She put her hands on his head, patted his rough hair.
“The Mercenary Brothers,” she said. “That’s why you’re afraid of Pasillon, because you-we-brought them here for Lok-iKol as well.”
He was motionless, but Mar saw in his face that it was so. She looked around the room at her folded clothing, her half-filled travel pack. Her instincts had been better than she knew.
“What can we do?”
“Go to the Tenebroso.” Gundaron got to his feet. “She’s the only person in the House more powerful than the Kir.”
“Will she stop him?”
“I’m sure she will.” But Mar saw the uncertainty cloud his eyes as he turned his head away. What odds the old woman didn’t already know?
A knock at the door startled them both.
Guilt, Mar thought. That’s what’s wrong with us.
Gundaron looked at her and she swallowed, straightened her dressing gown and, closing it once more with her hand to her throat, went to the door.
“Who is it?” she called. And how long have you been standing there listening?
“Okiron, Lady Mar.”
Gundaron motioned to Mar and she backed away, letting him open the door. Standing on the threshold was the boy page who served this corridor. He looked pale, and there were the marks of tears on his cheeks.
“What is it?”
“The House is fallen,” the young boy said, shock apparent in the reediness of his voice, “The Tenebroso Kor-iRok is dead.”
Mar felt her hands and feet go icy cold. Too late, she thought. We’ve left it too late. Is this Pasillon?
Dal-eDal stood at the doorway to the Tenebroso’s-no, Kor-iRok was no longer Tenebroso, and these were no longer the Tenebroso’s rooms. The woman whose rooms these had been was now the Fallen House, and he and everyone else in the family, Households and Holdings, would have to teach themselves to think of her in that way. He’d been young when he came here, but there were others here, many much older than himself, grandparents some of them, for whom there had never been any other Tenebroso but Kor-iRok. For them, this was worse than the death of a parent. For them, the whole world had changed overnight; nothing now could be safe or secure, ever again.
Dal-eDal looked at his cousin, the new Tenebroso Lok-iKol, and knew exactly how that felt.
The man who stood in Kor-iRok’s bedchamber with him, and watched with him while the Steward of Walls and the Steward of Keys examined the room and the tiny figure on the bed-when had the old woman become so small?-was Tenebroso now. Lok-iKol stood halfway between Dal-eDal’s post at the door and the bed on which the body of the Fallen House still lay, observing without apparent emotion as his servants performed their duties,
He is the Tenebroso, Dal thought, watching his cousin, and that means I am the heir. Though he was sure Lok was in no hurry to hold the ceremony that would acknowledge Dal, and change the format of his name. Even if there was no one closer to the succession until Lok married and produced his own First Born, his Kir. Dal tapped his thigh with his closed fist. That wasn’t strictly true, now that he thought about it. There was someone closer than himself to the succession. It must be fifteen years or more since that particular cousin-Dal glanced up at the ruin of Lok’s left cheek, his missing eye-had been Cast Out.
“A seizure of the heart,” Karlyn-Tan was saying. Dal-eDal turned his attention back to the bedside of the Fallen House. Karlyn-Tan rose from the bed, finished with his examination of the body. Semlin-Nor was bent over the Fallen House, making the body straight and covering it with the bedclothes until the lady pages would be allowed back in to tend to it. Both Stewards were in full formal livery, as was every servant and guard in the House by now. Karlyn even wore his sword.
“Are you certain, my Walls?” Lok-iKol’s beautiful voice was softer than usual. Was it possible that he actually had some feeling for the woman who had been his mother? At that moment Dal-eDal realized that he was taking it for granted that Lok-iKol had had his mother killed.
“I am certain, my House,” Karlyn-Tan said. “You may note the color of the skin, and the slight amount of froth on the lips. There are no other marks or wounds.” The man looked up. “It would have happened during the second watch of the night, my House.”
Dal-eDal noted the emphasis on the formal titles absently. Everyone would be very sure to observe strict protocol for the next moon or so, until they had all had a chance to accustom themselves to the new regime. After that, the level of formality would depend on the wishes of the new Tenebroso.
Lok-iKol nodded. “Do you concur, my Keys?”
“I do, my House.” Semlin-Nor gave the heavy quilted bedcover a final tug and stepped back from the bed and its burden. “As the Steward of Walls has said, there is no mark or wound, no sign of struggle.”
“Poison?”
“None we can detect, my House,” the woman continued. “There is no change of skin color, the eyes appear normal. I would also say a seizure of the heart, my House.”
“Very good,” Lok-iKol said, though what exactly he intended by that was not clear, thought Dal. Dal watched his cousin slowly nodding, the man’s gaze fixed on the still figure of the woman who had been his mother, the head of his House, and perhaps, in these later years at least, thought Dal-eDal, the thwarter of his ambitions.
“That will be all, I think, for now,” Lok-iKol said. “Have her people prepare her. Dal, Cousin, may I ask you to send the proper messages?”
“Of course, my House,” Dal replied, inclining his head in a slight bow.
“I thank you all for your service.” It was so obviously a dismissal that Dal bowed again and gestured to the others to precede him out of the room. Perhaps Lok would like to check for himself, make sure the old woman’s really dead, Dal thought.
Lok-iKol, the new embodiment of House Tenebro, looked down at the corpse of his mother. Death had aged her, robbing her face of its stern animation and adding to its lines.
“Thank you, Mother,” he said, sitting down in the slipper chair next to the bed and taking an apple from the bowl on the bedside table. “The timing of your death could not have been more perfect.” In fact, if she hadn’t died in her sleep, he would have had to take measures himself. All his work, all his planning, had not been done to place his mother on the Carnelian Throne.
His mother gone, a Finder, a Healer, and now a Seer in his hands. A Mender located. Lok turned the apple over in his fingers, automatically noting the perfection of its skin. A Seer was the rarest, and the most useful of the Marked. Not to be wasted by giving her to the Jaldeans, watching her disappear or be ruined as others had been.
Let Dhulyn Wolfshead choose to stay, Lok-iKol thought. There must be some way to persuade her. There always was. She seemed to like the Scholar; perhaps something useful could come of that. Lok needed to know what was to come, if he was to perfect his plans.
In any event he had to act quickly. Beslyn-Tor’s unexpected visit had shown him that. Should he wait until the Jaldeans became too strong, he would never free himself of their hold. For it was in no way a part of his plan to become a puppet of the priests. Let them help him to the throne, and then they might find that the pursuers often became themselves the pursued. He knew how to use the Tarkin’s power, better than that soft-handed weakling who had it now.
“Will you excuse me, Semlin?” Karlyn-Tan and the Steward of Keys waited in the outer room of the Fallen House’s suite. “I need a moment.”