“SO THE LORD DAL-EDAL is certain.” Cullen’s Racha bird Disha had hopped up on the table in front of him, and was eating tiny pieces of hard cheese from the palm of his hand. “I don’t find his certainty altogether reassuring, do you?” He and his Racha tilted their heads at each other, their movement a perfect mirror image. “It’s madness to believe him.” Cullen’s quiet tone was at odds with his words. “It is a trick. These men have been sent by the Tenebroso Lok-iKol to lure you into acting before you are prepared.”
“Mercenaries?” Tek-aKet looked up from the food lying untouched on his plate.
“What of Karlyn-Tan?” Dhulyn said. “The oaths taken by the Stewards of a House are as binding as those taken by Mercenaries… or by Racha Clouds,” she added, inclining her head toward Cullen and Disha. “Do you suggest that he has not been Cast Out? A Steward of Walls does not leave his post for a trick, not even so weighty a trick as this one.”
“But, Dhulyn.” Now it was Thionan who spoke up from her perch on the nearby table. “Demons? Possession by green shadows? We can’t make plans based on such ravings. Has any of us, any we can trust, seen this thing?”
“I have.”
In the silence you could hear the rustling of Disha’s feathers as she turned her head to look.
“You, Lionsmane?” Alkoryn’s harsh whisper held the surprise that was mirrored on every other face in the room. Dhulyn almost smiled. Parno was supposed to be the ordinary soul, she was the strange one.
“In the eyes of a Jaldean priest in Navra. A priest who was standing at the back of a mob while that mob burned down a Finder’s house, with his children still inside.”
“I also have seen it,” Dhulyn added.
“In Navra?”
“In a Vision.”
Cullen and Disha leaned forward, their heads at an identical tilt. Disha half opened her wings and took two rocking steps toward Dhulyn on her taloned feet. Dhulyn hesitated, aware that everyone in the room waited for her next words. Should she reveal what she’d seen of the Scholar, or should she keep it to herself until she’d had a chance to investigate it further? Did Gundaron of Valdomar know that the Green Shadow had also looked through his eyes? It might be an idea to find out before exposing him.
“I have Seen a green-eyed Lok-iKol on the Carnelian Throne, his shadow misshapen on the wall behind him.”
Cullen and Disha nodded, satisfied, but the Tarkin’s two guardsmen showed by their thinned lips and narrowed eyes that belief was mixing with something closer to fear in their thoughts. Dhulyn sighed, and pressed her lips together. It was exactly to avoid that look that she’d always kept her Mark to herself.
The Tarkin had seen it also. “Let me remind you,” he said to his men. “If Dhulyn Wolfshead was not Marked, I would be dead. And you, who gave oaths to defend me to the death, would be either dead as well, or alive and forsworn. She has done us all a great service.” Both men had the grace to look shamefaced at their feet. Tek-aKet nodded, satisfied.
“May I have your counsel for action?”
Slowly Dhulyn realized that everyone in the room, Cloudman, Racha bird, Mercenary Brothers-Tarkin and his guardsmen-all were looking at her. She glanced first at Parno, then at Alkoryn. Both men nodded to her.
“The Green Shadow exists,” she said. “Whatever its ultimate goal, it begins by destroying the Marked.” She glanced around at the faces intent on her words. “That is where it begins. We cannot know how it will continue.”
“It begins where it fears the most, you think?” Parno had obviously been giving this some thought.
“Very likely,” Dhulyn agreed. “If it fears the Marked, it means the Marked can harm it somehow. We need to find out how.”
“No.” They turned to the Tarkin. “We must remove it from the Throne.”
Tek-aKet Tarkin raised his hands, palms toward her, and Dhulyn fell silent. “With respect, Dhulyn Wolfshead, hear me out. Perhaps we can destroy it, but perhaps we cannot. Our first act must be to remove it from the throne, to regain control of Imrion. At the moment, its power does not extend past Gotterang, and if we act quickly, it will not. Once we have the city, now that we know what we must fight, we will have a position of power from which to do it.” He placed his hands palm down on the table. “We must act and act now.”
Alkoryn was nodding, his fingers tracing lines on an imaginary map. “A frontal assault will not work. We have not the numbers needed, and unlike Lok-iKol, we’ve no trick to empty the Dome of its Carnelian Guards.” He looked up from his tracing to indicate the rock walls around them. “Fortunately, we know a way into the Carnelian Dome that has nothing to do with front gates, or the number of guards. Dhulyn, my Brother, if you would.”
