“MANY OF THE OLD BELIEVERS have come to us, those from the cities, especially.” Yaro led the way down a steep and rocky path to a stream running along the bottom of a narrow vale. They were only over the ridge from the Caid ruins, but with the snow falling the previous afternoon, the stream had been easy to miss. Dhulyn followed closely, carrying the empty water bags and taking care not to crowd Koba, the Racha bird balancing on the Cloudwoman’s shoulder.
Koba cocked his head, and shook it slightly from side to side. “True,” Yaro said, in answer to some remark only she could hear. “Those who were content to stay in their shrines and hold their tongues were left there; especially the unimportant shrines, which held no relic of the god. But since the priest Beslyn-Tor has become head of the Jaldean sect-” Yaro stopped and turned to face Dhulyn. “You know there are others besides us Clouds who follow exclusively the Sleeping God?”
Dhulyn nodded. More than half the soldiers she’d fought with were followers of the warrior god, praying before each battle that if they should fall, they might sleep with him until they were needed again.
“Things have changed with the Jaldeans since Beslyn-Tor became their head, up there in Gotterang. They’re saying he’s been touched by the god, knows things he cannot know, and sees more than a man can see. And there are others who have been visited in the same way.” Yaro reached the water, and her Racha bird dropped off her shoulder to perch on a nearby rock. Yaro crouched at the edge of a small pool, dipping up the cold water into her hand and tasting it, smacking her lips with pleasure. “And there are many new priests now.”
Dhulyn set the water bags down next to Yaro, and passed the Cloudwoman the first one. “And what do they do, these new priests?”
“Preach against the Marked, as far as any of us can make out,” Yaro said as she maneuvered the opening of the first water bag under the surface of the pond. “This new heresy you say you’ve heard from the Finder in Navra-he reached us, by the way, we heard by Racha from Langeron-the Sleeping God must be kept asleep, our safety lies in his unbroken dreaming, and the Marked are the incarnation of evil in the world, trying to awaken the god and destroy us all. That nonsense.”
“But the armies would rebel-”
“And are being told they’re already the soldiers of the god, already fighting to keep the world safe.”
Dhulyn frowned, rubbing her temples with her fingertips. “We are more sensible in the southern ice,” she said. “The Sun and the Moon are always with you, the Weather gods, and the gods of the Hunt and the Herd.”
“We’re not so changeable here in the Clouds either.” Yaro exchanged her full bag for the next empty one. “We’ll keep to the old ways.”
Dhulyn waited until the third bag was filled, and then the fourth, before sitting down next to the Racha bird; Koba blinked at her companionably. Yaro pushed the stopper into the final water bag, dried her hands by running them through her hair, settled herself on a patch of last year’s grasses, and leaned back on her elbows, legs stretched out before her.
Dhulyn leaned forward. “You spoke of the old ways, Brother,” she said. “I must ask you…” She tapped her own face, indicating where the tattoos marked Yaro’s. The Cloudwoman lowered her eyes, nodding. After a moment she looked up again, but not at Dhulyn, at her Racha bird. Koba turned his head, returning her look first with one eye, then the other, before nodding in turn.
Yaro sat up, crossing her legs and resting her hands on her knees.
“I lost my first Racha,” she said. Her eyes unfocused, as if she no longer saw the world around her-the stream, the pool, and Dhulyn Wolfshead-but the past. Koba left his perch next to Dhulyn and half flew, half hopped until he was beside Yaro, crooning deep in his throat, a keening sound. “I was very young, and I found him, you see, fallen from the nest.”
Dhulyn made a querying note in her own throat and Yaro glanced at her. “It does happen,” she said. “Rarely, but it happens. Perhaps too many chicks hatch, perhaps there is a shortage of food that season, and one chick or more is pushed or falls from the nest.”
“But the trial,” Dhulyn said. “I thought for the bond to form, there had to be a trial?” That was why bonding with a Racha was usually part of the Life Passage.
“I saved him from a wolf,” Yaro said. She breathed deeply in through her nose and, blinking, turned to the living bird beside her and smiled. Koba rubbed his hooked beak against her right cheek.
“That was considered enough of a trial, you see, and we were bonded.” Yaro cleared her throat. “We were two months together,” she tapped the faded tattoo of feathers on her left cheek, “when I fell ill of a brain fever. I was near death for days.”
Yaro looked up, and Dhulyn saw the young girl, and the young girl’s sorrow and loss in Yaro’s face. Her living bird pressed his head against her, and both closed their eyes for a moment.
“My Racha, my-” Yaro pressed her lips tight, as if she could not say the bird’s name. But, gaining strength from contact with her living bird, she opened her eyes and continued. “My first Racha died during my fever. I fell into what all who saw me thought would be the final sleep, but Sortera the Healer came.” Dhulyn looked up and Yaro nodded. “Two weeks before she was expected, she came and Healed me. But when I finally woke, I was alone, my bond broken, and that she could not Heal.”
