Daughter of Ancients

Chapter 7

For three days running, I rode the two hours up Grithna Vale to D'Sanya's hospice, spent the day with my father, then rode the two hours back to Gaelie without so much as a glimpse of the Lady. My father saw her only rarely and discovered nothing we didn't know already: She was beautiful, kind, powerful, generous, discreet, charming. He felt no further change in his own condition, and I detected none. He was numb, and our investigation was going nowhere.

In Gaelie I tried talking to the proprietor of the guesthouse, but the granite-faced Mistress A'Diana could tell me nothing but that those who brought their kin to the hospice were the happier for it. Who wouldn't be, she said, to have a loved one living free of pain and disease when it was thought all hope was past? No, she'd never heard of anyone wanting to leave the hospice once they'd lived there, nor anyone who'd thought they'd made a mistake to send their friends or kin to the Lady. No, she'd never spoken to the Lady, only seen her kindness, and now would I get on with my own business for she, the innkeeper, had a full house of linens to wash.

Every evening that Paulo was gone I spent alone in the common room feeling awkward and useless. The same people were there every day: the parties of Tree Delvers from the Wastes, the two Gardeners, brothers it appeared, who stopped in for supper every night, and the dark-haired youth hunched over his table alone in the corner by the stair. The young man and wife sought endless consultations with endless streams of people over their painted cards—something about the prospects of talents in an expected child.

Inheritance was a magical thing to the Dar'Nethi. Adoption, disinheritance, and mentoring could influence a child's magical abilities as decisively as blood relationships. That's why my father's revival in D'Natheil's body, had made me the prospective Heir of D'Arnath with all the power and control such descent implied, even though I was not born of D'Arnath's blood.

Paulo returned in three days, riding in after I'd completed yet another fruitless venture up the Vale. On the next morning I was able to take my father a stack of books and notes from the writing he'd abandoned when he'd fallen ill and another bundle of letters from my mother. She must be doing nothing but writing letters.

"Perhaps now I can think about something other than the state of my belly," said my father as I pulled the bundles of journals and papers from the bags and dropped them on his table. "Constant self-examination is unutterably boring, whether the result is pleasing or otherwise. At least when I was ill I had people fussing over me."

As before, his first activity was to read my mother's letters, the first of many readings, I guessed. He sat in his chair and broke the seals one after the other. I tied up my empty bags and poured myself a glass of wine.

"Your mother's not happy being cooped up at Gar'-Dena's house," he said, waving the current missive at me, his spirits noticeably improved. "Ven'Dar doesn't think she should be seen about the city, in case anyone should recognize her or get too curious about Aimee's guest. But she's already wheedled Aimee into taking her to hear a Singer who comes to Avonar next week."

"Mistress Aimee doesn't have a chance," I said, sitting on one of the hard chairs beside his eating table and propping my boots on the other one. "She's too nice."

"I don't know. Maybe the girl has more grit than we know. Your mother's been trying to find out her feelings about Je'Reint. She says that the cook is certain that Aimee has an understanding with Je'Reint and that they're just waiting to announce it until 'the matter of the succession is settled.' But Seri can't get Aimee to reveal anything, and it's about to drive her mad. She writes: 'The girl just blushes and says Je'Reint is a noble gentleman whose Way will lead him to great honor, even if he is not to be Heir .' Poor Paulo."

"Better not tell him. If he gets any lower about Mistress Aimee, he'll have to reach up to shoe his horse." I wanted to shake the woman. "If she could just see him . . ."

"I think she sees better than people credit," said my father. "But she's young and generous, and believes she should offer her best to everyone, no matter her personal feelings. And she must be conscious of her position, the daughter of powerful family. For a Dar'Nethi to consider an attachment outside her—"

"To a mundane , you mean. A fellow with no power, who can't read, and who'd be happy living in a stable, but who just happens to have the best heart."

"You don't have to convince me, Gerick! It's just something she has to consider, assuming she is considering any attachment at all. You know, I don't claim to understand much of anything about women. Your mother has been challenge enough for one lifetime. Or three for that matter."

