“Why knock if you don’t wait for me to say ‘enter’?” Dal said, good training bringing him to his feet. As usual, she ignored him. They’d long ago come to an understanding; a free exchange of information between them helped them both.
“Mar-eMar was told she’d get her lands back.”
Dal sat slowly, holding the edge of the table like an old man.
Lan nodded, a stiff smile on her lips. “She wondered, as innocent as you please, should she ask about it now or wait. I told her she should wait, of course, or speak to you.”
“Sound advice, in any case. Though she’d wait a long time. Do we even own the lands still?” Dal shook his head. It felt strange to know that once upon a time he’d been this naive himself. “Did she say what she’d done to expect this gift?”
“I gave her every chance to tell me,” Lan said, spreading her hands wide. “But the moment passed. She must have been asked for something…”
Dal thought he knew what Mar-eMar had been asked for-and what she’d brought. But why?
“I’ll find a chance to speak to her myself,” he said. “See what I can get from her.” Lan nodded and left as abruptly as she’d entered.
What was so important about these Mercenaries? Dal pushed his chair back from the table, stood, and picked up his box of tiles. He’d asked the Steward of Walls to meet him, and he’d better go. He could give the good Walls a nudge in the right direction. With luck, this affair might become his chance to finally do what his father had asked of him. Avenge his death. Stay alive himself.
Maybe the Mercenary Brothers would solve his problems for him.
“You sent for me, my lord?” Karlyn-Tan waited in the doorway of the old armory, letting his eyes adjust to the light of the oil lamps within the room, so much darker than the sunlight streaming into the passageway from slits high in the stone walls.
Dal-eDal looked up from the dagger he was examining. “We’re alone, Karlyn, or will be if you shut the door.”
Karlyn took a step forward and let the oaken door, reinforced with strips of iron, swing shut behind him. Sturdy wooden shelves lined the walls, and low tables divided the floor space into long sections with clear pathways leading toward the far end of the room. A fine layer of dust covered innumerable pieces of weaponry laid out in orderly rows, everything from a gilded mace to a dagger small enough to fit in a glove. Many pieces were ceremonial, or so jeweled as to be almost useless.
“What’s this Juslyn tells me about a new sword? Are you sure you don’t want one new-forged?”
“I’m afraid I misled Juslyn slightly.” Dal was looking him directly in the face, but Karlyn thought there was something stiff and unnatural about the man’s smile. “It’s not so much a new sword I’m looking for, as a particular one. My father’s, to be precise. I seem to remember it was among the effects I brought from my Household.”
Karlyn started off to the left, heading for the far corner. “If it was, this is the place to look, right enough. Private blades-family blades that is, or anything jeweled should be along here.”
“Do you remember my father?”
Karlyn nodded, without turning around. “I met him once, just before I became Walls. A big man, golden-haired like a lion.” Karlyn turned to look more carefully at the other man. “Like you. You must look quite like him, though I won’t lie to you, I don’t remember his face. That would be, let me think… I’ve been Steward of Walls in Tenebro House for fifteen years, and served almost as many before that, since my father brought me here. So close to twenty years ago.”
“The Tenebroso never objected to your father bringing you?”
“Because he was her husband, you mean?” Karlyn shook his head. This was a question he’d answered many times over the years. “His children by other women did not affect the succession. And she liked me,” he added, seeing that it was Dal he spoke to. “Trusted me enough to make me Walls when old Norwed-Gor died, though my father was gone himself by then.”
“A man’s made Walls of a House as much for his judgment as for his skills,” Dal said. “I think we may have need of your judgment now.”
Karlyn heard Dal’s last words, but at first they did not register. He had reached the section of the tables where the swords were laid out in wooden racks, hilts first. He had stopped at a particular sword about one third of the way down the rack on the left. A sword lacking the patina of dust worn by those around it. A sword he knew.
Dal’s father might very well have had a sword like this one; forged by a master, perfectly balanced, sharp along the full bottom and back perhaps two thirds of the top edge. But this was not Dal’s father’s sword. Karlyn knew this sword. Knew the horsehead pommel, knew the very slight nick in the guard. He’d had this sword in his hands within the last three days. And if her sword was here, then the red-haired, gray-eyed Mercenary and her companion had not, after all, left Tenebro House two days ago-Karlyn-Tan struck his thigh with his fist and turned on Dal-eDal.
“What do you know about this?”
“Little more than you.”
“You helped him, don’t deny it.”
Karlyn saw Dal consider reprimanding him for his tone, saw the noble’s face relax as he changed his mind.
“My cousin the Kir doesn’t always leave me in a position to refuse when he commands-as you very well know.”
Yes, Karlyn knew. Dal had come to the House a frightened boy, hostage for the good behavior of his mother and the safety of his sisters. The women were gone now, dead or married off, but the habits of years were not so easily shaken away.
“I heard the same story as you. The Mercenaries gone from the guard after the incident of the bad food, as their Common Rule requires. Mar-eMar’s escort seen leaving Gotterang by the North Gate. I was relieved when I learned that they were gone.”
“Looks like your relief is short-lived,” Karlyn said. And mine, he added to himself.
Dal was nodding, as he brushed the dust off the sword next to Dhulyn Wolfshead’s with a fingertip. “Lok’s not impressed by the Curse of Pasillon, you know. He says the power of the Brotherhood has passed, and there are too few of them left in the world to pose such a threat.”
“He’s a great one for logic, is the Kir,” Karlyn said, his anger rising hot enough to burn his throat. “But logic’s a two-edged blade, and can cut both ways.” He hefted the Mercenary’s blade for emphasis. “Even in these times, people have a way of dying when Mercenaries go missing or abused. How’s this for logic? If their numbers are fewer in these years, would they not be all the more careful of each other?”
“What is so important that Lok would put the whole House into danger this way?”
Karlyn spat to one side. “It’s that snake spawn Beslyn-Tor behind this.” Dal’s head jerked up, and his eyes narrowed as he studied Karlyn’s face. “Did you think I didn’t know? I’m Walls, for the Caids’ sake. That poison’s been coming to the House for months now.” Karlyn laid the sword back down in the rack. He’d never regretted having to let anyone into the House as much as he regretted having to let in the leader of the New Believers. Not that he much liked the Jaldean’s underlings either. Hard to make out which was worse, bona fide poisonous snakes, or their tail-kissing followers.
“What will you do?”
This time Karlyn did not trouble to hide his disgust. “I am Steward of Walls of Tenebro House,” he said. “My oath, and my responsibility are not to you, Lord Dal, nor to Lok-iKol, nor even to the Tenebroso herself. My Oath is to the House. And it is the House I will protect.”
Karlyn-Tan swept by him so brusquely that Dal had to take a step back to keep from being shoved off his feet. The hand that he put out to steady himself knocked against the rack of swords, setting the blades of some ringing like bells. The nearest blade was knocked from the rack entirely, its dusty tip rapping the tabletop sharply. This sword was marginally shorter than the Mercenary’s weapon, slightly curved and sharp on only the bottom edge. However, it, too, had an animal’s head for a pommel, this time, a mountain cat. One of the cat’s ears had been hammered flat, when the pommel itself had been used to strike a blow. Dal sucked in a breath, wrapped his hand around the cat’s head.