Raven's Strike

CHAPTER 16

Much to Tier’s relief, the clouds seemed to be keeping their water to themselves, and there was even a growing area of blue sky to let the sun out to warm his bones.

He hadn’t been away from home this much since he’d been a soldier, but, moments of terror and worry aside, he didn’t really mind it. Perhaps when his wife decided she could not go back to being a farmer’s wife, he’d become a Traveler’s husband and roam the world with her.

He missed his farm—missed the smell of the earth turning and the plants growing.

He deliberately turned his attention to the city.

The University District had evidently been where the wealthy lived. From his perch on top of a garden wall, he had a good view of most of gardens belonging to a three-story stone manor house. The lack of birds and insects bothered him, but did not diminish the elaborate beauty of the carefully laid out flowers and trees.

The real benefit of his chosen position was not the local flora, but the ability it gave him to keep an eye on all of his charges, who had a tendency to scatter as something interesting caught their attention.

Rinnie left Lehr, half-hidden by a hedge at the far end of the block near the boundary Tier had declared was as far as they could go until everyone was ready to move on, and had started toward him with Gura at her side.

A moment later Phoran trailed laconically after Rinnie and Gura with the look of bored cynicism—a mask left over from earlier times—that he wore whenever he remembered that he was the Emperor, and not merely another of Tier’s boys. The work and riding Phoran had been doing had thinned down his face, showing wide cheekbones and a narrow, elegant nose. He wasn’t handsome, but his tanned face had an angular cast that would be more interesting than mere handsomeness—especially when he smiled.

Though he still dressed in his flamboyant colors, they had grown worn over the weeks of work and riding. He’d given up on the elaborate hairstyles of court and taken to tying his hair back. The overall effect was more that of a rogue than an emperor.

Behind him, as usual, were Kissel and Toarsen. Ielian would be somewhere near, but not too near, always aware of where the Emperor was. Tier saw him leaning casually on a garden wall on the other side of the street. Rufort had taken the other side of the block and, like Tier, had found a position that allowed him to keep an eye on everyone. Tier smiled, proud of his Passerines. They would do to guard the Emperor’s back.

Rinnie was getting closer, and Tier’s smile widened to a grin as Ielian fell in to trail casually behind Toarsen and Kissel. He knew they were guarding Phoran, but to an outsider it would look as though Rinnie were very important.

She stood on the street just under Tier and shaded her eyes. “Papa,” she said, “Lehr says he’s solved the mysteries of the places where the buildings have fallen, but he won’t tell me until you come.”

“All right.” He knew the chances of anyone else being in Colossae were slim, but the silence made him wary, and he took one more good look around before dropping off the wall.

He followed his daughter, her emperor, and his guards down the cobbled street to the end of the block, where Lehr awaited them. Rufort, he noticed out of the corner of his eye, was strolling along behind them.

“Look, Papa,” Lehr said, his voice tight with excitement as soon as Tier could see around the bushes to the small plot of land with another of the rubble-covered places where a house had once stood.

Lehr pointed to the surrounding fence that was modest in comparison to its neighbors, being only waist high and made of wood. The fence was elaborately painted with green vines and small white flowers that wove in and out of the evenly cut slats.

Tier frowned; he’d seen a fence like that before, but for a moment he couldn’t think just where. Lehr waited expectantly while Tier put a hand on the wood and bent to look more closely at one of the painted flowers. No, he thought, it hadn’t been a fence. If his memory had been its usual self he would have had an easier time of it.

“Benroln’s mermora,” he said at last. He’d seen it virtually every night on the trip from Taela until Benroln had led his people to Colbern. “Rongier the Librarian’s house has this pattern on the windowsills.”

“And the lines of the building match the house, Papa. I think the buildings that have fallen are all the wizards’ houses. If we get Mother, I bet we could figure out where all her mermori belong.”

“What’s a mermora?” asked Phoran.

Rinnie and Lehr both started to explain. Rinnie would have stopped and let Lehr continue, but Lehr reproved her for being rude and talking over the top of him.

Tier let them work it out while he took a few steps out into the middle of the road and tried to see, in his mind’s eye, what it would have looked like with Rongier’s house in place of the scattered stones that were all that was left of his house.

He wondered if Rongier’s house had been here first, and all the estates had grown up around it—or if the estates had been here and one of the owners of the properties on either side had given this land for Rongier’s use. Certainly the relatively modest house must have looked out of place while Rongier had lived there.

