“Some of the guards here,” Hernyn said. “I thought them just curious. I meant no harm.”

Thionan made her impatient sound again. “There is always harm in flapping the tongue. I’m surprised you didn’t learn that with Dorian.” Her voice was unexpectedly deep and rough.

“Have done, Thio,” Fanryn said. Parno could tell they had tossed this bone back and forth many times already. “Anyone could go to our House and get the same answer. What harm could there be in repeating common knowledge?”

“I should have thought the answer self-evident.” Thionan spread her hands out to take in the walls around them. She shook her head and stalked all of three strides across their cell to seat herself on the other cot.

“Wait, wait,” Parno said. He tried to pat the air in front of him in a “calm down” motion, hissed in his breath, and bit down on a grunt. Hernyn buried his face again. Thionan stood up once more but was waved off by her Partner.

“Sit still, my Brother,” Fanryn said. “I’ll have to bind that more tightly. Ask all the questions you wish, but for the Caids’ sake, sit still.” Fanryn folded Parno’s arm delicately across his stomach and began to tie it in place with strips of the same heavy cloth she’d used as the sling. The immobility of his arm made him more uncomfortable than the pain, but he did not protest. Mercenaries made the best surgeons, for obvious reasons, and he was not fool enough to argue.

“Perhaps you might start at the beginning,” he said. “I know, more or less, how I got here, if not why. What are your stories?”

“Simple enough,” Thionan said. “Straightforward guard detail. The Tenebros lost a few guards on caravan last fall. I think the Cloud People, wasn’t it?” She waited for her Partner’s nod before continuing. “Anyway, it’s hard to get good men in the city. If you’re in the country now, that’s different. You just promote some of your yeoman’s children, your farm boys who don’t care too much for farming, and there’s your new recruit. But here in the city-well, there aren’t so many extra pairs of hands here. The children of House servants rarely make good guards, even if they’re willing, and as for hiring outsiders-the questions come up, don’t they? ‘Why did you leave your last place of employment?’ People looking for a change aren’t the kind you want guarding your walls. And it’s too blooded dangerous to take some one else’s castoffs.”

“So they hire Mercenaries,” Parno said. There was nothing new for him in what Thionan was saying. Let her talk, he told himself. Let’s get comfortable with one another. He knew from the battles they’d fought in that he was the Senior Brother present-though that would change when they found Dhulyn-let Thionan give him her report. They would all feel better for a little ordinary discipline.

“So they hire Mercenaries,” Thionan agreed. “Specifically myself, my Partner and, not many moons ago, our Brother Hernyn here.”

“When did they ask about Dhulyn Wolfshead?”

Fanryn tied off the last strip of cloth and eased Parno back against the cold stone wall.

“They never asked me,” Thionan said.

“Or me,” Fanryn echoed. “Though, I daresay, we might either of us have answered. In our Brotherhood, your names are well known.”

“Aye, you’re probably right,” Thionan conceded with a shrug. “After all,” she added with a neutral look at Hernyn, “what harm?”

Hernyn shrugged and bit his lip. Parno sighed. They didn’t have time for the boy’s self-pity.

“Come on, man,” Parno said. “We’re all of us alive and, if we keep our heads, alive’s how we’ll stay. So snap out it, you sniveling brat!” Parno’s sudden roar popped the boy’s head up so fast he cracked it against the wall behind him. “We’re a council of war here. Stop wringing your hands and come be of some use.”

The boy looked at the faces looking at him. Thionan patted the cot beside her. Slowly, with a shy bewilderment, Hernyn rose to his feet and sat down with his Brothers. He gave a sharp nod and squared his shoulders.

“We were on watch one night,” he began. “Myself and two others of the guard.”

“Which ones?” Fanryn asked.

“The tall dark one with the broken nose, Rofrin, and Neslyn the Fair. Anyway, they were asking about how we live, the Brotherhood. Whether we marry and have children. Neslyn had just spoken for the son of the Steward of Keys, so there was much talk of such things. Everyone thought it would make a fine match-”

“When was this?” Parno said. Best to keep the boy to the point.

“Just over a moon ago,” Fanryn said.

“So they were asking about Mercenary customs,” the boy continued. “And I tried to explain about Partners.” Here he looked at the two women. “How it really isn’t a marriage, the way outsiders think, but that it’s a kind of… of…”

“Never mind, Hernyn,” Fanryn said, smiling. “We all know what it is.” Small wonder outsiders had difficulty understanding Partnering, her glance at Parno and Thionan seemed to say, if even Brothers got tongue-tied and embarrassed trying to explain it.

“And so they asked about famous Brothers, and did I know any and I told them who I’d been Schooled by, Dorian of the River, the Black Traveler, because everyone’s heard of him. And I told them about some of the Brothers Dorian’s Schooled, Samlind the Nightbird and Pakina Swifthorse, that I thought they might’ve heard of. And they asked me if I knew a Mercenary they had heard about, and Rofrin described Dhulyn Wolfshead.”

“They didn’t know her name?”

“No, but they described her pretty well, even the scar on her lip. But it was the coloring and the build that they knew best. Tall as a man, they said, very lean, fair skin, gray eyes, blood-colored hair. Good with horses, used maybe a sword, maybe an ax. And I knew her, how could I not, with both of us Schooled in the same place, by the same hand? I told them her name.” Parno could hear in Hernyn’s voice how flattered the boy had been by their interest, how proud to know someone, even in so indirect a way, who was known to them. Borrowing a little glory from his better-known Brothers.

“So they were looking for her, for Dhulyn Wolfshead? Her, particularly?” Thionan asked, breaking the silence before it could grow awkward.

Parno shook his head slowly. “Barring the scar, they might have been looking for anyone like her, anyone of her Clan-though from what she tells me, the Espadryn are no more. Just our bad luck that she was the one they found.”

“But what is it they want her for?” Fanryn asked.

Parno looked his Brothers in the face. “I do not know,” he said, lying with the strictest truth.

Thionan slapped her knee and stood up. “I’ve gone and forgotten,” she said. “Here, we’ve saved some stew for you, against the time you woke up.” She reached under the cot and pulled out a flat clay bowl, with another bowl turned over on top of it. “Hernyn ate a portion first to be sure it wasn’t drugged.”

“Optimistic of you,” Parno said, his stomach rumbling.

Good stew it was, too. Plenty of meat, if rather over seasoned for his taste. He’d paid for and eaten much worse any number of times.

“If this is the kind of food they give prisoners,” he said aloud, “this must be a very prosperous House.”

“Long as we don’t take it as a sign they mean to let us live,” growled Thionan. Hernyn curled back into the corner of the cot.

“Relax,” Fanryn said when she noticed him. “It’s not what they’ve got planned will decide our fates, but what we let happen.” She turned back to Parno. “What will Dhulyn Wolfshead do, my Brother? It’s my guess they’ve kept her alone-otherwise why not keep us all together-and if I’m right, she’ll have no one to share the food.”

“She won’t eat,” he said.

“But she’ll have to drink,” Fanryn pointed out. “She can go a long time without food, most of us can. But she’ll die quickly without water.”