Dhulyn cleared her throat but remained silent when Yaro again touched the faded tattoo on her left cheek.
“I believe it was the Healing that kept me from following my soul into death,” she said. “But I believe I should have died before ever Sortera came. My Racha gave me his life, and that is how I lived long enough to be Healed.
“I could not throw away his gift, but neither could I remain in the Clouds and see around me every day the space where my soul was not. So I went to serve the Sleeping God another way.” This time Yaro touched the green-and-gold tattoo above her ears. “I have no talent for scholarship, and I feared the meditative life, so I became a Mercenary Brother.”
Dhulyn nodded her understanding. Though she did not know where the belief originated, she knew the Clouds considered the Scholars, the Jaldeans, and the Mercenary Brotherhood to be three orders of the ancient priesthood of the Sleeping God, and therefore three disciplines open to any Cloud who chose to leave the mountains.
“In the Brotherhood I found another kind of bond; you will understand me, you are Partnered. But while I was Healed, still I was not whole.”
Dhulyn touched her own tattoo, her Mercenary badge, traced her finger along the black line that threaded through the colors. The line that showed she was Partnered. Did she understand? She had always believed in the bond of Partnership. But now, after Parno’s insistence that they return to Imrion, and especially after her Vision of his child-was it possible that he might leave her, leave the Brotherhood as Yaro of Trevel had done, and return to his House? Marry? Father children? Did this mean their souls were not one? She pushed the thoughts away. Today’s worry today, so said the Common Rule.
“One day,” Yaro was saying, “I found myself thinking again of my home, the color of the sky above the mountains, the smell of the pines. Alkoryn Pantherclaw, who is Senior Brother to us all here on the Peninsula, advised me to make a visit home.” Yaro looked at Dhulyn from under her lashes. “My coming was seen as the direct intervention of the god. My cousin Evela, who had been a toddling child when I left my clan, had become a young woman, a Racha woman. Two days before I arrived she had fallen ill. Of a brain fever.” Yaro leaned forward, elbows on knees. “My bond had been broken, and I lived. It was hoped I could help my cousin do the same. But it did not fall out that way.”
“Was the Healer…?”
“Arrived too late. This time it was my cousin who died, having given her soul to her Racha, who lived.”
Koba keened again, this time a throat-rasping cough that had almost the sound of a sob in it. Yaro rubbed Koba’s face with her hands, smoothing the feathers, somehow not cutting herself on the razor-sharp beak.
Dhulyn looked from woman to Racha and back again. “But that’s not possible…” She let her voice die away.
“So it was thought.” Yaro looked Dhulyn directly in the eyes. “The Healer came too late to save my cousin, but when she came, she had a Mender with her. They, Healer and Mender, saw that there were two of us, each with our broken bond-and so together they Mended us, and we were Healed.”
It had to be true. The bond was there, obvious. Real.
“You were Mended and Healed?”
Koba hopped up to Yaro’s shoulder as the Cloudwoman raised herself to her feet. “Together they did what neither could do alone. Koba and I were broken, sick at heart. Now we are whole.”
As she followed Yaro of Trevel and Koba the Racha back to camp, Dhulyn was conscious that she should feel honored by the woman’s confidence-and awed at the achievement of the Marked, Mender and Healer. But she went with her eyes cast down, paying special attention to her footing, struggling to keep her face from showing the churning of her thoughts. She found that, after all, she could not rid her mind of the other part of Yaro’s story. That part in which a Mercenary Brother left the Brotherhood, to return to clan and family.
The next day found them with a Cloud escort, following the caravan road west to avoid the Dead Spot, where legend had it that some magic of the Caids had gone badly wrong.
When the trail they followed came close enough, Mar looked out over the silent and empty expanse of twisted rock and sand.
“It looks like a glassmaker’s pot,” she said. As she let the reins fall slack, the packhorse came to a stop. “But only the dirty bits they don’t use.”
“There are three such places in the Letanian Peninsula,” Dhulyn Wolfshead said. “But whether that means that the Caids had their principal places here,” the Mercenary woman shrugged, urging Bloodbone along with her knees. “The Scholars are still arguing over it.”
“But what happened here?” The packhorse followed Bloodbone, and Mar looked back at the Dead Spot over her shoulder. “What went wrong?”
“Only the Caids know,” the Lionsmane said from where he rode behind her.
“The knowledge was lost,” Wolfshead added, “like so much of what the Caids knew.”
“And perhaps for the best, if their knowledge could do this.” Lionsmane gestured with a wide sweep of his arm. Wolfshead shook her head, but Mar couldn’t tell if she disagreed.
Their Cloud escort left them when the road turned northeast once more, though Yaro’s Racha bird Koba soared high above them a while longer, looking out and communicating with his bond mate in their private fashion. The whole morning Mar had kept to herself, unable to fully trust the Clouds, and finding herself looking even at her bodyguards from the corners of her eyes.
“That would be the first time you saw someone killed,” Lionsmane said.
