PARNO LIONSMANE STEPPED OFF the end of the ship’s gang-plank with deliberation. He and his Partner, Dhulyn Wolfshead, had only been aboard the Catseye for the four-day trip from the Isle of Cabrea, but it was enough for muscles to begin to adapt, and it wouldn’t do for people to see a Mercenary Brother uncertain on his feet. Parno headed down the pier to where Dhulyn stood with the horses, his big gray gelding Warhammer and her own spotted mare Bloodbone, rubbing their faces and caressing their ears while they became accustomed once again to the feel of land underneath their hooves.
The horses showed every sign of putting their sea voyage behind them. As Parno walked up, Bloodbone was snuffling Dhulyn’s shoulder, but both horses were alert, flicking their ears, bobbing their heads, and generally taking an interest in what was going on around them, as battle-trained mounts tended to do.
Dhulyn was doing the same, though in her own peculiar way. Still holding fast to the horses’ bridles, she was watching a group of children play a skipping game farther along the pier, not far from where she stood. Having had no real childhood herself, it had always seemed to Parno natural that Dhulyn showed a great curiosity in the childhoods of others. She smiled as he neared her, her eyes still watching the children’s game.
I’ll tell her later, he decided. The news he’d just learned from the Catseye’s captain was disturbing; just how disturbing would have to wait until the comparative privacy of their inn. There was a surprising number of people about in Navra’s harbor, considering most travelers were still waiting out the last of the winter storms.
“It’s the same rhyme,” Dhulyn said as he neared her. “That sweeping rhyme the children were singing in the street in Destila.”
“You sure? Those kids were playing a game with blindfolds.”
“Nevertheless, it’s the same rhyme, same cadence, same consonance. How do these rhymes and games get transplanted from one place to another?”
Parno shrugged. Dhulyn had spent a year in a Scholars’ Library before taking her final vows to the Mercenary Brotherhood, and she’d never lost the habit of making these scholarly observations. “Adults like you see them, I would suppose, and carry them home for their children, like new toys.”
“It would be interesting to trace the songs and the games back, try to find the point of origin from which they spread.”
“You think such a point could be found?” Parno said, smiling. His years with Dhulyn had taught him that many countries of the eastern continent told folktales and stories of amazing similarity.
“Unless it goes back to the time of the Caids, then it will appear to have sprung up everywhere at once.” Dhulyn shrugged one shoulder. “Ah well, a dissertation subject for some Scholar, no doubt. And, meanwhile, here we are back in the land of the Sleeping God.”
“The Sleeping God’s worshiped everywhere,” Parno said, taking Warhammer’s rein from her.
“But here, on the Letanian Peninsula, he is the first god, is he not?”
“The Brotherhood recognizes all gods,” he reminded her.
“And all gods recognize the Brotherhood.” She turned fully to look at him. “I told the first mate where to send our packs. Has the place changed very much? Do you remember the way to the inn you’ve been telling me about?”
“What do you think,” he said, grinning as he took a firm grip on Warhammer’s bridle.
“I think you got lost in our cabin last night.”
Parno swung, Dhulyn ducked, and the children looked over from their game, excitement plain in their faces-as was the disappointment when no fight broke out. Dhulyn, grinning for the benefit of the children, tilted her chin toward the end of the pier.
They led the horses away from the Catseye, dodging seamen and dock workers loading and unloading from the ships and fishing boats tied up along the pier. Warhammer and Bloodbone were spoiling for exercise, but the streets close to the docks proved to be so uneven that Dhulyn suggested they continue afoot. Parno was just leading the way down a narrow lane when his Partner froze.
“Did you hear that?” she said, her rough voice unusually loud in the cold air.
“The market?” Parno said dryly, bracing his feet as Warhammer, not as well trained as Dhulyn’s Bloodbone, shied slightly, pulling him forward.
Dhulyn held up one finger to silence him and listened again, eyes narrowed, head on an angle. Parno shrugged, wishing he’d worn his heavier cloak, and waited for Dhulyn to agree with him. The main market, if he remembered correctly, was off to the east, closer to the saltworks, but the barrows and stalls of the fish market, the one that served the docks and the ships, could be seen off to the other side of the pier they’d just left. Even this late in the afternoon, the buzz of the buyers and sellers, the calls of the merchants hawking their wares, even the sound of an optimistic flute, were still clear in the crisp air. But if Dhulyn thought she’d heard something else…
“There!” Dhulyn’s head jerked up and she swung herself into the saddle, urging Bloodbone with her knees into an opening between two houses, turning away from the docks. Parno was mounted and only half a length behind his Partner before Bloodbone’s tail disappeared from view.
