The older man, skinny, and wearing more jewelry than either Tarkin or Tarkina, Dhulyn noted with a grimace, also wore the Carnelian badge on his left shoulder, marking him for some upper-level aide of the Tarkin.

“I greet you, Alkoryn Pantherclaw.” The Tarkin’s voice was surprisingly gruff coming from so smooth-looking a man. And there was a smile in it, Dhulyn realized, which explained how Alkoryn had been able to see the Tarkin so quickly. Some connection, whether friendship could be the word or no, existed somehow between the two very different men. “My aide Gan-eGan you know,” the Tarkin said, gesturing at the older man, “and my Tarkina you have met. You say there is a threat against my life?”

“I greet you, Lords, Lady,” Alkoryn said, bowing his head and touching the empty loop on his belt where his sword normally hung. “May I present my Brothers, Dhulyn Wolfshead the Scholar, and Parno Lionsmane the Chanter. It is the Wolfshead who brought this news to me, and I bring her now that you may hear her own words.”

The Tarkin turned his pale blue eyes to her, the strange etiquette of the Carnelian court allowing him to notice her for the first time.

“Lord Tarkin,” Dhulyn said, lowering her gaze for a moment and touching her sword belt in imitation of Alkoryn’s example. Her Senior had heard and approved the version of the story she and Parno had planned, and she began it now. “I have recently been in House Tenebro, and while there I overheard the present Tenebroso speaking with a Jaldean priest. They were discussing your assassination, my lord, and making plans to put the Tenebroso Lok-iKol-the Kir as he then was-on the Carnelian Throne.”

The Tarkina lifted her hand, as if to put her fingertips on her husband’s shoulder. There was no other movement in the room.

Finally, the Tarkin leaned back in his chair, rested his chin in his right hand. The red stone in his seal ring caught the light, twinkling.

“The newly risen House and a Jaldean priest?”

“Yes, Lord Tarkin.”

The Tarkin looked at his aide. “Have your people heard anything of this?”

Gan-eGan shook his head. “No, my lord, and I do not see how this could be so. The Jaldeans have made no changes in their usual demands.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Dhulyn saw Parno rub his upper lip with his left index finger. She, too, imagined she knew what the “usual demands” were. Judging from what they’d heard preached on the street, the Jaldeans wanted arrests and detainments, not just green headdresses, curfews and pressure to come to their shrines voluntarily.

Alkoryn cleared his throat. “Nor would there be, if they had something like this in view. You are too moderate for them, Lord Tarkin…”

“It may be, as some suggest, that I would prefer the Jaldeans had never found their new teachings,” the Tarkin said. “But they are here, many listen and believe, and that is a reality of my reign. I am sorry for the Marked. I have instructed my soldiers, and the guards along my borders not to hinder or stop them if they wish to go, though the Jaldeans would prefer I did otherwise. I am not myself a New Believer, but I will have order, and until I find some other way, the Marked are the price I must pay.”

“It is as I have said,” the aide said. “The Jaldeans have no need to support the claims of another for the Throne.”

“Perhaps the need is Lok-iKol’s,” Dhulyn said.

“You should be more careful, Mercenary. This is a High Noble House you speak of.”

Dhulyn smiled her wolf’s smile, and Gan-eGan edged farther away from her. The Tarkin looked quickly aside, lifting his hand to rub at his upper lip. I could like him, were he not so wrong, Dhulyn thought, stifling a genuine smile of her own.

“May I ask, Dhulyn Wolfshead, how it is you came to overhear this conversation?” the Tarkin said.

Dhulyn swallowed. This was the tricky part.

“They thought I was unconscious, and so spoke freely before me.” The Tarkin sat up straight. “They thought you were unconscious? How?” He transferred his look to Alkoryn. “Drunk?”

“Drugged, my lord.”

The aide sniffed. “Is that not much the same thing?”

“Drugged by them.”

“To what possible purpose?”

The Tarkin was content, Dhulyn saw, to let his weasel of an aide pursue his questions for him. She drew in air through her nose.

“I did not catch your name, sir,” Parno cut in. Dhulyn ground her teeth but stayed silent. This was Parno’s world, as she herself had said. She’d do best to let him handle it.

“I am Gan-eGan,” the aide said through stiff lips. “I am the head of the Tarkin’s private council.”

“I am surprised, Gan-eGan, to find you so hostile to persons who have come here with a warning.”

“The Brotherhood’s neutrality is well known, so you may therefore understand my caution when one of you, claiming to have been drugged, comes with an accusation against a High Noble House,” Gan-eGan said.

It was all Dhulyn could do not to throw her hands in the air. This would get them nowhere. “My partner and I delivered a cousin of theirs whom we’d guarded from Navra, and when the job was done, we were set upon and held. We don’t know why-perhaps you could ask the Tenebros? They gave me fresnoyn, and while they were waiting to question me-again, I don’t know why-I overheard the conversation I’ve described. The interrogation was interrupted, and we escaped before it could be continued. We thought about remaining in captivity and asking a few questions of our own, but rational thought prevailed.”

“Do not take offense.” The Tarkin’s eyes danced in an otherwise straight face. “The Carnelian Throne is not an easy seat. Even the accusations of friends must be examined, when they come without proof. Is there proof you can offer me?”

Dhulyn closed her eyes and gritted her teeth. “I thought it was a mistake to come here,” she muttered. “Believe us, don’t believe us-it’s all the same to me.”

It was as if Dhulyn had thrown a cat into a dovecote. The weasel of an aide yammering his indignation, Alkoryn’s rough whisper failing to catch the Tarkin’s ear, and Parno also trying to be heard. Dhulyn ground her teeth together. This would all be for nothing if she could not get them to believe her. She caught Parno’s eye and raised her eyebrows. He grimaced and shrugged, leaving it up to her. She looked from Alkoryn to the Tarkin and back. She was here. Her decision, she realized, had already been made.

She grasped Gan-eGan by the shoulders and moved him to one side as though he had been a child, stepping into the space he had occupied, stepping to within striking distance of the now silent Tarkin. If details were what they wanted…

“They will poison you in a dish of kidneys.”

Every tongue stilled. Every eye in the room turned to her, and the Tarkin’s were not the only ones which had narrowed. Dhulyn took a deep breath, now she was for it. At least the weaselly clerk had stopped his yammering.

“You’ll be in a little room, much smaller than this one, in an old part of the palace where the walls are very thick. There’s a tall, thin window with an archer’s grille, and a shutter on the inner wall, with glass panes in it.” The Tarkin’s chair was elevated enough that Dhulyn looked straight into Tek-aKet’s blue eyes. “The lower left-hand pane has some words scratched on the glass; I don’t know what they say, it’s a language I don’t know. I could write it for you, though. There’s a worktable, with an armchair on each side of it, both cushioned. A fireplace on the side of the room farthest from the window, with a small fire laid but not yet burning. A dark patterned carpet on the floor, old with worn spots, but you can still see the outline of snakes. A cloth covering the table with weights sewn into the corners-”

“Enough,” the Tarkin said, his voice harsh and abrupt. “I know the room.”

“Well, they’ll bring you a dish of kidneys there, Lord, and you’ll die from it.”