Mar’s neck felt stiff as she nodded in reply. “I’ve seen dead people, but never…” Her voice trailed off as her gaze moved ahead to where the Wolfshead rode several horse lengths ahead of them. All because of me, she thought. Because of some letters from Tenebro House, a young man, younger than she was herself, a boy really, was dead.
When the letters had come, her world had suddenly opened to so broad and wide a thing that she could barely sleep for excitement. She hadn’t been unhappy with the Weavers, exactly, but she’d been just old enough when the sickness had taken her family to remember what it was like to have a Holding, to know that you were a part, however small, of a Noble House, part of a greater whole. The letters brought the chance of going to the capital and taking up her rightful place as a cousin of that House, and even the possibility of the restoration of her Holding, if she could show how well she understood her allegiance. She had letters she hadn’t shown Dhulyn Wolfshead, letters which had given her a job to do, for which she could be rewarded. Her task had been to hire two particular Mercenaries to guide and protect her instead of waiting for the spring salt caravans. A woman of the Red Horsemen and her Partner, the letters had said. Mar’d had all her friends on the lookout for them, and as soon as Rilla Fisher had seen them come off the Catseye, Mar had practically dragged Guillor Weaver to the Hoofbeat Inn to hire them. Dhulyn Wolfshead and Parno Lionsmane. She’d liked them, and even being on the trail with them had seemed like an adventure, once she’d got over the discomfort and the strangeness.
But the adventure had ended with the sight of Clarys’ blood spilling on the ground.
Mar risked a glance at the Wolfshead’s straight back. Lionsmane gave a great sigh, and she froze.
“Seeing someone killed does make a difference, doesn’t it?” he said, as if he were commenting on the sunshine.
Mar shivered, making the packhorse toss his head. “I must seem such a child,” she said, hardening her voice to make it stop shaking. “It’s not as though I didn’t know what soldiers and Mercenaries do.” She looked up at the golden-brown man beside her. “You’ll have seen many like Clarys?”
“I have,” he said quietly. “The first when I was much younger than you.”
“And killed them, too,” the girl said, her eyes returning to the back of the tall woman with blood-red hair.
“Yes,” he said more quietly still. “But that was later.” Mar glanced at him again, lowering her eyes quickly when he held her gaze.
“That’s not all that’s frightened you, is it?”
“I didn’t know if you were paid enough.” Mar cleared her throat. “I thought you might let them take me.”
“Fine bodyguards we would be,” Lionsmane said softly, “to let that happen. You needn’t worry about that.” He indicated his Partner with a tilt of his head. “Dhulyn might kill you herself, but she wouldn’t allow you to be taken and sold.”
“She might kill me?” Mar rounded on him, twisting in the saddle. Was he joking?
He shrugged. “No need to look like that. Anyone might kill you. Dhulyn’s been in slavers’ hands herself. Death is easier, she says. Not necessarily preferable, just easier. She was lucky enough to be taken from a slave ship by pirates when she was eleven, maybe twelve.”
“Lucky? Taken by pirates is lucky?”
“Of course lucky. She was first captured at eight, and no one takes an eight-year-old child to be a household slave.”
“What, then?”
Lionsmane looked sideways out of narrowed eyes. “A nice respectable family, the Weavers, eh? Did a good business but didn’t travel much?” He shrugged. “Ah well, it’s easier for the rich to indulge such vices. In certain circles, small children are sold as bedslaves.”
Mar felt her face grow stiff. Lionsmane nodded at her.
“The pirate who took Dhulyn was the Schooler Dorian the Black. He recognized her as one of the Red Horsemen from the south and put a sword in her hand.” Lionsmane looked ahead once more to where Dhulyn Wolfshead rode, and Mar, released from the focus of his eyes, relaxed. “We are members of the Mercenary Brotherhood. Soldiers and killers by trade. But certain kinds of people we-she and I-will kill for nothing.”
Mar looked down, concentrating on her clenched hands.
“Now what?” he said.
“I’m happy to be free… and safe. But that boy died because of me. Wolfshead killed him so that he would not take my bowl.” She stopped, unable to complete the thought aloud.
But Parno Lionsmane was nodding. “There’s guilt in being the one who walks away, don’t I know it. You’re wondering whether you should have given him the bowl, and taken your chances with your House. You’re wondering whether your comfort is worth a man’s life,” he said finally. And you’re wondering,” he continued when Mar still did not speak, “what kind of person kills for a piece of pottery, and what kind of person asks someone to do that for her?” He shook his head, his mouth twisting to one side as if he would spit.
“Listen, little Dove, never think for a moment that Dhulyn did not save your life. He was ready to take you, that hot head boy-to sell or to slave for him, whichever took his fancy. We were past bargaining for the bowl by the time the swords were out.”