The alleys between the houses and buildings in this quarter of Navra were none too clean, and the streets were not much better, Parno found as he followed Dhulyn out into a wider avenue. The freezing and thawing of early spring had heaved the cobbles and paving stones and left them slick underfoot. Even the dirt lanes were more than half slippery mud. Not the best conditions to be racing your horses, but Parno knew better than to argue with his Partner. He ducked an overhead sign with a swallowed curse. He was willing to wager practically anything he owned that it wouldn’t be her horse that went down as she rode it much too fast around the next tight corner.
And he still had not heard anything out of the ordinary.
The laboring breath and clattering hooves of their horses made enough noise that the few people they encountered had plenty of time to get out of their way. Market day it might be, but away from the market itself and the busy areas around the docks, most townspeople finished their business early in weather like this; the day was turning cold, and the sky promised snow. One tall old man, well-wrapped in a red wool cloak, looked up in surprise as Dhulyn Wolfshead galloped past him and called out angrily, not noticing the tattoos of their Mercenary’s badges, even though both she and Parno were bareheaded from habit.
They turned into a street of better-class houses, a few of them as much as four stories tall with the featureless lower walls that spoke of interior gardens or courtyards, or both. Not so fine as nobles’ houses, to Parno’s experienced eye these looked like the homes of well-to-do merchants. And suddenly Parno smelled smoke, and saw as they rounded yet another corner a three-story house with flames dancing in two upper windows that gave on the street.
Even now, he could not hear the sound of the fire, and he knew that Dhulyn-Outlander or no-could not possibly have heard it either. This burning house must have been some Vision she had Seen.
The usual crowd of people who gather out of nowhere at any sign of trouble were milling around in the irregular square in front of the burning building, but something was wrong-more wrong than just a house on fire. Parno frowned as he urged Warhammer forward. He’d seen many a mob in his time as a Mercenary, and this one wasn’t behaving normally. Those closest to the fire acted as he would expect, some craning for a better view, others pointing and yelling-shock and excitement both apparent in faces and stances. As for those farther away, far too many were standing far too still, hands hanging limp, heads all, as he now realized, at the same angle. And aside from some shoving, and what looked like a fistfight breaking out on the far side of the crowd, no one was doing anything. Not putting out the fire, not bringing water, not even helping to drag out furniture. In fact, two men seemed to be preventing someone from coming out of the house… Parno edged forward into the opening Dhulyn had made in the crowd just as a man put his hand on Warhammer’s bridle. Parno bared his teeth as the man looked up. His eyes widened when he saw the red-and-gold tattoo reaching from Parno’s temples to above his ears, and he backed away.
Closer now, Parno could hear the flames as they ate through the house wall, blistering the stucco to the right of the doorway. A woman at the front of the crowd threw a stone at the upper window on the left, screaming something Parno couldn’t make out.
Flames or no, Dhulyn rode Bloodbone right through to the front of the house, swung her leg over the pommel of her saddle, and jumped off, knocking the two men who’d been blocking the doorway sprawling over one another. The darker of the two sprang to his feet, a cudgel ready in his fist. Dhulyn stepped in close to him, knocked his arm away with her left forearm, brought her booted heel down sharply on his instep, and drew her sword from the sheath that hung down her back.
All without taking her eyes from the doorway.
A young girl burst out of the now unguarded door, but was choking too much to actually speak.
“Children upstairs,” Dhulyn called out to him as Parno drew rein beside her, using Warhammer’s size and wickedly rolling eyes to push the crowding people farther back.
“I’ll go,” he said, tossing her his reins. Demons and perverts, he thought, not for the first time thankful that he didn’t See what Dhulyn sometimes Saw. Children. He pulled his feet from the stirrups and, steadying himself with his hands on the pommel, hopped up on the saddle until he was balancing on Warhammer’s back, wishing he was wearing something with more grip than his boots.