Dhulyn bowed and turned to the door. “Rehnata,” she called, and waited for the girl to appear in the entrance before turning back to Alkoryn.
“Fetch my maps of Gotterang,” Alkoryn said now that the girl was within reach of his voice. “The blue series, not the green, and the plans of the Dome. When you have done that, bring back our guests.”
Two tables were pushed together, and Cullen of Langeron looked on with interest as the maps and drawings were spread over them. He’d seen such things of course-though the Clouds did not use them, relying on their own memories and training to find their routes and ways through the Antedichas-but never so detailed, and so beautifully drawn. Disha walked about on the table, looking over them carefully, with first one golden eye and then the other. For an instant Cullen saw the image of the drawing’s lines superimposed on his own image of his Racha and the room.
“If you would stand here, Lady Disha,” Alkoryn the Senior Brother said in his scarred voice. Thus courteously addressed, Disha was happy to move. There weren’t many who knew the Racha would understand them-as, of course, she could, so long as Cullen himself was in the room. If it were possible, his already healthy respect for the Mercenary Brotherhood increased.
“There are three layers of guards,” Tek-aKet Tarkin was saying. “Those here, in the outer perimeter, allow access to the public rooms and galleries where any petitioner may enter; here the second, letting pass only those who have business with the Throne. And finally, here, the innermost circle,” he looked up. “These posts are usually taken by my own Personal Guard, and they watch the family and private rooms.”
“So far as I can tell,” the Tenebro Lord Dal-eDal said, frowning down on the drawings, “the guard postings have not changed-though the guards themselves are different.” His brows drew down even further. “No, there is one change. There are now guards here, in the Onyx Walk.”
Cullen’s eyes narrowed as Disha cocked her head to look closely at the Tenebro man. He’d no trust of this one either, cousin to the usurper, a man who stood to gain no matter who died. Cullen shifted his gaze across the room to where Dhulyn Wolfshead stood, relaxed, her eyes on Dal-eDal, her wolf’s smile on her lips. Except for that, and their intent stares, the Partnered Brothers could have been asleep on their feet, there was so little tension in their bodies. Disha transferred her golden eye to the Wolfshead in response to Cullen’s thought.
+SEER+ was the thought that Cullen caught. +YES+ he answered. The balance of power in the room had changed utterly for him when he understood the direction of what had been said. Menders, Finders, even Healers were to be found among the Clouds-and if Lok-iKol was hunting the Marked, that was reason enough for him to help kill the man. But a Seer. His mother had spoken of one that had been known in her mother’s day. Cullen had no more hoped to be in the same room as a Seer than he would have hoped to fly without Disha.
We are here for you, Seer, he thought, knowing that Disha heard him and agreed. My soul and I. Yours is the lead we follow. He and his soul turned their attention back to the man speaking.
“That need not preclude our using that entrance, though we would lose the element of surprise,” Alkoryn Pantherclaw was saying, tapping his gnarled index finger on the plans in front of him. “And there are other secret ways by which we can enter into the Dome, but,” and here the old one paused, looked at the Tarkin and at the Tenebro lord. “But I will not take Dal-eDal through these ways.”
The Tenebro lord hissed air in through his teeth, plainly displeased, and Cullen smiled, Disha shifting from foot to foot.
“Surely-” The Tarkin broke off in the face of Alkoryn Pantherclaw’s slowly shaking head.
“You objected, Tek-aKet, that the Mercenary Brotherhood knew of ways into your Dome, and now you ask that we tell others? I should not even have taken you that way, but what’s done is done. As Senior Brother, I must consider the future and not merely the needs of the moment. In any case, we could not take many through the tunnels and passages. I advise sending only those who have already been. What say you, Brothers?”
Dhulyn Wolfshead grimaced, considering. “It seems to me these passages were never intended to be used by soldiers-to the contrary. In many places they are so narrow, that we could pass only one at a time, considering that we will be carrying weapons. That would likely also be true of whichever secret door we used.” She turned to Parno Lionsmane and added, “Remember the engagement at Lashar? Where we used the caves beneath the escarpment? One company of men was caught and slaughtered because of just such a bottleneck in the passages. Besides Tek-aKet, I would recommend no more than six Brothers.”