“I tell myself that,” Mar said. “But at the time I thought… I didn’t think…”
“You didn’t think she would actually have to kill him,” Lionsmane said. “You thought ‘this is real life, it’ll all end before the bloodshed.’ ” He sighed. “Mar-eMar Tenebro,” he said, “you did not kill Clarys of Trevel. His own people lifted no hand to stop him. He was given every chance to avoid his end, and he took none. The Cloud People are hard fighters, none better, but it would take three, maybe four of them to kill Dhulyn Wolfshead, and at that they’d have to trick her. It was Clarys’ own arrogance killed him, more than anything you did, or said. More, even, than anything Dhulyn did or said. No one else blames you,” he added when she did not reply. “And one day you’ll stop blaming yourself.”
Mar looked down at her clenched hands. Her head told her he was right-but her head had been telling her that for hours, and her heart felt no better for it. She wasn’t sure she’d done the right thing about the bowl-and she wasn’t sure she’d done the right thing about the letters. How much was she willing to trade to regain her noble life?
From where she rode ahead of Parno and Mar, Dhulyn had no trouble making out their words. She wrinkled her nose. That was the trouble with towns people. The little Dove had known that Dhulyn was a killer, back in the taproom in Navra. But she’d known it without thinking about it. During their journey, Mar had forgotten this thing she never thought about, and Dhulyn had become a kind of knowledgeable older sister, a guide and teacher of the secrets of the trail. More than once, Mar had even called her “Scholar.” That had ended with Clarys’ life. Now, Dhulyn knew, she would always be “Wolfshead.”
Nothing to be done, she thought, pulling her shoulders straight. Such is the way of things. Dhulyn did not have Parno’s natural warmth, his skill with people. Even when they saw him kill someone, he never entirely stopped being “Chanter.” Parno’s childhood had been spent in a Household-why, he and the Dove were probably related in some distant and complicated way, Dhulyn realized, her heart skipping a beat. Small wonder they were comfortable together. Bloodbone tossed her head and snorted. “Easy,” Dhulyn said, knowing it was her own uneasiness the mare was feeling. Mar was not the only one on her way back to her own family, her own people. Only Dhulyn had no family to return to, and perhaps no people. And if she had? she thought, frowning. If she had?
They entered Gotterang six days later. Dirty, tired, and bored with each other. The gates stood open, and while the guards were stopping everyone-Dhulyn saw some travelers being turned away-she saw no watching presence dressed in red and brown. She squinted. There was something else she couldn’t see.
“Parno,” she said, drawing in Bloodbone until she was riding knee-to-knee with her Partner. “What are the odds that in a capital city like Gotterang there should be no Mercenaries among the guards at the gates?”
“High, but not impossible,” her Partner replied. His eyes took on the faraway look that meant he was calculating. Dhulyn had first seen that look at Arcosa, where Parno had figured the enemy numbers by counting their cook fires. “I’d put us at about one in forty, in terms of Imrion’s soldiers. So, yes, there should be a few Brothers among the City Guard.”
“That’s what I thought,” Dhulyn said. “Yet I see no Brothers ahead of us.”
“They could be on another watch, or at another gate.”
“They could.” But somehow Dhulyn had a feeling they weren’t.
When they got close enough, Dhulyn examined the arched gates themselves with professional interest. They were two thirds the height of the walls, three man heights at least, and the rounded opening was wide enough for four horsemen to ride through abreast. She would give half a moon’s pay at campaign rates to get a look at the machinery that would shut the gates quickly across so large an opening. Had there been any Brothers among the guards, she might have asked for a viewing, but likely, as this was Gotterang, the Seat of the Tarkin, she would have been refused.
“Your business here, Mercenaries?” The guardswoman spoke with barely a glance at them.
“We escort this young lady to Tenebro House,” Parno said.
“Tenebro House, eh? I don’t suppose you’ll want to tell me what that’s all about?” the woman said, stepping forward.
“You suppose correctly, my friend,” Parno smiled.
“Coming from?”
“Navra.”
“Navra? Is the Pass open?”
“For military information, you’ll have to consult our House.”
“No need to get huffy, man. I was only asking out of curiosity.”
“It’s open enough for three people on horseback,” Parno said with a shrug. “If that’s of any use to you.”
“See any Cloud People?”
“Plenty of clouds, no people.”
“Some people have all the luck,” the guardswoman shook her head. A tall man in a crested helmet approached, and the woman questioning them drew herself stiffly to attention. “Two Mercenary Brothers, and their charge, to House Tenebro, Captain.”
“Very well,” the officer said. “Carry on.” He turned to speak to Parno as the guardswoman began to deal with the people behind them. “Dismount, please.” He waited, but none of them moved. Even Dhulyn would have been just as glad to be on her feet; the last two nights her bed had seemed to sway, and she’d been riding in her dreams. But Mercenaries didn’t get down off their horses for no reason.
“Except for those on City Guard business, and the Noble Houses, riding is not permitted in the city.” The Guard Captain had the air of someone who was repeating himself for the thousandth time. “You’ll go directly to your House,” the man stated flatly, biting off his words. “They’ll tell you what parts of the city you are free of, and what parts you’ll need business to enter.”
“My friend, we’re of the Brotherhood,” Parno said. “Since when are we to be treated like thieves and rogues?”