He half closed his eyes and visualized it. His hands warmed and tingled as the picture formed—no, not just picture. Suddenly the sounds he’d been missing were here, the wind in the trees and the birds twittering. He smelled the sweet scent of herbs and flowers and a faint tang of manure. The street wasn’t busy, only the people who lived on it and the people who did business with them came here.

A horse was tied outside Rongier’s house, smaller than the horses Tier was used to, and lighter built. Its mane was plaited with ribbons, and the horse’s tack was whitened leather. It flicked its tail and stomped a back hoof, trying to dissuade some irksome insect.

“So the wizards found a way to take their libraries with them when they fled?” Phoran’s voice broke Tier’s concentration. “All I managed was two changes of clothes, my sword, a fat purse, and four guards to spend it on.”

“They were killing their families,” said Rufort slowly. “Libraries seem…” He floundered for the right word.

“Petty,” supplied Ielian.

“They couldn’t bear to lose everything.” Tier said. The scene of the past had gone as soon as Phoran caught his attention. “If I were forced to kill my family and survive them, which is almost the most terrible fate I can imagine, then I would want some keepsake—something to show that once they had lived.”

“Isn’t that what they sacrificed?” asked Lehr holding on to the fence. “Mother says magic is about patterns, and along with the lives of the people who lived here, it was the patterns of everyday life, all the things that made Colossae their home, that they sacrificed.”

“The library wasn’t sacrificed,” said Rinnie. “It’s not part of the spell. Maybe the mermori are like the library.”

Phoran smiled, and said wryly, “Maybe, but my uncle said if a wizard had a choice between rescuing a book or his only child from a flaming building, the wizard would save the—”

Phoran’s voice broke off, and Tier was suddenly looking up at the branches of a tree.

“Papa?” Rinnie’s voice was small and scared.

“I’m all right,” Tier said, instinctively answering the fear in his daughter’s voice before he’d had a chance to assess the situation.

He hadn’t realized he was being held down until his arms and legs were released. He was lying on his back in the street, with the boys crouched around him and Rinnie’s tearful face looking over Lehr’s shoulder.

“Another fit, eh?” he said. He sat up too suddenly, and if Phoran’s hand hadn’t shifted unobtrusively behind his back, he would have fallen again. There was blood in his mouth, and he could feel a cut on the inside of his cheek.

“This one was bad, Papa,” said Lehr. His voice didn’t tremble, and there were no tears, but Tier could see he’d scared Lehr as much as he’d scared Rinnie.

“Kissel caught you before you fell,” said Toarsen. “But it looked to me as if you hit your head pretty hard before I could steady you.”

“Thank you,” Tier said, putting a hand on Phoran’s shoulder and using it to pull himself to his knees. When he didn’t feel any dizziness, he got to his feet.

“I’m all right,” he told the worried faces gathered around him, and Bard that he was, he knew that he lied.

“The Raven could have set the magic upon Colossae herself,” said the Scholar, answering Seraph’s question as he paced the short distance between Seraph’s bench and the stairway. “But that would not have been a sacrifice capable of binding the Elder gods. Only the wizards could make the proper sacrifice of the wizards’ city. The Raven directed the spell, and Hinnum served as the focus—but the power of the spell came from the wizards of Colossae.”

“They killed their loved ones,” said Seraph, trying to imagine how it was. “They destroyed all they held dear. How did you persuade them all?”

“We gathered them in the Raven’s temple and explained what had happened. They knew the Weaver and the Stalker were unbound—no one could deny it by then, all of nature was in tumult.”

“They didn’t all agree,” said Seraph, trying to imagine a roomful of Ravens agreeing on anything.

He stopped at the head of the stairs. “No,” he said heavily, and she heard death in that one word and saw it in his bowed shoulders. He took a deep breath, though she didn’t think he really needed to breathe. “We left Colossae by the University Gate. And then we sacrificed her.”

“But not the library, not even the wizard’s personal libraries,” she said slowly putting together the pieces as a Raven did, taking facts and using them to intuit beyond what she knew for certain. She remembered the way the Scholar focused on Hennea, and his voice as he spoke of his goddess. As if he were here, she could hear Tier say that he thought Hennea was old.

“And not the Raven. She planned on dying, didn’t she?” Seraph whispered, awe rushing through her. Hennea was the Raven. “After she’d seen the whole of the business finished, she wanted to die like the other gods.”

