He immediately looked down, heart thumping. It seemed he had nothing to fear from Dhulyn Wolfshead. It seemed that as far as she was concerned, he didn’t exist. He found himself hugging his arms around his chest, to convince himself he was there, he was.

When he had enough control of himself to listen, he found that he had missed Dal’s first words. The Tarkin was speaking.

“To say that I am surprised to see you does not begin to describe my feelings, Dal-eDal Tenebro.” He put up his hand and Dal stilled. “You are heir to your House, and now to the Carnelian Throne, and yet you come with your oaths of loyalty to me.”

It was not a question, but Dal-eDal answered it.

“My lord-” he cleared his throat and began again. “I am not an ambitious man. I have never wanted more than my own Household. But my cousin Lok-iKol sees a mirror in every man, and his own image grinning back at him. Fate may lead even a distant cousin to become House of his family, whether he wished it or no, but the Tarkinate…” Dal shook his head.

“I was warned to be skeptical of your loyalty,” Tek-aKet said, nodding at where Fanryn Bloodhand and Thionan Hawkmoon stood leaning against a small table to Gundaron’s left. “Perhaps you do not want the Carnelian Throne, but you would have me believe that you choose this moment to act against your House?”

Dal licked his lips. “I do not believe I go against my House, my lord,” he said, in that quietly strained voice that had been all Gun had heard from him for the last day. “I believe my House has Fallen.”

At this everyone, Gun included, edged forward. Fanryn Bloodhand straightened to attention and Thionan Hawkmoon put a restraining hand on her Partner’s arm. Even the Wolfshead and the Lionsmane exchanged glances.

“Who is it, then, who sits on my throne?” Tek-aKet’s voice was hard as the rock overhead.

“I do not know,” Dal said. “Outwardly, it seems to be my cousin.” Dal glanced suddenly at Parno Lionsmane, but Gun couldn’t see that the Brother had moved in any way. “Possibly, in some way, it is. But I do not believe it. Something else occupies… something else is there.” He straightened, and Gun saw for the first time the dark smudges under the man’s eyes. “Indulge me, my lord,” Dal said. “I have waited what seems an age to tell the full story only once, and it is choking me.”

Tek-aKet glanced at the older Mercenary Brother seated next to him. When the man nodded, the Tarkin gestured at Dhulyn Wolfshead, indicating that she should take the seat next to him. That left an empty seat across the table.

“Sit, Dal-eDal Tenebro. Refresh yourself, tell your story.”

Dal nodded, waited until a cup was poured for him, but made no move to pick it up. He took the chair, though, Gun thought, feeling the ache of his own muscles.

“I have spent my whole life waiting, and watching, my lord; so long that perhaps I forgot what it was that I was waiting for.” As Dal folded his hands on the table in front of him, Gun saw them trembling. “Lok had my father killed, and I believed I was waiting for the right moment to avenge him. I wonder if I would ever have found it.” Dal drew in his brows, frowning at his hands on the table.

Mar shifted, stepping forward as if she would move closer to the table. Gun put his hands on her shoulders, and pulled her back a little, until she was standing against his chest. Her skin felt warm, even through two layers of clothing, and she relaxed under his hands, though she kept her eyes on the faces of the four seated at the table.

Dal glanced up at Tek-aKet and waited until the man nodded before he continued. “Perhaps three days after he took the Dome, my lord, my cousin called me to him, saying that he had an errand for me.” Keeping his eyes fixed on Tek-aKet, Dal’s voice did not falter. “For years he has kept me under his hand, and I have not left Gotterang unless as his companion. Yet he has now, suddenly, asked me to do so, in order to find the Mercenary Dhulyn Wolfshead.”

Mar glanced at Gun over her shoulder, her eyebrows raised; Gun pressed his lips together and nodded. A quick look around the room showed much less puzzlement than he would have expected. She’s told them, he thought, by all the Caids, she’s told them.

Dal, too, had noticed the change of atmosphere in the room. “Apparently, you know more of this than I, though I knew that my cousin had shown interest in this Brother before he took the Carnelian Throne.

“He said no more of her at that moment, and I walked with him to the room where your crown, my lord Tarkin, and your treasures, and the jewels that your wife brought with her to her marriage are kept. He said he was looking for a relic of the Sleeping God.”

Tek-aKet nodded. “An old bracelet,” he said, “with green stones. I know of it. The Jaldean Shrine here in Gotterang has been asking for it for months.”

“As you say, my lord. Lok found it, a gold bracelet in the antique manner of the Caids, and he put it on.” Dal picked up the cup of ganje that had been poured for him, looked inside it, and put it down again. He’s not looking anyone in the face, Gun thought. When did that start? Dal had always been the most watchful of men.

“What of it,” the Tarkin said. “My mother wore it often. I’ve worn it myself.”

Gun wouldn’t have thought it possible, but at these words Dal paled even more, the shadows around his mouth stained a faint green.

“Drink something, man; you’re no use to us if you faint,” Dhulyn Wolfshead said in her rough voice. The Cloudman to the Tarkin’s left stood and with his own hand poured out water from the glass jug on the table and handed the mug to Dal-eDal.

“Thank you.” His voice was a thread of air. He sipped at the water and set the mug down next to the untouched ganje. He cleared his throat, but his voice when he continued was still rough. “Lok found the bracelet,” he said, “and slipped it over his hand. As I watched, the bracelet faded, dissolved, and was absorbed into his skin. I looked up, and Lok was watching the spot where the bracelet had been and smiling. And his shadow, on the wall behind him, was not his own, but larger, darker, than it should have been-” Dal sucked in a short, sharp sip of air, “and was the wrong shape, as if it had wings about to open.”

Parno Lionsmane’s cup tilted, but he caught it before it fell.

“The lantern-” Tek-aKet started to say.

“No, my lord,” Dal interrupted. “My own shadow was there, pale and ordinary, as familiar to me as my own hand. Except that my shadow seemed to shrink from his, as if it knew something I did not.” This time, when Dal stopped speaking, no one else moved or spoke, so obvious was it that he had not finished. “There is more, my lord. When I looked again to my cousin, to ask him about what I had seen, his eye was green. Not blue as it has always been, and, his eye patch-” Dal lifted his left hand to his own face, as if to show them where the eye patch should be. “I don’t know, perhaps because of the angle at which we were standing, perhaps because he had touched it somehow-” Dal looked across the table at his Tarkin. “My lord, I could see that both his eyes were green. Both of them.”

Mar shifted abruptly and Gun loosened the suddenly tight grip he’d taken on her shoulders. His breathing came uncomfortably quick, and in his mind he saw again the barricade of shelves and books that kept away the Green Shadow. The Cloudman at the table with the Tarkin made the old sign against evil, thumbtip to tip of index finger, the Mercenaries standing around the room developed suddenly neutral expressions, and Wolfshead and Lionsmane looked at each other, recognition in their faces. But Dal spoke matter-of-factly like a man beyond caring what other people thought.

“Clearly, you believe what you saw,” the Tarkin said finally. “What do you believe it means?”