“We can’t walk in the front door,” Tek-aKet said, rubbing his chin with the fingers of his right hand. “But Dal-eDal can, and he can bring others with him.”
“That I can’t do. I was sent for Dhulyn Wolfshead, and I can’t return without her.”
“Then Dhulyn Wolfshead you shall have,” she said.
Cullen clenched his teeth and remained silent. The Wolfshead waited patiently until the storm of protest died away before continuing as if she had not been interrupted. “We’ll be able to operate from two fronts, allowing us to flank if need be.” She looked up, not at her Senior, but at Lionsmane, her Partner. “I’ll be perfectly safe,” she said in her honey-rough voice, “until I get to the Green Shadow, and by then you’ll be there.”
“We are for you, Dhulyn Wolfshead,” Cullen said. “Disha and I. We also should not be shown the secret ways,” he added.
“I can’t bring back more than the eight I brought away with me,” the Tenebro lord said. “In fact, it would be more convincing if I returned with fewer.”
“You would have needed a tracker to find a Mercenary Brother,” Cullen said. “I am that man, come with you in the hope of greater rewards.”
The Tenebro lord spread his hand. “A good enough notion, but surely there is another way to get our own people into the Dome. Could some of the Mercenary Brotherhood not take work there, to act as spies, if nothing else?”
Disha moved closer to the Tenebro man. +BITE+ was her thought. +NO+ he responded, though he stifled a smile.
“What have I said?” the Tenebro lord said when the silence grew lengthy.
“The Mercenary Brotherhood does not take someone’s pay in order to spy upon them,” Alkoryn Panterclaw said. “Not even when it appears to suit our purposes to do so. We are true to our employ, always. This is one of the reasons the Brotherhood is as old as it is.”
“And one of the reasons there are so few of us,” Dhulyn Wolfshead added.
“Your pardon, Alkoryn Charter.” There was a hint of sarcasm in the Tenebro lord’s tone, as if he had himself taken offense. “Ordinarily I wouldn’t argue with a policy that has stood so well the test of time. But as I’ve said, this is no ordinary foe. Now, if ever, is the time to suspend such rules, before you find yourself and your Brotherhood destroyed.”
Maybe he should have let Disha bite him. +YES+ she thought.
“What difference?” Dhulyn the Seer broke in. “If we suspend our rules, there is no Brotherhood, we would have destroyed ourselves.”
Tek-aKet held up his hands. “Dal, please. I know you are anxious-”
Cullen remembered that these two were also, in some way, cousins.
“With respect, Tek, you didn’t see-”
“No, I didn’t see. But these others have, and yet they are not ready to plunge headlong in. Things are as they are. We work with what we have.” He turned to Alkoryn Pantherclaw. “What of loyal guard within the Dome?”
Dhulyn the Seer and Parno Lionsmane both shook their heads. Dhulyn shrugged and signaled to Parno to speak. “In view of what the Scholar Gundaron has told us, I don’t think we can count on any who are still within the Dome,” he said. “They may prove to be free of the taint of the Green-eyed Shadow,” here Parno paused and looked pointedly at Dal-eDal, “but we can’t be sure enough to trust them with our plans and our secrets.”
“Of course, we can’t trust any of them,” Parno punched the plaster wall of their bedroom, several flights above the underground meeting room, with the side of his fist. “But I tell you in particular I don’t trust him.”
“Either the Scholar or the Lord Dal might have been touched by the Green Shadow without knowing it.” Dhulyn pulled a chair away from the wall, turned it around, and sat down astride it, twisting her spine from side to side; the last thing she needed at this moment was cramping muscles. “The Scholar, I believe, has been.”
Parno sat down on the edge of the room’s only bed. “What do you mean?”
By this time in their Partnership, Dhulyn had had a fair amount of practice describing her Visions to Parno, and this one went quickly. “It looked to me,” she said finally, “as if there were three Scholars, one the body being used, one a spirit trying to escape, and one a spirit watching.”
“If he watched, then he knows.” A muscle in the side of Parno’s jaw popped out. “And he made no mention of this.”
“Some part of him does know, I’m certain, but can you be surprised that he would keep this to himself?”
Parno looked at her with narrowed eyes. “He is a danger.”
“We must warn Alkoryn to keep the boy watched, I agree, and to limit most strictly where he goes, and what he sees.”
“If the Green Shadow is looking for you…”
Dhulyn folded her arms on the chairback and rested her chin on her hands. “I understand the Tarkin’s wish to regain his throne, but it is the Green Shadow that is the real danger to us all, I think.”