“I couldn’t bear it,” said the Scholar. “I couldn’t bear that she die, too. I loved her.”

“So what did you do?”

“I took her memory instead. As you have seen, she still doesn’t remember. I changed her face—just for a while, until all of those who would have known her for what she was were gone. So many of the wizards died that night, and those who lived were all damaged one way or another. She wasn’t the only one to have lost her memory. There were wizards who never again worked magic, a handful who went blind. One who never said another word.”

“Isolde the Silent,” said Seraph.

He turned then and stared at her. “How do you know of Isolde? Are you of her house?”

Seraph nodded.

He smiled, remembering something with pleasure, she thought. “No. It wasn’t Isolde who was struck dumb. Isolde could have studied under the Owl’s wing—she had a singing voice like crystal strung to sound in the wind. In the days after Colossae fell, her songs comforted us all. We called her the Silent because she never said a word that didn’t need to be said.” He paused. “You don’t look like her, but you have something of her manner.”

Seraph pursed her lips. “I don’t know how you are doing it, but you are Hinnum, himself.”

“Yes.”

Seraph leaned back, assessing the situation. She had in front of her the greatest wizard of Colossae, and she was going to make good use of him.

“Man is made of spirit, mind, and body,” said Seraph, “To see spirit, the wizard must push past the barriers that block his sight.” She set the book down with an ill-tempered thump. “Nonsense,” she told it—and her new instructor—irritably. “Moreover, it is useless nonsense. No real details, nothing except a collection of high-sounding poetical nonsense. I have done everything it says to do, and I cannot see anything other than my Order—which is not spirit.”

“It isn’t nonsense,” said the illusion Hinnum wore mildly. “And if you are to keep your husband alive until I am capable of working magic, you need to know how to see spirit. All it takes is a little study and self-discipline.”

She turned to look at him, and he smiled at her—just like Tier. No one else laughed at her temper.

For Tier she would learn how to do this or die trying. And Hinnum, she reminded herself firmly, was the only wizard who could teach her—unless Hennea suddenly recalled herself. Seraph thought it would have happened already if it were going to.

It would probably be a kindness, Seraph thought, if Hennea never remembered. From what Hinnum had told her, Hennea had no more power now than any other Raven: her memory of what she had been would gain her nothing but pain.

Hennea wasn’t the only one who had lost when Colossae was sacrificed. He hadn’t gone into detail, but the damage he’d sustained from the spell had been bad enough he’d chosen to stay here alone rather than go out into the world.

The illusion he’d built to house his intellect—his spirit, he’d said, tapping the miserable book she was slogging through—was not capable of much magic. Which was why he’d begun the process of awakening his proper body as soon as he’d seen Tier and the Order-bound gems. Hinnum knew something of how to fix both problems, he’d told her, but he didn’t know how long it would be before his body would recover. For the gems there was no rush, but Tier did not have much time left.

Thus she found herself sitting at a table like a fledgling solsenti wizard under the tyranny of his master.

“It’s not that difficult,” he said now, and handed her the piece of chalk she’d thrown across the room. “An apprentice of thirteen would be able to master this easily. But not if she was too busy throwing tantrums to listen.”

Seraph simmered with ill temper as she drew the arcane glyphs across the gleaming surface of the table again. She hadn’t had a teacher since her own had died, and Hinnum seemed to take particular delight in being obscure.

This was worse than learning the runes for warding—at least then she could feel the power gathering under the runes so that the runes themselves told her if she’d drawn them correctly or not. This was just scribbling nonsense.

“That figure turns the other direction,” said Hinnum, tapping the drawing in the book. “See there? And the little bit right here needs to be a hair longer.”

“If you told me what we were trying to do,” she said, not for the first time, “this might not be necessary.”

“It’s in the book,” he told her. “But you told me the book doesn’t make sense to you—thus the figures.” He leaned over the marks as she made them. “That’s better. Only three more figures, then I’ll teach you the words.”

“Could Hennea do this?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he told her. “You can, of course, wait for someone else to fix all of your problems if you aren’t willing to put in a little time and effort.”

If he hadn’t been an illusionary construct, if he weren’t the only hope she had of saving Tier, she would have done something unpleasant to him.

She started trying to reconstruct the next random assortment of squiggles and angles.

Hinnum gripped Seraph’s cheeks and pushed, forcing her mouth into an unnatural position. “Like this. If you don’t get the sounds just right, they won’t work.”

