“It means you must not wait, my lord,” Dal said. Suddenly reaching out his hand to the man across from him, Dal looked the Tarkin directly in the face. “Listen to me. This is no ordinary coup. I have thought that it did not matter to me who sat on the Carnelian Throne, but I tell you, it matters to me what sits there, and that green-eyed thing is not my cousin.” Once again he spoke, not as a frightened man who expects to be held in contempt, but as a man freely owning a fear in the face of which the opinions of others were meaningless. “It has the Marked brought to the Dome, and they leave broken and mad. The Carnelian Guard-” He broke off, frowning. “Elite troops injure themselves with carelessness or in quarrels, except for those who go off duty and disappear. Gan-eGan has killed himself. Children are weeping in corners. Whatever this is, its poison is spreading. You must waste no time. You must act now.”
Gun licked his lips. One pair of eyes had left off looking at Dal-eDal and had fixed on him. One pair of stone-gray eyes that had slid over him, unable to see him when he had entered the room, were focused on him now.
“Let’s ask the Scholar,” Dhulyn Wolfshead said. “I’ll wager my second-best sword he knows what this is, or can guess. He knows more than anyone what the formerly one-eyed Lok-iKol has been up to.”
Gun’s hands formed fists at his sides. It felt like every eye in the room was on him. Even Mar had turned around and was searching his face, her eyebrows drawn down, her lips parted.
“Come, Gundaron of Valdomar.” Gun winced at the tone in Dhulyn Wolfshead’s husky voice. “From the look of you, Dal-eDal’s not the only one here who’s seen this green-eyed thing.”
Everyone was looking at him, Gun saw as he tried to swallow with his suddenly dry mouth. Everyone except Parno Lionsmane. He stood behind the Wolfshead, his hand on her shoulder, his eyes squeezed shut.
“Come forward, boy, and tell us what you know of this.”
Gun found himself responding to the tone of command in the Tarkin’s voice, stepping around Mar and coming closer to the table before he realized he’d made up his mind to do it. Mar touched him on the arm as he passed, her worried eyes searching his face. He looked away from her. He couldn’t tell them everything. He couldn’t tell them that he, himself-they would never understand. Mar would never understand. He would lose all that was growing between them.
When he was facing the Tarkin, he cleared his throat, and released the breath he was holding. “I have seen it, my lord Tarkin. It is real.” Gun glanced around, but except for Mar, there was no friendly face. “I-we’ve been hiding,” he said. “Can you tell me, Lord Dal, have the Marked been going to the Dome only since the…” Gun bit his lip and then continued. “Since the green has come into Lok-iKol’s eyes?”
“I believe the decree changed that morning, just hours before my cousin, or the thing that he has become, sent for me.”
“What can you tell us, Scholar of Valdomar?”
Gun drew in a deep breath and settled his shoulders. He found himself folding his hands in front of him, as if about to recite his lesson. If only this was just another lecture, another examination in his Library. That what he was about to say was only interesting history, and not something that might very well change the lives of everyone in this room, including his own.
“I believe it is this Green Shadow that seeks for and destroys the Marked. That the teachings of the New Believers are nothing more than an excuse, invented to give it freedom to act.”
Gun saw movement out of the corner of his eye and hesitated. The Cloudman was nodding, a satisfied smile on his face.
“Continue,” the Tarkin said.
“I cannot explain how, my lord Tarkin, but I have only recently remembered seeing what Lord Dal describes, the green light, the misshapen shadow, the… the feeling of otherness, in Beslyn-Tor, the Jaldean High Priest. It seems I took no notice of it at the time, but afterward, as I say, I remembered seeing it many times.” Gun waited for the murmurs to die away.
“I think I saw it in Lok-iKol once, but not in the same way,” Gun continued when no one else spoke. “At that time, Lok-iKol did not move or speak, but stood slackly, like a rag doll, as if the Green Shadow only looked through his eyes. In any case, it was the priest who wanted Marked brought to him, not Lok-iKol.”
“The Green Shadow,” Parno Lionsmane said under his breath.
Gun meant to continue, to tell about himself, to tell everything, but his throat closed. He looked down at his clasped hands, trembling, knuckles white. When he looked up again, he met Dhulyn Wolfshead’s eyes. She knows, he thought.
“They say Beslyn-Tor has suffered a stroke, and lies feeble and raving in rooms Lok has given him in the Dome,” Dal said, leaning back in his chair with a thoughtful look.
“Always the Jaldeans,” Tek-aKet said. “Zella warned me they were the real danger, and I didn’t listen.”
“They supported Lok-iKol’s coup,” Dal pointed out.
“But why? Was it this Green Shadow?”
Gun nodded. “It wants the Marked.”
“The Marked.” Tek-aKet let out a forceful breath. “I did not give the New Believers what they wanted.”
“And so they gave their support to someone who would.” Parno Lionsmane focused his attention on Gun over his Partner’s head. “But what did that support entail?”
“The people.” It was Dhulyn Wolfshead’s raw silk voice that answered. “How did the traitors get into the Dome so easily? Almost all of the Carnelian Guard, soldiers whose duty it is to protect the Dome, and more than half of your Personal Guard, Lord Tarkin, have been in the streets for the last moon, helping the City Guard keep order, quelling little riots and mob violence. All started by the Jaldeans.”
The Tarkin was shaking his head. “They wouldn’t have done so much on Lok-iKol’s bare word that he would enact their laws. Lok-iKol must have been doing something for them already.”
Gundaron swallowed. “Lok-iKol was collecting Marked for them, my lord.”
“Explain.”
“Not everyone came voluntarily to the shrines to be blessed by the Sleeping God. Some even left the city, or moved to new quarters, never obeying the edicts about their dress. Lok was seeking these out and holding them for the Jaldeans when he found them.”
“And how was he finding them?”
Something in the Tarkin’s tone, in the glint of his eyes, made Gundaron look away, down at the white knuckles of his clasped hands. He licked his lips. “I found them for him, my lord.”
“How?”
Gun bit his lip, his throat tight as a fist. He risked a glance at Mar. Her face was still as stone, but she said nothing. “Research.” His whisper sounded uncomfortably loud in the silence of the room. Dhulyn Wolfshead looked at him with narrowed eyes; he shifted his own and was startled to find the same searching look in the eyes of the Racha bird.
“What were the Jaldeans doing with the Marked you helped locate?” Tek-aKet’s voice was silkily quiet.
“I don’t know. That is-” Gun kept his eyes fixed on his folded hands. “I didn’t take any part after the people were found. Afterward, when I remembered… now I know that Beslyn-Tor came to give them what he called the Sleeping God’s blessing. But as for why… I think he-I think it, the Green Shadow, is destroying the Marked; it fears them, as if they can harm it somehow.”
“You never tried to find out?” Gun glanced up at Parno Lionsmane, but immediately dropped his gaze. The Mercenary looked like he’d opened a pie only to find snakes writhing inside.
“I didn’t know.” He couldn’t tell them everything, they wouldn’t believe him.
“It may be that the Green Shadow took the memories from him,” Dhulyn Wolfshead said.
“And it was for this that you brought my Partner, my soul, to Gotterang?” The growl in the man’s voice showed it wasn’t just for his coloring that he was called Lionsmane.