“With luck,” Parno said, “we will destroy it when we kill the body it wears.”
“And Lok-iKol does die by my hand, I have Seen it.”
“Then we proceed, and we’re back to my concerns.” Parno leaned forward, his elbows on his knees.
Dhulyn shook her head, her eyes shut. “Dal-eDal would be a problem if we did trust him. We’ve already agreed we don’t, so he’s no more dangerous now than he was before.”
“You’ll be bound-”
“I won’t really be bound, you dolt,” she said. “I’ll even be on my own horse, as if Bloodbone and I between us can’t confound Dal-eDal and his plans. If he has any. Now tell me what the real problem is.”
“Then I’ll come with you.” Parno spoke through his clenched teeth. “No disrespect intended to your horse.”
Dhulyn laid her forehead down on her crossed arms. “This has been decided. You’re to go with the Tarkin. I’m to go with Dal, and Karlyn-Tan and two others. And Cullen, don’t forget, which gives us the Racha as well. What can go wrong?”
“You’re the Seer, you tell me. Do you hear yourself? ‘What can go wrong?’ ” He threw out his hands and widened his eyes in a parody of innocence. “If I started listing things now, I’d still be talking when it was time to leave.”
Dhulyn slammed her hands down on the chairback. “That’s right,” she said. “You’d still be talking. The rest of us would be at work.” She rubbed her face with her hands. “ ‘Let’s go to Imrion,’ you said. ‘We haven’t been there in years,’ you said. ‘I miss the smell of my own hills.’ If we’d followed my advice we’d be in Voyagin even now, helping to plan the summer campaign.” She sucked in a deep breath, grimaced, and let it out as slowly as she could. “And the Green Shadow would be destroying the Marked. I’m sorry, my soul. These politicians waste my patience. Come, it’s not the first time a campaign has separated us, and it won’t be the last.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” he muttered. “I’d rather have Dal with me.”
She shook her head slowly. “And I’m supposed to be the inarticulate Outlander. Even if you did doubt my own abilities-which I know you don’t, bound and gagged I could still kill him easily-I won’t be alone. The way they feel about the Marked, do you think Cullen and the Racha bird will stand idly by if Dal-eDal threatens me?”
“They won’t be watching him carefully enough.”
“Carefully enough for what? Why should it prove so much more dangerous for Dal to be with me than with you?”
He stared at her for a long moment before speaking, his breath coming short and fierce through his nostrils. “Because Dal has no reason to want me dead. He may think he has such a reason for you.”
She looked up at him, eyes widened in surprise. “Nice to know I make enemies so easily.”
“I told you we met and spoke in the Dome. I didn’t tell you that, like the Fallen House, Dal wants Lok dead, and me to become Tenebroso. I told him I would not leave the Brotherhood. I would not leave you. What if he thinks my answer would be different if you were dead?”
“The old woman,” Dhulyn said. “The House-that-was. She thought I would make a fine consort.”
“And so you would, if we were not Partnered, and Mercenary Brothers. That life is gone.”
She nodded, rubbing the small of her back with both hands. “Parno, my soul. Would you fetch me warm blankets, please?
Parno put down the pipes on which he’d been rhythmically playing the same seven notes over and over and smiled his thanks at the young Brother standing in the doorway with a pile of heated blankets in her arms. Glancing at Dhulyn’s face, he saw she was well and truly asleep; neither the interruption in the playing nor the arrival of the blankets had disturbed her. He laid his pipes aside and rose to take the blankets from the youngster. The mountain wool had been folded twice, as he’d asked, and he laid them, warm and heavy, across Dhulyn’s lower body and legs.
Parno glanced at the open doorway, sensing the youngster still hovering, obviously torn between courtesy and curiosity.
“You’re Rehnata, aren’t you?” he asked, straightening from the bed and walking cat-footed closer so she wouldn’t have to raise her voice. “Go ahead, ask.”
The girl licked her lips, and pulled herself up straighter.
“Two things, Parno.”
Parno needn’t have worried about moving closer, she’d been well-trained in the nightwatch whisper.
“First, if this were the morning of a battle, what would the Wolfshead do for her pains?”
