“But you don’t feel it that way,” he said bitterly. “You’re immortal, right?”

Seethlaw smiled gently. “So far.”

And then his gaze drifted out to the left, eyes narrowed. Ringil heard footfalls across the black stone road behind him.

“. . . Seethlaw . . .”

It was a female voice, fluid and melodic but slightly muffled; the dwenda’s name was the only word Ringil could pick out, and even that was stretched and twisted almost beyond recognition. He turned his head and saw in the glow from the fire that a figure stood behind him. It was garbed in black, wore a long-sword across its back; its head was sleek and rounded. It took him a couple of seconds to realize he was looking at someone in the suit and helm Seethlaw had shown him under the city. Then the figure lifted a hand to the featureless bulb on its head and pushed back the glass visor. Framed in the space behind was an empty-eyed dwenda face.

A shudder scrawled its way across Ringil’s shoulders—he could not prevent it. For just a moment in the eerie unreliable firelight under the bridge, the featureless dark of the newcomer’s eyes seemed to merge with the black of the helmet, and the bone-white features took on the aspect of a thin, sculpted mask with empty eye holes, a helmet within a helmet, set on the shoulders of a suit of armor that must, instinct told him, contain nothing but the same emptiness that lay behind the eyes.

Seethlaw got up and ambled across to greet the new arrival. They took each other’s hands loosely at waist height, oddly like two children readying themselves to play a game of slap-me-if-you-can. They talked back and forth for a few seconds in what appeared to be the same tongue the newcomer had used, but then Seethlaw gestured back at Ringil and broke into the antique dialect of Naomic he’d been speaking before.

“. . . my guest,” he said. “If you’d be so kind.”

The female dwenda studied Ringil for a moment, showing all the emotion of the mask she had seemed to wear just a moment before. Then her mouth twisted into a crooked half smile and Ringil thought she muttered something under her breath. She lifted the smooth black helm from her head—it came slowly, as if a very tight fit—shook out long silky hair not quite as dark as Seethlaw’s, and rolled her head back and forth a couple of times to loosen her neck muscles. Ringil heard vertebrae crackle. Then the new dwenda tucked her helmet under one arm and stepped forward, free left hand extended languidly to make one half of the greeting she had shared with Seethlaw.

“My respects to those of your blood.” Her Naomic, aside from being archaic, was very rusty. “I am with name Risgillen of Ilwrack, and sister of already you-know this Seethlaw. How are you called?”

Ringil took the offered hand as he’d seen Seethlaw do, wondering if he was being subtly snubbed with this casual, one-armed variant.

“Ringil,” he said. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

Risgillen shot a glance at her brother, who shook his head minutely and said something in the other tongue. The female dwenda peeled her lips back from something that wasn’t really a smile, and let go of his hand.

“You come by unexpected ways, for this the un-, the dis-, the lack of proper ceremony. I regret.”

“We ran into some akyia on the coastal path,” Seethlaw told her. “This seemed like a safer option.”

“The merroigai?” Risgillen frowned. “Shown proper respect, they should not have bothered you.”

“Well, they did.”

“I don’t like such event. And with now these other matters, too. Something stirs, Seethlaw, and it is not us.”

“You worry too much. Did you come alone?”

Risgillen gestured back the way she’d come. “Ashgrin and Pelmarag, somewhere beyond. But they seek you at different angles, alternatives less than here. None expected you this adrift. I myself, it was by scent only I came to you.”

“I’ll call them.”

Seethlaw moved out from under the bridge and disappeared into the gloom. Risgillen watched him go, then seated herself with Aldrain elegance beside the fire. She stared into the oddly tinged flames for a while, perhaps marshaling the words she needed before she deployed them.

“You are not the first,” she said quietly, still looking into the fire. “This we have seen before. This I have done myself, with mortal men and women. But I do not lose myself as my brother can. Clearly, I see.”

“I’m happy for you.”

“Yes. So I tell you this.” Risgillen looked up and fixed him with her empty eyes. “Do not doubt; if you bring hurt or harm upon my brother, I will fuck you up.”

OUT IN THE DARKNESS, A LITTLE LATER, HOWLING SOUNDS.

Ringil looked at Risgillen, the perfect geometry of her features in the greenish glow from the flames, saw no reaction beyond the faintest of smiles. The realization hit him, like icy water, that he recognized the sound.

The howling was Seethlaw, calling for his kind.

Risgillen did not look up, but her smile broadened. She knew he was watching her, knew he’d understood, once again, suddenly, where he really was.

A fight is coming, a battle of powers you have not yet seen.

The words of the fortune-teller at the eastern gate, welling up in his mind like chilly riverbed ooze. The certainty in her voice.

A dark lord will rise.

CHAPTER 26

W e tried to stop them. But they took her.

For long moments, the words made no kind of sense. Ishgrim was a gift of the Emperor; you’d steal her on peril of a very slow and unpleasant death when the King’s Reach caught up with you, which they inevitably would because with Jhiral they themselves would be facing some pretty stiff penalties if they didn’t. Sure, she was long-limbed and beautiful, but so were a lot of northern slave girls. You wanted one badly enough, you could pick them up down at the harbor clearinghouses for less than it cost to buy and tax a decent horse these days.

Never mind that. Krin-driven brain, screaming in her head. How did they even fucking know? Ishgrim’s a gift of the Emperor since yesterday. No one knew she was here. You didn’t even know she was here until the early hours of this morning.

She hugged at Kefanin, worried at the impossibility of the situation. “Who? Who, Kef ? Who took her?”

The mayor-domo made a grunting noise deep in his throat. Rapid, battlefield-trained assessment told her his wound wasn’t fatal, but the blow had stunned him badly. She wasn’t sure how much sense he could make in this state.

“Citadel . . . livery,” he managed.

And then it all came tumbling into place, like some circus trick performed by a dozen inanely painted, grinning clowns.

Not Ishgrim—get that pale flesh out of your head, Archidi, get a fucking grip—not the Emperor’s gift at all.

Elith.

Menkarak: She’s an infidel, a faithless stone-worshipping northerner who would not convert when the hand of the Revelation was extended to her in friendship, and who persists in her stubborn unbelief deep within our borders. The evidence is plain—she has even torn the kartagh from her garb to blind the eyes of the faithful she dwells among. She is steeped in deceit.

The mix of hysterical accusation and cod-legal posturing rang around the inside of Archeth’s head like a rolling metal ball. Not much doubt what awaited Elith once they got her inside the Citadel.

“How long?” she whispered.

But Kefanin had lost consciousness again.

Footfalls outside. She spun to her feet, a knife in her hand like magic. The stable boy, dazed looking, hesitant in the doorway, backlit by the blast of morning sun.