What all this meant for him was that if you knocked, the person on the inside had to stop what he was doing, and come to let you in. Or not.
Telian’s hands formed fists at his sides. There had been lots of changes since the night Lok-iKol had come, but it was the more recent ones that were especially worrying. At first, when they’d heard the noise of feet pounding and steel clashing, Tel and some of the other pages in his dormitory had wanted to rush into the passages and find out what was going on. But the Steward of Keys had sent senior pages to keep all the younger ones in their rooms and dormitories. The next morning Keys had called them all into the big kitchen where the chief cook and his assistants, the kitchen help, the household staff-cleaners for the most part-and the pages had been asked to gather. Tel had missed the Keys’ first few words-something about a transfer of power that hadn’t sounded too scary-he’d been too interested in the kitchen to pay attention. He’d been here before, but always on an errand, and the noble staff weren’t encouraged to loiter down here.
“Each will remain in his or her own post,” Keys had said, nothing in his voice showing that he’d drunk three bottles of the Tarkin’s best jeresh the night before and must have had a splitting headache because of it. “You’ll find men with Tenebro badges,” here he’d tapped his chest on the left side, “in the public rooms and at cross corridors in the Dome. Be ready to explain who you are and what your errand-and as I said,” here Keys had looked ’round at all the staff, junior and senior, “this is nothing to worry us; it’s just while they get to know us.”
One of the Tarkina’s lady pages, tall, dark-haired Rab-iRab Culebro was bold enough to interrupt and ask about her mistress, but Keys had told her to stay in the Tarkina’s suite with her fellows and await orders.
“Your families may send for some of you,” Keys had said, though everyone knew that wasn’t likely to happen, at least not until they all saw how things were going to fall. No one wanted to risk offending the new Tarkin by appearing to remove their support along with their family members. Tel, for one, had been hoping no one came for him. Minor son of a Holding, a position in the Carnelian Dome was the best thing that could have happened to him.
He’d been so excited, he saw now, looking back on a morning that was only a week ago, though it felt like a month. All he knew was he was a lot more than a week older. He hadn’t admitted to himself, possibly hadn’t realized, how much he’d been hoping that some miracle would happen, and Tek-aKet Tarkin would come back. After the last few days, a return to minding his father’s almond groves and vineyards under his older sister’s supervision didn’t seem like such a bad thing. Locked doors were not the only changes for the worse in the Dome.
He took a deep breath and knocked, waited, standing with his back straight, elbows in as he’d been taught, straining to hear any command, any footsteps nearing the door, and finally hearing only the bolts being pushed back. He took two more slow breaths before pushing the door lightly aside with his fingers and entering the room.
Lok-iKol was sitting as usual in the armchair by the open window, the papers and documents on the worktable against the far wall untouched and gathering dust. He allowed no attendance, not even from his own people.
“My lord Tarkin,” Tel said, and waited to be acknowledged.
“Speak,” the man by the window said in his heavy voice.
“The Lord Dal-eDal has returned, and brings with him a prisoner.”
Tel gasped with pain as Lok-iKol was suddenly beside him, holding his upper arm in a grip that stopped Tel’s breath.
“Where?” The man’s breath was like rotting fish and Tel did his very best not to turn away.
“City gates, my lord.” Tel spoke through clenched teeth, unable to keep himself from squirming in an instinctive attempt to pull free. The man holding him took no notice whatsoever.
“The throne room,” the man said, dropping Tel’s arm and turning away. “When they come, tell them the throne room.”
“Yes, Lord.” Tel blinked back tears and sucked in air as circulation restored itself to his lower arm and hand. Lok-iKol turned away, no longer paying him the least attention, so Tel just turned and ran from the room.
Maybe he would send a message to his father, after all, and beg to come home.
The part of him that was Lok-iKol squirmed and would have turned aside, preferring not to enter the throne room. But he ignored it. He needed to know for certain whether this woman was a Seer. He needed to know whether she had already Seen the Lens. Then he could deal with her as he’d dealt with all the others.
And then he would only have to wait for the last piece to arrive and he would be whole again, in the first shape he’d known, in the shape that, perhaps, might be the key to freeing him from any shape. Whole, he would be safe, for without the Seer, there could be no Lens. And without the Lens, the Sleeping God would never awaken.
He saw the men who waited in the throne room, but he didn’t speak. They talked too much, these shapers. He sat on the throne.
As they rode along the narrow streets immediately inside the city wall, heading for the wider avenues that surrounded the precincts of the Dome itself, Dhulyn had to stop herself from taking off the hood. It was not the lack of sight that disturbed her, but the way her skin crawled and the hairs stood up on her arms. There was something wrong. She’d expected what Parno called city noise to disorient her, to mask the little telltales of scent and sound she’d been using to keep track of her group, and stay aware of her surroundings.
So where was it, then, the city noise?
These were, more or less, the same streets she’d been through not that long ago, and she wasn’t hearing what she should, nor smelling what she should either.
It was much too quiet for early morning. In this part of Gotterang there should have been-there had been when she’d come through with Parno and Mar-people hawking their wares, the squeaking un-greased wheels of hand- and donkey carts, children running and playing, chanting their games, and the buzz of conversations, the tiptap of hundreds of footsteps, the hum of hundreds of pairs of lungs pushing air in and out. But the noises were few enough that Dhulyn could detect and identify them almost as easily as she did the people who were with her. A woman wearing stale perfume scurried by on the right with what smelled like a basket of radishes, fresh from the ground with the earth still on them. Dhulyn’s stomach growled, and she realized that there was no smell of foods cooking, but only the smell of burning, faint but noticeable. Not so faint was the smell of filth-clearly the night soil had not been picked up in days.
“Turning left in a few paces,” murmured Karlyn, with a light touch on her left leg.
As they turned, the breeze brought the unmistakable odor of a decomposing body. Her companions were singularly silent, though Dhulyn knew they must have noticed the stench. Better not ask, she told herself.
Closer to the Dome, the streets smelled marginally cleaner. but there were even fewer sounds of people. At one point Dhulyn heard rapid hoofbeats in the distance, but they came no nearer.
Bloodbone’s muscles bunched and relaxed in a new way, and Dhulyn sensed that they had started up the incline that was the road to the Carnelian Dome. The Dome itself had originally been a fortress on the edge of the escarpment that overlooked the Talgus River, but as Imrion had grown, and the Tarkins had settled on Gotterang as its capital, they had all added to the original structure. Rather than building outward, however, when each subsequent Tarkin had needed more space, they had built up so that the Carnelian Dome was, in fact, layer upon layer of buildings, from the lowest ancient kitchens, to the highest lookout towers. The outer wall was almost as thick as the city walls, and built in the time of Jorelau Tarkin, that most paranoid of leaders.