“Keep your eyes open.” He didn’t have to tell her to watch the crowd. She’d have noticed before he did that something was amiss.
Out of the corner of her eye Dhulyn Wolfshead watched Parno make the small jump that got his fingers hooked on the windowsill above them. The muscles in his arms bulged as he drew himself up, swung one leg over the sill, and was gone into the smoky darkness within the house.
“My lady.” It was the young girl who had run out of the doorway. “My brothers-”
“I’m not your lady,” Dhulyn said, “and my Brother’s fetching yours.” She glanced at the girl’s soot-marked face. “Where’s your people, then?” She’d known from her Vision the parents weren’t alive inside the burning building, she’d Seen that much, but she hadn’t been sure she and Parno wouldn’t be stuck looking after a passel of orphaned children.
As the girl said something in which only the word “shop” was clear, Dhulyn whirled, her sword knockng aside another stone that came hurtling at them. She turned her head and smiled her wolf’s smile at the thrower, an otherwise respectable-looking woman of middle years. The woman dropped the second rock-taken from her garden by the look of the dirt on it-and stepped back, pressing her lips together but lowering her eyes.
“Will none of you fetch water?” Surely there had to be some well or fountain nearby. Those closest to her shifted their feet, looking down and away from her searching eyes. Some drifted even farther off, one of them bumping into his neighbors in the crowd as if he couldn’t see them.
Dhulyn again smiled her wolf’s smile, and the people nearest her froze.
“I don’t know what you have against this household,” she called out, “but perhaps the neighbors might like to save their homes before they catch alight.”
It was like tossing a snake into a hen coop. Sudden curses and determined scurrying, the quicker slapping the slower into movement. Dhulyn laughed aloud. “Blooded fools.”
“It’s bad luck to help the Marked, Mercenary,” the stone thrower said, sharp nods punctuating her words. “Everyone knows that.”
“Is it so?” Dhulyn looked and, sure enough, there was a sigil next to the door that showed the house belonged to a Finder. She turned back to the woman, still smiling so that the scar on her lip pulled it back from her teeth. “If I find the one who helped them to this fire, they’ll learn what bad luck is.”
Bad enough they were going to Imrion in the first place, she thought, watching to make sure that the people moving through the crowd were bringing water and nothing else, if this was the kind of trouble she and Parno found before they even got there. For herself, she didn’t care, one country was the same as another, and work was work. But Parno had wanted Imrion, reminiscing constantly about his childhood there-far too much for any Mercenary Brother, let alone a Partnered one-until finally she’d given in. Looking down at the Finder girl’s tear-streaked face, Dhulyn hoped she wouldn’t curse the day she’d done so.
And she didn’t like the look of the crowd. She never thought much of town men-even country lordlings like Parno had once been showed more sense-but this bunch was stupider than usual. Why, half a dozen stood toward the back slack-jawed-one was even drooling-as if their wits had left them.
“Dhulyn!”
She looked up. Left-handed, she snatched a small bundle out of the air that turned out to be a little boy, continued the movement to lower him gently into his sister’s waiting arms. Dhulyn looked up again to where Parno stood leaning out of the third-story window, a larger child dangling in his scarred hands. Dhulyn could see the flames close behind Parno’s soot-streaked face. What was he waiting for? She took a breath to call to him, but something on his face stopped her from uttering a sound.
Even as he leaned out to drop the second child to safety, Parno froze, a finger of icy chill tickling up his back. He shivered despite the heat of the furniture burning in the room behind him. Every hair on his body stood up; even the tattoos on his temples seemed to itch. He resisted the urge to look around, feeling that someone was behind him, watching. He knew no one was there-no one could be there.
Only his eyes moving, Parno scanned the crowd. Many watched him, but there was nothing that should give him this feeling of… his stomach twisted. Someone, some thing, patting thieves’ fingers through his thoughts, probing his mind and soul… leaving darkness and confusion in its wake. Parno shivered, blinking, forced himself to take a breath, and another. Forced his breathing into the pattern of the Turtle Shora. In. Out. Forcing his thoughts-
Movement caught his attention and he saw a man in red robes with a brown cloak on the edge of the crowd, his eyes so green Parno could see them even across the square. The fire cast the man’s shadow over the wall of the house behind him. But it couldn’t be his shadow, it didn’t flicker in the fire glow like everyone else’s. Rather it was as still as a pool of ink, looming over the man in red and brown like a smudge, far too large to have been cast by such a small man.