“First,” Parno said quietly. “When there is training, pain can be ignored, as I’m sure you already know. But in order to ignore pain, there must be a distraction. When there is no fighting, distraction of a kind can be found in drugs. Your herbalist can tell you which are best. The Wolfshead does not like drugs. She says that the pain exhausts, but the drugs make you stupid. Better tired than stupid, she says.” Parno smiled. Dhulyn had never been any great fan of the stupid. “As for the day of battle, the necessity to kill others is often in itself a powerful distraction.” He turned and looked again at Dhulyn. She slept, but under the weight of blankets she still moved and shifted as if, even in her sleep, she sought relief in movement for overtaxed muscles.
“And the second?” he said, turning back to Rehnata.
“Is she,” here the girl looked away, not wanting Parno to see what was in her eyes, “is she Seeing?”
Parno frowned. This would be the first of many such questions, now that Dhulyn was no longer hiding her Mark. “I think so. She has not said it, but it seems when there is more pain, there is more Sight.”
A TALL THIN MAN WITH CLOSE-CROPPED HAIR THE COLOR OF WHEAT STRAW, EYES THE BLUE OF OLD ICE, DEEP ICE, SITS READING A BOUND BOOK LARGER THAN ANY SHE HAS EVER SEEN, TRACING A LINE ON THE PAGE WITH HIS FINGER,
HIS LIPS MOVING. STANDING, HE TAKES UP A HIGHLY POLISHED TWO-HANDED SWORD, AND HIS LONG LILY-SHAPED SLEEVES FALL BACK FROM HIS WRISTS.
HE TURNS TOWARD A CIRCULAR MIRROR, AS TALL AS HE IS HIMSELF, REFLECTING A NIGHT SKY FULL OF STARS. HIS LIPS MOVE AND DHULYN SEES THE WORDS FROM THE BOOK. ******* HE SAYS, AND **********. HE MAKES A MOVE FROM THE THIRD PASSAGE OF THE CRANE SHORA, AND SLASHES DOWNWARD THROUGH THE MIRROR, THROUGH THE SKY, SPLITTING IT, AND THE GREEN-TINTED SHADOW COMES SPILLING IN LIKE FOG THROUGH A CASEMENT…
CHILDREN TURNING A LONG ROPE; ONE RUNS IN, TIMING IT JUST RIGHT TO BE ABLE TO JUMP OVER THE ROPE AS IT SWINGS UNDER HIS FEET, OVER HIS HEAD, UNDER HIS FEET. HE SINGS A CHANT, AND ANOTHER CHILD, A CHILD WITH HIS OWN DARK COLORING, RUNS IN AND JUMPS WITH HIM. THEY BOTH SING, AND ANOTHER GIRL JOINS THEM…
MAR SITS DOWN, FROWNING, HER DELICATE BROWS DRAWN AS FAR DOWN AS THEY WILL GO, HER MOUTH TWISTED TO ONE SIDE AS IF SHE IS CONCENTRATING WITH ALL THE STRENGTH OF HER MIND. SHE WEARS A LIGHT LINEN SLEEPING SHIRT THAT HAS BEEN TORN ON THE LEFT SHOULDER AND CAREFULLY MENDED BY A HAND SKILLED WITH THE NEEDLE. SHE BREATHES HEAVILY THROUGH HER NOSE AND STANDS UP, STILL LOOKING DOWN AT WHAT NOW APPEARS TO BE THE TOP OF A TABLE. THERE IS SOMETHING ROUND AND WHITE ON THE TABLETOP, BUT IT ISN’T UNTIL MAR RESTS HER HANDS ON IT THAT DHULYN CAN SEE IT IS MAR’S BOWL. AT THIS TOUCH THE WATER IN THE BOWL SHIVERS AND MAKES THE REFLECTED IMAGE OF CANDLE FLAME DANCE. SO IT IS NIGHT. AS DHULYN HAS THIS THOUGHT, MAR LOOKS UP AND TO HER OWN RIGHT, AND DHULYN SEES THAT THE SCHOLAR GUNDARON STANDS NEXT TO HER, AND HE ALSO IS LOOKING INTO THE BOWL. AND SHAKING HIS HEAD. HIS HAND GRIPS MAR’S SHOULDER MORE TIGHTLY, AND THEY BOTH TURN TO LOOK OFF TO THEIR LEFT PAST WHERE DHULYN IS STANDING WATCHING THEM. THEY DO NOT SEE HER. WHEN DHULYN TURNS TO SEE WHAT THEY ARE LOOKING AT, SHE SEES…