A light meal of roast chicken and long peas was laid out on a sideboard, and I helped myself as he went back to his letters, smiling to himself as he read. Then he picked up a page written in a different hand. This one was clearly not so entertaining.

"Ven'Dar writes of another raid in the north. He says that witnesses saw Zhid riding toward the mountains afterward." He looked up, frowning. "The rumor of a mountain stronghold has been repeated for years. If we could only find it . . ."

My father spent the next hour talking about Ven'Dar's news, examining a map of Gondai we pulled from the bookcase, marking the locations of the recent attacks, and speculating on the location of the Zhid headquarters and what could be motivating their actions. Their duty, their desire, the function infused in them from the time they were made Zhid, was to serve the Lords' wishes. I could not imagine them anything but half crazed with loss.

"Perhaps they just can't believe the Lords are gone," said my father. Ven'Dar's half-unfolded letter lay between a basket of leftover bread and a pewter salt dish that held the crumbled bits of wax I had picked off the paper. "They obey the last commands they were given because they don't know how to do anything else. Of course, that doesn't explain the period of quiet and why they are revived at this particular time. You didn't hear of any mountain—"

"I saw only the desert camps and spent time . .. trained … in only one of those. I never went into the mountains. Never heard them talk about secret encampments. Please, could we could talk of something else now?" I hated thinking of these things.

He leaned back in his chair and tossed a book onto the stack of maps and papers, looking at me far too closely. "Ah, Gerick, I've always believed that a great deal of this burden you carry is not related to your own past. Somehow, when you were joined with the Three, you took on responsibility for their deeds as well. If only you could touch their actual memories, make use of them to unravel these mysteries, that might make your pain worth something at least."

My fingers played with the edge of his map, rolling it tightly across one corner. I clamped my lips shut and kept my eyes on the paper, waves of heat and chill and nausea leaving my skin clammy.

My father leaned forward and laid a hand on mine "Gerick, what is it?"

"Don't ask it. Please don't."

He blew a long slow breath of realization. "You can touch the Lords' memories . . . earth and sky . . . all of them?"

"I tried it that night when Ven'Dar first told us about the Lady . . . when you were so ill . . . to see if I could retrieve some memory of her and avoid all this. Certainly in the few hours I was joined with them, the Lords weren't thinking of her. But I couldn't make myself dig any deeper into their past. You know the risk if I think about that life too much."

To delve too deeply into unhealthy memories, to touch the kind of power I'd had, could waken desires that should stay buried—like digging through a charnel pit and remembering how much you enjoy the foulness, the stink, and the cold heaviness of the dead. And though I chose not to nurture and exploit the talent born in me, I knew I was no weakling child even without my three partners.

"I trust you, Gerick, no matter what the circumstance." My father squeezed my arm and shook it gently, as if to wake me. "You have chosen the right in circumstances far more difficult than examining sordid memory. But the Preceptors and their Geographers and Imagers can pinpoint the source of these raiders far better than we've done here, and for the present the purposes and timing of the Zhid are matters of curiosity, not safety."

For the present. But if they were to find out the Zhid were rising again … if they needed to know where the legions lurked or how the warriors could function without the Three, and they came to me . . . "I'm sorry, Father. I just can't—"

A knock on the door interrupted us just then. A stocky, light-haired Dar'Nethi entered at my father's invitation, and with a quiet voice and a pleasant manner asked if we had finished our meal.

"Yes. We're quite fine, Cedor," said my father. "Thank you, as always."

"My pleasure as always, Master K'Nor," he said, sounding as if he meant it.

Once the man was gone, my father pulled out a chessboard and a rectangular wooden box. As he placed chess pieces of green agate on the board, he cocked his head thoughtfully toward the door through which the man had just exited. "I've at last unraveled the mystery of Cedor. Now why do you think a man who once taught natural history to the children of Avonar spends his days supplying meals and clean linen to a resident of this hospice?"

