Bound in Blood

XIV Two Chests

It was well past time that Jame checked on Graykin. Looking back, she didn’t know how she had come to put it off for so long, unless his voice occasionally heard through the walls had reassured her. Even then, however, two different people had seemed to speak, both Gray and her hated, long-dead uncle Greshan. It all had something to do with that wretched coat but what, she didn’t know.

Then too, the card in her hazard deck haunted her: “ . . . help me. . . . ”

Consequently, the next day before breakfast she rapped on the door that had once led to her uncle’s private quarters.

“Graykin?”

No response. He might, after all, be out in quest of his own breakfast, pilfered from one of New Tentir’s nine kitchens or even from the officers’ mess in Old Tentir. But no: the door was locked from the inside. Moreover, here was another piece of efficient Kendar work, proof against her prying claws.

At a step behind her, she turned quickly. Brier Iron-thorn stood regarding the door. “Have you come to winkle him out, lady? About time. All of this hide—and-seek has been getting on the cadets’ nerves, and he’s been whispering to some of them: ‘Don’t think you’ll make it as a cadet.’ ‘Couldn’t stand the rope test, could you?’ ‘D’you think anyone will ever trust you, turn-collar?’ ‘Still scream in your sleep, don’t you, sissy?’ Niall punched him through the arras for that. A pity that they blunted the blow but still, it was as good an answer as any, short of a dagger.”

Jame hadn’t heard any of this. She wondered what else they had kept from her about Graykin’s doings.

Brier brushed her aside. “Stand back.” She pivoted and unleashed a brutal fire-leaping side kick against the lock. It didn’t yield. “And again.” This time, wood splintered and iron shrieked, echoed faintly by someone inside. When the door swung open, however, Greshan’s quarters were empty.

They presented a luxurious ruin. Rotting silk shrouded the huge bed and drew ruined fingers across the dirty windows. The floor was covered with Greshan’s costly trinkets, mostly broken. A mute music box here, an ivory comb tangled with coarse black hair there; here a huge, ornate mirror, there peacock feathers, befouled, as for a vomitorium. Old as they were, their original owner’s scent floated over them in a miasma of lost decadence and self-indulgence.

Jame wondered if Greshan’s father had known how his older son had spent the gold earned by the blood of his warriors, or if he had even cared. Here had lived the golden boy, the Lordan, who could do no wrong. Without had lain the neglected younger son, Ganth Grayling, who could do nothing right.

Scattered about were signs of Graykin’s more recent habitation: crusted bowls of food, stale underwear, empty bottles. Judging by the mounds of moldering clothes, he had often played dress-up before the large mirror. He could have the lot, as far as she was concerned, but the assumption of another’s role bothered her. Where was Graykin himself? In her scorn and neglect, had she lost him altogether?

“Save ’em if you can, liddle girl. Meanwhile, ’m hungry. I feed.”

Brier was picking objects out of the mess. “I’ll return these to their owners,” she said. “Things have been disappearing in the barracks all autumn. Here. This is yours.”

She handed Jame a knapsack. Trinity. She hadn’t even missed it. Inside was Kindrie’s contract, apparently undisturbed. Ancestors be praised for that at least.

While Brier continued her quest for cadets’ missing property, Jame searched for the Lordan’s Coat. Clothes were piled knee-deep in places and seemed to cling to her legs as she waded through them. A cloying stench rose from them, part sweat, part perfume so concentrated in the bottle by years of disuse that it seemed the spoor of some living thing whose den this was. Jorin at least seemed to think so and was burrowing industriously, looking for it. A pounce, a rat’s squeal, a crunch.

Some chests had simply been dragged into the apartment rather than unpacked. Jame opened one and found a litter of underclothes silk-shattered with age and stains. Another by the ornate fireplace made her hastily step back, stifling an exclamation.

Brier looked up from across the room. “What, lady?”

“Nothing. Just a smell.”

Not just any smell, though. This one stung her eyes and stirred her memory. She was standing in the Ardeth kitchen on that tumultuous day of her arrival at Tentir last summer.