“I’m not blind, man. And I’m not your friend. If you wish to enter the city, these are the conditions. If not, move away from the gate.”
“The young lady stays mounted, then,” Dhulyn said as she climbed down from Bloodbone more slowly than necessary. “She is of the Tenebro,” she said to the man’s lifted eyebrow. “Nobles, you said, may ride.”
The officer nodded brusquely and stepped back. “Your pardon, Lady. Would you like a guard escort? These two must go directly to their House to report themselves. It would save you time.”
“No, thank you.” Mar spoke quietly, but with some composure. “I am in no hurry.” That almost made Dhulyn smile again. From the look on the little Dove’s face, any delay would be welcomed.
“Very well, Lady.” The officer turned back to Parno and rattled off the directions to Mercenary House as the Lionsmane listened, gravely nodding as though every Mercenary did not know where every one of their Houses could be found. He gave Mar another sharp nod, almost deep enough to be a bow, and turned his attention back to his guards.
Parno followed Dhulyn’s example and dismounted, exaggerating his stiffness as much as possible.
“It used to be they waited for you to make trouble before they decided you were a troublemaker,” he said casually as they strolled through the gate, but loudly enough for the retreating officer to hear. Dhulyn laughed. It would have been out of character not to grumble, however false it may have sounded to their own ears. Dhulyn shifted her shoulders, feeling the knife resting in its harness under her vest. She had the oddest sensation that she was being watched. She turned around, but no one at the gate was following their progress, nor did they seem the focus of anyone’s attention. She stroked Bloodbone’s nose. The horses seemed quite content.
Still. “Parno,” she said, keeping her voice level and quiet. “Does anything seem odd to you?”
“Besides these blooded rules, you mean?”
“I mean something like what seemed odd to you that afternoon in Navra.” At this Parno gave her a sharp, comprehending look, and then frowned, concentrating within, rather than without.
“Nothing,” he said finally. “You? Any green-eyed priests?”
She shrugged. “No green eyes at all. Not now at any rate.”
“Careful it is, then,” he said.
Wolfshead and Lionsmane had been in the city before, but nothing they had told her prepared Mar for the sounds, colors, faces, and-above all-smells that assaulted her senses as soon as they exited the cold stone tunnel that passed through the thick walls into the cleared space on the inner side of the city gates. At first she was glad to be left on her old friend the packhorse, relieved to be out of the crowd that jostled even the walking Mercenaries and their led horses. Relieved until she noticed how many glances were directed at her. Most of the looks showed simple curiosity, but some she had seen before on the faces of other town girls when they saw how well dressed the Weaver’s children were.
“Can’t I walk, too,” she finally whispered to the Wolfshead, who was nearest.
“Best not,” the Mercenary answered in the whisper Mar had heard her use so often on the trail. “Dismounting would draw even more notice. Rest easy, we’re not so far from our House.”
Mar was more relieved than she could say when they finally rode up a crooked street, past a large archway through which she could see a vast square filled with stalls and kiosks, and finally, through a much smaller arched entrance into the courtyard of Mercenary House. A young woman whose dark brown hair was pulled back off her face with a leather thong, but not yet removed for her Mercenary badge, ran out to take charge of the horses. Lionsmane himself reached up to help Mar down.
“Make yourself comfortable here,” he said. “This youngster will see you get something to eat and drink.”
“There’s fresh cider,” the girl offered with a smile, “nice and hot, and almond cakes baked this morning.”
“There you are, little Dove,” Wolfshead said, rubbing Bloodbone’s nose before handing the bridle to the waiting girl. “Tell the House that Dhulyn Wolfshead and Parno Lionsmane are here.”
“Can’t I come with you?” Mar clung for a moment to Lionsmane’s sleeve.
“Sorry, little Dove. None but Brothers may enter further.”
Another smile, a touch on her shoulder, and Mar found herself alone. She took a deep breath and looked around her, oddly uneasy with the by-now-unfamiliar sensation of being alone.
The courtyard was as quiet and solitary as she’d always imagined Scholar Houses would be. No clattering groups of armed Brothers, no one practicing Shora, no horses, dogs, or chickens. Not even any raised voices from within, as there would have been at the Weavers’ home. Scattered through the courtyard were grapevines growing out of old ceramic urns, chipped and discolored with time. Spring was far advanced in Gotterang, and Mar could see the new growth of leaves along the tough old wood stems. Someone had strung cords across the courtyard high enough that they would be well above the head of even someone on horseback. When the heat of full summer struck here, the courtyard would be roofed in with cool greenery.
It was hard to imagine that this small garden oasis existed in the middle of Gotterang’s stone. It was harder still to imagine that any harm could come to those who lived here and used this garden.
“Are you the one come with the Brothers?”
Startled, Mar almost slipped on the cobblestones under her feet as she spun around to face the voice.