I shrugged and reached for a handful of the white pieces, happy we had changed the subject. "No idea."

"He was Zhid. For some two hundred years. I asked him about the pendant he wears about his neck—a little brass lion. He said it was a symbol of D'Arnath that Lady D'Sanya gave him when she restored his soul. Evidently quite a number of the Restored work here."

"Former Zhid here? Is that safe?" Of course, no external marks identified those who had once been Zhid. I had just never considered that any of them might be so close. My neck bristled at the thought.

"Quite safe, I think. Cedor was captured in the southern Wastes, nowhere near where I was held. And I've no contact with anyone else on the hospice staff. You don't think—" He looked at me as if he'd forgotten until that moment who I was. "No, no. Even if they could remember anything of their years as Zhid, they would remember you as a child, not a man. Nine years it's been."

Most Zhid were Dar'Nethi who had lost their souls as a result of the original Catastrophe or in the early centuries of the war, as the Lords drove more and more of Gondai into ruin. Others had been transformed as the Lords perfected their Seeking, an enchantment that could creep through the countryside and even across the walls of Avonar to capture a person's mind. Few of them had been given any choice in the matter. Only when my father became the Prince of Avonar did the Dar'Nethi come to understand that Zhid could be restored and take up a normal life again.

"Most of the Restored have long outlived their own families and friends," said my father, shoving the green queen's drone forward—his standard opening, though he seemed to have forgotten that white plays first. "Cedor says the Lady has given them a chance to earn their livelihood in a less public setting, and to feel as if they're making some recompense for their past at the same time. A generous, insightful gesture on her part. And truly, I could not ask for a kinder or more diligent attendant."

I responded by shoving a white drone forward two spaces, and we talked no more of Zhid.

As my father and I walked in the gardens that afternoon, I caught a glimpse of the Lady, but she was hurrying away from us. I stayed a little later than usual, wandering around the stable and the paddocks, hoping she might reappear. But she didn't.

Just before dusk, I left my father to his books and papers and headed back for Gaelie, wondering what we were accomplishing with all our elaborate secrecy. The journey was slow. Clouds had swallowed the full moon, and without the moonlight, the road was treacherous. Halfway down the road, a thunderstorm broke over the Vale. Having stupidly left my cloak at the hospice, I tried to wait out the rain under the trees rather than riding the last few leagues across the open fields to Gaelie.

By the time I arrived at the guesthouse stable, it was nearing midnight, and I was drenched. The rain had never stopped. The stable lad was just dashing out of the stable on his way home when I rode in, so I told him I would see to my own horse. Once the beast was dry, blanketed, and fed, I hunched my shoulders in my wet shirt and picked my way across the muddy stableyard in the dark and the rain. I wished Paulo had not left for Avonar that morning to take my father's latest batch of letters. I wondered how I was going to proceed with my grand investigation if the subject wouldn't show herself. And I hoped I might still be able to cajole the innkeeper into a hot meal to warm the chill that had seeped into my boots and my skin along with the rain. Halfway across the yard, just as I was passing an abandoned cookshed, a mountain fell on my head. . . .

Probably not a mountain, my fogged brain told me as my arms were stretched almost from their sockets, and my faced bumped and scraped over the rank-smelling roughness of mud, straw, and stones. A rock, perhaps, or a wooden cudgel across the back of the head. Something to knock me senseless long enough for my assailant to lash my hands to this beast that was dragging me through the muck and to bind my legs together so tightly, I could find no leverage to get to my feet.

The restless disturbance of large animals to either side and the change of texture from wet muck to damp straw on my face informed me I'd been dragged into the stable. I considered it a great victory to come up with that conclusion. When I lifted my eyelids, the world was blurry and dark.

The dragging stopped. Yellow light flared just beyond my head, so that if I could have lifted the damnably heavy thing, I might have seen who was ripping the gloves from my hands and holding a lantern close enough that my skin felt the warmth of it.