“Timmon, your family crest is the full moon, isn’t it? Then why is there a serpent rampant over your mantelpiece? Oh.”

Just then, the darkling crawler whom they had been hunting had lost its grip on the crumbling stones and fallen on top of her. Timmon had subsequently hit it with a shovel and the mantel had fallen on it, along with most of the chimney. They had never found its remains. Her assumption had been that it had dissolved in its own corrosive juices.

Gingerly, she lifted the edge of a shirt and saw a dull, metallic glint beneath it. The wyrm called Beauty had not only survived, it seemed, but spun itself a new cocoon within which to heal and perhaps to metamorphose as it had once before over the winter in her brother’s unused bed. Instinctively she reached for her knife.

“Don’t,” said the wall, or maybe the fireplace.

Jame stopped herself from calling to Brier.

“Why not?” she asked, keeping her voice low.

“It purrs.”

She could feel that, vibrating at her touch, inside its shell. Perhaps one outcast had found comfort in another. Then too, except when it had been under the influence of its previous owner, one of the Master’s darkling changers, she had never sensed active malice in it. Could a dumb creature even be evil? Could anything that didn’t have the free will to choose?

I chose, she thought. Deliberately. To be born under the shadows was not necessarily to submit to them.

Jorin had come to stand next to her, his forepaws on the box edge, neck stretched and ears pricked. From him too she felt only fascination, not fear.

“All right.” She eased the lid down, leaving it slightly ajar. Was she being foolish? Ancestors only knew what shape the wyrm might take next, with what animal needs. Then too, it had bitten her brother and presumably been blood-bound to him. It might even have gotten a taste of her blood as they had grappled on the kitchen floor. If so, did one binding supersede the other? In Tori’s absence, what would it do?

“Prrrr . . . ” rumbled the cocoon, and seemed to bump against her hand.

“Where are you?” she asked the voice in the wall. “Come out.”

“Now, why would I do that?” The voice had changed subtly. Now it mocked her. “You don’t want this pathetic little half-breed, do you? Your neglect makes that clear.”

Jame took a deep breath. “Greshan. Uncle. Let him go.”

“Why should I? What use do you have for him?”

“Graykin, listen: in twelve days I leave for the hills and Winter’s Day by way of Mount Alban. I want to take you there, to the Scrollsmen’s College, to learn all you can about Kothifir, the Southern Wastes, and especially about Urakarn.”

“And why should I-he want to do that?”

“If I’m assigned to the Southern Host, I want to know what to expect. In the spring he-you can go south as my spy-master. Thanks to my brother, I have the money to send you. Neither of us has to scrape for clothes or food again.”

Her only answer was a soft, fading laugh that might almost have ended in a sob.

The next few days saw a rash of practical jokes in the Knorth barracks, some funny as such things went, others not.

Among the former, someone cut off every pair of Vant’s pants at the knees and turned all of Rue’s clothes inside-out—something she only discovered during morning assembly. Mint received a nicely wrapped present of fresh manure and Killy, the gift of a dead mouse in his boot. Less amusing was the pebble in the porridge that broke one cadet’s tooth and a trip wire at the head of the stairs that nearly caused a clutch of broken necks.

Everyone knew that their lordan’s Southron servant was behind all of this. Jame wondered if Greshan wanted Graykin completely discredited, just when she had found a real job for him, maybe because it would take him away from Tentir. Perhaps Greshan still had business here. It wasn’t altogether logical, but then neither had been her uncle, from what she could make out. Such sly, stupid malice seemed his trademark, alive or dead.

Moreover, with his door now hanging on one hinge, Gray’s sanctuary was gone. Cadets came and went freely, looking for wearable or stolen clothes. Meanwhile, Jorin mounted a fascinated guard on the chest that contained the wyrm’s cocoon. Jame could have ordered everyone out. Perhaps she should have; but it did help clear the air somewhat that the haunted chambers had at last been thrown open.

However, Jame was still in a quandary. She wanted the Southron found, but not if it led to some outraged cadet wringing his neck. The link between them told her that Graykin was cold, hungry, and miserable. She hadn’t done right by him. Now her nose was being rubbed in it at the cost of his suffering. She could only hope that he emerged on his own before she left for the hills. In her absence, there was no telling what might happen to him, so high was feeling against him running.

