It was as if Dhulyn had thrown a cat into a dovecote. The weasel of an aide yammering his indignation, Alkoryn’s rough whisper failing to catch the Tarkin’s ear, and Parno also trying to be heard. Dhulyn ground her teeth together. This would all be for nothing if she could not get them to believe her. She caught Parno’s eye and raised her eyebrows. He grimaced and shrugged, leaving it up to her. She looked from Alkoryn to the Tarkin and back. She was here. Her decision, she realized, had already been made.
She grasped Gan-eGan by the shoulders and moved him to one side as though he had been a child, stepping into the space he had occupied, stepping to within striking distance of the now silent Tarkin. If details were what they wanted…
“They will poison you in a dish of kidneys.”
Every tongue stilled. Every eye in the room turned to her, and the Tarkin’s were not the only ones which had narrowed. Dhulyn took a deep breath, now she was for it. At least the weaselly clerk had stopped his yammering.
“You’ll be in a little room, much smaller than this one, in an old part of the palace where the walls are very thick. There’s a tall, thin window with an archer’s grille, and a shutter on the inner wall, with glass panes in it.” The Tarkin’s chair was elevated enough that Dhulyn looked straight into Tek-aKet’s blue eyes. “The lower left-hand pane has some words scratched on the glass; I don’t know what they say, it’s a language I don’t know. I could write it for you, though. There’s a worktable, with an armchair on each side of it, both cushioned. A fireplace on the side of the room farthest from the window, with a small fire laid but not yet burning. A dark patterned carpet on the floor, old with worn spots, but you can still see the outline of snakes. A cloth covering the table with weights sewn into the corners-”
“Enough,” the Tarkin said, his voice harsh and abrupt. “I know the room.”
“Well, they’ll bring you a dish of kidneys there, Lord, and you’ll die from it.”
“How can you know-”
“She’s Marked.” Only the Tarkina would interrupt the Tarkin, and she’d been silent so long they had all forgotten her. She sounded as though she smiled with delight under her veil, and her voice had the liquid lilt of her northern homeland. “She’s a Seer.”
“That’s why you include the Jaldean priest in your accusation.” Gan-eGan stabbed the air with his beringed index finger. “Now your motives come clear. The Marked have ample reason to wish the Jaldeans accused of the assassination of the Tarkin.” The man’s eyes narrowed with calculation as he turned to the Tarkina, “My lady, this is not proof.”
“You could always let the Tarkin be poisoned, then you’d know for sure.” Parno said in his most reasonable tone.
“I Saw what happens to the Tarkin, and I Saw Lok-iKol on the Carnelian Throne,” Dhulyn continued, leaning forward against the grip Parno had on her arm. “I don’t need the Sight to know what will happen to you. It’s all the same to you who sits on the Carnelian Throne, providing you keep your office-” She poked the aide’s shoulder with her index finger.
GAN-EGAN STANDS IN THE COUNCIL CHAMBER AND TALKS TO A TALL MAN IN A DARK RED GUARD’S UNIFORM. HE IS CALM AND SMILES A SMALL, VEE-SHAPED SMILE; HIS EYES ARE A WARM JADE GREEN. ANOTHER GAN-EGAN, TRANSPARENT LIKE THE IMAGE OF THE SCHOLAR SHE HAS SEEN BEFORE, STANDS BEHIND HIM,
WEEPING, AND WRINGING HIS HANDS. WHEN HE IS FINALLY ALONE, IN HIS OWN ROOM, AND HIS EYES ARE GRAY ONCE MORE, HE FITS A ROPE AROUND HIS NECK AND STEPS ON TO A CHAIR.
Dhulyn sucked in air and clung to Parno’s arm. The green again. The green fog. In the priest’s eyes, in the one-eyed Lok-iKol, and now in this old man. What was it, and how did it move? And why did it seek out the Marked? She swallowed. Gan-eGan’s eyes were gray now. If she saved the Tarkin, would she save this counselor as well?
“You will feel differently, sir,” she told him. “You will. If this man falls-” she jerked her head toward the Tarkin, “so will you.”
Dhulyn stepped back into Parno’s circling arm and hung her head, swallowing. They were fools, all of them. Listen to them now, Alkoryn’s urgent whisper going unheard, drowned out by the clerk bleating his outrage. Only Parno’s murmur in her ear made any sense. She wished she hadn’t come.
The doors to the anteroom opened, and the slim, golden-haired young woman who’d been their escort through the winding corridors of the Carnelian Dome came in with a unit of six guards in the Dome colors at her back.
“My lord Tarkin,” she said, “a report has come from House Tenebro. It seems the old House did not Fall of age and infirmity as was thought at first. There is now evidence that the Fallen House was poisoned, and two members of the House have run away, suggesting their guilt.”
“I grieve to hear it, Amandar,” the Tarkin said. “But why must I hear it now?”
“One of the runaways is a distant cousin, Mar-eMar, recently come to the House, and brought by these Mercenary Brothers.”
“Who else ran from the House?” Parno said.
The young woman shot a quick glance at Parno out of the corner of her eye before focusing again on the Tarkin.
“The Scholar Gundaron of Valdomar,” she said when the Tarkin had nodded his permission for her to answer.
Dhulyn looked at Parno and raised her eyebrows.
“And do we know where these people are now?” the Tarkin asked.
“They were followed almost to the doors of Mercenary House, and then lost, my lord.”
“Alkoryn Pantherclaw,” the Tarkin said. “You will understand that I must detain your Brothers-” He raised his hand to halt Alkoryn’s whispered protests. “This is the Fall of a High Noble House, and not any House, mind, but one closely related to my own… and it places into a different light the tale that these Brothers have brought you. Some will say,” here he looked aside at Gan-eGan, “that they wished to make the first move in a game of accusations-but enough! Questions must be asked, and these Brothers will remain here, well-treated, until the answers are found. You, I hold blameless; you may go. But see that you send the Tenebro cousin and the Scholar Gundaron to me, should you have occasion to find them.”
“My lord, we are neutrals, we cannot merely-”
“You may go.” The Tarkin stood and looked to his wife, who shook her head and remained standing beside the chair. He nodded to Alkoryn, and left the room by the double doors to the right of his chair, accompanied by Gan-eGan. Once her husband had cleared the door, the Tarkina turned back to the young woman and the guards.
“Amandar, you will give me a moment with these Brothers. You guards may wait outside. Alkoryn Pantherclaw, I know you have matters to attend to at your own House.”
“I do, my lady, but I expect to return for my Brothers.” He turned to them and touched his forehead.
Dhulyn caught herself before the smile reached the surface of her lips. It was not the Tarkina, but she and Parno who were being reminded. Dhulyn remembered Alkoryn’s workroom, and the charts and floor plans that lined his shelves, and thought she knew how Alkoryn intended to return for them.
“Dhulyn, Parno,” Alkoryn touched his forehead with his fingertips. “In Battle.”
“Or in Death,” they replied in unison, saluting him in return.
The young woman, Amandar, hesitated but finally made a short bow and gestured the guards out of the room. The Tarkina waited until they were alone before sitting down in the Tarkin’s chair and throwing off her veil with a sigh. The face revealed was striking, her olive skin darker than the norm for Imrion, and her profile too pronounced, too hawklike, for conventional beauty. But her eyes, the darkest Dhulyn had ever seen, were large and lustrous, her lips full, warm and ready to smile.
Dhulyn pressed her own lips together. She’d wondered what the presence of the Tarkina might mean; perhaps she was about to find out.
“Do you know when this will come to pass?”