Dig in your feet and push . . . loop the rope around the bastard's neck . . . Just need a little slack in the rope. Wet rope. Wet boots. Miserable. Conjure something . . . you're a sorcerer. Hungry, too . . . surely the cook made something new tonight. . . hate that green-pea mess . . . A warrior's belly should be lean . . . always on the verge of hunger . . . Swirling thoughts, blurry as the night. Nonsense.

Concentrating, I drew my knees toward my midsection and dug in my toes. The immediate result was a sound that could be nothing but the slap of an experienced hand on a horse's rump. The beast lurched forward. The overstretched muscles in my shoulders began to rip, but when my mouth opened in protest, the mountain fell on my head again. . . .

Drowning ! I coughed and spluttered and gagged, fighting for breath. Panic eased when I grasped that the water was knife-edged rivulets of cold rain running down my face and into my nose. What in the name of sense … ?

My cheek bounced on wet leather. The wind hammered a flap of scratchy wool onto my scraped forehead.

Rhythmic jolts bruised my aching gut and threatened to burst my pounding millstone of a head. The world smelled of wet horse. My disorientation slowly resolved itself into the realization that I was draped over the back of the beast. Upon consideration, drowning sounded quite appealing.

I couldn't see my captor or where he was taking me, for a rag had been tied about my eyes. He needn't have bothered. Everything had been blurry already. I knew better than to give any sign I was coherent, but I had to get the rain out of my nostrils before I puked my guts out—which was going to happen any time now. I cautiously rotated my face toward the rough saddle blanket, and my thoughts blurred as well.

Just when I was convinced that the dark, wet, miserable journey would never end, the horse jolted to a stop. Cold rain soaked my back. Ropes fell slack, and I was dragged off the beast by my feet. My face bumped its way across the saddle, and then I slid all the way to the ground in an untidy heap, unable to catch myself as I was still trussed up like a goose.

Accompanying an ineffective pawing of hands trying to catch me on my way down, I heard the first words from my assailant, not through my ears, but directly inside my head. I'm sorry. No, not sorry a bit, unless I'm wrong, which I'm not .

So my assailant was Dar'Nethi. No surprise there.

The fellow dragged me through wet grass and rocky mud, sat me up, and eventually wrapped my arms backward around a broad tree trunk, binding my wrists tightly. At least I was right-side up and somewhat out of the rain. Though my head was clearing a bit, I allowed my chin to droop. Before committing myself to any more serious action, I needed to learn whatever I could. I couldn't see anyway, as the sodden rag was still in place about my eyes. So I listened.

Footsteps. He was light on his feet. The boots hardly made a sound. A soft cluck of the tongue and the two horses walked a few paces away. A rustling of branches . . . soft pats. The horses snorted and blew in a friendly way. The fellow was alone. Small. No strong-armed warrior, else why the head-bashing, dragging me about with a horse, and inordinately tight binding? I wasn't all that heavy.

Footsteps again, back toward me. He crouched on my left side, close enough I could feel his breath on my wet hair. The warmth from his body smelled of horse, damp cloth and leather, and something else I ought to know, something not unpleasant. Fruit—

A sudden movement. Metal sliding on leather. A touch on my chest.

I slammed my head backward into the tree. "Who are—"

Flat, cold steel pressed first on my lips and then across my throat. I understood the implicit command, holding as still as I could, the back of my head hard against the rough bark. No one within range was likely to offer me any help anyway. If this person was going to kill me, there wasn't much I could do about it.

The blade moved away. Not far. His breath came faster. Cold, damp fingers fumbled at my neck. The knifepoint pricked as the blade slit open the front of my shirt, and the fingers jerked the fabric apart. Though I squirmed inside, I held my body still. Pale white light leaked around the edge of my blindfold.

But then he stood up. Footsteps hurried away, quickly lost in the pattering rain. The light was gone.