She jerked her face out of his grip and tried again. Rhythm, tone, pitch, pronunciation, no wonder solsenti wizards were a nasty bunch.

Staring at the meaningless shapes she’d drawn on the table, she once more focused all of her attention on getting the words just right. It sounded to her exactly as it had the first twenty times, but this time something happened. Magic rushed through the chalk marks and into her in a stream of power that pushed the stool she was sitting on back a few inches.

It was different from the runes. The runes were hers, and they did as she bid.

The shapes and words of this kind of spell weaving distracted her, then stole her magic and twisted it into a new shape. She didn’t like it—a Raven controlled her own magic. She didn’t like it, but she saw and understood the pattern the symbols and sounds were trying to make of her power. There were flaws here and there, and she fixed them as she tugged her magic until it was once more hers.

“I’ve got it,” she said, turning to Hinnum.

But instead of the half-grown Traveler boy, she saw instead a net of magic, a complex pattern of strings and knots that gave form to the Scholar. The violet fabric she’d always seen as the Raven Order was there as well, beneath the netting—or so she thought at first. She got up from her chair and walked toward him. She could see now it wasn’t the same as the Order, not quite.

“It’s not the Raven Order, but it is akin to it,” she said.

“I was goddess-touched,” he said, seeming to follow her meaning. “The gift of the Raven is very like the Raven’s Order. What did you do? This magic doesn’t feel like the spell you were working on should!”

“I fixed it,” she said, bending closer, fascinated. “Pardon me,” she said absently, as the reality of what she saw began to give meaning to the passages Hinnum had made her read.

“What did you do?” Hinnum sounded fascinated, examing her magic as closely as she was examining him.

“Not right now,” she said. “Let me look.” It took concentration, as if she had to pay attention in order to focus her eyes on anything. It was draining, too. She wouldn’t be able to do this for long periods of the time. It was akin to the way Ravens looked to see Orders, but it went deeper.

“I see the spell binding you to your illusion,” she said after a moment of thought. That must be what the net that encompassed the rest of him was. “Beneath that the—Raven’s touch, I suppose you’d call it—and under…” The violet sheathing became transparent, fading from her view as she chose to look at different things. “I see a bluish light and a dark core beneath.”

“Describe it to me.” Hinnum’s voice had lost the note of caution and become eager.

Seraph lifted up her hand and pushed it through the net to stroke the light with a fingertip. “Give me your hand,” she told him. If his goddess touch worked like the Order, she should be able to show him what she had done so he could do it himself. It would be easier than trying to explain it to him.

It was her turn to be the teacher, and she hadn’t forgiven him for grabbing her cheeks.

He took her hand, and for a while she wondered if his not-quite-an-Order, his not-quite-human, and his not-able-to-work-magic were going to hinder her.

She found out quickly that he was right about the magic, but if she split up what she wanted to do, everything worked. She showed him the form of the magic she used for this new, extended vision, and though he couldn’t work the magic himself, she knew from his “Ah” of pleasure, that he understood. Then she showed him what she saw, the same way she could have shown it to anyone, even someone who didn’t happen to be mageborn.

She took him slowly through the net of his magic and past the Raven’s touch and brought him to the pale blue fire surrounding a darker form.

“The light blue is spirit,” he said. “That’s what you needed to be able to see. I have no idea what the other is… soul? Perhaps. Or perhaps it is something that has happened because I’ve kept my self in this form…” His voice trailed off.

She closed her eyes and separated her magic gently from Hinnum, then dissipated the spell she’d used. She blinked twice before her eyes returned to working properly—and took two steps back so she was no longer nose to nose with the Scholar.

While Hinnum still had a dazedly pleased expression on his face, Seraph asked, “If the Stalker is not evil—then why is the Shadowed?” He’d avoided answering any question she’d tried about the Shadowed; she hoped taking him by surprise would yield better results.

His expression returned to alertness with disappointing speed. When Tier had that look on his face, it took him much longer to return to his usual quick-witted self.

“How would I know?” he asked. “I’ve been here since the end of Colossae.”

“Not quite, I think,” Seraph said. “There was a Shadowed with the wizards who survived, and the stories tell us you are the one who killed her. So why are the Shadowed evil?”

She should probably have left the questioning to Tier, but the expression on Hinnum’s face had led her to try. She had nothing more to lose now by trying to bludgeon information from him. He knew about the Shadowed in general—and he knew about Willon in particular. She hadn’t forgotten that Willon had come to Colossae. Willon had had the same maps that she had, and he was a wizard. Of course he had come to the library.

