Mar shot a quick glance around. She’d have to hide all her packing before she went to fetch help. Whoever came would be sure to notice it and guess exactly what it meant. Her eyes returned to the Scholar. There was one more thing she could try. She picked up the bowl and dashed the water into Gundaron’s face. He sputtered, blinked, and shook his head.

“I didn’t know,” he said, clutching at her arm as he came fully awake. “I swear I didn’t know.”

“Of course not,” she said. The pressure of his fingers on her forearm made her wince. She gently pulled free and set the bowl back on the tabletop. “I take it you Found what you were looking for?”

He started to nod, turned a pale green, and retched, gagging. Nothing came from his mouth but a thin line of saliva.

Mar ran into the bedroom, snatched up a towel from the washstand and brought it out to him. He disappeared into the towel, and for a moment Mar thought he wasn’t going to come out. When he did, he had rubbed some color into his face, and looked less as though he were about to faint again.

“Don’t tell anyone. Please.”

“What can I tell? I don’t even know what it was.”

Gundaron looked up, eyes wide. “No,” he said finally. “I meant don’t tell anyone I’m a Finder.”

“I won’t.”

“Promise?” His voice was thick, giving weight to the childlike request.

Mar hesitated, but there was something in his face that touched her-something more than fear. She held out her hand, waited until he’d taken it.

“Yes, I promise, but-do you mean no one knows?”

Gundaron rubbed his eyes with his fingertips, lowered his hands, and looked around the room.

“I wanted to be a Scholar. I wanted it so badly. I moved the sun and the stars to be allowed to go to Valdomar. And I’m good at it; I knew I would be. The best Scholar in my class. If they’d known I could Find…”

“You’d have gone to the Guildhall.”

He looked at her. “And now…”

Mar took the towel from him, shook out the creases and began to fold it. It wasn’t the Guildhall he’d go to now if the wrong people learned he was a Finder, but the Jaldean Shrine. “I’ll keep my promise,” she said. “I won’t tell.” She sat down in the other chair, still holding the towel. “What was it you Found?”

A muscle jumped in his cheek as he clenched his teeth. “I Found what they’re doing here. Lok-iKol and…” his eyes shifted away, “and the others.”

Mar waited some minutes before deciding that Gundaron wasn’t going to say anything more. But as she rose to her feet, thinking to take the towel back into her bedroom, the Scholar spoke again.

“This was my first assignment.” He stroked the edge of the bowl with the first two fingers of his right hand. “The Tenebros asked for our best Scholar to write a history of the House, and the Seniors at Valdomar chose me, even though I was their youngest graduate. I’ve never been anywhere but home and Valdomar; I’d certainly never seen such a place as this. I was all alone here-”

Mar thought of the twin sisters Nor and Kyn and knew just how alone he had been. Suddenly she wanted to put her arms around him, stroke his hair, but she knew that if she did, he would stop speaking. And whatever it was he was about to say, he needed to say it.

“Then to have the Kir of such a Noble House take me into his confidence, treat me with respect…”

Mar lowered herself into her seat once more. His words and tone had the flavor of explanation, almost apology, and she waited for him to continue.

“There’s so much data in a Noble House’s archives,” he said. “The kind of private things that never get into the history books. Things that could help me with my personal researches and I was promised all the information I needed-” He got up and moved the short distance between the table and the window, his steps small and abrupt. “I was so excited, I got so interested in what I was learning that I-I forgot to keep my distance.”

“Is that what you Found? Your distance?”

Gundaron licked his lips and Mar got up once more, this time to bring him a cup of water.

He took a deep swallow and gripped the cup tightly in both hands. “Yes. I think I can say that.” He took a deep breath. “I’ve stepped back and taken a good look at what I’ve been doing, and I don’t like what I’ve seen.”

Mar put her hand on his arm. Gundaron was the only person here who had been kind to her, really kind to her, as herself. The only person who had never made her feel apart. “I’m sure whatever you’ve done couldn’t be all that bad,” she said.

The look of despair that passed over his face at her words almost frightened her.

“I’ve been Finding Marked for them,” he said, so quietly that Mar actually leaned toward him to be sure she’d heard him correctly.

“For whom?” The words came out in a hoarse whisper.

“Lok-iKol, for one.” What Mar thought must have shown on her face because he threw himself down at her feet and clutched at the skirt of her dressing gown. “I didn’t know, I swear I didn’t know. I thought it was just research. Families, bloodlines, how talents pass through kinships. I didn’t know about the Jaldeans.” He looked at the bowl. “I didn’t know until now. It’s memories I’ve Found.”

“But Gundaron, you’re Marked.”

“They don’t know!” He waved her words away. “I’m a Scholar.”

Mar shook her head. Surely it wasn’t possible. Surely it wasn’t possible that you could be so focused on your craft, on your research, that you could overlook what was being done with it. Surely you couldn’t feel so separate and apart from people just like yourself.

Families. Bloodlines. She looked from his face to the bowl on the table. Her bowl. Passed through five generations. A scryer’s bowl. A Finder’s bowl. A cold hand closed around her heart.

“That’s why I’m here,” she said. “That’s why they sent for me. And you-”

“I told him you weren’t,” Gundaron said. “I wouldn’t have let them-please, believe me.”

So he had known. Even if some of his memories were missing, to lie to Lok-iKol about her, Gundaron must have been aware that something wicked was happening, even if that awareness had been buried deep. Mar reached to push him away from the skirts of her dressing gown, but something held her back. What had he done, really? Found innocent people and, in return for certain promises and favors, arranged to have them brought to Tenebro House. Hadn’t she done much the same thing herself? In return for comfort, riches, her Holding restored, hadn’t she brought them Dhulyn Wolfshead and Parno Lionsmane? Hadn’t the Wolfshead killed a Cloudboy in the Mountains for her? Were her hands any cleaner than Gundaron’s?

She put her hands on his head, patted his rough hair.

“The Mercenary Brothers,” she said. “That’s why you’re afraid of Pasillon, because you-we-brought them here for Lok-iKol as well.”

He was motionless, but Mar saw in his face that it was so. She looked around the room at her folded clothing, her half-filled travel pack. Her instincts had been better than she knew.

“What can we do?”

“Go to the Tenebroso.” Gundaron got to his feet. “She’s the only person in the House more powerful than the Kir.”

“Will she stop him?”

“I’m sure she will.” But Mar saw the uncertainty cloud his eyes as he turned his head away. What odds the old woman didn’t already know?

A knock at the door startled them both.

Guilt, Mar thought. That’s what’s wrong with us.

Gundaron looked at her and she swallowed, straightened her dressing gown and, closing it once more with her hand to her throat, went to the door.

“Who is it?” she called. And how long have you been standing there listening?

“Okiron, Lady Mar.”

Gundaron motioned to Mar and she backed away, letting him open the door. Standing on the threshold was the boy page who served this corridor. He looked pale, and there were the marks of tears on his cheeks.