Stars of night ! Releasing a breath held too long, I wriggled and fought to get out of the ropes. No luck. So I was left with sorcery . . . and only a few hours gone since I'd used sorcery to examine my father for the fourth time in four days. In hopes I had recovered, I concentrated and scraped together what power I had left, but no attempt at loosening, breaking, or splitting the rope had any effect. When my fifth attempt left hair and cloth smoldering on my scorched wrists, I quit. Clearly my captor had used exceptional rope, and his prisoner was exceptionally inept.

As the chill and the damp seeped into my bones, the two horses crunched the grass, and the drizzle rustled the leaves above my head. The rain smelled of wet grass and flowers, and we'd climbed since Gaelic The air was thinner. I was shivering in my wet clothes.

Soon I heard approaching footsteps. Slower than before. And two people this time, the second one heavier, but not by much. His feet shuffled a little in the wet grass, and his steps were uneven. Limping? Light glimmered. Not the white glow of a Dar'Nethi's handlight, but the yellow flicker of a lantern. I stiffened, wary of what might come.

"Oh, child, what have you done?" The soft, chiding voice of a man no longer young.

Cold fingers forced open my clenched fists, somewhere behind the tree beyond my aching shoulders.

"Look here and tell me it's impossible!" Demons and all perdition—a woman!

"What's going—?"

My thick-tongued attempt at participation in the conversation was cut short by the knife pressing a reminder into my windpipe. "Silence, monster!"

"Stop it, Jen!" said the man. "Stop! These are just scars from the war … or from any number of things. You have to forget, child. Let it go. And let this poor young man go. Look what you've done to him."

"Look at his hands, Papa. Only one thing ever caused scars like these. Look at the color of his hair. Remember it? Look at these other marks on him." She yanked on my ripped shirt and held the lantern close enough that I could feel the warmth on my clammy skin. With the tip of the knife she traced a scar on the left side of my rib cage, and another on my right shoulder, one on my abdomen, and a long, jagged one on my right arm. How could anyone know of those scars, remnants of my childhood sword training in Zhev'Na?

"It's impossible. He's long dead." But the man wasn't so sure any more.

"He should be dead. Justice is a mockery in Gondai while the monster yet breathes. Yet he rides the roads of the world as if he has a right to them. I'll see him dead, Papa. I will. The moment you acknowledge him, I'll bleed him dry. Only three other creatures in all the world bore these same scars • on their hands."

I didn't know who these two were, but they certainly knew me . . . and no word I could say could possibly assuage either the woman's hatred or her fear. Not if she knew what the scars on my hands were.

"Even if . . . even if it were so," said the man, "only the Heir of D'Arnath can condemn a man to death. You must not wager your soul for something so fleeting as revenge. And I can't be sure. It's been so many years. . . ."

"Perhaps if you look on his face, Papa. Look and remember. No one in authority is going to listen to me, but if a Speaker testifies . . ."

The cold fingers pulled at my blindfold, and at last I identified their scent: raspberries. By the time my eyes could filter out the lamplight, I had already cursed myself for a fool, remembering the retiring "youth" in the Gaelie common room and the dark-haired young woman who'd taken such an interest in my hands. Ten paces to my right stood the ghostly white ribbon of the hospice wall.

But my disgust at my blindness was quickly overruled by shock when I saw her companion. An old man with one ruined eye and a villainously twisted back stared at me, droplets of rain trickling down his face like a shower of tears. Even with eyes that refused to hold their focus, I knew him. I had last seen him when I was eleven. He'd been standing in the door of my house in Zhev'Na as I rode off into the desert with a red-haired Zhid warrior who would tutor me in the fine arts of murder, torture, and war.

"Sefaro," I whispered, heedless of the woman's knife. The kind, gentle chamberlain of my household, the slave forbidden to speak unless I gave him leave, yet who always smiled at me. The slave allowed to wear nothing but the vile steel collar and a gray tunic, yet who always told me how well I looked in my fine clothes. The slave fed nothing but sour gray bread, though he always made sure I had my favorite things to eat. The man I came near killing in a child's pique, yet who looked in on me in the long nights when I couldn't sleep, giving me comfort by caring that I was lonely and afraid. I had believed him one of the thousand victims of my training. . . .