“Watch yourself, Lady, best you sit down. Days on horseback don’t make for steady footing, not on these stones.” A small boy, his shock of red hair escaping from a leather thong identical to that of the young woman who’d taken the horses away, stood near her with a tray containing a large cup full of what smelled like the best spiced cider Mar had ever smelled, and a small blue plate of almond cakes covered with a square of linen.
The boy smiled at her and, blushing, set down the tray on the end of the bench next to the studded door that had swallowed her friends.
Mar sat down and nudged the plate toward the boy. “I’m Mar,” she said.
The boy took her gesture for the invitation it was and sat also, helping himself to one of the cakes. “Nikko,” he said. “I’ve been here a month, and they’re sending me to be Schooled as soon as Dorian the Black puts into port, or there’s a Brother heading toward Nerysa Warhammer in the southern mountains, that is. They wouldn’t send me alone. Are you coming to be Schooled?”
“No,” Mar answered gravely, taking a sip of cider to clear her throat of almond cake. “I’m being taken to my House here in the city.”
“So it was you that came in with Parno Lionsmane and Dhulyn Wolfshead?”
“You know them?”
“Everybody knows them! Dhulyn,” Nikko blushed again as he called his future Brother by her name. “Dhulyn’s a Red Horseman, they say the last of her Clan, the others are all dead, but nothing can kill her, she killed a whole boatload of slavers when she was just a kid like me, and Parno, he freed the kidnapped heir of Bhexyllia and got decorated by the Galan himself and rewarded with a golden sword, which, of course, he gave to our House, because a real Brother doesn’t use such things.”
Nikko stopped to take a breath and another bite from his almond cake, and Mar fought to keep herself from smiling.
“So you want to be just like them when you grow up?”
“Oh, I’m not waiting until then. Alkoryn, our Senior Brother here, he says you can be a good Mercenary before ever you have a weapon in your hands. Alkoryn says a good Mercenary-” Nikko broke off and sprang to his feet, his previous blush seeming like pallor next to the dark color that now suffused his cheeks.
“We’re not supposed to talk to strangers,” he said, and ran off before Mar could reassure him that she wasn’t, exactly, a stranger.
Mar leaned back, smiling, against the warm stone of the courtyard’s inner wall. This was a sunny corner, and she could feel the tension seeping slowly out of her body. It was clear that Nikko had a case of hero worship, but it was also clear that his Brothers Parno and Dhulyn were forces to be reckoned with. Whatever House Tenebro wanted with these two particular Mercenaries, Mar felt sure that two such legends among their kind would prosper. Even if only half of what Nikko believed was true. Even if she didn’t tell them about the letters. Mar closed her eyes. Her head fell back against the warm stone and she slept.
The office of the Senior Brother of Mercenaries in Gotterang was a small but comfortable room tucked into a corner of the House’s stone outer wall. When the old building had been a noble family’s palace, back before larger houses were built on the more fashionable eastern side of town, this room had been the anteroom to a sleeping chamber. As indeed it still was, Dhulyn reflected, as Alkoryn actually slept in the inner chamber. The office’s interior walls, and its floor, were hard oak, stained dark with time. Its two windows, just wide enough, she noted with a frown, to let a slim man pass through, had been paned with real glass lights, shut now against the cool of the spring morning. The window wells were as deep as the thickness of the wall itself, and obviously built for archers. A large worktable with a single armed chair drawn up to it took up most of the floor space. Matching side chairs with thin cushions on their seats were pushed back against the wall between the arrow-slit windows. An enormous parchment showing the map of the Letanian Peninsula with Imrion in pink was fastened to the table with metal clamps. Stains on the map showed where glasses and plates had been put down on it. Racks, shelves, and pigeonholes around the walls held books, smaller maps, and dozens of scrolls.
Dhulyn eyed the man in the room with the kind of interest she would normally have given only to his books. She had never met Alkoryn Pantherclaw, but she had heard him described by Dorian the Black. Alkoryn had seen his birth moon some fifty times, she estimated, and had been a Mercenary longer than she herself had been alive. It had never been Alkoryn’s ambition to Command a House, but that was before he had taken the blow to the throat that had robbed him of his voice. A man whose orders cannot be heard loses his value as a field officer. Thwarted in his first ambition, Alkoryn had turned his attention to developing quieter skills. Though he was still considered a formidable warrior and tactician, even among a Brotherhood of warriors, Alkoryn Pantherclaw was now more often called the Charter, and, among other things, he was the chief mapmaker for the Brotherhood.
Alkoryn waited to speak until Dhulyn and Parno had drawn up chairs, and they had all been served with sweet cakes and hot cider mixed with a little ganje.
“Your arrival is timely, very timely.” The old man’s voice was rough and barely louder than a whisper. “How was Navra when you left it? What of the Pass?”
As Senior Brother of Imrion, Alkoryn Pantherclaw was, in effect, the Senior Mercenary for the whole Peninsula-should his authority ever be required by one of his Brothers. As such, he had a responsibility to collect any information that might touch upon his charge. He listened patiently while his junior Brothers told him of the dredging being planned in Navra’s harbor, the new salt mine, and the expansion of the evaporation ponds. He heard with some amusement their story of what had happened to them in Clan Trevel.