A GREAT THRONE IN A ROOM VAST WITH DARKNESS. NOISE AND MOVEMENT AROUND HER, BUT MADE OF SHADOWS ONLY, NOT OF THIS TIME. THE ONE-EYED MAN SITS ON THE THRONE OF TIME-DARKENED WOOD AND DULL RED GEMS, LOOKING AT HER WITH TWO GREEN EYES. DHULYN PLUNGES HER SWORD INTO HIS HEART. THE FINE TELISCAN BLADE PASSES CLEANLY THROUGH HIS BODY AND PINS HIM TO THE THRONE AND HE CANNOT MOVE. THE BLOOD SOAKS INTO THE WOOD, AND WILL NEVER COME OUT. HIS EYES ARE GREEN. HIS EYE IS BLUE. SUDDENLY IT IS NOT LOK-IKOL SITTING ON THE CARNELIAN THRONE, BUT TEK-AKET, AND YET SHE IS STILL THERE, SWORD IN HAND. ARE HIS HANDS BOUND? THE TARKIN LOOKS AWAY OVER HER SHOULDER, HIS EYES FOCUSED FOR THE LONG DISTANCE, AND WHEN SHE TURNS TO LOOK, SHE SEES…
A GRAY DAY, A COLD GRANITE CLIFF, CRAGGY AND HIGH ENOUGH TO HAVE SNOW THOUGH THERE IS NONE TO BE SEEN. A MAN WITH A FACE TATTOOED BLUE WITH FEATHERS FALLS, PLUMMETING STRAIGHT AND TRUE AS A STONE FALLS, AND SO SHE KNOWS HE IS ALREADY DEAD. A BIRD FALLS WITH HIM, BLUE-TIPPED WINGS HELD TIGHT AGAINST ITS BODY, AND DHULYN KNOWS THAT THE BIRD HAS TIME-MORE THAN ENOUGH-TO SPREAD ITS WINGS AND SAVE ITSELF,
BUT SHE KNOWS THAT IT WILL NOT, THAT THOUGH ITS HEART BEATS AND ITS EYES ARE CLEAR, IT, TOO, IS ALREADY DEAD.
Dhulyn sighed and tried to turn over, opened her eyes when she found the weight of bedcoverings impeding her. Mountain wool blankets, from the weight, and the sharp smell. She snaked one hand free and felt it caught by Parno’s, larger, rougher, but as familiar to her as her own.
“Have I been asleep long?”
“A few hours. Is the pain better, or worse?”
“Better, I think.”
Parno turned her hand over and kissed the palm. She pushed herself up on one elbow, and, using her grip on Parno’s hand for leverage, managed to roll onto her side so she was still lying under the covers, but able to see her Partner without twisting her neck.
“Anything?”
“More discussion, but they’re agreed. Dal will meet you at Yerloa’s Spring at the hour the moon sets tomorrow night. That will bring you to the north gates of the city just as they open, and we’ll meet inside the Dome just as the morning watch is settling in and getting complacent.”
“What of the Tarkina?”
“She’ll stay here where it’s safer. Mar and that Scholar boy as well.” He took the hand he still held, and bumped it softly against his lips before adding, “Well-watched, as you advise, but I still say you should let me kill the twisted little book reader.”
Dhulyn sighed. “It is the purpose of Scholars to learn, and this one has learned something of the world that his Library neglected to show him. Let him live with that knowledge, and with the knowledge of the evil he is capable of. And let us not forget, we may yet learn something from him ourselves.”
Parno shrugged, though his own smile did not touch his eyes. “It’s your decision, I suppose. Let me know if you change your mind, though. I’d be happy to kill the little dung eater later.”
Dhulyn tugged his hand. “I’ve Seen Gun helping Mar. They were both looking into that bowl of hers.”
Parno sat back, releasing her hand and placing his own on his thighs. “They’ve been wondering, the Tarkin especially, whether you’ve Seen anything. I don’t think they’re going to care much about Mar and her bowl.”
“Daresay you’re right.” Dhulyn began pushing back the blankets that covered her. “I saw Lok-iKol again, and I killed him again. Sometimes he had two eyes, sometimes one.”
“But you still See his death, so that’s to the good. Nothing we’ve done so far changes that?”
“Evidently.”
“What aren’t you telling me?”
“I Saw Tek-aKet on the Carnelian Throne.”
“So why don’t you look happy about it?”
