“That’s Ennick,” Din-eDin said.
“No,” Hernyn said. “I don’t think it is.”
The guard Ennick was now close enough that they could see his face clearly in the light from the wall sconce near the intersection in which they stood. Hernyn could see the man had the most beautiful jade-green eyes.
“Let me pass,” he said again. He had been looking beyond them, down to the far end of the Onyx Walk, but now he brought his gaze to bear upon them. “Let me pass.”
“He’s in shock.” Din-eDin pushed Hernyn’s restraining arm out of the way and stepped into the Onyx Walk.
Ennick brought up his sword and slashed at his captain, catching him on the arm as Din-eDin lifted it to block the blow to his head.
Hernyn raised the crossbow and let the bolt fly, feeling a hot burst of satisfaction when the bolt buried itself in the guard’s neck. The man put his hand up to the bolt and stood swaying for a moment before he dropped to his knees.
“Captain?” he said.
Hernyn broke his own rule and stepped into the corridor to help Din-eDin pull the other guard back into the relative safety of the narrow kitchen passage. They shifted him until he was sitting with his back to the wall. The bolt was plugging the hole in his neck, but turning his head to look at them started the blood flowing in earnest.
But he was looking at them now, and the strange, staring green of his eyes was gone. His eyes were very dark brown.
“Ennick?” Din-eDin said.
“Captain,” he said again. “Don’t-” He coughed, and a bubble of blood broke on his lips. “Don’t.”
“No fear, my boy,” the captain said. “We won’t.”
Ennick nodded, and his eyes closed.
“What was that?” Din-eDin frowned down at the body of his guard.
“Whatever it was,” Hernyn said, “it means we can’t trust anyone else who comes down this corridor.”
Din-eDin shut his eyes. “Makes things easier for us.”
“It does at that.” Hernyn glanced up at the older man. His jaw was set, and his eyes sharp, but the wound on his arm was bleeding. Hernyn quickly tore two strips of cloth from the dead man’s tunic. One he folded, and used the other to tie it securely in place over the gash on Din-eDin’s arm.
“Can you handle a sword left-handed?”
“As it happens.”
“Better to be lucky than good, isn’t that what they say?” Hernyn bent to strip Ennick’s body of weapons before rolling it back out into the wider corridor. “Let him be useful in tripping up the rest of his companions.” Hernyn glanced behind him. Amplified by the stone corridor, the voices of those in the kitchen echoed in the air around him. He was sure he’d heard Dhulyn Wolfshead’s ringing tone.
“This changes things,” Din-eDin said. “We can’t let anyone past us now.”
“That’s not all,” Hernyn said. “We’ve more to worry about as well.”
The man glanced from the corner of his eye. “Explain.”
Hernyn nodded at Ennick’s body. “It looks like there’s worse than death might come to us. Did you see how his eyes were glowing green? That wasn’t just Ennick, not at first anyway.”
The other man tapped the dagger he had at his waist. “We’ll have to be sure, then, won’t we?” His eyes narrowed. “Can we warn the others?”
But then they finally heard the sounds they’d been waiting for, rushing feet, jingling harness. Men who weren’t taking the trouble to be quiet. Din-eDin stepped in front of Hernyn. Hernyn was about to say something when he realized the man was right for once. Older, injured, and not a Mercenary. Three reasons to put him in front.
“Here they come,” Hernyn called back over his shoulder, hoping the amplification of sound in the service corridor worked both ways. Before picking up his second sword, he checked that he had a dagger in each boot, and that the one strapped to his left arm wouldn’t stick in the sheath. He stood squarely in the passage with the Guard Captain in front of him, facing the opening to the Onyx Walk, and lightly tapped the walls with his swords, fixing the space well in his mind.
He would rather have died with his Brothers, but if he could die for them, well, that would be enough.
The Tarkin and his family had followed the last three guards into the tunnel. Dhulyn hesitated at the opening. She was sure she could hear the sounds of conflict coming from the far end of the hallway.
“Should we wait?” Parno asked.
One of the many cords that bound her hair must have broken, for a fine blood-red braid fell over Dhulyn’s forehead with the minute shaking of her head. She pushed it back.
“We told Din-eDin we would close the passage,” she said.
Someone was yelling. Her hip was pressing against something hard. She must have fallen asleep waiting for Dhulyn to come back with wood for the fire. She could smell damp wool and smoke. Mar blinked, took a deep breath, and shifted. That had been the mountains, and long behind her. This was Gotterang, and Gundaron, and the ruins of the Old Market.
Maybe if she ignored it, the yelling would stop and she could go back to sleep. They’d spent more than half of the night hiding in a crawl space Gundaron had found, under a surprisingly intact floor of thick oak planks, but they hadn’t had much sleep. Trying to get comfortable on ground made uneven by loose foundation rocks and ancient garbage, with nerves stretched to the snapping point by the drizzly rain and the knowledge that they were being accused of having a hand in the Fall of Tenebro House, would have been difficult enough. As it was, the night had been marred by the noises of screams and running. A fire had broken out in the Old Market itself, and it had been close to dawn by the time she and Gundaron had been able to fall into sleep.
“Mar!” A hand shook her shoulder.
She cracked open one eye. From the look of the light that slanted down through the breaks in the old floorboards above them, the sun was well up.
“Did you hear what he said?” Gundaron shook her shoulder again. “Mar, did you hear?”
Without waiting for her answer, Gun crawled out of their hidey-hole. Still blinking sleep from her eyes, Mar followed, afraid to lose sight of him. Lionsmane and Wolfshead had been teaching her to navigate out on the trail, but in Gotterang she felt it would be all too easy to get completely lost.
Mar had a moment of panic when she didn’t see Gun right away, but then she remembered he no longer wore his Scholar’s tunic and, looking for the gray-brown of homespun rather than the bright blue of the Libraries, she spotted him. Gun stood on the fringes of a group gathered around a thickset man in breeches, boots, and a full-sleeved shirt who must have been standing on a broken bit of wall, as he was head and shoulders above the crowd. She blinked at him, holding up her hand to shield her eyes. Ran the taproom down by the fountain, she thought. That’s where she knew him from. She’d bought food from there last night.
“Imrion’s Fallen, I’m telling you that’s certain, they’re crying it in the Great Square. Lok-iKol Tenebro is Tarkin by acclamation.”
The taproom keeper had plenty more to say, but Mar had stopped listening. She tugged Gun by the sleeve.
“Gundaron,” she whispered, tugging again until he turned to look at her.
For a moment the sight of her face stopped Gundaron’s breath. A wisp of hair had fallen out of her head scarf and swayed over her right cheek. In the vivid depths of her blue eyes, her pupils shrank to pinpoints as she blinked in the morning sun.
“Is this what I helped him do,” she said. “Bringing him Wolfshead and Lionsmane? He wanted to be Tarkin? That’s what this is all about?”
His thoughts spinning, Gun followed Mar back into their hiding place. She was right, wasn’t she? Lok-iKol was Tarkin. The things that he had done, the people he had harmed, all that research, not for scholarship-Gun’s stomach turned at the thought of his own naïveté-but to put Lok-iKol on the Carnelian Throne.