Brewydd laughed and winked at Seraph. “I’ll say yes, only because that handsome young Guardian who’s been waiting outside will come, too.”

Seraph laughed, yawned, and left for their tent.

“Seraph, wake up,” Hennea’s voice was soft and disappeared into the dream.

“Mother,” murmured Jes.

At the sound, Seraph sat up and opened her eyes almost in the same motion. “Jes, are you all right?”

He smiled his sweet smile. “Fine, Mother, but you’re going to wake the camp.”

Seraph yawned and tried to find the reason they’d woken her up in what Jes had just said. It was still dark out and everyone except her was lying down. Hennea had a gentle grip on Seraph’s arm.

“You were having nightmares,” said Lehr, rolling on his side so he could see her more easily.

When he said it, she remembered. Tier had been sitting on a throne of oak, ash, and rowan while a spell was worked around him. He’d been playing one of the songs he played often at the tavern, though she couldn’t remember which one it was. She’d run to him, knelt at his feet, and set her head in his lap as she had sometimes when the nightmares had been so bad after her brother had died. But there had been something wrong. He’d kept playing, ignoring her entirely. Finally she’d reached up to touch the skin of his arm and screamed. His flesh had been warm, she could feel blood pulse under her fingertips, but she knew that he was dead.

Nervously she ran her fingers in her hair. “Thank you for waking me,” she said, lying down again.

“What did you dream of?” asked Hennea.

“I don’t remember,” Seraph lied. She had no talent for foreseeing, she reminded herself firmly. It had only been a dream.

She lay back and stared at the top of the tent. She knew that Jes and Lehr assumed they’d find Tier hale and whole and the only problem would be getting him out, but Seraph had too much experience to believe in happy endings.

He might be dead.

She’d never told Tier that she loved him. Never once.

She had done her best to turn herself into a good wife, tried to become the person he needed as helpmeet. She knew he’d assume that she’d never told him that she loved him because she didn’t.

He was wrong.

Tier felt guilty for so much: that she’d been forced to marry him, that she’d been so young. Their marriage had freed him from the burden of taking over the family bakery and he felt guilty about that, too. He’d gained his freedom and she’d lost hers, lost her chance to rejoin her people. If she’d ever told him that she loved him, he’d have told her that he loved her, too.

He’d have lied for her.

Tier was the most truthful person she knew. He’d have lied to her out of guilt, and she couldn’t abide that, so she’d never told him.

Dry-eyed, she stared at the tent ceiling and hoped that she’d get the chance to hear him lie to her.

CHAPTER 13

Phoran nervously caressed the stack of parchment on his bed. He had already carefully organized it, placing the one that would make his first bid for power fifteenth down. Far enough down that many of the Septs would have relaxed their guard, but not so far that they would have quit listening entirely.

A light tap at his door made him take three quick steps away from the bed. Then he realized that the bed was an odd place for formal documents, so he ran back, snatched them up, and placed them on his writing desk. He wouldn’t want anyone to think that he’d spent all day and most of the night going through them. Most of the Septs would think that he was merely tormenting Douver, the council secretary: everyone knew that Phoran couldn’t stand the worm.

The quiet tap sounded again. “Your Highness?” said the guard who stood his watch at the door to the Emperor’s bedchamber. “My lord, Avar, Sept of Leheigh, begs entrance.”

“Avar?” Phoran said distractedly. Now that he thought of it, the writing desk was an odd choice as well. He couldn’t remember ever actually sitting at it—something Avar would have noticed.

“Yes, Your Highness.”

“Yes, yes, let him in.” It was too late to change anything anyway.

The door opened and Avar made his entrance. “Phoran,” he said as soon as the door was closed behind him. “I’ve been looking for you since yesterday afternoon. Did you really take all the proposed laws and run off with them?”

Surprisingly, Phoran didn’t have a prepared reply. He hadn’t even thought about what Avar would say. Not that he didn’t care—but it didn’t seem as important anymore.

Avar misread his hesitation.

“Not that you didn’t have every right to—but you might have warned someone you intended to take a closer look. It wasn’t necessary to give poor Douver an anxiety attack.”

Phoran found himself smiling. “Wasn’t it? You’ll have to forgive me if I’ve forgotten that I could have just called the things into my review. I suspect everyone else has forgotten as well.”

A frown chased itself across Avar’s perfect brow. “What are you up to, my friend?”

“Do you know anything about the Secret Path?” It was an impulsive question born of years of trust, blind trust he was no longer certain he felt. But even after the question left his lips, Phoran didn’t regret it.

“The secret, secret club that everyone knows about?” asked Avar with a grin. “Where a bunch of young hotheads go to pretend they are villainous Travelers? My brother, Toarsen, and his tagalong, muscle-bound friend, Kissel, belong to it.”

Phoran walked back to his bed and perched on the end, offering a nearby padded bench to Avar with his hand. “Tell me everything you know.”

“Does this have something to do with taking the proposals?” asked Avar as he availed himself of the offered seat and leaned back against the wall.

“I don’t know,” said Phoran truthfully.

“Well then.” Avar put his head back and relaxed. “They choose young men of noble blood when they’re fifteen or sixteen and induct them in some sort of secret ceremony. They don’t pick a lot of boys—no more than five or ten a year. I don’t know what they do at the ceremony—but my brother carried bruises from it for a week or more. The people they choose are usually the ones who are… well, problems for their families.”

He looked at Phoran a moment, then sighed. “I know they had something to do with that mess last year when some young thugs destroyed the weavers’ market. I saw Toarsen coming home in the wee hours of the morning, dead drunk with a hatchet in his hand. I should have said something, but”—he shrugged ruefully—“he’s my brother.”

“Do you know any of the older members?” asked Phoran. “The Raptors?”

“Some,” answered Avar with a quick grin. “The ones my brother gripes the most about. The council leader—the Sept of Gorrish is one of them and Telleridge is another. My father was—I think that’s how my brother was selected.”

Phoran closed his eyes and thought. “Didn’t the Weavers’ Guild file a complaint against Gorrish just before the market was destroyed? They dropped it because he was instrumental in getting funds to help them rebuild it.”

“You’re right,” said Avar in an arrested voice. “I never thought to look for a deeper motive. I’ve always thought of the Secret Path as a game for boys who are at loose ends.”

“I have heard that you cannot be an heir to a Sept and belong to the Path,” said Phoran.

“Gorrish’s father and three older brothers died in the plague that hit the Empire about twenty years ago,” said Avar. “He’s not the only younger son who has inherited.” He smiled. “My own father was a second son.”

Phoran had a terrible thought. Maybe it was because he’d just spent the night talking to a bard that he’d thought of the old story of the Shadowed. How the first magic the Shadowed had loosed was plague. Maybe it was all the talk of magic—or maybe it was his current affliction of Memory. “How many of those second and third sons, or cousins who inherited a Sept were members of the Path?” he asked.