“Why do you wait? Every delay allows the Sleeping God more time to awaken.”

Lok ground his teeth. The man’s beliefs were becoming more than a nuisance. Lok set his wineglass back on the table, fixing his guest with his eye. The Jaldean was not even looking at him. “I have declared Tek-aKet Fallen, but in the absence of a body, there are rumors,” he said, with more force than he had intended. “Rumors which force me to move much more slowly than I had originally planned.”

Beslyn-Tor brought his gaze back from the distance and fixed it on Lok-iKol, the jade-green eyes as bright as though they’d absorbed the light of the setting sun that streamed through the windows. The new Tarkin of Imrion suddenly wished he was not sitting down. He would feel stronger on his feet. It seemed the whole room had darkened.

“You think to put me off. I warn you, do nothing you will regret.”

Lok brought his fingertips together and tapped his lips. “Do you threaten me? You stirred the people against the Marked; that is a great power you have. But Tek-aKet was taken by surprise, I will not be. That trick cannot be played again.”

The Jaldean priest waved the statement away with the closest thing to a smile Lok had ever seen him make.

“I seek to give you what you want most.”

“And that is?”

“You have named it. Power.”

Lok-iKol felt the cord of his eye patch move as he drew in his brows. “I am Tarkin.”

“Is that the extent of your ambition? What if there were more power to be had?”

Lok sat back, gripping the chair arms with his hands. This was too much.

“What? Will the Sleeping God bless me and hold me in his dreams? Do you think me as gullible as the rabble you rouse to frenzy? You are a useful tool, Beslyn-Tor, and I will reward you as promised, but do not presume too much on my gratitude.”

As a sign that the audience was over, Lok-iKol stood. Beslyn-Tor sighed and heaved himself to his feet, his age suddenly showing in the noise of his effort.

“My lord Tarkin, “ he said, lowering himself to one knee. “Forgive an impatient man. Allow me to be the first to give you my allegiance.” He bowed his head and reached up his right hand.

Lok-iKol hesitated, but there was no irony, no smug sarcasm, nor even any calculation on the old man’s face. He took the offered hand between his own. The priest’s skin was warm and dry, his grip firmer than Lok would have expected in so old a man. Lok licked suddenly dry lips.

“I receive…” he began, and shook his head in irritation. For a moment he couldn’t remember the words. He blinked and focused again on Beslyn-Tor’s face, the man’s jade-green eyes. The room around them grew darker.

He threw back his head, lungs breathing deeply. He had touched this shape before, used its eyes, so it took only moments of weakness, seconds of disorientation before he wore it easily. Younger. Stronger. For a moment the lost eye distracted him, but a second’s concentration removed that difficulty. For another moment the original inhabitant’s shrieking drew away his attention, but that was swiftly dealt with. The same concentration allowed him to review what this one knew.

The Seer was lost.

For a moment the body’s heart stopped beating.

She must be found, this Mercenary, this Wolfshead. Who could do so?

The Scholar. He had Found once already. But the Scholar himself was missing. Karlyn-Tan Cast Out. Dal-eDal. That one always knew more than he told.

He looked down at the old man on the floor.

“Jelran,” he called and was pleased by how swiftly the page entered.

“Have the junior priest who accompanied Beslyn-Tor enter. His master appears to have suffered a stroke.”

The young page glanced at the figure on the floor and licked his lips. “Of course, my lord.”

He watched, feeling the inside of this shape, testing the strengths, tasting the skills, as they helped the stricken man dodder out of the room.

“Jelran? Tell Gan-eGan to cancel the ambassadors’ supper and send for my cousin Dal-eDal to come to me.”

“At once, my lord.”

I have got nothing to worry about, Dal-eDal told himself, nodding to the pale-faced Dome Guard as he dismounted at the Ironwood Gate. If Lok was ready to have him killed, he needn’t bring Dal to the Carnelian Dome to do it. Far more likely to suffer some “accident” at home, like so many others of the Tenebro family. No, the difference today was that the summons came not only from his House, but from his Tarkin.

Or someone’s Tarkin, anyway.

Dal smiled and tossed his reins to the waiting stable girl, thanked his escort and began the long walk across the fitted flagstones of the wide interior yard to the Carnelian Dome’s Steward of Keys, waiting on the steps of the grand entrance known as the Tarkin’s Door. Like the stable girl, and a couple of the Carnelian Dome Guards for that matter, the Steward’s face showed a pallor and a stiffness that spoke of underlying uncertainty. Not unlike, Dal thought, the look on the faces of the people in Tenebro House on the morning the House fell.

“Not your first time here, at any rate, Lord Dal,” the Steward said with the ghost of his usual smile on his lips.

Dal tilted his head with a smile of his own. He felt and recognized the need for normal conversation in these most abnormal times. “I barely remember that event,” he said. The Steward gestured, and Dal preceded the man through the gateway. “I was four when my father became head of his Household, and I came with him to give his oaths to the Tenebroso, and to the old Tarkin.”

The Steward made a half-aborted motion with his right hand, and Dal coughed. So it was better not to mention even Tek-aKet’s father, was it?

“I wasn’t Steward then,” the man said. “I don’t believe I remember your father.”

“He was only in Gotterang once more. In fact, he died on his way home from that last visit to the Tenebroso. Fell from his horse.”

“You became Household then? Or was there an older sibling?”

“No, I was Kir for my Household, but at eight years old, my House thought it better to put a Steward in place and brought me to her in Gotterang.” No need to tell the Carnelian Dome’s Steward of Keys that such young children were used as hostages; the man well knew that for himself.

“And, of course, you’ve been here ever since. Once in the capital, who would want to leave?”

Dal smiled, his lips pressed tightly together. Ever since. Ever since his father, who must have guessed something about that summons from which he never returned, had kissed him good-bye whispering, “Stay alive, Son. See you survive to avenge me.”

Still alive, Papa, he thought. Accomplishing that much at least.

“It must have been strange for you,” the Steward said, as he opened the third set of double doors for Dal to walk through. “I remember being very homesick when I first came here as a child.” Dal stood to one side as two pages, heads down and mumbling their excuses, came stumbling through the opened door.

“Not exactly homesick. Though there were no children my age in Tenebro House,” he said, after the young pages were out of earshot. “And I’m afraid I found my cousin Lok-iKol very… impressive.”

The Steward of Keys, with a glance at Dal’s face, nodded his quick understanding.

At first, Dal had been too shocked by grief and the change in his circumstances to remember his father’s last words to him. Afterward, he’d needed to be sure that it wasn’t just homesickness and an aversion to Lok’s company that made him want to kill his one-eyed cousin. The longer he waited, the harder it became to do anything. If he killed Lok openly, he would be killed himself. Failing in his father’s first command to him. If he killed Lok by stealth, he’d become the heir, something he’d never wanted-still didn’t want. So he’d spent years studying the situation, gathering information, in part to protect himself, in part to find a safe way of enacting his father’s vengeance. All in all, he’d been gathering information for a long time.