So she told the horse-master when she met him uphill on the fifty-second of Autumn.

“Assume a responsibility and you’re responsible for it,” he said, dumping a load of tack on the ground. “What’s strange about that?”

“Nothing, I suppose. It just gets so complicated.”

“Not that I can see. Take the chicken. Lure ’em up.”

Jame rummaged in her sack, found the knobby end of a greasy leg, and wrenched it free. Discovering that the rathorn loved roast chicken had made things a lot easier, although she wondered about the wisdom of training him with treats. After all, what happened if the henhouse ran dry?

Death’s-head snuffled at it. His nostrils were fiery pits in his ivory mask, not unlike his red eyes but deeper. He had the breath of a carnivore and the teeth of one too. His jaws gaped and he snapped the offered fowl from her hand, barely missing her fingers. Simultaneously, the horse-master dropped a saddle on his back.

“Now feed ’em a breast.”

The rathorn was still chewing, chicken bones crunching in his powerful jaws. Jame had learned that he could digest anything, probably up to rocks if a lump of one should take his fancy. If driven to it, he could even eat small trees, although they turned his droppings bright green.

As he bit down on the breast, the horse-master threaded the girth and drew it taut. Given the slick ivory plates sheathing the rathorn’s barrel, the tighter the better. Riding him bareback, to the extent that she could, meant gripping exclusively with her knees as her feet could find no purchase further down.

“Now let’s see if he’ll accept a hackamore.”

This proved more difficult. As soon as he saw the bitless bridle, the rathorn snorted and tossed his head up out of reach.

“Oh, come on!”

The horse-master jumped, caught the nasal horn, and tried to pull it down. Instead, the colt raised his head higher until the man dangled from it and went on chewing, cross-eyed with pleasure. When he swallowed, Jame put the open sack on the ground. Instantly the ivory mask swooped down to the partially dismembered chicken and the master tumbled free. Jame slipped the noseband around the beast’s muzzle and had it buckled at his poll before he had found his favorite tidbit. Clipping on the reins only took a moment.

“There we go, at last,” said the master, rubbing his sore bottom where he had been dumped. “Next time will be easier. I hope. Up you go.”

He hoisted her into the saddle between its tall cantle and pommel. The tree also rode high to accommodate the rathorn’s spine when it roached up.

Death’s-head went on rooting in the sack.

How far it seemed to the ground. Even secure in the new saddle, Jame felt as if she were at the top of a high, unstable ladder. The horse-master’s bald head only came to her knee.

“Master, are animals ever evil?”

He looked up. “A fine time to ask me that. I’ve met some that were vicious and a few that didn’t seem right in the head, but evil? No.”

“I knew one once. My father’s war-horse Iron-Jaw. Come to think of it, though, that was only after he turned into a haunt. Before that, he was just bloody-minded. Either way, I was truly scared of him.”

The rathorn raised his head, jaws dripping grease, and shook himself so hard that Jame nearly fell off despite the saddle.

“Here we go,” said the master.

And there they went.

On the fifty-third of Autumn, Tentir had visitors.

When they arrived, Jame was practicing armed, mounted combat in the training square, and making a thorough mess of it. She had been given too heavy a sword and shield, also a walleyed horse who shied at everything. Arguably, most of the weapons in the armory were above her weight. As hard as she trained for strength, there were limits which not all instructors chose to recognize.

“If you can’t cut, hack!” the Coman sargent in charge roared at her.

She tried, and was easily disarmed by her opponent. Simultaneously, her mount decided that now was a good time to spook at a shadow.

On her back in the dirt, fighting to regain the breath that had been knocked out of her, she was at first glad of the obstacle that blocked the sun’s glaring eye, then puzzled by it. This unexpected eclipse had a corona of white hair and a familiar voice.

“Are you all right?”

“Kindrie!”

She was surprised at how glad she was to see her cousin. Without her noticing it, her aversion to his priestly upbringing seemed to have faded. Then again, he had never really been a priest, having run away before they could properly get their hooks into him.

