“I use my own tile?”
“A Sight that involved you might prove to be most useful,” Dal suggested.
Dhulyn nodded and took the tile he handed her, setting it down in the center of the table as Dal had shown her. How do I call the Sleeping God? she asked herself. As she placed the tiles she thought of as the other Marks, Dal swept the rest off the table, and shook them in their box. As they were placed, Dhulyn tried not to guide her thoughts, but to let them float freely, making whatever associations they might form by themselves. Her Visions usually came to her in her sleep; those very few she’d had in her waking state had always fallen upon her like a blow. Unlike Gundaron, she had never used her Mark deliberately, never sought after a Vision. Perhaps she would See one, though, if their methods were not too broken. And providing the Visions were not so thoroughly linked to her woman’s time that this effort was wasted. That tile was the Tarkin of Swords, clearly a man and he was holding a type of sword very much like one she owns, though she doesn’t use it much as it’s…
NOT THE SWORD OF A HORSEMAN. SHE CAN SEE NOW THAT THE MERCENARY’S CLOTHES ARE BRIGHTLY COLORED, AND FIT HIM CLOSELY EXCEPT FOR THE SLEEVES WHICH FALL FROM HIS SHOULDERS LIKE INVERTED LILIES.
HE TURNS AWAY FROM THE STRANGELY TIDY WORKTABLE AND TOWARD A CIRCULAR MIRROR, AS TALL AS HE IS HIMSELF. THE MIRROR DOESN’T REFLECT THE ROOM, HOWEVER, BUT SHOWS A NIGHT SKY FULL OF STARS. HIS LIPS MOVE AND SHE SEES HIM NOW FROM THAT SIDE, AS IF SHE WERE STANDING IN FRONT OF THE MIRROR AND HIS LIPS FORM WHAT DHULYN KNOWS ARE THE WORDS FROM THE BOOK. ADELGARREMBIL HE SAYS, AND THEN ACUCHEEYAROB. A FOREIGN TONGUE?
“Wolfshead. Wolfshead wake up.”
Dhulyn snatched the hand from her shoulder and only just stopped from breaking the wrist when she realized the person shaking her was Mar-eMar. Dhulyn’s heart grew cold. The little Dove was out of breath and as pale as lilies. Behind her, in the doorway of Dal-eLad’s salon, was the Mercenary Brother Oswin Battlehammer.
“Dhulyn, hurry. Tek-aKet’s sitting on the Carnelian Throne and he’s-” she shot a glance over her shoulder at the Brother in the doorway. “He’s raving.”
“Where’s Parno?” Dhulyn was already into the hallway and heading to the courtyard where Bloodbone waited.
“At the doors to the throne room letting no one in, but you must…”
Mar fell behind, but Dhulyn went on running. She knew perfectly well what the girl had been about to say. “You must hurry.” Of course she must. Wait too long, and Parno would go in without her.
Twenty-five
“HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?” Dhulyn stood with her right hand pressed tightly against the ornate carving of the doors to the Carnelian Throne Room, as if she could somehow reach through and sense what was happening inside.
“You think I know?” Parno growled. “I was helping the Tarkina with the Semlorian ambassador when the page, Telian-Han, came running for me. He’d gone to the Tarkin’s room with the midday meal and found the guard who’d been left there dead on the floor.”
“And the Tarkina?”
“Keeping the ambassador calm, I imagine.” Parno closed his fingers around her upper arm. “Dhulyn, my heart, don’t do it. It doesn’t have a head wound now. What if it-it must know you are coming? The best you’ll accomplish is to send it to another body.”
“You prefer to have the Green Shadow as Tarkin of Imrion?” She looked at him as if she didn’t even feel his grip on her arm. Her eyes were as bright as the edge of a knife.
“Besides, I promised him I would kill him. I gave my word.”
“We have only you and Gundaron. If it destroys you before you can kill Tek-aKet, we will never prevail against it.”
“I gave my word.”
“At least let me come in with you.” He knew it was no use even before she started shaking her head.
“I can kill him,” she said. “I don’t know that I could kill you if…
Parno let his hand drop to his side. He’d known what her answer would be, but he’d had to try. She was what she was. When Dhulyn took his face in her hands, he did not pull away.
“Beslyn-Tor said, ‘like this,’ did he not?” Dhulyn’s steel-gray eyes fixed on his.
Parno closed his hands around her wrists. “He did.”
“Eye-to-eye, that’s how the Shadow moves, and how, I’ll wager, he destroys.”
“And so?”
“And so? Blindfold me, you idiot.”
Eyes covered with a piece of silk torn from one of the hangings and threaded through the braids of her hair for security, Dhulyn settled her shoulders, breathing deeply, slowly. Beginning the discipline she privately thought of as Blind Parno’s Shora, from when the horizon sickness had forced her Partner to go blindfolded to cross the Blasonar Plains. She became conscious of the timing of her breathing, the movement of the air, so that each breath took the same length of time going in and going out. In. Out. As her breathing fell into a rhythm, as her body and her thoughts calmed, in the darkness of the blindfold her senses woke. She heard the air move through Parno’s lungs, and the soft susurration of his clothes as they adjusted to the movement of his chest. She felt her own skin move against her vest as she breathed, and pushed her senses outward.
Smelled now, not just Parno’s familiar smell, but the garlic in the sauce of the partridge they’d eaten for luncheon, the wine he’d had, and the bay leaf in the water he’d used to cleanse his hands. She felt and heard Parno slip the makeshift bar free and eased herself through the opening, moving only enough to allow him to shut the door behind her. She could hear two sets of breathing now-two?-and stilled her own to listen better. From the left. Low, steady, almost a snore. Unconscious, then, and neither help nor hindrance. And the second? Above.
Dhulyn stepped to the right in time to feel the displacement of air as the body of her assailant landed to her left, his grunt sounding loud to her sensitive hearing. She ducked under the blow she sensed sweeping toward her head, felt the air push past her face and seized the wrist instead of dancing away as instinct and training demanded. She continued her turn into her opponent until she had it back against the wall, her forearm against its throat, and her knife buried in its chest.
Dhulyn eased the body to the floor, pulled her knife out of the wound and wiped it clean on her breeches before carefully feeling upward with her free hand and covering the dead eyes. Many fights were lost through too early belief that they were won. No point in being careless now. She took a moment to allow her breathing to return to normal, to release herself from the discipline of the Shora before laying the knife down behind her and using that hand to dig her fingers into the side of the throat, under the jaw. Nothing, no pulse. The blood had stopped moving from the wound. She made sure the eyelids were closed before she recovered the knife, inserted it with care between her skin and the blindfold, and sliced the strip of cloth free of her face.
“I fulfill my oath, Tarkin of Imrion,” she whispered, touching her forehead with her fingertips.
She rose to her feet in one movement and advanced in the direction of the other breathing she’d heard. She stopped when two legs, one folded under the other, came into her view on the far side of the dais. She advanced even more slowly, certain that she recognized those soft-soled boots with their intricate embroidery. Her lips formed a soundless whistle as she knelt, sheathed her knives, and pulled loose one of the braided leather cords that were woven into her vest. Two important questions leaped immediately to mind.
What had Cullen of Langeron been doing in the Throne room? And was this still Cullen of Langeron?
Dhulyn had just finished trussing the unconscious Cloudman when the doors of the throne room were flung open behind her. The rapid footsteps stopped only paces into the room, and then advanced once more, slowly. The last knot secure, Dhulyn looked around, knowing already who she would see.