"—that I wanted that inventory on my desk tonight, thank you. Yes, I meant it."
"Well, this is everything, down to the last straw in the stable." He put the neat pile of paper exactly in front of Felaras with a half-smile of pardonable pride.
"Good man; go get yourself some of that wine and get to bed; I'm calling a full Convocation tomorrow." She shifted her gaze to Kasha. "Finish yours and get yourself off. I'll need you tomorrow, and not muddled."
Kasha downed the last swallow in her mug, and left it on Felaras's desk. Zorsha waited for her just beyond the door in the dark stairway.
She stumbled over a rough place; he caught her elbow. Roughly sensitive after her bout with Felaras, she twitched away from him. Wisely, he let her go, and let her lead the way down the uneven stone steps.
"Is it that bad?" he asked her, about halfway down. "There's a lot of rumors below, but no real facts."
He had a very pleasant, rich voice; lower than a tenor, higher than a baritone. It unsettled Kasha in a way she did not want to deal with, and she simply nodded, forgetting for a moment that he probably couldn't see her gesture in the ill-lit staircase.
"Kasha?"
"It's bad," she replied shortly.
"The messenger was from the Vale, then? The nomads are at the Teeth?"
"They're at the Teeth," Kasha got out around her clenched jaw, exerting control over herself to answer. "They'll be in the Vale in the next few days. That's why the inventory. What we have now may be all we'll have for a while."
Zorsha made a soft little sound, like a cross between a sigh and a grunt. "I rather thought that was it." As they reached the bottom of the staircase, he gave her arm a squeeze, surprising her before she could pull away. "Go get some rest. You may not get any for a while."
She turned to glare at him. But he was already gone.
CHAPTER TWO
Teo's eyes misted over, and he lost the sense of what he was reading.
Gods. He blinked; blinked again, but the old and fading words on the yellowed parchment page kept running together into illegibility. Teo rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand to clear them, but they wouldn't stop blurring. He glanced over to the corner of the scarred desk, at the time-candle he'd brought with him into the Library. He shook his head in mild surprise. Half burned-down already? It only seemed an hour ago that he'd started his search.
Is it really midnight? He sneezed and rubbed at his nose as another sneeze threatened; his eyes felt gritty and sore. He looked around, certain that the candle must have burned too fast, but he was alone; nothing but battered, empty desks and full, dusty bookshelves. His fellow Archivists and their novices had slipped away while he was deep in researches. I guess it must be. I guess I got pretty involved.
He closed his eyes for a moment; felt contented, rather than exalted, by his discoveries. But then, that was what being an Archivist was all about, anyway. Not the Seeker's sudden thrill of seeing something new arise out of your investigations, but rather the slow process of putting all the bits together until at last you could stand back and see the whole.
The whole—Hladyr bless, I have put together a whole indeed this time!
He opened his eyes again and contemplated the neat pile of papers before him with profound satisfaction. Each page was covered with notes in his own careful hand. He had put together a picture of the horse-nomads and their ways that had waited unnoticed in the Archives for a century—and that only Felaras had guessed (or hoped) existed. More than enough to inspire a soul-filling contentment.
An aged but still musical contralto interrupted his reverie.
"When I told you to burn midnight oil on this one, Teo, I didn't mean you to take me quite so literally."
He blinked, and came back to himself; not with a start, but slowly, carefully, as he did everything. He turned around to face the door, wondering what could have brought the Master of the Order down at this hour. Unless . . . unless things had gotten worse since this afternoon.
Master Felaras leaned against the frame of the open Library door, the only spot of color in the room full of dark wooden bookcases and leather-bound books. Her scarlet wool tunic and darker red breeches made her look like a flame in the light from the time-candle and the carefully shielded oil lamp beside the door.
No outward sign identified her as the Master of the Order. Not her age, nor her iron-grey hair—there were others in the Order who looked (or were) older. Not the sword at her side, nor her clothing; Masters wore what they pleased. Some Masters of the Order had gone robed in precious silks, and some in rags.
She certainly didn't look or act nobly born; if an air of pedigree was a prerequisite for the Master's seat, Halun, (silver-haired, blue-eyed, holding himself with all the pride of his Ancas ancestors) would have had it long ago.
Maybe it was the aura of calm authority. Maybe it was the feeling she seemed to project that she would, somehow, get things done.
Whatever it was, it was obvious that she was the Master even without the tiny badge on the shoulder of her tunic, of Sword, Flame, and Book—the badge that only the Master wore.
"Dreaming awake, lad?" Her generous mouth quirked in a smile. "Hadn't you better be doing that in bed?"
He gave himself a mental shake, and returned the smile. "I'm sorry, Master, I was woolgathering."
"I hope you were gathering more than that." She sniffed, and rubbed the side of her nose with her knuckle. "I hope you gathered me some answers. I need them; we've had bad news. The nomads are at the Teeth."
"I have what you wanted, I think," he said cautiously. "I found a whole set of Chronicles taken from some silk merchants who came through the Teeth about a hundred years ago."
"Isn't that a bit old to do us any good?" she asked doubtfully, pushing away from the door frame and walking over to lean on his desk instead.
He shook his head as she planted both palms on the desk top and looked over his shoulder. "No, not really. Things don't change much for the horse-nomads. Not that much to change, really. They would probably be much the same today as they were when the Sabirn Empire collapsed . . . except for one thing."
He launched into a fairly concise summary of what he'd gleaned, pausing now and again to check his notes. Felaras followed his speech with narrowed eyes, nodding now and again when something he said seemed to touch on something in her own mind.
His throat was dry and his voice cracking a bit as he built up to the really choice bit of his gleanings. " . . . so this wandering healer, whoever he was, and the merchants seemed to think he was one of us, made one really important change in their outlook. Almost in their religion. By the time the merchants came through, he'd risen in the legends of the Clans to something like a saint or a demigod."
"Which means what? That a scholar gets nearly the same treatment as a shaman?"
"Oh, better," Teo hastened to tell her, not concealing his glee, the glow of discovery making him forget his aching shoulders and burning eyes for a moment. "A man that's a scholar or a healer is sacrosanct. It's assumed that the Wind Gods have him under something like divine protection. If you molest him, you bring the gods' anger down on your whole Clan; if you shelter him, you bring their blessing. A scholar can move about among the Clans pretty much at will, and virtually unmolested. All he has to fear is outlaws."
"What if this bunch is—"
"No," he interrupted, "these aren't outlaws; they have their horsetail banner with them, so they're a real Clan."
"Gods bless." She gripped the edge of the table and closed her eyes, leaning all her weight on her hands; and suddenly Teo saw not her strength, but her bone-deep weariness.