“But it only looked through my eyes, I swear it! It never lived in me as it did Lok-iKol.” Relief at having finally told them warred with fear that they would not believe him.

“And when it comes back?” Lionsmane’s voice was a snarl.

“It can’t.”

“How can you be sure? Convince us.” Dhulyn Wolfshead spoke with the voice of command.

How to make them understand? “It’s not Marked. I’ve hidden myself. It can’t Find me.”

“Dhulyn, we can’t be sure,” Parno Lionsmane said.

But the Mercenary woman was nodding. “Yes, we can. He is probably the one person we can be sure of. Who better to hide, than the one who Finds?” She looked up at her Partner and took hold of his sleeve. “The boy’s right. It was not the same. I Saw it in him, and I Saw it in Tek-aKet, and it was not the same.” She frowned and then looked at Gun once more. “Still, the Green Shadow has touched both you and Tek-aKet. Can you use that link somehow to Find the Tarkin?”

Could he? Did he dare? He looked at Mar’s face, calm now, but wary. If he didn’t try, would she ever smile at him again?

“I’ll need Mar’s bowl.”

“Now, Scholar Gundaron,” Dhulyn Wolfshead said, stepping back from the scrying bowl and setting the empty water pitcher on the little desk under the window. Gundaron took his seat at the small round table, set his hands flat beside the bowl, and looked down.

“I have Seen this,” Dhulyn Wolfshead said, her hand on her Partner’s arm.

Gun took a couple of deep breaths and focused on the water. He’d found Tek-aKet before, but that was just… the water shimmered, and the image broke. Gun steadied his breathing and tried again.

Parno Lionsmane sighed and Gun jumped in his chair.

“I’m sorry,” the Mercenary began, but Gun held up his hand.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “All I’m getting is the Tarkin in his room.”

Mar put her hands on his shoulders. “Relax,” she said. “Try again.”

Gun blinked, his eyes suddenly threatening tears. He dragged in another breath and let it out slowly.

It’s not water, it’s a bright page of paper. What should he write there? The story of Tek-aKet. Suddenly he’s back in the Library. Of all the lines on the floor before him, he needs to choose one in particular. Dark red it should be, the color of carnelians. He frowns. It’s there, but it’s stained, as if someone spilled green ink on if and didn’t clean it off fast enough. He shudders; the last thing he wants to do is follow anything green. He takes a deep breath, looks around him at the ghosts and shadows of other Scholars and steps out, following the red line. Concentrating on the red. He walks swiftly now, down the main aisle, shelves and scroll holders branching off to left and right. The place is enormous, the silence broken only by the sound of his bootheels on the wooden floor.

He turns a corner and the thread of color is gone. The floor is covered in a thin carpet. The shelving is darker, too thin to carry the weight of the countless tomes on it. He reaches out a tentative finger. It’s cold, painted metal. He turns around. The shelves behind him are exactly like these. There is no sign of the Library he came from.

There is a red mark like a small square of paint on the spine of one of the books. Gundaron looks around. There are similar marks on other books as well. Clean red marks with no green stain. He sets off again. This is only a Library. There is nothing to be afraid of.

He walks faster, following the red-marked books as they lead him across a wider lane with a metal cart in it. The cart holds books with green marks on their spines and Gun averts his eyes as he crosses the aisle into the next wall of shelves. There’s a man at a desk farther down, his elbows on the tabletop, his head down between his hands. Just a shadowy figure at first, but he comes clearer as Gun advances. Gun knows the man won’t look up, that he’s afraid to. Gun puts his hand on the man’s shoulder, wondering whether he knows the book the man’s reading. He can see the writing, but it’s a language he doesn’t know.

“My lord Tarkin,” are the words that come out of his mouth. “Tek-aKet. You must come with me.”

Twenty-four

“THERE IS A PRECEDENT for madness.”

The next morning, Tek-aKet Tarkin’s voice sounded even more gruff than usual, as if someone had been sanding his vocal cords with a metal rasp. Dhulyn frowned. Or as if someone else has been using them.

“Madness is not considered grounds for the Ballot. Tau-Nuat Tarkin was always restrained to prevent him from harming himself,” Gun said from where he stood, shifting from foot to foot, near the door of the Tarkin’s bedroom.

“True,” Tek-aKet said. “And he’s an ancestor of mine, as it happens, so neither Guard nor Houses will be too shocked if they see me chained to the throne.” He lifted his hands the scant inches allowed by the silk ropes to illustrate his point.

It may have been a trick of the light, but Dhulyn could have sworn there was a smile hovering on the man’s lips. When Gun had come out of his Finder’s trance, they had all rushed immediately to the Tarkina, and they had found her, with tears in her eyes, already in Tek-aKet’s room clutching his bound left hand in both of hers. Now, Zelianora still sat on the edge of the bed, across from where Dhulyn had dragged up the chair that had been standing closer to the window.

“Do you remember anything of the Shadow?” she asked.

Zelianora raised her face from where she’d laid it on Tek-aKet’s hand. “Give him a chance to rest-” Her words died away as Tek-aKet tried to raise his hand.

“We may not have time, Zella. If it should come back…”

The Tarkina swallowed, and nodded her understanding. She reached up and smoothed back a lock of hair that had fallen into his face.

“Your pardon, Dhulyn Wolfshead. Pray proceed.”

Dhulyn looked at where Parno leaned with his back against the door of the room. He raised his left eyebrow, and lifted both shoulders the merest fraction. She inclined her head to the same degree.

“Lord Tarkin?”

“The first I remember is the pain in my head. I’d banged it once as a child, falling from my pony, and I thought-” He cleared his throat, “I thought that somehow I was there again, or there still. Thank you.” He raised his head to sip at the water cup the Tarkina held to his mouth. “I realized after some time had passed that I did not actually feel the pain.” Tek-aKet frowned. “It was as if I stood to one side and watched it more than felt it.” He turned to his wife. “I’ve had the same feeling when I’ve been fevered.”

And there were drugs, too, Dhulyn thought, that gave you the same feeling of detachment.

“Suddenly I wasn’t off to one side, but inside. Inside, looking out through my own eyes as if they belonged to someone else. Pushed to the back like a passenger in a carriage.” The Tarkin swallowed, but he shook his head when Zelianora lifted the water cup. His voice dropped to a thread of sound. “More time passed, and-some of that time-I wasn’t inside. I was… nowhere.” He looked up. “It, the thing I was inside, is nowhere.”

“NOT” Dhulyn said.

“What do you mean?” Gun took a step into the room.

“When I knocked it out, before I knocked it out. I saw it changing the room, and the space around itself, making it nothing.” She looked over the boy’s shoulder to Parno.

“The damaged part of the floor, in your bedroom, Zelianora,” Parno said. “The end of the bench that looked melted.”

“Like the Dead Lands.” It was no question, but Dhulyn nodded to Gun just the same.

“It is not simple damage,” she said. “He makes a nothing. No.” She shook her head, the words not making sense even to her. “Not nothing, for that’s the opposite of something, and therefore a thing in itself. Unmaking it, as if it never was.”