Still. “Parno,” she said, keeping her voice level and quiet. “Does anything seem odd to you?”

“Besides these blooded rules, you mean?”

“I mean something like what seemed odd to you that afternoon in Navra.” At this Parno gave her a sharp, comprehending look, and then frowned, concentrating within, rather than without.

“Nothing,” he said finally. “You? Any green-eyed priests?”

She shrugged. “No green eyes at all. Not now at any rate.”

“Careful it is, then,” he said.

Wolfshead and Lionsmane had been in the city before, but nothing they had told her prepared Mar for the sounds, colors, faces, and-above all-smells that assaulted her senses as soon as they exited the cold stone tunnel that passed through the thick walls into the cleared space on the inner side of the city gates. At first she was glad to be left on her old friend the packhorse, relieved to be out of the crowd that jostled even the walking Mercenaries and their led horses. Relieved until she noticed how many glances were directed at her. Most of the looks showed simple curiosity, but some she had seen before on the faces of other town girls when they saw how well dressed the Weaver’s children were.

“Can’t I walk, too,” she finally whispered to the Wolfshead, who was nearest.

“Best not,” the Mercenary answered in the whisper Mar had heard her use so often on the trail. “Dismounting would draw even more notice. Rest easy, we’re not so far from our House.”

Mar was more relieved than she could say when they finally rode up a crooked street, past a large archway through which she could see a vast square filled with stalls and kiosks, and finally, through a much smaller arched entrance into the courtyard of Mercenary House. A young woman whose dark brown hair was pulled back off her face with a leather thong, but not yet removed for her Mercenary badge, ran out to take charge of the horses. Lionsmane himself reached up to help Mar down.

“Make yourself comfortable here,” he said. “This youngster will see you get something to eat and drink.”

“There’s fresh cider,” the girl offered with a smile, “nice and hot, and almond cakes baked this morning.”

“There you are, little Dove,” Wolfshead said, rubbing Bloodbone’s nose before handing the bridle to the waiting girl. “Tell the House that Dhulyn Wolfshead and Parno Lionsmane are here.”

“Can’t I come with you?” Mar clung for a moment to Lionsmane’s sleeve.

“Sorry, little Dove. None but Brothers may enter further.”

Another smile, a touch on her shoulder, and Mar found herself alone. She took a deep breath and looked around her, oddly uneasy with the by-now-unfamiliar sensation of being alone.

The courtyard was as quiet and solitary as she’d always imagined Scholar Houses would be. No clattering groups of armed Brothers, no one practicing Shora, no horses, dogs, or chickens. Not even any raised voices from within, as there would have been at the Weavers’ home. Scattered through the courtyard were grapevines growing out of old ceramic urns, chipped and discolored with time. Spring was far advanced in Gotterang, and Mar could see the new growth of leaves along the tough old wood stems. Someone had strung cords across the courtyard high enough that they would be well above the head of even someone on horseback. When the heat of full summer struck here, the courtyard would be roofed in with cool greenery.

It was hard to imagine that this small garden oasis existed in the middle of Gotterang’s stone. It was harder still to imagine that any harm could come to those who lived here and used this garden.

“Are you the one come with the Brothers?”

Startled, Mar almost slipped on the cobblestones under her feet as she spun around to face the voice.

“Watch yourself, Lady, best you sit down. Days on horseback don’t make for steady footing, not on these stones.” A small boy, his shock of red hair escaping from a leather thong identical to that of the young woman who’d taken the horses away, stood near her with a tray containing a large cup full of what smelled like the best spiced cider Mar had ever smelled, and a small blue plate of almond cakes covered with a square of linen.

The boy smiled at her and, blushing, set down the tray on the end of the bench next to the studded door that had swallowed her friends.

Mar sat down and nudged the plate toward the boy. “I’m Mar,” she said.

The boy took her gesture for the invitation it was and sat also, helping himself to one of the cakes. “Nikko,” he said. “I’ve been here a month, and they’re sending me to be Schooled as soon as Dorian the Black puts into port, or there’s a Brother heading toward Nerysa Warhammer in the southern mountains, that is. They wouldn’t send me alone. Are you coming to be Schooled?”

“No,” Mar answered gravely, taking a sip of cider to clear her throat of almond cake. “I’m being taken to my House here in the city.”

“So it was you that came in with Parno Lionsmane and Dhulyn Wolfshead?”

“You know them?”

“Everybody knows them! Dhulyn,” Nikko blushed again as he called his future Brother by her name. “Dhulyn’s a Red Horseman, they say the last of her Clan, the others are all dead, but nothing can kill her, she killed a whole boatload of slavers when she was just a kid like me, and Parno, he freed the kidnapped heir of Bhexyllia and got decorated by the Galan himself and rewarded with a golden sword, which, of course, he gave to our House, because a real Brother doesn’t use such things.”

Nikko stopped to take a breath and another bite from his almond cake, and Mar fought to keep herself from smiling.

“So you want to be just like them when you grow up?”

“Oh, I’m not waiting until then. Alkoryn, our Senior Brother here, he says you can be a good Mercenary before ever you have a weapon in your hands. Alkoryn says a good Mercenary-” Nikko broke off and sprang to his feet, his previous blush seeming like pallor next to the dark color that now suffused his cheeks.

“We’re not supposed to talk to strangers,” he said, and ran off before Mar could reassure him that she wasn’t, exactly, a stranger.

Mar leaned back, smiling, against the warm stone of the courtyard’s inner wall. This was a sunny corner, and she could feel the tension seeping slowly out of her body. It was clear that Nikko had a case of hero worship, but it was also clear that his Brothers Parno and Dhulyn were forces to be reckoned with. Whatever House Tenebro wanted with these two particular Mercenaries, Mar felt sure that two such legends among their kind would prosper. Even if only half of what Nikko believed was true. Even if she didn’t tell them about the letters. Mar closed her eyes. Her head fell back against the warm stone and she slept.

The office of the Senior Brother of Mercenaries in Gotterang was a small but comfortable room tucked into a corner of the House’s stone outer wall. When the old building had been a noble family’s palace, back before larger houses were built on the more fashionable eastern side of town, this room had been the anteroom to a sleeping chamber. As indeed it still was, Dhulyn reflected, as Alkoryn actually slept in the inner chamber. The office’s interior walls, and its floor, were hard oak, stained dark with time. Its two windows, just wide enough, she noted with a frown, to let a slim man pass through, had been paned with real glass lights, shut now against the cool of the spring morning. The window wells were as deep as the thickness of the wall itself, and obviously built for archers. A large worktable with a single armed chair drawn up to it took up most of the floor space. Matching side chairs with thin cushions on their seats were pushed back against the wall between the arrow-slit windows. An enormous parchment showing the map of the Letanian Peninsula with Imrion in pink was fastened to the table with metal clamps. Stains on the map showed where glasses and plates had been put down on it. Racks, shelves, and pigeonholes around the walls held books, smaller maps, and dozens of scrolls.