs with all the magic I possessed as I continued ever deeper into the earth. The flight took its toll on my old body.

I ruled the Principality of Rondoiro in the south of the League of Principalities. This ruined church towered atop a cliff on the outskirts of my capital. The league was currently embroiled in a fruitless war with the Wainwright Kingdom, and three other southern marchesi who desired peace had met me here in secret to set it back on the right path. But while we had discussed our march on the city of water, the Church of the Holy Spirit had struck.

I never expected them to steal a march on us before the Committee of Thirteen meets on Darknessday!

Our foes numbered only two. They should have posed no problem. Old though we were, we had fought our way through two of the Southern Wars, and we’d trusted our strength to turn the tables on any ordinary assassins. But that confidence had frozen solid the moment we’d laid eyes on the beauty in black and her attendant—a girl in the distinctive hooded gray robe of a church inquisitor.

The woman’s crescent earring had glinted as she turned her silver eyes and the tarnished-silver hair that fell to her waist a bloody crimson.

“I am Alicia ‘Crescent Moon’ Coalfield, theone and only lieutenant of the great Shooting Star,” she had announced to our rattled assembly. “I must insist that you die. The Saint’s word is law.”

Crescent Moon! A monster to match her fellow lieutenant, the Emerald Gale! Who could have imagined her working with the church, let alone re