The captured assassin proved considerably more forthcoming than anyone had expected, though not through any interrogation technique Kael's guards employed. He broke on his own, three days into his confinement, deciding whatever loyalty he owed his employers mattered less than his own survival.
"I want protection," he told Kael and Elira both, seated across from them in the same small room that had become, over these past months, the place where Veskara's careful reckoning with conspiracy after conspiracy consistently unfolded. "Real protection, not simply confinement here until you decide I'm no longer useful. I'll tell you everything I know, but I won't be left exposed to whatever fate met the men I worked alongside during that ambush."
"You'll have it," Elira said, "provided what you t