Too large and too dark.
Parno shivered again, trying to shake off the feeling that somehow it was the shadow that watched him, dissolving his thoughts. He wanted to look away, needed to look away.
“Sir?” the boy had hold of his sword harness and was pulling on it. “Sir, the fire.”
Parno jerked and lowered his eyes to the child’s tear-marked face, dragging in a ragged breath of smoke-tainted air. Though the boy was no great weight, his arms trembled, and the sweat on his face was not from the heat of the fire. Dhulyn still waited below, her face a pale oval in the darkening square. Parno shook himself, held the boy out, and dropped him into her waiting arms.
It was harder for him to use the shape than to be it. Harder to merely look through the eyes than to inhabit. Especially at such a distance. Distance was shape, too. He shook, and pushed that thought away. To keep the human he now used whole, to keep its shape, he had to spread himself thin. Spread the undoing. Spread the NOT. The humans closest to him were fidgeting already, their eyes rolling and flicking from side to side, their heads beginning to twitch, their hands to clutch, to wring, to scratch.
A flicker of gold, high up on the wall, and with great effort he had the human whose eyes he used lift its head and look. Gathered his powers and felt. Sending his own essence like fingers tenuous as smoke, pushing into the human’s eyes, probing into the flame he thought he had seen. He smelled it all over, tasted it, felt it begin to give way, then harden again, regain its shape. Yet it was not Marked. He withdrew. It was only a blue flame after all, not the gold one he sought.
But now the humans around him were crying out, some were striking their fellows, others falling to the ground weeping, tearing at their own skin and faces. He retreated again to the man whose eyes he used, resting a heartbeat or so before gathering his strength for the leap back to his host, the shape in which his essence now dwelt.
As he leaped, he saw again the gold flame, and he took one heartbeat more to look closer, to fix the flame’s human shape and human coloring.
There.
She was the one he sought.
By the time Parno stepped off the windowsill, landing neatly at her side, others in the crowd had begun to help douse the flames. The Finder’s house couldn’t be saved, Dhulyn thought, nor could the smaller structure to the south of it-attempts to put out the fire had started too late for that-and even now, less than two thirds of the people still in the small square were helping to douse the flames. Automatically, she shifted the angle of her sword and settled her feet firmly in a new position.
“Parno,” she said, and felt him move to her left side.
What’s wrong with them?” he whispered.
She shook her head, voice freezing in her throat. The people not helping to put out the fire seemed confused, many as if they did not know where they were. Some were rolling on the ground slapping at themselves as if attacked by bees, others fought each other, clawing at each other’s faces with stiffened fingers, seemingly unaware of the knives at their belts. Others were crying, rocking and holding themselves. One poor woman wandered as if blind, blood dripping from her nose and ears.
Some few of the unaffected were leaving the water brigade and going to the aid of one or another of the afflicted, and some of those were calming down, a few looking around them, as if trying to remember where, and perhaps who, they were.
“Should we do anything?” Dhulyn said, her sword still raised.
“Leave,” Parno said. “There’s a Jaldean here. He’ll see to them.”
Dhulyn nodded, even as she pressed her lips together. Which was stranger, she wondered, the behavior that was even now dissipating like smoke blown away by a breeze, or that the Jaldean priest-bewildered looking but otherwise sane-was only now coming to help?
Parno was putting the older girl up on his horse, and passing the smallest child up to her when what could only be the Finder and his wife in identical dark green headgear came pushing through the line of people passing buckets. A few people muttered and pointed, and one man made as if to approach them, but Dhulyn discouraged him with a hard look.
“Why haven’t you gone to the shrine, then?” the man called out, but he turned away, jaw and fists clenched, when Dhulyn jerked her head at him to be gone.
The wife went immediately to her children, but the Finder himself, after staring openmouthed, began to question those of his neighbors he found among the people passing the water. Dhulyn pulled him to one side and spoke, pitching her voice so only he could hear.
“Have you someplace else to go, Finder?”
The man focused his shocked gaze on her, responding to the touch of Dhulyn’s hand on his arm much like a nervous horse responds to the trusted touch of its handler, calming automatically and without thought.
