“Very well.”
As Lok spoke, a page entered the spacious room that had been Tek-aKet’s public study. Lok-iKol let out his breath with such force that Gan-eGan looked up from the mark he was making on his parchment list.
“The Priest Beslyn-Tor is here, my lord,” the page said. Gan-eGan dropped pen and parchments, and the page courteously stooped to help him retrieve them.
“My apologies, but I have no leisure for him today.”
“My lord Tarkin.”
Lok realized that Beslyn-Tor had followed on the page’s heels and was already in the room. He suppressed the irritation that immediately rose to twist his lips. Gan-eGan looked around, brows raised and head twitching as he backed away from the priest. Lok’s eye narrowed. It seemed there was something between Gan-eGan and the old priest. Something unpleasant.
Lok smiled. He’d expected Beslyn-Tor to turn up, though not quite so quickly.
“More wine and a glass for my friend,” Lok said to the page, ignoring the Jaldean’s shaken head and gesture of refusal. He’d never seen the man take either food or drink, and Beslyn-Tor was noticeably thinner than he had been when Lok had first met him, though he showed no other signs of ritual fasting. His color was good, his grip firm, his jade-green eyes particularly clear and his movements, as he took the chair next to the worktable without waiting to be invited, graceful.
Once more Lok-iKol suppressed a frown. “As you heard me say,” he began, “I have no great store of leisure today. If you would tell me in what way I can assist you?”
“I have given you what you desired, yet you withhold my payment.”
Again a darting glance from Gan-eGan, and another from the page, as he came in with a tray bearing a fresh flask of wine and a second goblet.
Lok looked at the tray as the page set it down on the table. “Leave us,” he said.
Unexpectedly, Gan-eGan did not protest. Hugging his parchment lists to his chest like a shield, he scuttled from the room. The page looked from the old counselor to Lok-iKol and back again, as if he might speak.
Lok raised his remaining eyebrow.
The page inclined his head, though his lips thinned as he turned to go. No one in Tenebro House would ever have looked at Lok like that. What has Tek-aKet been teaching his servants?
Only when they were alone did Lok sit down in the Tarkin’s chair. “I must have time to solidify my position before I can give you what we agreed upon. A moon, perhaps two.” As the priest narrowed his eyes, Lok smiled and spread his hands. “Come,” he said. “Have we not prospered?” He leaned forward and poured himself a glass of the wine. It was a dark, full red that Lok knew from experience would taste of the oak it had been aged in. “When I am anointed, I will prepare the proclamations that shall give you what you’ve asked for.” He sipped at his cup of wine, savoring it in his mouth a moment before swallowing. And, once I’m anointed, I won’t need you. “The support and countenance of the Tarkin for yourself and your followers. Dominion over the Marked.”
“Why do you wait? Every delay allows the Sleeping God more time to awaken.”
Lok ground his teeth. The man’s beliefs were becoming more than a nuisance. Lok set his wineglass back on the table, fixing his guest with his eye. The Jaldean was not even looking at him. “I have declared Tek-aKet Fallen, but in the absence of a body, there are rumors,” he said, with more force than he had intended. “Rumors which force me to move much more slowly than I had originally planned.”
Beslyn-Tor brought his gaze back from the distance and fixed it on Lok-iKol, the jade-green eyes as bright as though they’d absorbed the light of the setting sun that streamed through the windows. The new Tarkin of Imrion suddenly wished he was not sitting down. He would feel stronger on his feet. It seemed the whole room had darkened.
“You think to put me off. I warn you, do nothing you will regret.”
Lok brought his fingertips together and tapped his lips. “Do you threaten me? You stirred the people against the Marked; that is a great power you have. But Tek-aKet was taken by surprise, I will not be. That trick cannot be played again.”
The Jaldean priest waved the statement away with the closest thing to a smile Lok had ever seen him make.
“I seek to give you what you want most.”
“And that is?”
“You have named it. Power.”
Lok-iKol felt the cord of his eye patch move as he drew in his brows. “I am Tarkin.”
“Is that the extent of your ambition? What if there were more power to be had?”
Lok sat back, gripping the chair arms with his hands. This was too much.
“What? Will the Sleeping God bless me and hold me in his dreams? Do you think me as gullible as the rabble you rouse to frenzy? You are a useful tool, Beslyn-Tor, and I will reward you as promised, but do not presume too much on my gratitude.”
As a sign that the audience was over, Lok-iKol stood. Beslyn-Tor sighed and heaved himself to his feet, his age suddenly showing in the noise of his effort.
“My lord Tarkin, “ he said, lowering himself to one knee. “Forgive an impatient man. Allow me to be the first to give you my allegiance.” He bowed his head and reached up his right hand.
Lok-iKol hesitated, but there was no irony, no smug sarcasm, nor even any calculation on the old man’s face. He took the offered hand between his own. The priest’s skin was warm and dry, his grip firmer than Lok would have expected in so old a man. Lok licked suddenly dry lips.
“I receive…” he began, and shook his head in irritation. For a moment he couldn’t remember the words. He blinked and focused again on Beslyn-Tor’s face, the man’s jade-green eyes. The room around them grew darker.
He threw back his head, lungs breathing deeply. He had touched this shape before, used its eyes, so it took only moments of weakness, seconds of disorientation before he wore it easily. Younger. Stronger. For a moment the lost eye distracted him, but a second’s concentration removed that difficulty. For another moment the original inhabitant’s shrieking drew away his attention, but that was swiftly dealt with. The same concentration allowed him to review what this one knew.
The Seer was lost.
For a moment the body’s heart stopped beating.
She must be found, this Mercenary, this Wolfshead. Who could do so?
The Scholar. He had Found once already. But the Scholar himself was missing. Karlyn-Tan Cast Out. Dal-eDal. That one always knew more than he told.
He looked down at the old man on the floor.
“Jelran,” he called and was pleased by how swiftly the page entered.
“Have the junior priest who accompanied Beslyn-Tor enter. His master appears to have suffered a stroke.”
The young page glanced at the figure on the floor and licked his lips. “Of course, my lord.”
He watched, feeling the inside of this shape, testing the strengths, tasting the skills, as they helped the stricken man dodder out of the room.
“Jelran? Tell Gan-eGan to cancel the ambassadors’ supper and send for my cousin Dal-eDal to come to me.”
“At once, my lord.”
I have got nothing to worry about, Dal-eDal told himself, nodding to the pale-faced Dome Guard as he dismounted at the Ironwood Gate. If Lok was ready to have him killed, he needn’t bring Dal to the Carnelian Dome to do it. Far more likely to suffer some “accident” at home, like so many others of the Tenebro family. No, the difference today was that the summons came not only from his House, but from his Tarkin.
Or someone’s Tarkin, anyway.
Dal smiled and tossed his reins to the waiting stable girl, thanked his escort and began the long walk across the fitted flagstones of the wide interior yard to the Carnelian Dome’s Steward of Keys, waiting on the steps of the grand entrance known as the Tarkin’s Door. Like the stable girl, and a couple of the Carnelian Dome Guards for that matter, the Steward’s face showed a pallor and a stiffness that spoke of underlying uncertainty. Not unlike, Dal thought, the look on the faces of the people in Tenebro House on the morning the House fell.