“It is good to have seen you, Brother,” the older woman said.

“You will see me again,” Dhulyn said. Yaro raised her eyes. “In Battle.”

“Or in Death,” Yaro Hawkwing replied.

The bird flew overhead, circling, circling, balanced on the currents of air.

What to do, what to do? If he destroyed the Healer now, would they suspect, or would they think it merely her time?

A Mender was coming. If he destroyed any of the Marked now, even the old woman, perhaps the Mender would not come. If he struck, he might lose the chance to destroy the Mender as well. He looked up into the sky and watched the bird float on an updraft, seeming to hang in the air that these folk thought of as nothing, not knowing the true nothing. The NOT. If he struck, they would know he was here, now, when they had almost forgotten to suspect, and they would hunt for him. But without the Lens, what could they do?

He could wait. He had overheard the two younger ones talking in the night, when they thought all asleep. They believed they had the Lens, and this belief weakened them. They no longer searched for it, and he could destroy them before they ever realized they should continue to look. He was strong enough, now that he was whole again. He could turn all back to that moment, when he first had form. If he waited, if he managed to find the Lens before them. This time he could succeed. This time he could turn this world into the NOT.

Or could there be another way? The bird swept down, and he pushed himself away from the edge of the wall. What if he did not destroy? What if he occupied? Was he strong enough for that? His breath came short, and he tried to steady the pounding of his heart. Was one form any worse than another? He had never looked from the eyes of a Mark-but they would never suspect. Once accomplished, it would be the safest place for him to wait.

Oh, I knew Gotterang well. I traveled much in my younger days, as was the rule then, and had been, time out of mind, see you. Scholars traveled then, too, but the only ones who still do are you Mercenaries, and I think that tells us something, don’t you?”

Dhulyn glanced up from the washbasin to where the Healer, Sortera, sat in the shaft of sunlight that entered through the doorway of the public washhouse in Trevel. It was the old woman’s presence here which had brought them to Trevel, and today she was taking advantage of a warm day and a good breeze to launder her winter garments. After a few minutes of watching the Healer trying to wring out soaking cloth with her crook-fingered hands Dhulyn had asked her to sit down, and had taken over the task of the wash herself, with Mar to help her. Sortera had smiled in such a way, her teeth remarkably good in her wrinkled face, that Dhulyn was certain she’d been outfoxed. But she hid her own smile and kept her thoughts to herself.

Not that laundry was Dhulyn’s purpose here this morning. Cullen was as clear-eyed and apparently Shadow free as he had been all the way from Gotterang, but Dhulyn felt only somewhat reassured by what Yaro had told her the night before. After talking it over with Parno, they’d decided that, as far as the Shadow was concerned, very few precautions could be called “unnecessary.” She and Mar were watching Sortera; Gundaron they’d left with Parno, going through what scrolls and books the Clouds had in their library. A young Mender boy was coming from Pompano, and until he and his Racha bird escort arrived, no Mark was being left unguarded.

“We Marks didn’t live settled into a city in those days, see you,” Sortera continued telling them as Dhulyn scooped up another handful of the soft soap in the nearby bucket. “We were all of us on the road, taking our Mark, whatever it might be, to everyone.” She leaned forward, resting her hands, with their heavy veins, on the knob of her cane. “Back in those times, people would save only their most important things for a Mender, and they didn’t waste a Finder’s time on lost scissors or lapdogs, see you. No, it was more like: ‘where did granddad put the harvest money for safety before he fell off his horse and died?’ or ‘can you Find us the spot for our new well?’ That was our work in those times, see you. Marked of the gods, we were. When us Marked started living in cities,” she shook her head, “that was when the trouble started, as far as I’m concerned. Then we were like any tradesman, and people started treating us that way.”

Dhulyn carefully squeezed the soapy water out of a thick inglera wool shawl and passed it to Mar for rinsing. Mar pulled the wooden sluice gate from the water channel between the double row of stone sinks and let fresh rainwater flow into her basin from the cistern on the roof. They were the only people in the washhouse this morning, and could use as much water as they liked.

“Eight days on horseback, and all we get are stories of her youth?” Dhulyn said to Mar under her breath.

“I can hear you, young woman,” Sortera said, her thin lips pulled back in glee. “I may be old, but I am a Healer. My hands may trouble me, but my hearing’s just fine.”

“Your pardon, Grandmother,” Dhulyn said. “How old are you, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Oh, I don’t mind, but you won’t like the answer, see you. The truth of the matter is I don’t know for certain. I remember when there was a Tarkin named Jenshannon-a woman she was-but people tell me that can’t be so, that I must be thinking of Jen-aNej Tarkina.” The old Healer wrinkled her nose and shook her head in disgust.

Dhulyn rested her forearms on the edge of the basin and thought, mentally ticking off a list of names and dates. It was two hundred years, perhaps more, since noble names began to change to their present mirror-image form. Surely they were right, the people who told Sortera her memory was at fault.

On the other hand, the woman was a Healer.

“You may be right, Grandmother,” she said. “In any case, don’t listen to those who tell you your memory is at fault.”

Sortera’s laugh was toneless and without heft in the cool mountain air. “I believe you, Granddaughter, I believe you.”

“Tell me something else. In all that you have heard of the Mark, do you know of anything called a Lens?”

“Here it is,” Parno came into the room with a belt buckle in his hand. It was cast silver, shaped like a snarling cat’s head, and the teeth were sharp enough to cut through rope. “In the outer pocket of Dhulyn’s left saddlebag, right where you said it was.”

“All right, then.” Gun pushed himself back from the table and rubbed his eyes with stiff fingers. “We know it’s not me. I’ve no trouble Finding ordinary things.” He looked up. “But I still can’t Find the Shadow.”

“You’re sure you’re doing what you did before?”

Gun just looked at him, lips pressed together. Parno raised his hands, palms out. “Forgive me, but you have Found it twice before, and somehow I don’t think it’s just disappeared off the face of the earth.”

“I said, it’s not me.” Gun sighed and rolled his left shoulder, grimacing as if at a particularly stiff muscle knot. “I’m not even getting that other Library where I found the Tarkin.” The boy looked sideways at him. “I think it’s the bowl.”

Parno tried not to let his disappointment show. They’d been waiting until they arrived in Trevel to try using the bowl; on the trail there had been no way to hide what they were doing from the others.

“But you have no better luck finding the Shadow without the bowl.”

“That’s just it, I was getting better results in Gotterang-”

“Caids help us if we have to be in Gotterang for the thing to work.” Parno said. He pulled out a chair and sat down, rubbing the edge of the bowl with the tip of his right index finger. “Has the Healer tried it?”