And if the dish wasn’t poisoned? No great harm there either.

Tek-aKet, Tarkin of Imrion, Consage of the Lost Isles, Darklin of Pendamar, and Culebroso, sat back in his chair to watch his dog eat.

Fourteen

“MY INSTRUCTIONS WERE very clear, Mistress. I’m to escort you and the children to Mercenary House.” Hernyn hovered in the doorway to the Mender’s inner room, frustration and impatience making his skin crawl. The family were living in the two back rooms of what had been a decent tradesman’s dwelling-before the furniture had been sold and the family tapestries and ornaments taken from the walls, leaving pale marks behind to show where they had been. There were two tick mattresses on the uncarpeted stone floor that had obviously seen their bedsteads sold out from under them, and the outer room held only three mismatched chairs, an unpainted wooden table, and a carefully arranged stack of pottery plates and mugs.

Three children, a boy of about eleven, and two younger girls, perhaps seven and four, sat close-mouthed and wide-eyed on the edge of the larger mattress.

“I must wait for my man.” Korwina Mender fastened the ties on a small leather pack and handed it to the older boy. “He’s been out same as I have, looking for a place to hide the children. I can’t let him come back to an empty house. Please,” she turned to Hernyn, showing him a face that wouldn’t accept a “no.” “I’ll wait and bring him with me. But please, Hernyn Greystone, take the children now.”

Korwina Mender looked at him, mouth set, the words she wouldn’t say in front of her children shining from her eyes. That her man would come back too late, if he came back at all. That, having seen her children safe, she would wait to share whatever ending fate brought her husband.

Hernyn looked from the children to the door and back again. Time was wasting. “Say your good-byes,” he told Korwina.

The older boy stood and went to his mother, the pack clutched in his hands, his face solemn. He was almost as tall as she, with the same soft brown hair and hazel eyes. Korwina brushed the hair back off his forehead with a steady hand.

“I’ll not be long,” she said. “But you are the head of the family until your father and I come. Watch out for your sisters.” She turned to the two younger children. “Mind your brother, and the good Mercenaries, until…” her voice faltered and she looked back at her son.

“Don’t wait too long, Mama,” the boy said.

“I won’t, my heart.” But the look they exchanged showed that both knew the truth. There was not luck enough left in the air tonight to bring the husband and father home in time, and this was good-bye. The boy swallowed and blinked rapidly, as if he knew that tears would frighten the younger children. But his lips were trembling too much for him to say anything more.

Korwina Mender took her son’s face once more between her hands and shut her own eyes. After a moment she opened them again, and her son’s face was calm, peaceful. He pressed his lips together and nodded, touching his mother’s face lightly. Hernyn looked from one to the other, knowing that something had happened, but unsure what it could be. The boy looked more solid somehow, more whole. She’s Mended him, Hernyn thought, licking suddenly dry lips. By the Caids, she’s Mended him.

“Hernyn Greystone,” the woman said, lifting her hands slightly as the boy led his sisters from the room. “I should tell you, my boy shows signs of Mending, like me. We’ve told no one else.”

“I don’t care if he shows signs of being a vulture plant,” Hernyn said. “Good luck to you, Korwina.”

“And to you, Greystone.”

As soon as they were out on the street, Hernyn picked up the older girl and set off as quickly as the boy, carrying his younger sister, could manage.

“What’s your name, boy?”

“Jerrick.”

“Come along, then, Jerrick.”

Close to an hour later, Mender’s children safely stowed in Mercenary House and managing to eat the food Fanryn had set before them with a surprising appetite, Hernyn Greystone was on his way to the Carnelian Dome through back alleys washed clean by the rain. As he sprinted toward the main avenue, he became aware of the sounds of a crowd ahead of him. He slowed, drew the longer of his two swords, and shifted over to the right-hand side of the alley as three men, two carrying long butcher knives, the third with a rusty short sword, ran past him on the left. The last man looked over with a hard eye, but Hernyn’s Mercenary badge showed well in the moonlight that had followed the rain, and he had to stifle the laughter that bubbled up in his throat when he saw how quickly the man’s belligerent look became polite. Instead of saying whatever he had intended to say, the man ducked his head and hurried after his friends.

As he neared Tarkin’s Square in front of the Carnelian Dome, the rumbling he’d heard in the distance grew louder, becoming murmuring, with individual voices raised in shouts Hernyn couldn’t quite make out. It seemed like every corner he passed had grown a knot of three or four men. This was no ordinary crowd, Hernyn thought, his stomach muscles tightening, but a mob in the making.

He slowed his pace still further and sheathed his sword, but kept his hand resting lightly on the grip. Trying to appear nothing more than curious, he sauntered up to the nearest group of men. “Hey, friend,” he said. “What’s caused all this buzz? Are we invaded?”

“Have you not heard?” the man said, his smile wide, plainly pleased to be giving news to a Mercenary Brother. “There’ll be work for you boys, that’s certain. Imrion’s Fallen.”

Hernyn hoped his raised eyebrows disguised the shock he felt.

“The Tarkin’s been poisoned,” the man continued. “They say it’s those cursed Marked.”

Hernyn walked away, his eyes fixed on the towers of the Carnelian Dome, still some blocks away. The distant shouting had become screaming, and he could hear the sounds of metal clashing on metal.

Hernyn began to run.

Dhulyn was getting tired of these very nice rooms. This one had a deep pile rug on the flagstone floor, a highly polished table with two comfortable chairs, a pitcher of wine with matching glazed cups, and a plate of one-bite meat pies. Everything, in fact, to entertain waiting guests except music, windows, and an unlocked door.

She looked up from the vera tiles she was laying out on the table as Parno asked the same question for the third time.

“Alkoryn says he’ll return for us,” she said, giving the same answer she’d given twice already. “Compose yourself in patience, my soul.”

“Caids take it, of course he’ll come,” Parno said. He turned back to the door and stroked the lock with the fingertips of his right hand. “You’re certain we shouldn’t help him a bit ourselves? Meet him halfway, as it were?”

Dhulyn shot him the look she usually reserved for people cheating at tiles and put down the tile she was holding with an audible click. “You’re the expert on politics and Noble Houses,” she said. “You tell me. Tell me you think it’s a good idea for us to wander about the Carnelian Dome hoping to meet our Brother in hallways crawling with servants, pages, and nobility both high and low, to say nothing of the Tarkin’s Personal Guard. Tell me this, and that lock’s as good as picked.” Dhulyn went back to studying the hand she was laying out before Parno had even finished rolling his eyes. She moved a page of swords from its place in a sequence of sword tiles so that it stood next to the seven of staffs. The two tiles, though of different suits, had the same color pattern. Green. There was a hand. A winning hand called Tarkin’s Jade. She looked at the tiles, frowning. She could have sworn that for a moment she’d seen something else, not a pattern exactly, but some total lack of…