Don't get too close; don't get too familiar; don't care about anyone or they'll disappear and they'll be dead. Your touch means their death. Your interest means their death. Knowing their names, looking in their eyes, hearing their voices means their death. And they can expect nothing else, for they are slaves and their only life is to serve your need. To make you strong. To make you worthy to be a Lord of Zhev'Na . Cruel lessons for a child of eleven. Ones I'd learned all too well.

"He condemns himself," said the girl, raising her knife. Dark eyes blazed in her sharp face.

The old Dar'Nethi's remaining eye searched my face, but I could not meet his gaze. Nor could I bring myself to ask the questions that came instantly to mind. How was it that he lived, when the Lords had purposely slain every one of my servants? How did he know of the scars on my hands, caused by an event that happened months after he'd vanished from my life? How had he been set free? I would have given my own eyes to hear that I'd had a hand in his salvation. But I had no right to ask him anything.

"You've used him ill, Jen," said the old man, softly.

"How can you say that? How can you care what harm comes to him—knowing what he is, what he's done? And I had no choice. I couldn't allow him to use his power."

"And did you not think to ask what's become of him? If he is a Lord, then why do you find him riding back and forth to this place and eating in a poor guesthouse in Gaelie? And how is it that we live, daughter, now he's looked upon us? How is it that he's allowed you to use him so and bind him to a tree in the rain?"

Her dark wet hair, hacked off ungracefully short, stuck to her brow and cheeks. She was neither ugly nor beautiful. The features of her small face were fine, but her jaw was sharp, her mouth slightly lopsided. The knife quivered in her hand, but not from fear. I was trained to smell fear. Her outrage was as palpable as the rain. "He can't look you in the eye, Papa."

"Do you think a Lord of Zhev'Na would have difficulty with that?"

"He can wear any face he wants. He must have some purpose in allowing me to take him; perhaps he thinks I'm too cowardly to kill him. He should be dead."

The old man laid a hand gently on the angry girl's shoulder. "He is what he is, daughter. If he is a Lord, you will not damage him, but will be drawn into his evil by your act. And if he is not, then you will bear the guilt of life-taking. I'll not allow it, certainly not for what was done to me. Not even for what was done to you and your mother and your brothers. Release him."

The girl shook off Sefaro's hand and glared at me, tapping the flat of her knife blade rapidly on her left palm. "This is for Avonar, not for me! The Zhid are raiding. He can't be allowed to make it all happen again. Someone has to know. At least we should go back to the hospice and tell the Lady D—"

"No!" I said sharply, jolted out of my silence by her words. I would attempt no explanation, no history or excuses or hollow words to tell one so grievously harmed that I hadn't meant to hurt him. I had no right. I was everything the woman named me. But mention of the Lady, and the sight of the hospice lights beyond the veils of rain where my father lay dead but not dead, forced me to speak. "Please," I said. "I am not… what I was."

The girl snorted.

"I don't expect you to believe me. But others whom you might believe would tell you that it could be of mortal importance that the Lady D'Sanya not know who I am."

"Lies! Listen to the flow of them. Why would we believe anyone you would name?"

"Please listen, sir." Though I addressed Sefaro, I could not bring myself to call him by name again. "In your last days in . . . that house . . . where we lived, a woman came to you, a Drudge, and she told you of a boy I'd wounded, hoping you could see to him, and she asked questions that you believed no Drudge would ask. You obtained a transfer of duty for her, so that she would be close to me. Do you remember her?"

Sefaro stepped closer, peering at my face with his soft brown eye. "Eda, the sewing woman."

"You told her I was not evil. Not yet."

"She said that if she could be close to you, she might prevent it."

"Because of you trusting her, helping her, she was able to do what she said."

The girl stepped forward to stand at Sefaro's shoulder. Her hands were small like the rest of her, but they gripped her long-bladed dagger securely. "And that was before he sent you away, Papa, where they burned out your eye for having looked on the young Lord and before they stuck a hook in your back and hung you up like a haunch of beef to teach others to fear the vile beast."

