“But the Brotherhood, the Mercenaries, they had no reason to flee. Their Common Rule says that those who fight on the losing side submit to the victors and are ransomed by their own Brothers. But not that day. Not at Pasillon. Blinded by victory, enraged by its cost, the Tragoni pursued their fleeing enemy and fell upon any who stood in their way. They did not see why a Mercenary badge should buy someone’s life.

“They’d forgotten they had Mercenaries on their own side. And those men and women were quick to come to the aid of their Brothers. And then the real battle of Pasillon began.” Gundaron leaned back against the cold stone embrasure, eyes closed, looking back at the boy he had been, reading an exciting and forbidden book by candlelight when he should have been in bed.

“Exhausted, outnumbered,” he went on, “some injured, forty or fifty Mercenaries stood against more than five hundred. Gabrian describes how they stood back-to-back on a rise of ground and cut down wave after wave of enraged Tragoni until finally, long hours later, when the sun had set, three injured Brothers crept off in the darkness, leaving the rest to cover their escape. And finally, finally, the last Mercenary fell. The victors-the few Tragoni who were left, looked about them and shook their heads, thanking their gods that it was over.”

Gundaron blinked, and focused on Mar once more. Her eyes were wide, whites showing all around, and the corners of her mouth were turned down.

“Except it wasn’t over.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “The army of Tragon continued to die after that day. Not everyone, just the men who were there that day. Just the men who had killed Mercenaries. And the officers who did not stop them. And the lords who gave orders to the officers.

“People spoke of bad luck and the Curse of Pasillon, and many went to Healers and Finders and Menders, even Jaldean shrines, since they were soldiers, to see if the Sleeping God would cleanse them. The Healers saw no illness, the Finders found no poisons, the Menders nothing broken, and the Sleeping God slept on. But many shrines housed Scholars, and the Scholars saw that this was the work of the Brotherhood.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Don’t you see? It was the Mercenaries, the Brothers who escaped. They carried the story back to their Houses, and their Schools, and the Brotherhood acted, to teach everyone in the world that mistreated and betrayed Mercenaries would be avenged.” He looked away. “Will be. Still will be.”

“No, I understood that part. I don’t understand what made you think of all this now? Why you’re so frightened.”

He looked at her, licked his dry lips. Realizing that he could not tell her. Could not tell her of the look on Dhulyn Wolfshead’s face and the word Pasillon on her lips-Gundaron pressed his clasped hands between his knees to steady them.

“It was seeing the Mercenaries,” he said finally. “Not the tame ones who live here and guard the walls, but the strange ones, your Mercenaries. They made me think of it and I had a nightmare…”

The girl pressed her lips together, frowning. “Something else has happened.”

Gundaron looked down at his hands, suddenly clenched into fists without his even realizing it. What else happened? He’d been in the Kir’s workroom and Dhulyn Wolfshead had said “Pasillon,” and then… and then. Nothing.

He looked at Mar-eMar. His hands were shaking.

“Nothing,” he said. “There’s nothing there.” He pitched forward as the yawning blackness swallowed him again.

Dal-eDal shook the box of vera tiles, listening with half an ear to the rattle, spilled them onto the tabletop, and began laying them out in the Tarkin’s Cross, one of the old patterns, the Seer’s patterns. As a child he’d wished for the Sight, sometimes even pretended he had it, and he’d brought his box of tiles with him when he was summoned to Tenebro House on the death of his parents. If he’d been the Seer he’d pretended to be, would he be sitting now in his own Household, he wondered, his mother and father still alive? His sisters nearby instead of married away, and himself at home instead of a Steward he knew only through the man’s reports. But perhaps then he’d have been summoned to Gotterang after all, like little Cousin Mar, who might yet find herself in one of Lok-iKol’s windowless rooms, on the receiving end of uncomfortable questions, with the chance of an unwanted introduction to a highly-placed Jaldean staring her in the face.

While her cousin Dal-eDal sat in his room and played vera with himself.

Dal didn’t even bother to sweep the tiles back into their box when a knock sounded at the door.

“Come,” he said, looking up from the pattern on the table and smiling his inquiry at the man-at-arms who came in.

“I don’t know how you knew it, my lord, but you’re right. The upper armory’s been unlocked and restocked, though nothing’s missing from the lower armory, and nothing’s been delivered from outside so far as I can find out.”

Dal tapped the tabletop with the tile in his hand, keeping his face impassive. “And the other matter?”

“I did as you told me, my lord, and asked in the kitchens. The Scholar and the Kir are using the big workroom, leastways food and drink have been taken there, and up to the small room in the north tower as well. But there’s something else, my lord. Lights and braziers have been taken down to the western subcellar, the wine rooms.”

Dal lifted his eyebrows, but slowly, careful to keep his excitement off his face. Lights to the wine rooms were one thing, but lights and heat? He sat back in his chair. Wine rooms indeed. Cells didn’t stop being cells because you called them wine rooms. Light and heat down there, that meant new prisoners in the old cells. And new, unaccounted-for weapons in the armory? That gave him an idea of who the prisoners were.

If he was right, if the Mercenaries were still in the House-what, if anything, was he going to do about it?

He knew what his father would have done, if Lok-iKol had left Dal’s father alive to do anything. Mil-eMil would have gone straight to the nearest Mercenary House with his tale of kidnapping and forced imprisonment. And not because he wanted to remove an obstacle to his own ambition-he’d had none, though Lok-iKol had never believed it-but to protect the House. And maybe, said the voice of the little boy who still lived inside Dal, maybe just because it was the right thing to do.

What would my father do? he thought. Something more than stand back collecting information, that was certain. And what had happened to make him think of his father just now?

“Thank you, Juslyn, you’ve done well. Ask the Steward of Walls to be good enough to join me in the upper armory at his earliest convenience. I require his advice for a new sword.”

“Very good, my lord. Thank you, my lord.” The man-at-arms bowed his way out of the room, his crooked teeth showing in his wide grin.

Dal turned over the tile he’d set down and looked at it. The picture on its face was tiny, but unmistakable. A Mercenary of Swords. He sat up straight, concentrating on the tile. There had been something. Something that had made him think for a split second of his father. When he’d led the two Mercenaries through the halls to the trap point, something-a shiver of familiarity-about the man Lionsmane had triggered a thought, a memory. What had it been? He frowned, placed the Mercenary of Swords back into the olive-wood box and began sliding the others into his palm. No time to chase down stray thoughts now.

He closed the lid of the olive-wood box with a snap.

And if his one-eyed cousin was keeping four Mercenary Brothers in a cell and one in a nice room-when she wasn’t tied to a chair-what, precisely, could Dal do about it now?

A brisk knock, and Lan-eLan entered with a click of high heels. She shut the door behind her, leaning against the knob.