“Yes,” she said, responding to the question and not the statement. “Parno will come,” she repeated. “He will always come.” That should do them, she thought, watching them exchange looks. What’s the best lie? A truth that won’t be believed.
One-eye nodded at the Scholar. “You see? So much for your fears of Pasillon.” The boy sat on the edge of the armless chair. His hands were at his mouth. Clearly, he was regretting his decision to stay, but even as she watched, his hands fell to his knees, and he straightened in his chair. His face relaxed, the frown of concentration melting away as his features grew slack, and his eyes glowed a soft jade green.
There, she thought, the hairs on her arms and the back of her neck rising, sure she was seeing what Parno had seen. Green eyes again. What makes your eyes so green, little Scholar?
One-eye had already turned back without, Dhulyn was certain, seeing what she had seen. She settled her face to show no reaction.
“Who are you?” he said.
Dhulyn smiled as softly as she could. There was only one answer to this. Clearly, they must have tried this only on the unSchooled, otherwise they would have learned to ask better questions. “I am Dhulyn Wolfshead the Scholar-” She stopped at the man’s abrupt gesture.
“And before?” One-eye leaned forward again in his eagerness.
Dhulyn drew her eyebrows together and pretended to have difficulty focusing on the Kir. Again, this one was easy. For Mercenaries there was nothing “before”-or shouldn’t be; she dragged her thoughts away from Parno. They had no history before they joined the Brotherhood, no country, no House, no family. When they received their badges, their real lives began. This was their truth.
“There is no ‘before,’ ” she said.
“What was your tribe?”
Now she did smile. “I am Dhulyn Wolfshead,” she repeated. “Called the Scholar-”
She saw his arm tense and braced herself for the blow, but One-eye did not actually raise his hand.
“The Scholar tells me you are Espadryni. What the common folk call the Red Horsemen.”
It was not a question, so Dhulyn did not have to answer.
“What do you remember of that tribe?”
Wrong question, Dhulyn thought as she shook her head and then pretended she couldn’t stop shaking it. All too easily done. Maybe the drugs were more effective than she’d thought.
“Nothing,” she said. Again the strict truth-if not all of it. She remembered sitting astride behind her father on the back of his horse. A woman wearing leathers and furs, with her face completely wrapped in cloths, only her ice-gray eyes showing, leaning over to me from her own mount, adjusting the scarf around my face. That woman is my mother, that I know, but I never remember her face, only her eyes, peeping out between the wrappings of scarves. And never anything more of my father than his wide back in front of me. Of the tribe, nothing. Just my mother’s eyes, the color of ice. But warm, very warm. She shook herself. But of her band nothing, of her tribe, nothing. And Lok-iKol, Kir of House Tenebro, had asked no questions about her family.
“I think you people must be insane,” she heard herself say in a bright friendly voice. One-eye glanced at the boy behind him but without noticing anything.
“The eighth book of the Rhonis tells of a city named Shpadrajh, so old that the book claims it dates to the time of the Caids.”
Dhulyn made a rude noise with her lips. “No one’s read the Rhonis,” she said. “Are you telling me you’ve read the Rhonis? There’s only-what, two copies of the Rhonis in the whole world.” What were they trying to prove?
“One of those copies is at Valdomar.”
“Really?” Dhulyn’s thoughts skittered down a path all their own. “Would I be able to come there and read it?”
Lok-iKol smiled. “Of course. If you answer our questions thoroughly, I’m sure I’d be able to arrange that.”
“What questions,” Dhulyn said, twisting her head and squinting her eyes at the green-eyed Scholar. “Blood, old One-eye’s ugly, isn’t he? I mean, uglier than a one-eyed person generally is, don’t you think? Listen, I’ve seen some ugly one-eyed people in my time, but really… What? Did I speak aloud?” Dhulyn grinned. “Sorry, my lord Kir. But really, you must own a mirror. I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, am I? And you’re the Kir of a High Noble House, for blood’s sake-it’s not like you’re going to have any trouble getting lovers, is it? Oh, all right.” Seeing that she’d made the impression she wished to make, she stopped talking. This would teach them to give her drugs. Give her a headache, would they? “Sorry, what was the question?”
“Spadrajh was a city of Seers. Tall, red-haired people. Lords of Clans and Households, Great Houses, even Tarkins, even the High Kings when they still ruled in the north came to Shpadrajh or sent their First Children to speak for them, all asking for a glimpse of the future.”
“No,” Dhulyn said, throwing as much skepticism into her voice as she could. “Where are they, then?”
“The Seers began to tell of a coming plague and finally an ambassador of Kadrath came to find the city deserted, the Halls of Sight empty. Shpadrajh was no more. All felt that the plague they had spoken of had finally come upon them. But our Scholar here does not think so.” The One-eye gestured behind him without turning. “There is no plague that doesn’t leave bodies, bones, behind. He thinks they Saw something else and fled before it could destroy them. The first mention of your tribe, the Espadryni, comes after this time. The Shpadrajha had been nomads in their time, and it is his theory that when the thing they called the plague neared, the Shpadrajha abandoned their urban lives and returned to a wandering, reclusive existence. And so they survived until the present day, as the Espadryni.”
The space in Dhulyn’s head was suddenly larger, more echoey and very, very cold. And her hands and feet were cold, too, and she hoped her mouth would freeze solid before they asked her again the question she saw coming.
THE SCHOLAR GUNDARON IS STANDING OFF TO HER LEFT, WATCHING, BROWN EYES DARK WITH FEAR AND LINES OF HORROR ON HIS FACE. THE SCHOLAR GUNDARON IS AT THE DOOR, PULLING AT THE LATCH, BUT HIS HANDS PASS THROUGH THE MECHANISM WITHOUT TOUCHING ANYTHING AND THE DOOR
REMAINS CLOSED. THE SCHOLAR GUNDARON IS SITTING IN HIS CHAIR, LEANING FORWARD WITH HIS JADE-GREEN EYES FOCUSED ON HER, HUNGER IN HIS FACE. THE GUNDARON AT THE DOOR LOOKS OVER HIS SHOULDER, SEES THE ONE IN THE CHAIR, AND REDOUBLES HIS EFFORTS TO OPEN THE DOOR…
THE SCHOLAR GUNDARON, THIN AND DRAWN, STANDS WITH THE LITTLE DOVE, SHOULDER TO SHOULDER. THEY ARE LOOKING DOWN AT THE TOP OF A TABLE, BUT DHULYN CAN’T SEE WHAT THEY LOOK AT. A MAP? A BOOK? MAR MAY BE CRYING.
Dhulyn blinked and took in a ragged breath of air. Where was Mar? Hadn’t she seen the little Dove just now? But the Scholar was looking heavier again, and Mar was nowhere in the room. What had just happened?
One-eye leaned toward her again, his knuckly hands with their long fingers grasping the back of her chair to either side of her head. Leaned forward until his face was only a few fingerwidths from hers. Dhulyn could see the hairs of his beard growing in crookedly where his face was scarred. Smell wine on his breath.
“I think you can see the future, what do you think?”
Dhulyn wanted to laugh, but was afraid it would not sound real. “I think you’re foolish and stupid, too, as well as ugly. Get your Scholar to read less and think more.” She had shaken her head. “If I could see the future, how could you have captured me? Why did I walk into this trap?”
She looked up to see One-eye still looking at her, the muscles in his face, still moving to focus two eyes, gave him a most peculiar squint. Here it comes, she thought.