She shrugged as best she could lying propped up on one elbow. “I was standing next to him with my sword out.”
Parno nodded his understanding. “Armed in the presence of the Tarkin is one thing, but weapons out in the throne room? That’s not likely.”
“Exactly what I thought. The throne room might have been just an overlap from the image of Lok-iKol, but…”
“You don’t know for certain.”
“I don’t know for certain.”
When she looked into Parno’s eyes, she saw there the same knowledge he would see on her face. She couldn’t know for certain. She never had, and this is what the loss of her tribe really meant-not just her mother and father, but the loss of all and any who might have taught her to School her Visions, to read them properly, even to guide them. That had always been the drawback, the flaw, to using her Sight. But with so much, and so many, relying on her now, what else could she do?
“I need to know more about how the Sight works,” she said. “I can’t go on hiding from it.” She looked up at him. “That’s the lesson the Scholar has taught me.”
“When this is over, we’ll go looking for some answers.”
“It seems the Scholar might have answers.”
“You just don’t want me to kill him.” Parno’s swift grin faded just as swiftly. “There’s something else, isn’t there?”
She nodded, lower lip caught between her teeth. “The Green Shadow fears the Marked, for reasons unknown to us. It follows that the Shadow has knowledge of the Marked, also unknown to us. In killing it, might I be destroying the source of the very information I seek?”
“Do we have a choice?”
She kept her eyes down.
“You Saw Tek on the throne, so that has to be good,” Parno said, in the firm tones of a man telling the surgeon to go ahead and cut.
“I Saw him on the throne,” she agreed.
“Watch Dal, my soul,” he said after a moment’s silence. “I’ve made it clear he’s not to think of me, but… watch him.”
“I do not like these Houses of yours,” Dhulyn said, taking his offered hand and letting him pull her out of the bed.
“They’re none of mine,” he said.
But Dhulyn had noticed that he’d called Lok-iKol-and even the Tarkin himself-by their diminutives, Lok and Tek. As if he felt somehow free to speak of his old kin as he must have done when they had all been young together.
When Mar saw Parno Lionsmane run down the steps and into the entrance on the far side of the inner courtyard, she immediately abandoned the stone bench where she’d been told to wait for the Tarkina, and flew up the stairs the Lionsmane had used. Earlier, he’d been carrying blankets, and the only person Lionsmane would be carrying blankets for would be the Wolfshead. And that meant she was up these stairs. Mar went directly to the only closed door on the floor above and opened it without knocking.
“Dhulyn Wolfshead.”
The Wolfshead had her heel hooked on the sill of the window casement, and was leaning over, stretching out the long muscles in the back of her leg. The older woman looked over her shoulder, lowered her heel to the floor, and straightened to her full height.
Heart still pounding from her run up the stairs, breath still coming short, Mar took one look at the Wolfshead’s face and flung herself into the Mercenary’s arms.
“Dhulyn, I’m so sorry,” Mar said, sobbing out the words. “This is all my fault.”
Mar felt the Wolfshead relax, ever so slightly. The muscled arms came up, and the long-fingered hands took Mar by the shoulders and held her away.
“Sun and Moon, Lady Mar.” The words were kind, but the tone, and the face when Mar had courage to look up at it, were cool and closed. “Don’t make yourself so important, child,” the Wolfshead continued. “You didn’t make the Jaldeans insane, and you didn’t make Lok-iKol rebel against his Tarkin.”
“But you and the Lionsmane-”
“We’re still whole and hearty, no harm done; in fact the contrary, if our help to the Tarkin has come in time.”
“But I betrayed you.” Mar wiped her face with her sleeve. “Please, let me explain. You must forgive me.”
“Tchah. There’s nothing to forgive. How could you betray us? It’s not as though we’re Brothers.”
Mar swallowed with difficulty, the Wolfshead’s face blurring as she blinked away tears. Finally, she nodded, and, keeping her eyes lowered, left the room.
“I give you notice, Scholar, that my Partner keeps giving me reasons I shouldn’t kill you. The day will come she’ll run out.” Parno had found Gundaron of Valdomar exactly where he’d looked for him, coming out of the underground council room after a short audience with the Tarkin. The boy had what seemed like a bundle of cut paper in his arms.
“I would like to live, Lionsmane. What can I do?”
“Don’t wait.” At the boy’s raised eyebrows, Parno added.
“You give me a reason not to kill you.”