“I don’t understand,” he said to her, a countryman’s accent under the polish of the Guild. “Why would they do this to me? I’ve always done my best to Find.”
“You didn’t Find my Jolda!” came a voice from a woman nearby.
Even in the uncertain light of the dying fire, Dhulyn could see that the Finder had gone pale. His lips moved, but in the suddenly increased noise she missed what he said. A stone came flying out of the crowd, and Dhulyn deflected it without a glance, stepping in front of the Finder, sword still raised. His wife took him by his arm and pulled him into the shelter of the horses, where Parno stood with the children.
“We can go to the shop,” the woman whispered to Dhulyn. Dhulyn nodded and backed away, her sword still held out in front of her.
“Let the Brothers take them,” someone else called out. “They’ll know how to deal with them.”
Dhulyn silently blessed the quick thinking of that particular person. So the Finder and his family had at least one friend in the mob. The slower wits in the crowd were happy enough to believe that she and Parno were taking the Finders under duress, and to let them leave with only jeers and sharp glances to send them on their way.
The Finder’s shop was a small but comfortable space within easy walking distance of the house. Dhulyn settled Grenwen Finder into what was obviously his own chair behind a neat worktable while his wife, Mirandeth, took the children into a small kitchen room and set the older girl to making hot drinks for everyone before rejoining her husband. She made the Mercenaries take the clients’ chairs and perched one hip on the edge of her husband’s table.
Parno leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Are you sure there’s nothing…?”
“Nothing, good Mercenary, I swear. I’ve always given full value, never charged more than the Guild recommends. And I’ve done all I can to follow the new restrictions,” he said, rubbing his face with trembling hands. “The curfew was one thing,” he said. “And the dress code.” His gesture took in their headresses. “That was bad enough, but this…”
“What was that the woman said about Jolda?” Dhulyn asked.
Mirandeth shook her head. “That was a sad thing, but a thing no one could have helped. And it’s more than a year ago now. Mistress Fisher’s child. Everyone thought the willful little thing was just hiding herself as usual after an argument with her sister. She’d done it before, and this time the parents-the Fishers, as I said, they own three boats and the salting sheds down by the point-thought they’d let the stubborn little mite sulk and come home on her own when she got hungry instead of chasing after her as they usually did.”
“And so?” Parno asked when the wife fell silent.
“And so,” Grenwen Finder said, “the child choked on a bit of fruit she’d had in her pocket, and by the time they came to me to Find her she was long dead. The Fishers didn’t blame me-at least not then. How could they? I knew nothing of it ’fore they sent for me.” The Finder pressed his lips together before continuing. “I Found the body.”
“They didn’t blame us then, as you say,” Mirandeth said. “But it wasn’t more than two moons later that Mistress Fisher didn’t return my greeting in the market, and the stall holder told me that the Fishers were saying Grenwen hadn’t really tried to Find the poor child until it was too late.”
“Grief does strange things to people,” Dhulyn said. The daughter came out of the kitchen area carrying a round wooden tray with two glasses and two clay mugs. The way she handed the tray to the Mercenaries made it clear they were meant to take the more expensive glasses. Dhulyn breathed in the rich scent of ganje. She could use a stimulant, she thought, and so could the Finders. “They’ll blame themselves most of all, you see,” she told them. “It’s a hard day when an act of sensible discipline has the bad luck to result in such a tragedy, but they’d go mad if they blame themselves. Easier to blame you.”
“But to set fire to my home?”
“The Fishers didn’t fire the house, and you know it.” Mirandeth put her mug down on the table. “At least not by themselves.”
“Who then?” Parno said. “The Watch will want to know.”
“The Watch? What point in telling the Watch? Where was the Watch when my own neighbors…” Mirandeth took a deep, steadying breath before going on. “You hear things, and you think ‘well, away in Imrion, anything can happen.’ But when my own friends and neighbors set fire to my house with my children inside. No,” she turned to her husband, “you know who put the idea into Mistress Fisher’s head that you were to blame for poor little Jolda, and who made sure the Watch knew nothing about the fire.”
“Tell us, then, and we’ll all know,” said Dhulyn.
The husband and wife exchanged a look that was equal parts fear and determination. Finally, the Finder nodded.
