“Brown,” she said.

That matched what he thought himself. “They were green when he looked at me,” he told her. “Glowing green like slices of jade stone with the sun behind them.”

Dhulyn raised her cup to her lips, made a face when she found it empty. Parno signaled the waiter, waited quietly while their cups were refilled. Dhulyn suddenly sat up straight, her eyes narrowing.

“Did you feel like crying?” she said. “Or striking yourself?”

“Ah.” He drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “You’re saying it was the Jaldean, all of it.” He picked up his fresh ganje and set it back down again without tasting it.

“Or whatever it was made his eyes glow green.” Dhulyn frowned, the fingers of her right hand braiding to form the sign against ill luck. “Some drug perhaps?”

“When did you See the fire?” he asked, using his nightwatch voice, soundless and almost breathless. When she raised her eyebrows at him without answering, he added, “You knew which alley to go down.”

She looked away and shifted in her seat. “This business with the Marked,” she began. “It makes no sense.”

Parno took a swallow from his cup. “You read too much poetry. This is all about power. The Jaldeans assert themselves at the expense of the Marked. When the Marked are gone, the Jaldeans fill the void.”

“Fill it with what? Promises and platitudes?”

“Fear and righteousness.”

“And meanwhile people die for want of Healers, starve for want of Finders, and go mad for want of Menders.”

“Not everyone, there’s few enough Marked that many don’t depend on them.”

“Not so many.” Dhulyn chewed on her upper lip. “Parno, my heart, remember that time you told the tavern dancer that I could See his future for him?”

“I remember what you called me,” Parno said, trying for a smile, “and what you told him about me. And I remember how sore I was in practice for the next few days.”

“I don’t think you’d better make that offer to anyone else.”

“I’d already thought of that.” Parno waited a minute before asking. “Did you See anything else?”

“Gotterang.” Her lips twisted as they named the capital of Imrion.

“No.”

Heads turned and a waiter hesitated on his way across the room. Parno lowered his voice again, shaking his head. “It’s back to the Catseye for us. Imrion is no longer the land of my childhood, nor even the land we left after Arcosa. Caids know, it’s not safe for you there.”

Dhulyn nodded, but so slowly Parno knew she was really saying no. “Ship’s gone,” she said. “Tide turned while we were with the Finders.” She looked up and gave him her wolf’s smile. “If any of the Marked are safe, it would be me. No one thinks to meet a genuine Seer, most people don’t even believe in them anymore. Besides, since when do we look for safety, my heart? We’re Mercenary Brothers.”

“I won’t lose you to the Jaldeans.” That was as plain as he could say it.

“And if I lose you?” Dhulyn set her cup down with a thump and looked her Partner in the eye, holding his gaze when he would have looked away. This was neither the time nor the place she would have chosen to speak on this subject, but surely she’d been silent long enough. Partnership was a life bond in the Mercenary Brotherhood. Or was meant to be.

“What do you mean?”

“A demon haunts you,” she said. “A demon from your childhood.” She waited two heartbeats, three, but Parno made no move to deny her words. “Shall I tell you how many times in the last year I’ve turned to you on the trail-or worse, on watch-and found you, wits abstracted, staring into the middle distance? Or how many times woken up in the middle of the night and found you awake, staring at the stars?”

“You never said anything.” Parno’s eyes held hers for a moment longer before falling to where his fingers were clamped around his own steaming cup.

“I waited for you to speak, and the word spoken was Imrion.”

“I never meant…” Parno heaved a deep breath. “It’s only that I began to wonder what became of my Household and I…”

“Spoke to me of Imrion.” Dhulyn leaned back in her chair, nodding. Of course, she thought. Time had softened whatever had made him leave his House and become a Mercenary Brother. But to tell her so, to ask her openly to return with him to learn what had become of his past-she smiled, a twisting of her lips. How could he ask this of her, who had no past to return to?

“This business of the Marked changes all of that.” Parno took a deep breath and released it slowly, pushing his cup to one side. “Very well, I admit that I’ve wondered about my House, my father… but going there endangers you. If the Catseye is gone, then we’ll take another ship.”

“Do you hear yourself?” Dhulyn leaned forward, though her voice was already too low to be heard beyond their table. “You actually counsel the safe and the secure to a Mercenary Brother-to me? What next? I should open a book shop and die in my bed? We’re Mercenary Brothers. One day we’ll make a mistake, and someone or something will kill us. This is our truth.”

“It’s everyone’s truth,” Parno began.

“But we know it, and we don’t run away.” Dhulyn licked her lips. “We don’t run away.”

“In Battle,” Parno said.

“Or in Death,” she answered.

Parno leaned against the serving bar, the common room of the inn slowly filling with customers as the afternoon lengthened and laborers came in for a midday meal or a quick mug of ale on their way home. Those who were already drinking something stronger had neither homes nor meals to go to. The serving girl had just swept up the last of the broken crockery from around the table where he and Dhulyn had been sitting when Linkon Grey the innkeeper, a little stouter and a little grayer than when Parno had last seen him, came out of the serving door behind the bar.

“Hot stones will be ready in a minute,” Linkon said.

Parno turned. “Sorry about the mess,” he said, jerking his head at the girl moving toward them with her broom and dustpan full of what had been two plates and a pottery mug.

“Not your fault, Lionsmane,” Linkon said. “Though I’ll have to replace them, and with no Menders the blasted potters are charging an arm and a leg. But not to worry, I took the price out of the man your Partner threw out the door. He should have taken no for an answer. If you didn’t want to work for him, you didn’t want to work for him. And I don’t blame you, if he was lying about the job.”

“Wolfshead’s good at spotting liars,” Parno said, “though your house cat would have known the fool was lying, come to that. Normally she’s more forgiving. His bad luck he pushed it a little too far at the wrong time, if you catch my meaning.”

“Oh, I catch it all right. My wife’s the same, though not much capable of throwing me out the door, for which I thank the Caids.” The man grinned.

Parno grinned back and didn’t bother to correct the man. Dhulyn wasn’t his wife, but there were few people outside of the Brotherhood-and even some within-who understood what it meant to be Partnered.

“Though I can’t say I’m surprised the man persisted,” Linkon continued, as he laid out mugs on the bar ready for spiced cider when it came hot from the kitchen. “There’s not so many Mercenaries in Navra at the moment, and for that reason, a word in your ear.”

Parno obliged the man by leaning both elbows on the bar, bringing his face within inches of the landlord’s. He’d once spent almost a whole winter at the inn, and had developed a friendship with Linkon Grey that even the passage of years did not change.

“Two of the Watch were in here last night, looking for a couple of Mercenary Brothers who’d helped some Finders yesterday.”

A chill traveled up Parno’s spine. Not Linkon, too. “People had set fire to a house with children inside it.”