The next matter before the council was Dawnstar.
Nyx delivered what she had gathered in a few measured words.
Dawnstar was dying slowly. With Gerardy dead and the crimes beneath the mountain dragged into the open, the Red Dawn faction had fractured into three feuding clans, each drowning in debt and disgrace. Worse still, the Moonlight Syndicate had sunk its hooks deep into all of them — buying some, frightening the rest — and so long as it held the clan leaders, Red Dawn could not be made to fall the rest of the way.
Emery listened and asked little. The picture matched everything Tessa and Klea had already laid before him. Dawnstar was rotting from the inside, and the Syndicate was the rot.
By the time the final matter was concluded, the night had grown late.
Emery dismissed the council.
It was nearly midnight when Klea returned to the hall.
"We have a visitor," she said.
A guest chamber had already been prepared in the western wing.