She scrambled to her feet. Both of them dodged her loose horse as it careened around the square, chased by a swearing sargent.

The Commandant also stepped back, pulling an oblivious Index with him while the old scrollsman continued fervently to argue his cause. When the Knorth Lordan went into the hills, he wanted to go with her.

“He came all the way from Mount Alban to sing that old song?”

Kindrie shrugged. “The study of the Merikit was his life before your friend Marc closed the hills to him, as to all the rest of us. Of course he wants to go back. That’s not why he’s here, though: the Commandant sent for him to coach you in your Merikit. I came along to prevent him from absentmindedly getting himself killed.”

“Granted, that would be unfortunate.”

More than that, it would be a catastrophe. Index had earned his nickname by being the only one who knew where all the college’s information was stored, in what scroll, or book, or aging memory.

“Are you still helping him in his herb shed? Has he taught you yet how to read it?”

Kindrie made a face. “You might have warned me. I only just figured out that its arrangement is his mnemonic aid. Now I’ve got to memorize the whole thing, and you know that I haven’t had the proper training.”

“You’ll manage.”

In fact, it seemed a good role for someone who Jame suspected was slowly becoming That-Which-Preserves, whether he knew it or not.

She was surprised, though, that the Commandant has sent for the old scrollsman. No one had said anything to her since the equinox about her promised trip into the hills, leading her to wonder if she would have to slip away again and risk charges of desertion.

It seemed, however, that Sheth took her mission seriously. As he inclined his head to listen to Index (who only came up to the randon’s shoulder, even standing on his tiptoes and clutching the other’s scarf), he cast a look at Jame and raised an eyebrow. Yes, she had important work to do. Since the Merikit massacre of Marc’s family at Kithorn, the hills had been closed to all Kencyr, all because of a tragic misunderstanding between two people who should have been allies against the darkness farther north, for above the Merikit lands and those of their neighbor tribes was the Barrier and beyond that, ever waiting and watchful, Perimal Darkling itself.

For the first time in decades, a Kencyr had permission to travel northward, not only as the Knorth Lordan but as the Earth Wife’s Favorite.

No one’s fool, of course the Commandant was concerned. At the very least, he didn’t want to answer to the Highlord in case his heir got herself killed through sheer ignorance.

Knowledge might get her killed too, or at least the imparting of it. For the next four days Index dogged her footsteps from class to class, drilling her on the Merikit language. To have him tug at her sleeve during fire-leaping dagger practice was distracting to say the least, and he nearly got himself trampled in the training fields during lance drill. The Falconer set his merlin on him. Caineron cadets trotted after them calling, “What’s the Merikit word for ‘bum’?” Kindrie had his hands full keeping his elderly, nearsighted charge from destruction. As for Jame, luckily she already knew some Merikit, but her head still pounded like a drum at the end of each day.

On the other hand, Index turned out to know a lot less about Merikit society in general than Jame had hoped. He had spent all his time with the shaman Tungit studying those rituals practiced by the Merikit men. Hillwomen, on the other hand, were a complete mystery to him. In this, he adopted the Highborn prejudice that women’s doings were unworthy of serious consideration and could tell Jame nothing of the Winter’s Eve ceremonies since they were conducted in the village where he had never been.

Given his attitude, Jame was surprised that he wanted so badly to go north with her for what promised to be a domestic ritual.

“I think he just wants to get his foot back in the door,” said Kindrie.

It was his fifth, last night at Tentir and, unlike Index, he had chosen to stay in Jame’s quarters. Jame, for her part, was pleased to host him. Several days in his company had shown her that he had lost most of the insecurity that she had found so annoying before. Mount Alban clearly agreed with him.

There was a sneeze within the nearest wall, followed by a bout of half-muffled coughing.

“Gray, why don’t you just come out? We’ve got a lovely fire here. Come get warm and have something to eat.”

A scornful, muffled laugh answered her. “What, sell my freedom for a bowl of porridge?”

“Actually, it’s venison sausage on a stick, among other things. We’re having a picnic of sorts. Wouldn’t you like to join us?”