"Hush, child. This Eda was an extraordinary woman. I never forgot her. She wanted to tell me her secret, but I said better not. I knew what was to come. To kill anyone close to him, to make everyone fear him, to keep him alone . . . these were their plan for him. All could see it."

"She never forgot you either. She told me everything… later, when I could understand it."

"Who was she? I've always wanted to know."

"She was … is … my mother."

"Papa! This is madness to listen!"

"No, child. You didn't know the woman. If anyone—"

"But I did see her. You forget, I was there! I watched her weep as he was changed. I saw him step out of the Great Oculus with no human eyes left, and I saw them melt the sword across his palms. I saw him in a gold mask with jeweled eyes just like the others, and I'll never forget it. He is one of them, and they said on that How was it possible? She could be no older than I, which meant she could have been no more than twelve when I was changed."

As if she heard my question, she stepped closer and pulled down the high neck of her tunic to show the angry red scar about her neck. Her eyes glinted in the lamplight. "Surely you remember, young Lord. Usually they didn't make slaves of Dar'Nethi children. They would kill them or bleed them for power or the few special ones they would corrupt. But if it gave them pleasure to torment a particularly powerful Dar'Nethi, one who held great honor before his capture—a Speaker perhaps—then they would seek out his children whatever their age, and they would make him witness their collaring. They would make sure the children were put to work close enough that he could see them often, never able to speak, never able to help, never able to touch them or ease their pain and fear; Surely you remember your pleasures, Lord."

I remembered. It was the first time I ever fixed the seal on Dar'Nethi slave collars, the first time I'd listened to their screams as half of their hearts were ripped away. I had sealed three that night, two boys in their teens and a small, dark-haired girl. The Lord Ziddari had told me the Dar'Nethi forced their children to fight in the war, and Lord Parven told me how those children could kill our warriors with their enchantments just like adults could, so they must be treated like adults as a lesson to their people who used them so. I had done it. And I'd never known the three were Sefaro's children. The girl had served in my house for a time, but I'd never heard her speak, never allowed it, never looked at her when she drew my bath or laid out my clothes. . . .

I closed my eyes and fought to keep from vomiting the bile that churned in my stomach. I didn't want to remember. I'd tried so hard not to remember.

"Release him, daughter. I think your knife can do no worse than your tongue has done. And you—whoever you are now—as a price of our silence, I would like my daughter to meet your mother. She is not here in the hospice?"

"She resides in Avonar at the house of the late Preceptor, Gar'Dena." I could scarcely squeeze words past my sickness. "She cannot come here. For the same reasons—"

"—that the Lady cannot know of your past."

I nodded.

"And the one here? Who lies in the hospice and draws you here?" He suspected what I would say. His eye was wide, his lips parted in anticipation. My slaves had known of my parentage.

Secrecy was vital, but I could offer Sefaro nothing but truth. "My father lies here, the man known in this world as the Prince D'Natheil, believed dead these five years. He is dying now, but has returned to Avonar to perform one last service for his people."

"Vasrin's hand! And does the Lady know this? Or anyone?"

I shook my head. "The Lady does not know, and must not know. Not yet. Only two or three others . . . and now you and your daughter."

"There is a tale here."

"A complicated tale. On the grace of my mother and the honor of my father, I swear to you that we work for the safety of Gondai."

The old man bobbed his head in return, then turned his back to me. "Release him, daughter. Whatever harvest he must reap for what he has been and done, it is far beyond you and me."

With an explosion of disgust, the girl sliced through the ropes, nearly taking a few of my fingers with them. She whispered in my ear with a spit of hatred. "I won't forget. Justice will be done." Or perhaps it was only in my head that I heard it. Then she untethered her horses, and took her father's arm, and with no more word, they headed off toward the hospice lights and soon vanished into the night.

As for me, I huddled alone in the shelter of the tree through a very dark midnight, waiting for my vision to dear and the blood to return to my arms and legs. The cold rain fell for hours.