The dark man was Tek-aKet. The golden man would fight to save the dark man. Interesting. He could not TOUCH the golden man from here. But he could TOUCH the dark one.

“This way.”

Mentally checking and approving the direction against the map she’d seen days before in Alkoryn’s workroom, Dhulyn ran down the corridor after Dal-eDal. This was the right direction for the throne room, even though they’d missed the formal public approaches that would have taken them directly there. She quickened her pace until she was just behind the Tenebro lord. If he was leading them into a trap, she was willing to let him spring it. As they came up on a second cross corridor, they slowed. This passage was not as wide as the one they were using, but its carpet was good wool, not the woven matting they were walking on. Here they might run into someone with authority.

“Hold your sword down and just walk straight across at a normal speed,” Dhulyn told him. “From a distance we’ll pass for Dome Guards. It’s the stealth and the running that attracts attention.”

They slowed to a walk, but just as they reached the other corridor, a slim, dark-haired young woman turned briskly into their passageway. She yelped, took a quick step back, turned, and ran off. Training made Dhulyn pull out a throwing dagger before she thought again, and resheathed it. Killing the girl would accomplish nothing.

“So much for stealth,” Dal said. “Let’s hope she doesn’t bring the guards.”

“You mean more guards?” Dhulyn said.

They were no more than ten or twelve paces past the intersection when a small group of six guards burst into the passage behind them. They came, Dhulyn noticed, not from the arm of the corridor down which the dark-haired girl had fled, but from the opposite direction.

“Sun and Moon take them,” Dhulyn cursed. They couldn’t hope to outrun soldiers on their own ground, and while six were not too many to deal with, it would cost them time they might not have.

“Let me try something,” Dal said. He took a step toward the approaching Guards with his hands up, palms toward them.

“We come to kill Lok-iKol,” he called out, “and restore Tek-aKet to the Carnelian Throne. We’d just as soon not kill you, so are you with us or against us?”

Dhulyn grinned, seeing that the man in front, while unshaven, was otherwise tidy in the solid dark red uniform of the Tarkin’s Personal Guard, as were three others. The remaining two wore the multicolored sleeves of the Carnelian Guards. Dal-eDal had good eyesight.

The lead guard rubbed his face with his free hand. “You’ve got Tek-aKet? He’s alive?”

“He should be ahead of us,” Dhulyn said. “With my Partner.”

“You swear it’s so?”

“I’m Dhulyn Wolfshead the Scholar, I was Schooled by Dorian the Black. I fight with Parno Lionsmane the Chanter. I swear by my Partner, may we both die in battle.” Dhulyn touched her forehead with the back of the hand that held her sword.

The man reversed his own weapon and held it out to Dhulyn, hilt first. “I’m Dernan. We’re with you. Lead on.”

“You won’t mind keeping your weapon, and taking the point position? It’s not that I don’t trust you,” Dhulyn said, with a smile. “It’s that I trust no one.”

With their reinforcements surrounded, they crossed three more corridors on the way to the throne room, but the only other people they saw were two young pages. Unlike the dark-haired young woman, these two boys did not run away, but stood looking at them as they approached. They clung to each other, though Dhulyn was sure they weren’t aware of it.

“Telian-Han,” Dernan called out. “Go for Talya. Tell her to come help us kill the Tenebroso usurper.”

Both boys broke into wide smiles and ran off down the corridor behind them.

The waiting area outside the wide oak doors of the throne room was just as dusty and neglected as the corridors had been. But somehow it made Dhulyn’s skin tingle to see the tastefully organized chairs with their side tables carrying dead greenery and guttered candles.

“Take care, my lords,” Dernan said, as Dhulyn, shoving her sense of unease to one side, ran across to the closed doors. “If you stay too long with the Tenebroso, or too near him, some illness takes you.”

“I don’t want to stay long in One-eye’s company,” Dhulyn said. “I want to kill him.” She seized the gilded pommels in the center of the ornamental doors and threw them open.

Even as the others spread out, Cullen behind her, Dal to her right, Karlyn-Tan to her left, Dhulyn assessed the room, mentally ticking off friend from foe, looking for the one she wanted most to see. She found Parno just as he shrugged a guard off his back and cut off another’s hand with a casual stroke of his sword before turning to engage two others. A guard she recognized as one from Mercenary House, who had been facing two opponents until one suddenly found herself hand-less, dispatched the man left to him with a broad cut to his head. Dhulyn was more than halfway across the room herself when she heard Parno cry out “Tek, no!” and increased her speed.

Parno’s cry had a strange impact on the people in the room. Fighting all over the room faltered as several of the Carnelian Guards raised their weapons and stepped back from their opponents, looking around them as if unsure what to do. One even nudged a fellow guard who was still fighting out of the path of his adversary and called something Dhulyn couldn’t hear into the man’s ear.

Dhulyn ran past them and skidded to a halt.

Tek-aKet Tarkin and Lok-iKol Tenebroso were circling each other in front of the Carnelian Throne. Lok looked as though he had been wearing the same clothes for some days, and his hair hung stringy and unwashed. He still wore his eye patch, but a green glow shone from behind it, matching the color that shone from his good eye.

Dhulyn caught Parno’s attention across the room and flashed him a grin as she circled around to the left, hefting her dagger. Now if only the Tarkin could maneuver the green-eyed dung eater around so that she could plant a blade in him. Her experienced eye was just telling her that Lok was holding his blade a shade too low, when Tek-aKet, remembering what they had taught him, swept the other man’s blade aside and planted his own squarely in the center of the taller man’s body.

For a moment they stood there frozen, Lok’s arm falling limp by his side, his sword dropping to the floor with a clang of metal on stone, his green eye hooded. He coughed and a dribble of blood ran out of the corner of his mouth. Then Lok moved, reaching out for Tek-aKet, pushing himself up the blade until he clutched at Tek’s clothing, staring the Tarkin in the face as if he would say something important. Per-force, Tek let go of his sword, grabbing Lok’s wrists to prevent being pulled off his feet. Dhulyn saw the green die out of Lok’s eyes, saw the lips form the words, “Tek, Cousin” as Lok-iKol’s knees sagged, and he slid slowly to the floor, taking the blade with him, hands still clamped to Tek’s arm. Lok’s mouth still worked, but the lips formed no words. Dhulyn ran forward to catch the Tarkin’s arm before he joined his cousin on the floor.

Tek-aKet screamed, yanked his arm loose and fell, cracking his head against the foot of the Carnelian Throne.

He cried out, letting the new body scream for him. The light. The searing light. She Sees. She was not to touch him, with her all-seeing eye. He withdrew, diving deeper, until the darkness covered him.

She Sees.

“How can you be humming?”

Dhulyn lifted her fingers from the charred window frame. “What?” “You’re humming that children’s tune, the one from the game you’re so interested in.”

“It’s going through my head, I can’t get it out.”

“Come, the floors are unsafe here. We must go.”