The northwestern end of the valley in which the village of Trevel lay was marked with a small orchard of apple trees. There was no wall as such, only a few large boulders placed to give those who took the herds beneath the trees a place to rest their legs. On the far side of the orchard was a stream, and the shallow pass that marked the village’s vulnerable point from this direction. It was that pass that accounted for Dhulyn’s presence here, as every weapons-wise adult in Trevel-even guests if they were trusted-was expected to take a turn at guard duty.
Telling Karlyn to wait for her by the rocks, Dhulyn scouted through the orchard, ears primed to catch every sound and nose prickling at the sharp, clean scent of trees newly and thickly leaved. She heard the foraging of small animals under the trees halt as she neared and continue as she moved farther away. When she was satisfied that there was nothing in the orchard more dangerous than herself, she rejoined Karlyn at the rocks.
“I have heard,” Karlyn said after they had been silent for many minutes. “That Partnered Brothers often have lovers.”
It took Dhulyn a moment to realize that her mouth was hanging open, and to shut it. She set her crossbow on the ground, and leaned forward, elbows on knees, chin propped on her hands. She’d had lovers, of course, as had Parno, but she was always surprised by the offer. She let her eyes drop to Karlyn’s hands, with their strong fingers, resting on his knees.
“The bond,” she said, “is not how you imagine it.” They sat so close, she could reach out and touch him with no effort at all. As if he read her thought he lifted his hand and reached toward the side of her face. The moon, shining through the screen of apple leaves, was bright and full enough to give a green cast to the light.
“Look up, my Wolfshead. Let me see your eyes.”
Dhulyn straightened until her hands rested on her knees. Without pause, she lifted her head, smiling, and felt the little fold at her upper lip that created her wolf’s smile. As her head rose, she took a deep, steadying breath, raised her hands, and-just before their eyes could meet-she struck.
She caught the unconscious man as he pitched forward, easing him to the ground and searching through the laces on her clothing for something long enough to tie him.
“What was taking you so long?” Cullen said, stepping out of the orchard just as Disha landed on his shoulder.
“I had to be certain,” Dhulyn said. “Look.” She turned one of Karlyn’s hands palm up in the moonlight and compared it to her own. Her hand was pale and white in the moonlight, his showed a faint but unmistakable green cast.
Twenty-seven
THE LOCKUP IN Trevel proved to be a disused horse stall in the back of the headman’s house. Like every other building in the village, the walls were thick stone covered with whitewashed plaster, but the window opening had an iron grille, Parno noted, not shutters, and the door was barred from the outside.
Gundaron, bent over the trussed Karlyn-Tan, looked up and nodded. “It’s here,” he said.
Sortera leaned on her staff, shaking her head. “Nothing wrong with him that I can sense,” she said. “Barring that he’s unconscious, see you.”
“We’ll want to keep him that way,” Dhulyn said. “Can we?”
The old woman’s face creased as she smiled. “ ’Course you can, there’s drugs to do it, as you well know. But we’ll have to watch him carefully if we don’t want to kill him.” She thought a moment, frowning heavily. “Let me talk to the village Knife. Between us, we can work out the dosages, see you.” She tilted her head, focused her sharp eyes on Dhulyn. “How long do you plan to keep him this way?”
Dhulyn drew her eyes away from Karlyn-Tan. “As long as we have to.”
“We’ll need to look to our supplies, then,” Sortera said. “We can’t have innocent people going without because we’re using all we have on this one.”
“Then we’ll have to find a more permanent solution,” Parno said. “Wait for us in the other room, Grandmother. We’ll come as soon as Gun’s finished.” He turned to Dhulyn and lowered his voice still further.
“Are you certain it’s trapped?”
Dhulyn shrugged. “I couldn’t think of anything else to do. From something Yaro told me, I hoped I could strike at the body fast enough to trap it in Karlyn, especially since it did not know I suspected it.”
Parno loosened the muscles in his jaw that kept getting too tight. “I’m surprised he let you get close enough for the Hooded Snake Shora.”
Dhulyn shrugged. “Even those who have seen a woman’s strength never really believe she’ll use it against them.”
Parno coughed. “And what about you, Cullen. Why didn’t you tell us?”
The Cloudman’s teeth gleamed white for an instant as he smiled. He was leaning against the wall next to the door. “What was I going to do, Lionsmane? Swear to you I wasn’t possessed?”
Dhulyn and Gun both laughed.
Parno rubbed his face with his hands. It seemed his own bond with Dhulyn helped him to sense the link that they had between them. The Marked. As potent and as real as the bond of Partnership. It was a good thing, he told himself, he was only uneasy because he hadn’t experienced it before. Before, it had only been Dhulyn and him, and he could almost forget her Mark.
Surely it was only this uneasiness, this new sensation of exclusion, that gave him the feeling things were getting out of hand?
Dhulyn walked down the long narrow lane that snaked its way through the quarter in which Sortera had her house, having volunteered to fetch water. The tension was beginning to tell on everyone. Even after being up all night, she felt completely unable to sleep. The morning sun was bright, the streets-really more like stone-laid paths slanted to allow the water to run off downhill-still showed the damp marks of dew in the shady corners.
Dhulyn had tried the tiles again after returning to their quarters in Sortera’s house, and even though they’d worked, she Saw no Visions that she hadn’t already Seen, although each was clear and precise in a way they had never been before.
She stopped as a door in the wall beside her opened and discharged a Cloudwoman of her own age with a large basket of eggs on her hip. The villager saluted her with a nod and a “good morning” before setting off down the lane at a pace only a native would have found comfortable, given the steepness of the street.
Chickens in an inner courtyard, Dhulyn thought. Enough of them that the excess eggs were going to market to be sold or traded for things that didn’t grow in the woman’s inner courtyard. The uncomplicated pattern of village life. When had their lives, hers and Parno’s, become so complicated? Since Navra. Dhulyn slowed her pace even more. And she’d had more Visions since Navra as well, now that she thought about it. The fresnoyn would account for some of those, she knew, as would the unusual stress and worry of being so near Parno’s home. Even the weather might have made its contribution. Blood knew, she’d never been really comfortable in the warmer north.
More Visions; fine, she could account for those. But why clearer ones?
Dhulyn shook off her thoughts and looked around her. Trevel was like no other town or village she had lived in, tucked into its high mountain valley, its location protected by narrow passes and thick forests impenetrable to those who didn’t know the ways. Ahead of her now was the tallest structure in town, the stone tower of a Jaldean Shrine-Old Believers, of course-and beyond that, perhaps three days’ ride away, the peaks of the Antedichas Mountains to the south. Nothing like what little she could remember of her own birthplace, the cold, windswept southern plains, or even any of the port towns she’d known during her Schooling with Dorian the Black.