“What is it, little one?” Dhulyn looked up from stowing her book. Mar’s fidgeting was enough to make the packhorse itself restive.

“Nothing, that is…” the girl hesitated.

“A heavy silence for nothing,” Dhulyn said.

“It’s just… I was wondering if I might be able to say good-bye to my friend Sarita at the weapons stall.”

“Who would stop you? We take you where you wish to go, do we not?” Dhulyn spoke lightly. No point in terrorizing the girl. “Never mind, my Dove. Slip down and go. The Lionsmane and I will wait for you over by that barrel.” Dhulyn pointed out an empty barrel holding up one end of a baker’s stall. There it would be possible for them to stand at least partly out of the way.

Mar glanced over at the weapons stall and nodded. “I won’t be long,” she promised as she hurried off.

“You don’t think she’ll run,” Parno said, watching the girl weave her way between early morning buyers and sellers.

“She hasn’t the look of it, no,” Dhulyn said, drawing down her blood-colored brows. “But then, we have a clear sight of the weapons stall from here, she won’t get far on foot, and we’ve our travel money to Gotterang in any case.” She smiled her wolf’s smile, and Parno threw back his head and laughed.

It was not possible for them to stand completely out of everyone’s way even so early in the day, but marketers tended to part around the two Brothers with little or no complaint. Mercenary badges often encouraged even the most unruly to mind their manners. They stood facing each other, their eyes drifting apparently aimlessly as they spoke, taking in all of their surroundings, never looking in the same direction at once.

“How is it,” Dhulyn remarked in the nightwatch murmur that would be unintelligible to any passerby, “that I have lived thus long without ever hearing the name Tenebro, since it makes even strong men pale?”

Parno bit back a curse. He should have known she would notice something. She would never have asked, but this was something he should have told her before. Caids knew, the middle of the market square in Navra was not the best place for his life story.

“What if I told you it was just a trick of the light?” he said, forcing a smile to his lips.

“You’d be lying.”

Best place or no, he had to say something; this might be the last chance they had to speak privately for the next half moon.

“I knew them.” He watched as her eyes widened and her mouth formed a soundless “oh” of comprehension.

“Will they know you?” She was asking more than if they would recognize him. She was asking whether there was danger in it if they should. There were many reasons a man might leave his Household for the Brotherhood. Blood duel was only one of them.

“Caids, not likely,” he said, making it sound as certain as he could. The difference between seventeen and thirty-one, he thought. A lifetime of change.

“You would tell me,” she said, turning to nod and smile as the kitchen boy from the inn passed close to them-marketing on his free day from the look of his good clothes.

“Of course,” he said, eyes flicking to her face. How could she doubt that he would fail to warn her of possible danger? They were Partnered, a sword with two edges.

“Any odds it’s not the same House?”

“I keep telling you, less poetry and more politics.” Parno snorted, relieved that she questioned him no further.

“Then why would I need you, my soul?” She reached out and punched him lightly, barely a touch, above his heart. “All the same family then?”

Parno twisted his lips to one side, resisting the temptation to squeeze his eyes shut. “The same House,” he said, indicating Mar with his eyes, “though not necessarily the same family. The Tenebros are one of the five High Noble Houses, the ones most likely to provide a Tarkin should one be needed. They’ve Households and Holdings of all sizes throughout the Letanian Peninsula. For the sake of influence, and courtesy, we’re… they’re all considered kin, though the blood runs thinner the farther away from the main branch. Just the same, every Household and Holding owes their allegiance there, and all are counted as House Tenebro. Both Householders and Holdings use the noble form of their names, as Mar-eMar was quick to remind us. But not the high noble form-”

“Which is?”

“The mirror reverse. If our little Mar was herself the House, or heir to that dignity, her name would be pronounced Mar-EE-Ram, not Mar-EE-Mar.”

“Ah, I’ve seen that in books, I should have asked you before what it meant.” Dhulyn gave herself a nod of satisfaction.

Parno shook his head. “It’s an odd time to send for the girl, having let her Holding lapse these ten years. There’s more to this than reuniting lost kin. The Tenebros are First Blood to the Tarkin himself. More important than that it’s difficult to be, though they were so once, and perhaps with these new troubles, they are trying to be so again.”

“I have read history, which you call politics,” Dhulyn said, frowning. “If I recall correctly, was there not a Tenebro Tarkin before Nyl-aLyn, father of the present Colebro Tarkin?”

Parno shrugged. “I think two reigns before his. It seems their luck turned bad. It began within the House itself, a generation or two back. Unexplained, or insufficiently explained illnesses, a disappearance or two. Then it followed as these things follow.” Parno shrugged again. “A battle lost here, an ill-advised marriage there, an assassination or so. The High Houses intervened, the Tarkinate was put to the Ballot, and House Tenebro proved to have insufficient support to retain the Carnelian Throne.”

“They were not wiped out?” Dhulyn’s eyes narrowed and Parno followed her glance over his shoulder to where he could see Mar talking to her friend. A small flat object, which he recognized as parchment even at this distance, was passed between them. Was that a bit of green seal? The girl had more than the one letter then.

“Oh, no,” he said in answer to Dhulyn’s question. “Too numerous and too powerful for that, for all they’d lost the Throne. Some of the smaller branches, the Holdings, withered, it is true…” Parno’s voice dried in his throat, and Dhulyn looked sharply back at him, waiting with brows lowered for him to say something more. He shifted his eyes away, pretending to scour their surroundings for enemies. He wanted to tell her, he should tell her. But he hadn’t thought the pain was still so close to the surface that it could shut his throat.

“And Mar-eMar is a twig from such a branch, or so her letter seems to say,” she said finally, ignoring his silence. Bloodbone snorted and stepped back as someone nudged her from the far side. Dhulyn cocked her eye and smiled at a man in a painter’s stained work clothes who ducked his head and smiled in return before he dropped his own gaze. She ran her hand along Bloodbone’s neck until the mare quieted. “Which means that marriage is not just a wishful thought on the little one’s part. Here I thought she had listened to too many bard’s songs.”

“Not at all. The songs usually have some root in fact, swords on the bed notwithstanding. At these rarefied heights, allegiances can be tricky things, and it’s difficult to find someone of sufficiently noble blood who is not politically suspect, or who is not already too closely related for progeny. A country branch of your own family is ideal. In the old days it was not unheard of to begin such branches for that very purpose.”

Again their eyes locked. This time it was Dhulyn who looked away.

“Keeps the property together too, I shouldn’t wonder,” she said. “Now we know why Mistress Weaver was so sure we would be paid, and so anxious for the family to know of her good care.” Dhulyn’s eyes found Mar again as she moved through the stalls of the market making her way back to them. “Though why would the Weavers not escort the girl themselves, if it comes to that?”