“Lok, what…?” His voice was paper thin and Dal cleared his throat. Without moving the rest of his body, Lok twisted his head to look at him and Dal saw that Lok’s right eye, clear and beautiful in the unmarred side of his face was green. Not crystal blue as it had always been, but a soft jade green. And Lok’s eye patch had shifted, perhaps because of how he’d turned his head and Dal lifted his left hand to his own face, as if to indicate to his cousin what had happened, but he froze, unable to move.
Both of Lok’s eyes were green. Both of them.
Seventeen
KARLYN-TAN HAD TO STEEL himself not to twitch away from people, not to hug the walls as he walked down the street. He recognized his feelings as the horizon sickness, though he’d never suffered from the fear of open spaces before. There was not too much space, he told himself, just more than he was used to-and too many strangers. Already this afternoon he’d had to convince two young toughs that he wasn’t someone they could prey on. Thank the Caids, Dal-eDal had given him a sword. He now walked with his hand openly resting on the sword’s hilt, as a message to any other tough boys in the area.
He kept walking, following the market crowds into the Great Square, resisting the urge to run back to his inn-run away from outside. He took a deep breath and looked around him, forcing his shoulders down. Was it his imagination, or was everyone around him walking too quickly, heads ducked, cloaks held more closely than the warm day called for? He frowned. He’d been Walls too long to remember what people on the outside were like.
Karlyn walked directly across the square, heading for the steps in the southeast corner that would lead him out into Swordsmiths Street and Mercenary House.
There were several people on the wide stone steps leading from Great Square to the street below and Karlyn’s attention kept being drawn to one of them in particular. Fair-haired, medium height, fair width of shoulders… and the right shoulder hitched up a bit, as if he was used to carrying a pack or heavy bag slung over it. Horizon sickness forgotten, Karlyn increased his pace. He knew that walk and that shoulder hitch even without the Scholar’s tunic; he’d been watching them around Tenebro House for the last two years. So Gundaron of Valdomar was still in Gotterang, and where was he heading now?
Mar sat in the window hole of the ruin just an alley length away from their hiding spot under the old floorboards of the abandoned granary. She’d been the one to go for water this morning, while Gun went to see if he could get into his Library. They weren’t going to be able to stay out on the streets very much longer, not unless they wanted to start selling things-and what did they have to sell but a few articles of clothing and the tools of their trades? If it wasn’t for having to hide from every pair of guards, and every sound of horses’ hooves, they would have been well able to make a living selling their skills, but as it was, they’d be running out of money and things to barter very quickly.
She was listening carefully for the short three-note whistle that would mean Gundaron had entered the alley. She’d answer with the agreed-upon variation, and then watch from her hiding spot as he walked to the end of their lane past the entrance to their cellar and turned the corner. She’d wait for a count of fifty and, if the lane stayed empty, she’d whistle again. Gundaron would double back and meet her as she let herself down from her window hole. This was just one of the ways they’d figured out between them-her from stories she’d picked up from Dhulyn Wolfshead and Parno Lionsmane, Gundaron from his fund of reading-of watching if anyone was following them, or if anyone had found their hiding place. Still, Mar was getting heartily sick of spending most of her time watching her back.
When the whistle finally came, she answered it, and Gundaron glanced up to where he knew she would be. When their eyes met, a new look passed over his face, a familiar look.
Oh, Caids. I know that look. She’d seen it on Parno Lionsmane’s face when he looked at Dhulyn Wolfshead. She’d wanted someone to look at her that way. The blood hammered in her ears and her hands shook, even as a small flower of joy bloomed under her heart.
“We can’t go on like this much longer,” Mar said, keeping her eyes on the ties to her pack, the knowledge of what she’d seen on Gundaron’s face too new, too fresh to acknowledge. “Money’s not all we can run out of. So far we’ve been lucky, no one’s cared enough about us to steal from us or to turn us in, but how long will that last?” She groped into her pack for the metal cup they shared. “We need help, and we need it soon.”
“It’s a judgment on us,” Gun said.
Mar’s hand stilled. “What do you mean?”
“We’re surrounded by people we can’t trust,” he said, looking up from the small lamp he was refilling with the last of their scrounged oil. “Maybe it’s because we can’t be trusted.”
“I’m trusting you,” she said, touching his forearm lightly with her fingertips. It felt just as hard as the metal cup in her other hand. “And you’re trusting me. And… we were used by the people we did trust, both of us,” she added. “That makes a difference.”
Gundaron rubbed his face with both hands, the corners of his mouth turned down. “I don’t think the Mercenary Brotherhood are going to feel that way about me.”
Mar pressed her lips together. She did trust him, just as he trusted her. And yet there was still something Gun wasn’t telling her. What could be worse than what she’d done, betraying people who had saved her life? Maybe it was because she hadn’t read the stories Gun had, maybe it was because she’d spent so much time with the Mercenaries, but she honestly didn’t believe she or Gun were in any danger from the Curse of Pasillon.
“Gun,” she said finally, handing him the cup. “Maybe we should try to get out of the city.”
He looked at her, their fingers touching on the cold metal of the cup. “But you wanted to tell them, the Wolfshead, I mean, and Lionsmane.”
She nodded, lower lip caught between her teeth. “We’ve been sent away from Mercenary House twice now,” she said. “What if we don’t get a chance to tell them?”
“Tell them what, Lady Mar?”
Interesting, Karlyn thought once the cup had been picked up and they’d made room for him in the only corner high enough to let them all sit upright. They’d dropped the only thing that they might possibly have used as a weapon, to cling to each other. He wondered if they’d realized it themselves. Judging from the way they carefully avoided touching in the confined space, Karlyn rather thought they had.
Like anyone who’d commanded troops, he was a good judge of character. The girl looked nervous, he thought, and a little too pale. But her jaw was firm, and her mouth a resolute line. She was tougher than her noble birth and her town fostering might lead some to believe. After all, she’d come over the Antedichas Mountains with two Mercenaries, met the Cloud People, and lived to tell of it-not to mention surviving those particular four days in Tenebro House. Karlyn looked to the Scholar.
Though he was a few years older than Mar-eMar, Gundaron was likely the younger in experience-that being the trouble with book learning. The boy was frankly terrified, in Karlyn’s opinion. Where the girl was pale, the boy was white-faced; where she was firm and resolute, he held himself so stiffly he had a slight tremor in his hands. And he blinked too much. But for all that, Karlyn thought, impressed almost against his will, Gundaron was keeping his fear firmly in check. What could have frightened him so badly? This was the first real emotion Karlyn had ever seen in the boy. What had woken him from his Scholar’s daydream? Was it the girl? Or something more sinister?