“So what then?” Parno asked. “Have you no other recourse? What says your Guild?”

Grenwen Finder shook his head. “There’s been no word from the Guildhall since the passes closed.”

The silence around the table acknowledged what they all knew. The Guildhall of the Marked was in Gotterang, Imrion’s capital.

“There’s always the Cloud People.” The daughter’s voice made her parents jump; she’d been quiet so long they’d forgotten she was still there. “The Clouds don’t believe any of this nonsense. They value the Marked.”

Dhulyn exchanged another look with her Partner. Normally, the Finders would be considered safe enough with the Clouds. Neither the Tarkins of Imrion nor the Princes of Navra had found any profit in trying to pull the Clouds out of the mountain range that lay between the two countries, and that the Cloud People considered their home. But when religious fanatics became part of the game, sensible policies were often thrown from the board.

Mirandeth was shaking her head. “Child. Can we go to live in a cave in the mountains like a pack of wolves or Outlanders? No offense, Dhulyn Wolfshead.”

“None taken,” Dhulyn said, carefully not smiling. “But if you don’t mind a bit of advice from an Outlander, consider what your daughter has said. Better to be a valued member of the wolf pack than the target and prey of civilized men.”

The Finder nodded. “There’s sense in that.” His face showing more color now, he turned to his wife. “My bowl, Mira, if you please.”

Mirandeth, a new light shining in her eyes, sprang to her feet and excused herself, returning from the kitchen in a moment with a small porcelain bowl. As wide as her two hands, its glaze was so pure a white that it seemed to glow in the fading light of the workroom. Grenwen Finder leaned back in his chair and allowed her to place the bowl directly in front of him on the tabletop. The daughter came close behind her mother, a pitcher of water in her hands. Fresh spring water, Dhulyn knew, poured three times through clean silk. She cocked an eyebrow at Parno and leaned forward in interest. Grenwen Finder was a skilled Mark, indeed, if he could Find something as abstract as a safe place for his family.

The Finder poured a small amount of water into the bowl, handed the jug back to his daughter, and placed his hands so that his fingers rested lightly on the bowl’s edge. Back straight, he sat forward enough to be able to look directly into the depth of white porcelain. His breathing almost immediately became deep and steady, and the room grew so silent Dhulyn could hear the footsteps of a passerby in the street and the blood beating in her own ears. Then she could not hear even that, and it seemed that the world and everything in it had fallen still, stopped in its dance.

The Finder raised his head, and the world resumed.

“There is sanctuary,” he said, his voice a whisper as if the Finding had taken all his strength. “It is in the mountains. But the passes-”

“Should be clear enough for determined people on horseback,” Parno cut in. “And empty of everyone else. Have you beasts? Then fetch them and begin packing,” he added when Grenwen Finder nodded.

Dhulyn stood, placed her empty glass carefully on the table. “The first thing you should do,” she said, “is take those headdresses off.”

Without a word, Mirandeth reached up and unfastened the pin in the carefully folded dark green cloth around her head. She pulled the headdress off and revealed her hairless and tattooed scalp.

Two

PARNO WATCHED AS DHULYN carried two cups of steaming ganje back to their table close to the fire at the Hoofbeat Inn. No one could tell by looking at her face, or watching the smooth way she moved, that they’d been up most of the night, sneaking the Finders out of Navra by an old way Parno remembered. The Hoofbeat hadn’t changed much since he’d seen it last. There were a few more cracks in the dark ceramic tiles of the floor, and the small bricks making up the ceilings that arched between stubby pillars were more worn and crumbling than he recalled, but the pillars themselves, and the walls for that matter, were solid and had been recently whitewashed.

“Your friend the innkeeper has heard tell of something like it,” Dhulyn said, putting down the cups and sliding in next to him. “He says it’s happened a few times at Jaldean shrines, during meditations.” Dhulyn shrugged, and lifted her cup. Parno knew perfectly well what she thought of townsmen’s religious practices.

“Anyway, Linkon Grey tells me that this falling into a fit, this…” Dhulyn shivered, “whatever we want to call it, that’s where it’s happened before. Sometimes there are miracles, Healings and the like, and when that happens, the Jaldeans tell people they’ve touched the dreams of the Sleeping God.” She took a swallow of her ganje. “Most come out of the fits all right. Not all.”

“All that time in the Great King’s court I was wishing we were here, and now that we are, I’d give my best sword to be back with the Western Horde,” Parno said.

“Always supposing we’d be welcomed back.” The smile in Dhulyn’s voice matched the one on her lips as she threw him a sparkling glance. Parno grinned back at her.

“What was it you so carefully didn’t say, back there at the Finders?” she said, watching him over the rim of her cup. “When the wife asked was there a Jaldean in the crowd, you froze like a man caught in his neighbor’s bed.”

Parno’s throat closed like a fist, his smile melting away. He couldn’t tell her. She’d laugh at him. But she was his Partner. Who else could he tell? It would sit like a lump of poison in his gut if he didn’t tell someone.

“Spit it out, you blooded effete,” she advised him, her grin softening her words. “Stop trying to spare your dainty feelings.”

“While I was standing in the window with the second boy,” he began, his voice sharp as he pushed it past the tightness in his throat, “I had the oddest feeling of being watched.”

“Of course you were being watched.” Dhulyn’s blood-red brows made a small vee above her eyes.

He pressed his lips together and shook his head. “Not like that, it was like… when you’re all alone in the woods, but you feel you’re not alone, and you look around and see nothing, but later you find a print and you know some beast’s been watching you.”

Dhulyn’s nod was slow. “There was no animal in with the mob-not that kind anyway.”

Parno shook his head. “I think it was that Jaldean New Believer. Or maybe, maybe something that was with him. I felt… there was something I couldn’t see. Something that seemed to comb through my mind and thoughts and I couldn’t stop it.” Parno took a sip of his ganje to cover the trembling of his lips. “It made me feel… unmanned.” He couldn’t look up.

“Well, that’s saying quite a lot.” Dhulyn looked at him with eyes widened in pretended innocence.

“Demons and perverts! I should have known I’d get no sympathy from you.”

“It isn’t sympathy you want, you blooded fool, and you know it.”

The tightness in his chest began to dissolve. “But you believe me?”

“It made you sweat to tell me,” she said, reaching behind her to rub the small of her back with her fist. “I don’t need any other proof. Of course I believe you.”

Parno nodded, taking a swallow of ganje to hide his relief. He’d expected her to laugh, really laugh that is, not just tease him. Showed you that you never knew what an Outlander would do or say. And that seven years of Partnership doesn’t always tell you everything about your Partner.

There was something else, something he’d better mention now, while he still could. “Did you see what color his eyes were?”

Dhulyn closed her own eyes a moment as she searched through the images of memory until she could light upon the one detail-