Talieth smiled, though the predator's eyes remained. "Follow me," she said, and turned down the hallway.
Lewan followed. The hall was wide enough for several to walk abreast. Talieth glided down the middle, Lewan behind her and slightly to the right. He drifted to one side and looked down into the channel. He could not smell or see oil or fuel of any sort-only a tiny crack along the bottom of the stone. It seemed no thicker than his thumbnail, and the flames leaped to life just above the crack.
He was near the wall, his eyes following the track of flame, when the channel ended at a doorway. Although the entrance had a thick wooden door on four stout iron hinges, the door was open. Inside, the room was dark, and the light from the channels of flame in the hall only penetrated a few feet inside the room. As they passed, Lewan could see no more than a bare stone floor, covered in dust and grit. But the smell emanating from the room was unmistakable. Blood and charnel. A hunter for most of his life, Lewan had seen countless animals butchered. In the villages and settlements in the Amber Steppes, he'd seen entire pens devoted to slaughter, the blood and offal drenching the grass and forming a putrid mud. This smell was worse. Lewan recoiled, almost trampling the hem of Talieth's skirt in front of him, and his gorge rose. For the first time since waking, he was glad of his empty stomach. This was the stench of slow death and rot.
Grimacing, Lewan swallowed bile and looked to Talieth for explanation. She kept walking, not even turning, as if nothing were out of the ordinary.
"What… was that?" Lewan's voice was hoarse and raw. His throat burned from the bile.
"Put it out of your mind," said Talieth, not turning or slowing her pace. "You have other concerns now."
They passed three more doors-two on the left and one on the right. Thankfully, these were shut tight, but as they passed the second, Lewan thought he heard a faint sniffling from behind the door, like the ragged end of weeping or someone breathing during the final stages of a long sickness. But the steady hiss of the flames drowned it out after they passed.
The hallway curved again, always to the right. They passed a large passageway with more stairs leading down, and not far beyond, they reached another door. Talieth lifted the black iron latch, the door swung forward on noiseless hinges, and she entered.
Lewan hesitated in the doorway, but the room before him was nothing like the one he'd passed earlier. It was opulent. The room was bigger than most houses he'd seen in his lifetime, though the ceiling was low. Heavy drapes covered the walls, alternating with several bookshelves, each of which was filled with scrolls and thick tomes. Soft couches rested upon thick rugs. Thick white candles burned in sconces on the wall and on pedestals throughout the room. In the middle of the far wall, a fire burned in a hearth so large that Lewan could have stood inside it. A brass brazier hung from a chain over the flames, and something inside bubbled, filling the room with a spicy scent. In the middle of the room, sitting upon a thick rug that looked as if it had been taken from a sultan's palace, was a plain table, four plain chairs set around it.
"This is my private study." Talieth stood just inside the room. "Enter and be welcome."
Lewan stepped inside, his footsteps soundless on the deep rug. Talieth shut the door behind him and walked to the table, where she turned and leaned against it to regard him with that predator's gaze.
"Please, sit wherever you like."
Lewan looked around, eyeing the plain wooden chairs and the soft, cushioned couches. Time to test this predator's mettle, he thought. He sat on the rug with his back firmly against the door.
Talieth's left eyebrow shot up, and one corner of her mouth followed it in an amused smile. "Comfortable?" "Yes, my lady."
With both hands Talieth reached behind her neck and pulled a necklace of braided leather over her head. Erael'len emerged from the front of her dress.
"You remember of what we spoke yesterday?"
"Yes, my lady."
Talieth looked at him, her eyebrows rising a little more with each moment that he didn't speak. Finally, she said, "Lewan?"
"Yes, my lady?"
"Are you going to be difficult?" "Difficult, my lady?"
" 'Difficult, my lady,' " she repeated in a flat tone. She crossed her arms beneath her breasts, Erael'len dangling from one hand. "It's been so long since I've had to deal with a man your age, I'd forgotten how difficult you can be."
"My lady?"
"Lewan, I commend your manners, but I sense a lack of sincerity in them."
Lewan said nothing. He tried to hold her gaze but found that he could not, so he glanced away and pretended a sudden profound interest in the nearest bookshelf.
"I ask you, Lewan," she said, "have I shown you anything but kindness since you came to my home?"
"As I remember it," said Lewan, still studiously watching the bookcase, "you sent a band of killers to capture my master. He was killed trying to escape, and I was poisoned and brought here."
Silence. Soon it became uncomfortable, and Lewan decided to risk looking at Talieth. She stood in the same pose as before, but her eyes had gone cold.
"I loved Kheil more than my own life," she said, her voice low and carefully controlled. "Whether you believe me or not… damn it all, I honestly don't care. I care not if he took a different name and fled my father. Gods know I've considered it many times over the years."
She turned her back on him and bowed her head. A small part of him-the part that remembered his master's lessons of treating women, especially nobles, with deference, if not genuine respect-felt a pang of guilt. But only a small pang. Although the memory of watching his master disappear beneath that shambling manlike mound of earth was dull and unfocused in his mind's eye, he could still see it, like a fading dream, and he held on to that last fleeting image. He would not apologize.
Talieth turned to him. "We must make things clear between us, you and I," she said. "Clear, my lady?"
Her jaw clenched for a moment. "Yes, clear," she said. "We are a proud people here at Sentinelspire, and whether you know or respect our code of conduct and honor, I assure you we do have one. This fortress is the pride and envy of the East and West-among those few fortunate enough to have seen it and lived. But we are not like the societies of the pampered sultans or simpering kings. Every person here must contribute something. We have no layabouts. Your task is to unlock the secrets of this relic." She held Erael'len up in her fist and shook it at him. "As long as you agree, as long as you contribute-and I do expect results-you will be our most honored guest in the fortress. You will be clothed in the finest clothes, fed the finest foods, bathed and oiled, you will sleep in a soft bed with the company of Ulaan or as many women as you choose. But you will help us."
"Or what?" said Lewan, and he was proud that his voice didn't tremble, for his heart was beating double-time under Talieth's imperious gaze. He expected her to say, Or you'll find out what we do in that charnel room up the hall, or Sauk will let that tiger hunt you in the grounds, or I'll have you dragged to the top of the tallest tower and thrown off, or any number of threats.
But she said none of those things. Instead she looked at him and said, "Or I'll see that you're given the best traveling clothes we have, as many supplies as you can carry, weapons of your choosing, and I'll have you taken out the gates and down the mountain. You can go wherever you like. And in a few days' time, or a tenday, or perhaps even a month if the gods smile upon us, when Sentinelspire explodes and shatters the land for a hundred miles, when a cloud of dust and ash and fire covers half the known world, choking babes in their sleep, killing wild beasts and livestock, and strangling sunlight from this season's crops-and very likely next season's as well-if you're far enough away to escape that… well, then, I guess you can live the rest of your life knowing that you could have helped prevent it. Once the fires have died, the earth cooled, and the ash blown away, you can even come to the great hole in the ground where once we lived, and you can dance on the place where we died. Where Ulaan died. Is that what you want, Lewan?"