Hinnum had had a hand in the creation of her Shadowed, Willon, who had crept into her home on the pretext of his friendship with Tier and killed her daughter. Hinnum would tell her all he knew if she had to pry it from him one word at a time.

Something of that determination must have been on her face, because Hinnum sighed. “There’s a flaw in the veil we drew between the Elder gods and our world when we sacrificed the city. I felt it—and so did the few great wizards who survived. One of them used the hole to draw upon the power of the Stalker.”

“What caused it?”

“We did. I did.” Guilt was one of the expressions she’d seen on his face quite often, given she’d only known him for part of two days. “It took me a long time to figure out what happened.” He sat on a bench, his head bowed. “I had been experimenting with an illusionary form that not only reproduced an object perfectly to all the senses, but could be set into a silver object to be called and recalled without degrading the illusion.”

“The mermori,” said Seraph.

Hinnum nodded. “I’d found that by destroying the object I intended to reproduce, the spell required very little more power.”

“Forming the mermori destroyed the wizards’ houses.” Seraph rubbed her forehead, which ached from the spelling she’d been doing. “Since it took little power, it was not such a big thing to work it into the Raven’s spell, and you formed the mermori at the same time the city fell. The sacrifice wasn’t perfect because the wizards’ houses weren’t part of the eternally preserved city.”

“And then there was the library,” Hinnum said.

Seraph rubbed her forehead harder. “Stupid.”

“Yes.” Hinnum sighed.

“You were going to tell me why the Shadowed is evil.”

“A wizard—not just any wizard—but a powerful, smart, well-schooled wizard, can under certain circumstances slip through the hole in the veil and touch the power of the Stalker, can touch destruction. Being destruction, it kills any mortal being who holds it for long.”

“But the Shadowed doesn’t die,” Seraph said.

“Most wizards who touch it release it immediately and never seek it again. But if the wizard gives the death that is the price of the power of destruction to another person, then he can use the power for a while.”

“He chooses to kill others to keep the power,” Seraph interpreted. “And anyone who would do that—”

“Is evil.” Hinnum glance up at the skylights. “It’s getting late,” he said. “You’d better find your family.”

“ ‘The dead walk the streets at night,’ ” she quoted him softly.

He nodded. “The dead have a lot to be angry with in this city.”

Lehr walked just behind his father, Rinnie’s hand clutching his. She was still breathing in jerks from the tears she’d tried so hard not to let Papa see. The moment that the fit had struck his father was close to the worst moment in his life.

It wasn’t the first fit his father had had, but it was the worst—and the first time it had happened without Mother there to give them direction. And after the fit was over, Papa had just lain on the pale cobbles. He hadn’t been breathing until Kissel hit him in the chest.

Phoran walked just on the other side of Tier, and on some pretext or other had managed to get a firm grip on Tier’s arm to steady him a little.

“Are we going back to camp?” Ielian asked Lehr in a subdued voice.

They hadn’t discussed it. Phoran had helped Papa to his feet, then said, “Let’s go.” But he hadn’t said where.

Papa had been a little dazed, and he’d slurred his words—but he wouldn’t let any of them help him further. He’d gotten better as they walked; well enough to carry on an animated conversation with Phoran.

“We’re going to find my mother,” said Lehr.

Phoran caught Lehr’s eye and nodded slightly.

“Papa, what’s wrong?”

Lehr looked up to see Jes and Hennea hurrying over.

Papa smiled. “Do I look that bad?”

“Yes. You smell of sweat, and you are pale,” Jes answered with his usual bluntness.

Hennea wore her usual inscrutable face, but Lehr noticed that her eyes were puffy. She was almost as pale as Papa except for her nose, which was reddened. She’d been crying, which was something he could hardly imagine. On a different day Lehr would have wondered about it, but he was too worried about Papa.

“I had another fit,” Papa admitted to Jes. “Judging by the way they are all hovering around me, it must have been pretty bad.”

Phoran started walking again and pulled Papa forward with a gentle tug. Jes picked up Rinnie and put her on his shoulder, then he and Hennea fell in with Papa.

Lehr waited and took up the tail end of the procession beside Rufort. He’d come to like the quiet man; besides, he didn’t want to walk too near Jes.

Sometimes Lehr reveled in the powers that had grown in him since he’d found out that he was Hunter. Sometimes, though, he wished that his senses didn’t tell him quite so much.