“This has all been since the New Believers came out of Imrion last year, spreading their teachings. Did anyone see? Was there a Jaldean in the crowd?” he said.
Dhulyn was sure only she noticed the muscles in Parno’s forearms twitch. His lips parted, but he closed them without saying a word.
“There was,” Dhulyn said when it was clear Parno would not speak. “But what do the priests of the Sleeping God have to do with this?”
“Everything,” Mirandeth said, nodding. “The New Believers have been preaching against the Marked for months now, and after the earthquake last summer, and the bad harvest…
Dhulyn nodded, considering. The Marked had always made certain people nervous-those who were afraid of what they didn’t understand and couldn’t do themselves. In bad times, foolish talk in taverns wasn’t unusual. But since when would sober, reasonable, law-abiding citizens turn against someone who could Heal or Find or Mend?
“What’s different now?” she asked. “We’ve heard nothing of this, we’ve been away in the west, beyond Semlor, training with the armies of the Great King. The world’s a different place out there.”
“The world’s a different place right here, Dhulyn Wolfshead, let me tell you.” Mirandeth pressed her lips together and turned her head to the side, blinking.
“It seems it started,” the Finder took up the tale, patting his wife on her hand, “when the Jaldeans found a new artifact of the Sleeping God. I don’t know that anyone thought much of it. I certainly did not. They’ve found these things in the past, and for a while it makes people think a bit, reminds them the old gods are still with us, don’t you know, for all that many are heeding the teachings coming from the west.” The man swung his head from side to side. “When I first heard, I thought it a way to help the Jaldeans recruit more monks, to be honest. No harm in it.”
“Then they started calling themselves the New Believers,” Mirandeth said. “Started preaching on street corners instead of keeping to themselves in their hermitages and shrines in the old way. They came predicting danger and giving warning.”
Dhulyn raised her eyebrows. There was a way to catch the attention, no doubt about it. But Mirandeth hadn’t finished.
“They say the Marked are trying to awaken the Sleeping God before his time, and he’ll destroy the world.”
Parno fell back into his chair, his movement causing the ganje in his glass to slop out onto his knee. He didn’t seem to notice.
“I don’t understand,” Dhulyn said. “Wouldn’t the Marked be destroying themselves then?” None of the religions of townsfolk made any sense to her. There were three or four different sects that, as far as she could tell, called the same gods by different names-and she had respect for them all as often providing excellent reasons for war.
This time it was Parno who answered her. “The Marked have always been thought to have a special connection with the Sleeping God, maybe that’s supposed to save them.” He shook his head, “But-the Sleeping God’s supposed to awaken, and come to our aid if he’s needed. As indeed he’s done in the past, according to the Jaldeans themselves.”
“According to the Old Believers, yes,” Grenwen Finder said.“But now that’s all accounted heresy, and it’s more than your life is worth to say so in public, whatever you might think to yourself in the safety of your own home.”
The silence that fell lasted so long the Finders’ daughter came to the door of the back room where she’d been distracting her brothers. Dhulyn knew what they were all thinking. The Finders’ home had not turned out to be so very safe.
“Even so easily can people be turned against each other,” she said.
“But they aren’t…” Parno’s voice trailed away, whatever argument he was marshaling collapsing unspoken.
“People believe what bad harvests and earthquakes tell them to believe,” Dhulyn pointed out.
“They’ll allow as how we might be innocent enough by intent,” Grenwen said. “At least some will. But that changes nothing. Somehow we’ve perverted the gifts the god gave us, and our actions are awakening him.”
“So why did that man say you should go to the shrine?” Dhulyn asked.
“We’re supposed to go and be blessed by the Jaldeans, any of us who wish to keep our homes and livelihoods.”
“Willam Healer went, and no one’s seen him since,” Mirandeth said. “His family have sold off everything and disappeared, though I heard they have kin in Voyagin.”
Grenwen’s nod was slow and heavy. “I often helped him with his cases, Finding bad growths and infections for him, but now… I think Willam was one of the lucky ones. Of the few who’ve returned to their families, they’re no longer…” the man swallowed, “they aren’t Marked any longer.”
Dhulyn thought of the blank faces she’d seen in the square.
“That’s why the Watch didn’t come,” she said.