“So Yaro Hawkwing prospers,” the old man croaked. “I rejoice to hear it. Do we now have allies among Clan Trevel?”
“We might,” Dhulyn said. She glanced at Parno in time to see him nodding. “Perhaps if we sent them some acknowledgment…”
“I’ll think what form it could take. I have my contacts with Clan Pompano, but we may have need of all the Clouds if what I think is coming comes,” Alkoryn said dryly. He took up the ceramic jug of cooling cider and refilled the cups. Dhulyn saw that two knuckles of his left hand were swollen, but whether from old breaking or from arthritis she could not tell. “You came as bodyguards?” he continued as he set down the jug.
Parno exchanged glances with Dhulyn. She gave him a slight nod. “Not merely bodyguards, Alkoryn my Brother,” he began. He paused and took a sip from his cup. Dhulyn suppressed a smile. The way he was drawing out the moment, Parno should have been an actor, she thought, as her Partner blotted his lips carefully with the square of linen provided. “We have come to Gotterang as the guides and bodyguards of a Lady orphan of House Tenebro, no less. Any reason for such an exalted House to be gathering up their lesser kin?”
Alkoryn’s lips formed a silent whistle and his eyes narrowed. “She’s not the first, and that’s a fact,” he said. “My bones tell me this may be part of what I see coming,” he said. “Though I don’t know how.” He sat back, leaning his right elbow on the arm of his chair. “The Tenebroso is an old woman and gossip says she’s failing. The Kir, Lok-iKol, is a forward-looking man, and may very well be thinking to reestablish the Tenebro claim on lost lands. But that in itself is no reason to bring the girl here.”
“Mar-eMar feels there’s a wedding in the wind, and it’s true she has letters she hasn’t shown us,” Dhulyn said.
“She’s not advantageous enough a match for the Kir himself,” Alkoryn said, taking a sip of his cider and returning the glass to the table. “Though there’s a cousin in the House, Dal-eDal, from an Imrion Household, not a Holding as is this Mar-eMar. A marriage there would be a way to increase the young man’s property without losing anything of value to the main branch. House Tenebro has had bad luck enough in the last twenty years or so; Lok-iKol has no cousins of his own generation left, they say, though there are some few of their children about, like this Mar of yours, and Dal-eDal himself, for that matter.” He glanced at his younger Brothers. “With things the way they are at present, it’s no bad idea for those in the Houses to put their hands on all their kin.”
“The way things are at present?” said Parno. “Like these new regulations governing who may ride? This has some connection with the doings of House Tenebro?” Something in his voice made Dhulyn glance at him. Was he a little paler than before? What had there been in Alkoryn’s remarks to give Parno that stricken look?
“Perhaps only in the mind of an old Brother, but I’ve seen too much to be easy with the changes of the last few years-still less with those of the last few months.” Alkoryn took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “The riding law is just the latest, and unpopular as it is, it helps more than it hinders. There’s always trouble in a city,” he said. “The bigger the city, the more trouble. You’d think that people weren’t meant to live together in such quantities, but there, that’s a subject for another time.”
Dhulyn exchanged a look with Parno as the older man pushed his white hair back from his face with both hands.
“It would be hard to pinpoint exactly when things began to go badly, or why it began, for that matter, but the normal incidents one expects in city life have grown more frequent, and more disturbing. More knifings and fewer fistfights, if you follow me. Associations and clubs are becoming gangs, and it’s not unusual now for a quarrel between two merchants to turn into a full-blown riot in a matter of minutes, or for groups to be set upon in the streets.”
Parno searched the tabletop for a moment before finding a relatively empty spot to set his glass down.
“You could see something was off-center,” he said, “Even walking here.” He glanced at Dhulyn. “It’s been a few years since either of us were in Gotterang-before we Partnered-but there’s a bad feeling in the streets. I can’t put my finger on it-”
“Not enough children,” Dhulyn said, and lifted her blood-red brows as both men looked at her. “None playing games in the streets, anyway, and the people who were out, looking at each other sideways.”
Alkoryn nodded again. “You can see the tension now, those of us who know what to look for. The City Guards are always on the alert, and they’ve taken to traveling in groups of five, instead of the usual pairs. The order restricting riding gives the Watch greater mobility, and lessens the chances of troublemakers getting away, but honest people feel it’s too severe.”
“Can’t make the nobles walk, I suppose,” Parno said.
“That would make them more trouble, not less,” Dhulyn said, her eyes round and innocent in her scarred face. Both men smiled.
“There was a riot in the Calzos district two months ago, and the City Guards were overwhelmed. The Tarkin sent the Guard from the Carnelian Dome and the crowd dispersed. There were delegations to the Tarkin after that and things looked to be getting better, but every time the violence dies down for a few days, something happens that starts it up again. Things are now at the point that only the presence of the Carnelian Guard will convince people to disperse.”