He hadn’t wanted to know what Jes and Hennea had just come back from doing. It was bad enough he knew too much about his parents; he didn’t want to know about his brother, too.

Brewydd would have laughed at him, he thought. He could almost hear her voice ringing in his ears. “So where do you think the babes come from, my lad—under a mushroom?”

He could feel his ears heat up even more—his cheeks were probably bright red. Not for the first time he wished for his father’s darker skin.

“I hope that your mother can help him,” Rufort said, either too worried about Tier to notice Lehr’s flushed face or too polite to press him.

“Me, too,” Lehr said.

“I thought he was going to break something,” Rufort said, then gave Lehr small smile. “Possibly me.”

Lehr smiled back and felt a little better. The worst was over for now. “Ielian was the one who was outmatched,” he said just loud enough Ielian could hear him.

The smaller man made a rude sign with his hand, then waited for them to catch up.

“I never thought being a guardsman was going to be more interesting than working for the Path,” said Ielian.

“Better,” said Rufort.

“Mmm.” Ielian glanced around as they entered an intersection of streets, looking for danger. Colossae still unnerved Lehr, too. “But being a Passerine was better than being a clerk for my uncle’s steward. Paid better, too.”

Rufort stiffened, his mouth tight, but before Lehr could ask him what bothered him, he relaxed again. “This will be a story to tell my grandchildren,” he said. “And they will pretend to believe me because their mother has told them to humor the old fool so she can get dinner on.”

His mother was standing at the top of the stairway into the main room of the library as if she’d been about ready to go to camp herself. The young man who called himself the Scholar was with her.

Her gaze swept them all, and she stepped back. Without a word she commanded them all up the stairs and into the library, where they scattered among the benches, stools, and tables.

Lehr didn’t think that Hennea intended him to hear her whisper to Mother, “You know, don’t you? You know about me.”

Lehr had found a seat, and so he saw his mother take in Hennea’s reddened eyes and Jes’s easy posture. He didn’t think that she could tell what they had been doing, as Lehr had, but he didn’t put it past her.

Mother smiled coolly, but Lehr could tell she was pleased about something—which, after all the lectures Papa had given both boys about how to treat women, he felt was a little unfair.

Then Mother said something very odd. “Hennea, you of all people should know that Ravens like secrets.”

Papa sat on one of the tables, his legs crossed at the ankles. Phoran sat on the floor, and Rinnie curled up beside him and put her head down on his knee. Gura lay down on Phoran’s other side with a sigh and took the other knee.

Lehr thought that the Scholar intended to stand with Mother, but she sent him off to a bench, too.

“I have had a productive day,” Mother told them, her eyes dwelling on Papa’s ravaged face. “But why don’t you tell me what you have found? Jes?”

Jes smiled widely, and Lehr was momentarily horrified by what his brother would say. With Papa for a father they all had learned not to lie, but Jes was sometimes too honest.

“Found the Raven’s temple,” he said. “Not far from here.” He glanced down at Hennea. “Different from the Owl’s temple, all black-and-white stone, but the same idea.”

Lehr saw relief cross Hennea’s face and knew she’d had the same worry that he’d had. Unexpectedly, she met his gaze across the room, blushed, then gave him a rueful smile.

“Tier?” asked his mother.

“Lehr discovered what those damaged buildings are,” Papa said.

Mother looked at Lehr, so he explained about the fence and the shape of the house that once had stood there.

“We’ll take Rongier’s mermora there tomorrow,” was all she said when he finished.

“I thought you were of Isolde’s house?” asked the Scholar suspiciously. “Why do you have Rongier’s mermora?”

Mother gave him one of her looks. “I told you the Shadowed has been systematically killing Travelers. He killed the last of Rongier’s clan a few weeks ago. The mermora came to me.”

“Rongier’s line is gone?”

“I hold two hundred and twenty-nine mermori,” Mother said. “They are all gone.”

The Scholar dropped his eyes. “I’ll be able to work magic for you tomorrow afternoon,” he said.

“Good.” Mother looked at Papa and raised an eyebrow. “You look better,” she told him. “I wasn’t certain if you were going to survive the trip up the stairs.”

He grinned. “All right, Empress,” he said. “I had another fit. If Kissel hadn’t been quick and caught me before I hid the cobbles, I guess I’d have a worse headache than the one I do. That’s nothing new, love. Tell us what you’ve learned, we’ve been waiting long enough.”