The Finder nodded. “I’ll lodge a complaint, of course. And they’ll listen to me, for now, even if they do nothing. There’s still plenty that don’t hold by the new beliefs. But many of them are starting to look the other way. It’s only a matter of time, until they’ll do more than that.” He blinked slowly, his brow furrowed as if an idea had just come to him. “I was contracted to Find a new salt deposit before winter set in, and the project was postponed. It’s past the time I should have heard, but surely they wouldn’t-” he looked up at the Mercenaries. “The good of the town…”
Dhulyn glanced at Parno and looked away. Surely they would, and both she and her Partner knew it. Common sense and the good of the town flew out the window when what a god wanted came in the door.
“And Zendra Mender’s gone-took ship for Berdana last week before the port closed to us-so you won’t be inspecting the aqueduct together as you always did. It wasn’t so bad before the Marked started coming here from Imrion, drawing attention to us-and I can’t believe I just said that.” Mirandeth covered her eyes with her hands. “We’re all Marked, there’s no Imrion and no Navra in this.” She let her hands fall to her lap. “But it does mean the Prince has closed the port to us, as a favor to Imrion. The last of many favors.” Her hand went up to touch her dark green headdress.
“So what then?” Parno asked. “Have you no other recourse? What says your Guild?”
Grenwen Finder shook his head. “There’s been no word from the Guildhall since the passes closed.”
The silence around the table acknowledged what they all knew. The Guildhall of the Marked was in Gotterang, Imrion’s capital.
“There’s always the Cloud People.” The daughter’s voice made her parents jump; she’d been quiet so long they’d forgotten she was still there. “The Clouds don’t believe any of this nonsense. They value the Marked.”
Dhulyn exchanged another look with her Partner. Normally, the Finders would be considered safe enough with the Clouds. Neither the Tarkins of Imrion nor the Princes of Navra had found any profit in trying to pull the Clouds out of the mountain range that lay between the two countries, and that the Cloud People considered their home. But when religious fanatics became part of the game, sensible policies were often thrown from the board.
Mirandeth was shaking her head. “Child. Can we go to live in a cave in the mountains like a pack of wolves or Outlanders? No offense, Dhulyn Wolfshead.”
“None taken,” Dhulyn said, carefully not smiling. “But if you don’t mind a bit of advice from an Outlander, consider what your daughter has said. Better to be a valued member of the wolf pack than the target and prey of civilized men.”
The Finder nodded. “There’s sense in that.” His face showing more color now, he turned to his wife. “My bowl, Mira, if you please.”
Mirandeth, a new light shining in her eyes, sprang to her feet and excused herself, returning from the kitchen in a moment with a small porcelain bowl. As wide as her two hands, its glaze was so pure a white that it seemed to glow in the fading light of the workroom. Grenwen Finder leaned back in his chair and allowed her to place the bowl directly in front of him on the tabletop. The daughter came close behind her mother, a pitcher of water in her hands. Fresh spring water, Dhulyn knew, poured three times through clean silk. She cocked an eyebrow at Parno and leaned forward in interest. Grenwen Finder was a skilled Mark, indeed, if he could Find something as abstract as a safe place for his family.
The Finder poured a small amount of water into the bowl, handed the jug back to his daughter, and placed his hands so that his fingers rested lightly on the bowl’s edge. Back straight, he sat forward enough to be able to look directly into the depth of white porcelain. His breathing almost immediately became deep and steady, and the room grew so silent Dhulyn could hear the footsteps of a passerby in the street and the blood beating in her own ears. Then she could not hear even that, and it seemed that the world and everything in it had fallen still, stopped in its dance.
The Finder raised his head, and the world resumed.
“There is sanctuary,” he said, his voice a whisper as if the Finding had taken all his strength. “It is in the mountains. But the passes-”
“Should be clear enough for determined people on horseback,” Parno cut in. “And empty of everyone else. Have you beasts? Then fetch them and begin packing,” he added when Grenwen Finder nodded.
Dhulyn stood, placed her empty glass carefully on the table. “The first thing you should do,” she said, “is take those headdresses off.”
Without a word, Mirandeth reached up and unfastened the pin in the carefully folded dark green cloth around her head. She pulled the headdress off and revealed her hairless and tattooed scalp.