For a moment, they thought he might, but then they heard him blunder away.

“He’s got to be starving,” said Jame. “Ever since he spiked that stew with flax oil and gave half the barracks galloping diarrhea, the kitchens have been guarded day and night. If another house catches him poaching, he’ll be in even more trouble.”

She had been putting food out for him in Greshan’s apartment as if for a stray cat, but was fairly sure that Jorin was eating it.

“He’s in a dark place,” said Kindrie soberly.

“I know: between two dirty walls.”

“I didn’t mean that. Unless things have changed, his soul-image is still that of a mongrel dog chained to the Master’s cold hearth.”

“Yes, but that’s not where I am anymore.”

“I know that. You’ve escaped, but you didn’t take him with you. Trapped like that, he must always feel cold and hungry.”

Jame threw a branch on the fire under the copper cauldron. “Yes, he does. Sometimes in my dreams I hear him whimpering, and I sneak away before my scent can set him howling. I never meant for him to suffer like that.”

“You never meant anything for him at all once he’d served his purpose.”

“That’s not fair. What in Perimal’s name was I supposed to do with him here at the college? I warned him when he accepted my service that I was apt to be a chancy mistress. Anyway, I have work for him now. A proper job, fit to his qualifications.”

“Yes, you mean to use him again as a sneak. I know, I know: he sees himself that way. It may be the best either of you can do. But you still have to pay for past neglect.”

Jame felt herself fire up in self-defense, but the flames were short-lived. Somewhat to her surprise, she found she accepted that Kindrie could speak to her this way, and she recognized the justice of his words.

“I’ll try,” she said with a sigh. “It’s hard to know what to do, though, with him deliberately walled up alive, to the extent that that’s his will at all. The Lordan’s quarters may stand open now, but we’re still haunted by Tentir’s past, Harn and the Commandant most of all, ancestors only know why. In the meantime, I have some unfinished business with you too.”

When she returned with the knapsack, Kindrie regarded it apprehensively, as well he might.

“What’s that?”

“Something you may or may not welcome: your inheritance.”

She drew out the scroll and gave it to him. Flecks of dried blood rattled off the coarse cloth as he unrolled it. “I don’t understand. What dead thing is this? Are these stains words? They are!”

As he read by the flickering firelight, his expression changed from bewilderment to amazement to something like horror. In the end, he looked up at her in near shock, pale blue eyes wide under his thatch of white hair.

“Is this what I think it is?”

“Yes. It’s the contract for your conception, duly signed and sealed. Congratulations. You’re legitimate.”

He looked at it again, gingerly holding it by the edges as if loathe to touch it. “I knew that my mother was Tieri, of course. You told me as much.” His face had gone nearly as pale as his hair. Jame wondered if he remembered that thing of cords and hunger in the Moon Garden that had tried to bind him in its death threads.

“But my father . . . ! It isn’t possible, is it?”

“I’m afraid so. Our grandfather Gerraint Highlord promised his baby daughter Tieri to Master Gerridon in exchange for his son Greshan’s return to life.”

Kindrie dropped the contract and rose to pace, running distraught hands through his hair as if meaning to tear it out by the roots.

“You say it so calmly! That man, that legend, that monster . . . my father?”

“My condolences. As for ‘calmly,’ I’ve had a bit longer than you to get used to the idea; and, after all, he is also my uncle.”

“This is madness. Do you know what you’re saying?”

“All too well.” She paused to listen. The walls were silent, the listening presence gone. Nonetheless, her voice dropped. “This is a secret, Kindrie, deep and dark: Jamethiel Dream-weaver was my mother, and Tori’s as well. No, she didn’t die some three thousand years ago. In fact she was still alive . . . sort of . . . until the battle at the Cataracts. The Master is too, worse luck. He sold out his people for immortality, after all. I think you’re safe from him, though,” she added, seeing that the healer looked increasingly alarmed. “Both times, with Ganth and Tieri, he only wanted a daughter or, in the Dream-weaver’s case, a niece. I was to replace her, you see, as a reaper of souls. You and Tori were accidents.”

