Zereth didn't waste time asking Krix to clarify. He was already moving before the last word left the boy's mouth, shouting the castle into the particular controlled panic he'd drilled into every soldier under his command for exactly this contingency — full lockdown, every gate barred from the inside, every torch along the outer wall doubled, every off-duty hand pulled from bed and armed within minutes. I'd seen him rally the garrison against an advancing army with less urgency in his voice than he carried now, and that told me more about how seriously he was taking a lesser demon's cracked, wet-eyed certainty than any explanation would have.
"Sweep the grounds in pairs," he was saying to Nana before I'd even reached the corridor. "Nobody walks a section alone tonight. If you see something that doesn't explain itself in the first three seconds, you don't investigate it, you shout for backup and you keep shouting until backup arrives."
"And if it doesn't wait for backup," Nana said.
