When he’d realized just why Parno Lionsmane had seemed so familiar, only the iron discipline of years had stopped him from running singing through the House. He’d thought all his problems were solved. As kidnapped Mercenary Brothers they would kill Lok, and as a first cousin, Par-iPar Tenebro would set aside his Mercenary Brotherhood, become heir, and Dal could finally go home.
But the Brothers were gone, and Lok was now Tarkin.
“My lord.” The Steward of Keys motioned Dal to one side. Approaching them down the corridor were three individuals dressed completely in dark green, escorted by two guards in Tenebro colors and two Jaldean priests. From the corner of his eye, Dal looked at the Steward’s impassive face. For it was clear from their air of stumbling confusion that something had been done to these Marked. One of them, a short stout woman, was supporting a man almost twice her height, holding him around the waist. She merely looked red-eyed and blotchy, tears still rolling down stiff cheeks, but the man was vacant-eyed and drooling. The third, perhaps their son, was white as paper, and breathed shallowly as if in great pain.
“I thought the Marked were being taken to the Jaldean High Shrine,” Dal murmured to the Steward of Keys.
“Last night the new Tarkin gave orders for them to be brought here,” the Keys said. Something in the man’s voice made Dal look at him closely, but the Keys kept his eyes lowered. His lips, Dal saw, were trembling.
Once the Marked had passed, Dal and the Steward of Keys fell silent. They continued down the hall until it widened before the delicately carved doors of the Cedar Room, the small audience chamber. Here, there were comfortable cushioned chairs set out for waiting dignitaries, grouped around small empty tables that normally carried jellied fruits, salted nuts, and carafes of wine and cider. The place, usually crowded with petitioners and the younger children of the Noble Houses, was deserted.
Suddenly, Dal didn’t want to go any farther.
“If you would wait a moment,” the Keys of the Dome said. “I will see if the Tarkin is ready for you.”
Dal sank into one of the cushioned chairs. Once again he reminded himself that Lok need not bring him to the Dome to kill him. So what did Lok want? Dal thought about the message he’d received this morning from Karlyn-Tan, that the former Steward of Walls could be found at the Blue Dove Tavern. And where, Dal wondered would Gundaron the Scholar and the Lady Mar-eMar be found? Dal did not believe for a moment that the two had anything to do with the Fall of the House, but it was evident that Lok wanted them, and that meant Dal might gain something by finding them himself.
Lok had asked Karlyn-Tan to find the Mercenary woman, and the Steward of Walls had refused and been Cast Out. Was Dal now about to be asked? And if he refused? What would Lok do then?
The Keys pushed both doors of the small audience room open, gone so pale that his mustache and eyebrows stood out dark against his skin. “You may go in, Lord Dal-eDal.” He gestured toward the open doors.
Stomach twisting, wishing he had the courage to simply turn and walk away, Dal went through.
Whatever he’d expected to find, it wasn’t Lok in what was clearly the Tarkin’s great chair-carved out of white cedar, studded with carnelians, and just smaller than the official throne-talking to Chief Counselor Gan-eGan. Dal hovered, unwilling to approach more closely. The older man was on his knees on Lok’s right side, his hands clinging to the arm of the great chair, as a man in the sea clings to the side of a raft. Dal licked his lips and took a hesitant step forward.
With a soft sigh the counselor stood, lifting a trembling hand to his mouth, sketched a shaky bow, and headed for the door. Dal actually had to step out of the man’s way, as Gan-eGan-usually so punctilious it was almost laughable-passed him without acknowledgment of any kind.
“Cousin.” Lok’s voice was curiously flat, as if he was too tired to speak with more animation. Perhaps he’d found being Tarkin to be more work than he’d expected, Dal thought as he crossed the floor to his cousin’s side. He performed a more elaborate version of the counselor’s bow and straightened, forcing a smile to his lips.
“All is well at the House,” Dal said. “Tenryn-For is settling well into his duties as Walls.” As well as he can after less than twenty-four hours, and after Karlyn-Tan’s Deputy Jeldor-San had unexpectedly refused the post.
Lok nodded, but with an air of a man who is listening to something else. He got to his feet and gestured to Dal to fall in beside him as he walked toward the smaller, private door behind the great chair.
“Come with me, Cousin,” he said. “I would ask something of you.”
If I didn’t know better, Dal thought as he followed Lok through the door and nodded at the redheaded page who waited there and fell into step behind them, I’d think he was drunk. There was just something a bit too careful, too focused, about the way Lok was speaking-and walking, now that Dal thought about it.
Any other time Dal would have welcomed the chance to walk through the private corridors of the Carnelian Dome, places that the public-even relations like the Tenebros-never saw. As it was, he kept his eyes on his cousin, and only took in the occasional detail, here a portrait of a heavily bewigged Tarkina, there a rug showing the bright dyes that marked it as a product of Semlor in the west.
Lok finally stopped outside a thick oak door, reinforced with embedded iron bars, whose massive frame was carved to look like snakes. Treasure room or armory, Dal thought, recognizing the motifs of the Culebro Tarkins. The page, pale, wide-eyed, and tight-lipped, once more took up his position to the right of the door, ready to wait until he was wanted.
Lok unlocked the thick door with a final twist of the key and walked straight into the room. Dal stopped dead on the threshold, until he realized that the reason his mouth felt dry was that it was hanging open. Treasure room he had thought, and treasure room it was, but thought is one thing, and sight another. A long central aisle stretched out between tiered shelving, every shelf covered with dark blue felted cloth, and every finger span of cloth covered. Plates and tableware used on state occasions filled more than half the room, personal jewelry by the basketful-including the cat’s-eye rubies the Tarkina had brought with her on her marriage-and, halfway along one side, the Tarkin’s gold crown, bracelets, ear clasps, and pectoral of woven snakes, every one with gleaming carnelian eyes.
“The lists say there is a relic of the Sleeping God here,” Lok said, so quietly that Dal almost did not hear him. “A bracelet with green stones.”
Dal took a step forward. “Did you wish me to look for it?” His voice sounded harsh in his own ears, but Lok did not seem to notice.
“No, I wish you to find me the Mercenary Dhulyn Wolfshead.” Lok stopped, turned to the shelves on his right and picked up a pendant, a square-cut emerald set in silver wire. He frowned and set it down again.
Dal almost smiled as he watched his cousin pick up yet another piece of jewelry with a green stone and set it down again. Finally, a chance to learn why Lok found this woman so important.
“The Mercenary?” Dal said, careful to show no real interest. “What is it about this woman…?”
Lok had stopped again, this time to pick up a bracelet made of gold links set with square smooth-polished stones. From that, and from the color and thickness of the gold, it was obviously very old. These stones, too, were green, but seemed likely to be jade. As Dal watched, Lok pushed it on over his hand, barely able to move it past the root of his thumb, to where it hung closely about his wrist.
Dal cleared his throat to ask his question again, but he hesitated, as his cousin had closed his eye, tilting his head back as if he were listening to some favorite music. Glancing down, Dal saw the bracelet on Lok’s wrist move, as if it were suddenly a living thing, its colors suddenly painfully bright, and then fading, dissolving as it was absorbed into Lok’s wrist, until it seemed he had a tattoo there, where his skin had been clear and clean a moment before. Even as Dal took a breath to exclaim, the tattoo faded, and Lok’s skin was clean again. Dal looked up, but his cousin’s eye was focused on the spot on his wrist where the bracelet had been. And his shadow, cast on the wall behind him was not his own, but larger, darker, than it should have been, and somehow the wrong shape. Dal’s own shadow was beside it, pale and small and normal.