Although still shocked, Kindrie showed faint pique. “So this is all about you?”

Jame smiled. “Only as far as the Master is concerned. You and Tori are legitimate too—I checked—and just as important as I am, for another reason. You do see what this all means, don’t you?”

“Three legitimate Knorth Highborn. My god.”

“So to speak. What we are, or may become, are the three manifestations of divine power known collectively as the Tyr-ridan. Simply knowing that doesn’t make it so, however. Do you feel ready to become Argentiel, That-Which-Preserves?”

“Trinity, no!”

“Nor I Regonereth, That-Which-Destroys. Right now I’m a nemesis, which is quite unsettling enough, ancestors know, but not yet the Nemesis.”

“But Tori . . . ”

“There’s the real problem. As far as I can figure out, Destruction comes first to sweep away evil, with Preservation on its heels to protect what’s good. Without Creation, though, we have no future.”

“Have you told him?”

“What good would that do if he isn’t ready to accept it? The maddening thing is that I think he would be an excellent source of creation. Look at how he chafes now under this flawed society that he’s inherited. Just think what he could do with a fresh start!”

“But not as long as he can’t accept his Shanir nature.”

“That’s it.”

“He’s softened somewhat,” said Kindrie, a bit wistfully. “At least he doesn’t throw up every time he sees one of us.”

“True, but there’s something in his soul-image stopping him, and I can’t reach it. Can you?”

The healer shook his white head. “Not yet, not without destroying him. Remember, that’s why I didn’t accept his bond—and I wanted to, cousin, I really did.”

Jame indicated the contract, thinking of her conversation with Shade. To whom are you bound? “Do you still want it?”

“I . . . don’t know.” He spoke with a sort of wonder. “The craving to belong is as strong as ever, but maybe not in that particular way. I want to help Torisen, but we can only do so much without breaking him. The real work is up to him.”

“I think so too. There’s one thing you can do for him, though. Tori has to remember the names of everyone bound to his—that is, to our—house and so far he’s forgotten at least one of them. I’ve memorized all I’ve been able to learn. Frankly, though, I don’t know what’s going to happen to me in the hills. We need a third list-keeper. You.”

“Trinity. First Index’s shed and now this. Haven’t you written them down?”

Jame was taken aback. “That never occurred to me. They say that memory is safest.”

“Not if some overenthusiastic hillman is waiting to flatten your skull. As far as I can make out, people have been lining up to do that for years. No, we’ll have a paper and quill, if you please.”

Jame called in Rue. During the hunt for writing materials that ensued, everyone in the barracks learned what was up. In addition to the Riverland names that Jame had already learned, everybody had some Knorth aunt or uncle or cousin three times removed serving with the Southern Host or on detached duty whose name they wanted recorded. Operations moved down to a table in the dining room and proceeded well into the night. Officers and sargents arrived. Not all approved of the written word, but no one wanted to be left out.

“I didn’t mean to land you with something so complicated,” said Jame, regarding the weblike growth of names and connections between.

“That’s all right. I’ll enjoy making a fair copy of this.” He looked up through the fringe of his white hair with a quirky, almost shy smile. “It’s good to be able to help.”

It was well after midnight by the time they were done. Jame retired to bed too tired even to fully undress. She dreamed, or thought she did, of a disturbance across the reception hall in Greshan’s quarters. Jorin was dashing about, crashing into things, and so was something else that went ga-lump, ga-lump, ga-lump very fast.

The commotion crossed the hall and burst into her own chambers.

“Wha—?” said Kindrie sleepily.

Jame didn’t answer. Jorin had just galloped over her, paws driving into the pit of her stomach. “Oof!”

The rolling rumpus of ounce and whatever-it-was circled her pallet, then dived into it under the blankets, one on either side of her, both purring. She felt Jorin’s soft fur to the right, then bristles to the left. The latter stung her hand and side.

Wide awake now, she flung back the covers and rolled to her feet. Jorin sprang out of her way. The blanket fell over her other unexpected bedfellow and began to seethe as it tried to wriggle out. Jorin pounced on it, then leaped back as it fought its way free.