“Let me guess,” Parno said. “Something to do with the Marked or with these New Believers we’ve heard about.”
“What haven’t you told me?”
Parno looked at Dhulyn, and she nodded. “There was a fire in Navra,” she said. Alkoryn Pantherclaw’s face grew grimmer and grimmer as she told the story, and he was silent a long while when she finished.
“I did not realize it had spread so far. There have been fires here as well and, I think, worse things. Nor is there doubt in anyone’s mind that the new sect of the Jaldeans are behind it,” Alkoryn said. “But proving it’s a different matter. Even those who don’t follow the Sleeping God are being turned against the Marked, being told that they profit from the misfortunes of others.”
“Well, so do we if it comes to that,” Parno pointed out.
“Yes,” Dhulyn said. “But we risk our lives doing it; that may keep us safe a while longer.”
“Oh, in public and during the day the New Believers preach tolerance and understanding, pleading with the Marked to come to their shrines for guidance and cleansing.” The old man shook his head. “I see from your faces you’ve been told what this cleansing means.”
“All this turmoil, at least, should mean we’ll find plenty of work, once we’ve delivered our charge.”
“Don’t count your money yet,” Alkoryn said. “There’s been no new hiring of Mercenary Brothers for weeks, and some long in guard service have been let go.”
“All these problems, the City Guard confounded, and no work for Mercenaries?”
“Nothing overt has been either said or done,” Alkoryn said. “But again, this is nothing new in our history. There are changes coming, with these New Believers, and it won’t be the first time that as a Brotherhood we ride them out, rather than fight them out.”
“And the Marked?”
“We’ve a little something in hand for them, never fear. When you’ve finished with the Tenebro girl, I will have an assignment for you myself. But tell me, you heard nothing of this in the West?”
“Not in the court of the Great King,” Dhulyn said. “There are Marked there, of course, but very few, and well-respected.”
“As bad as it is here in Imrion, this whole eastern end of the world is like kindling awaiting the match. Kondria has warned the Tarkin that if there are any further attacks on the Marked, it will withdraw its embassy.”
“That means war.”
Dhulyn shot a glance at Parno. Was there worry in his voice?
“And if Kondria is drawn into a religious war with Imrion, their allies will follow,” Alkoryn said. The look he gave them was grave. “The Tarkin, and his hold on Imrion, is all that keeps the east from bursting into flame.”
“If the east is burning, it may attract the attention of the Great King,” Dhulyn said. “And bring the rest of the world into the conflict.” She frowned down at the table, tracing her finger along a shoreline drawn in deep sea green. She froze.
FIRES
She’d Seen fires consuming shores, mountains, and rivers.
“With things so uncertain, perhaps you should consider moving your maps,” she said. Parno looked at her, eyebrows raised in inquiry, but she moved her head minutely, side to side.
“What Dorian has said of you is true,” Alkoryn said after a short silence. “Your intuition is superb. It is, indeed, part of my plan to move these records to a safer spot.”
“I would start moving them now,” Dhulyn said, gesturing around her. “I think you are so used to them, my Brother, that you don’t realize how much packing all this will take.”
“You may be right.”
“In the meantime, since Imrion is not yet at war, we’ll take the little Dove to Tenebro House…” Dhulyn let the words fade away as Alkoryn held up his hand.
“The day’s well advanced. Wait until morning and take no chances. And in the meantime, I have something here that may be of use, though it cannot leave this room.” He twisted in his seat and reached over the low back of his chair. Dhulyn automatically noted that the old man was still limber enough to perform such an action. After a moment’s hesitation he selected a bundle of thin parchments rolled together and tied with a wide blue ribbon. This he untied and spread the curling papers, turning brown around the outer edges, flat on the map that covered the table. Parno passed over several stone weights from his side of the table.
Floor plans, Dhulyn realized. Layer after intricate layer of floor plans.
“Incredible,” Parno murmured, pulling one sheet closer to his side of the table. The house was a maze. Halls that went nowhere, others that simply turned back on themselves, forcing the uninitiated to travel in circles, fake walls, secret passages, more stairwells than normally appear in a handful of buildings.
“Built in the time of Jorelau Tarkin,” Alkoryn said. “And reflecting the paranoia of that day.”
Dhulyn tapped the corner of one sheet, where the mark of House Tenebro was clearly drawn.
“How is this possible?” she said, smiling her wolf’s smile.
Alkoryn shrugged. “Over the years many Brothers have served as guards and instructors in Tenebro House. We have three there now, as it happens. For that reason, I will ask you to exercise the greatest care while you are on their premises.”
Dhulyn nodded, her eyes still on the plans. Mercenary Brothers might find themselves on opposite sides on a battlefield, but anywhere else they took care of one another.
She looked up from the drawings. “Is the old Bootmaker’s Inn still in business?”
Alkoryn nodded. “You might as well leave your horses here, however. You won’t be riding them, and it will save you their board.”
“Let’s hope that’s all we have to worry about,” Parno said, still studying the floor plans of Tenebro House.