Jame glimpsed something about three feet long, rather like a fat, rolled-up carpet with a heavy white fringe and a decided will of its own. It also had at least nine pseudo feet kicking the air. Then with a squirm it righted itself and galumphed toward the door in a rapid series of undulations with Jorin in close pursuit.

“What?” said Kindrie again, sitting up openmouthed, staring.

“The wrym has hatched!”

Jame grabbed her coat. She reached the stair in time to see the crawler bounce down the steps, rolled into a tight ball. Fringe and side bristles kept it upright. Its back was covered with long, flexible hairs, its skin divided into segmented swirls of iridescent color that caught the night lights as it hurtled past.

By the time she got downstairs, Jorin and the former wyrm, now transformed into something more like a giant caterpillar, were rampaging about the training square.

Jame’s hand and side stung. She opened her shirt to reveal a row of reddening welts. “It still has its venom, or at least some of it.”

A half-dressed Rue had arrived beside her at the rail. “Then stop it, lady! It’s going to kill your ounce!”

“I don’t think so.”

Caterpillar and cat had both reared up on their hind legs (or feet) and were batting at each other, with sheathed claws on one side and poison bristles drawn back on the other.

“They’re just playing.”

Gorbel emerged, naked under his hastily thrown on dressing gown. He gave a grunt of satisfaction and advanced on the two, a spear ready in his hands.

“No!”

The shout came from behind Jame. She was thrust aside by a gnomish figure half swallowed by a gaudy coat. Graykin floundered over the rail and flung himself in the Caineron’s path. For a moment they wrestled with the spear, then Gorbel flung him aside, straight into Jame’s path as she also rushed forward. She and the Southron fell, both tangled in the folds of the Lordan’s Coat. Trinity, that stink . . . ! They heard a piping whistle of pain from the former wyrm, echoed by Graykin’s scream. Gorbel stood over the impaled, writhing darkling, fending off Jorin with the spear’s hilt.

Brier arrived. Jame shoved Graykin into her arms, saying, “Hold him,” then tackled Gorbel.

“Has everyone gone mad?” panted the Caineron from the ground where she had knocked him. “This is a darkling crawler!”

Jame freed herself and carefully withdrew the spear. It had caught the creature a glancing blow in the side, mid-thorax, that looked painful but not necessarily fatal. Then again, what did she know about the anatomy of such a thing? Venom had eaten away most of the spearhead. Avoiding the wound, she touched the crawler gingerly. It vibrated under her hand. Despite everything, it was purring. She wrapped it in her coat and picked it up.

“You never let me kill anything,” grumbled Gorbel, and stomped back into his quarters.

Jame took the darkling back up to Greshan’s quarters, curled in her arms, and fashioned a more comfortable bed for it in the chest where it had hibernated. Sleep had healed it once before, when Tori had sunk one of his daggers into its head. Perhaps it would again.

Emerging, she found Brier, holding the Lordan’s Coat.

“Where’s Graykin?”

“He collapsed. Dehydration, malnutrition, and exhaustion, your cousin figures. Maybe a touch of pneumonia too.” She spoke with the indifference of one to whom such things were not likely to happen, as if they were moral failings. “We took him to the infirmary and I’ve mounted a guard. He won’t be slinking back into the woodwork again.”

She handed the coat to Jame, who accepted it with a grimace. It was surprisingly rank and heavy, its rich, glistening colors like those of internal organs after a heavy meal. Poor Graykin.

“What am I supposed to do with this? It may be an heirloom, but God’s claws, it’s a filthy piece of work.”

Brier didn’t answer. By her silence, clearly she was glad that it was no business of hers.

With a sigh, Jame stuffed the offending garment into the chest full of stale underwear and locked it. She would worry about it later. Tomorrow—no, by Trinity, today—they started north, taking Graykin with them even if he had to go by litter. This wasn’t a healthy place for him. She hoped that with new interests and occupations, he would forget about all that had haunted him these past eleven days. Fresh air would do them both good.

Leaving the two chests and the door as shut as its burst hinges allowed, she went back to her quarters to snatch an hour’s sleep before the morning horn sounded.