"It isn't necessary," Korama said.

But The Kalakar lifted a white face. "No," she said quietly. "I don't."

"I took the liberty of speaking with the Terafin merchant myself."

"That was a liberty, Verrus. Have you spoken to anyone else about this?"

"No, Kalakar."

"Good. You will not."

"Yes, Kalakar." Vernon's lips were a single white-gray line.

"But you will tell me," she added, so softly her words hardly carried.

"They cut off his legs at the knees and made him try to walk."

She said nothing.

"He should have refused and died with dignity, but he couldn't; they told him if he could walk,

they would spare his children." Her silence slowed him where her anger could not. "We have to act, Kalakar. We have Annagarian n.o.bles littered about the isle as if they own it. Hostages," he added, his voice blurring on the word. "Make them pay."

She said nothing again, but she stared at the signet ring upon her hand as if it burned.

Serra Marlena en'Leonne rent her silk sari-or tried; the fabric was, sadly, stronger than her hands -and wailed like a newborn child. The kohl and powders that adorned the whole of her face caked and gathered in the lines that age and wind had worn there. The veil, she had torn off in shock and anger, that the Lord might see her outraged face and know that wrong had been done.

Valedan sat a discreet distance from her heaving shoulders, uncertain of how to offer comfort to a woman whose husband lay dead an empire away. Especially not when he had been, even at that distance, the center of her world.

"It was treachery," his mother said, the words m.u.f.fled by the thick palms of her hands. "Treachery. Markaso was a great man, a great man. Only treachery could have felled him."

He nodded awkwardly, staring at her back, and the pale roots of her dark, dark hair, too numb to say anything at all. The only thing he felt, besides this unnatural awkwardness, was guilt: guilt at the lack of loss he felt for the shadowy figure of his father.

The Tyr'agar had been an older man when last they met. He remembered this well, for they did not meet often, and the blurring of years-the pa.s.sage of time- was not lessened, as it had been for his mother in his eyes, by their constant companionship. Finely robed in gold and silver, with black and white and blue embroidery, sword-girded and heavily booted, the man who ruled the Dominion of Annagar returned from war to his harem. His eyes were dark and narrow, and his beard thin; he was wide-broad-shouldered, tall, but thickening at the middle if truth were to be told. And there was no warmth in him.

He greeted his Serra, and in turn his wives, and then paused a moment to praise Ser Illara, his kai. Valedan, and the rest of his half brothers and sisters, waited quietly, even meekly. To speak out of turn was dangerous, especially for the concubines' children. At six, he had known it clearly. Yet his father never struck him, never beat him, never hurt him.

Because, his mother said, he was a great man.

What had he said, the stern and terrible man who ruled the Southern Dominion? What words had he offered to those who waited in such meek silence?

Serra Marlena and her son.

Oh, it stung. Even now. Especially now. He rose; he wanted peace, and this place, this courtyard with its blindfolded stone boy in the center of its lone fountain, had been his one certain retreat. Until now.

He and his mother had traveled with two cerdan to the heart of the enemy's empire. To these very halls, to live and breathe the salty, tangy air of the open sea in a land where horses were beasts of burden and women ruled and blood-kin were less than nothing among the families of the powerful. Because his father, the great and powerful Tyr, needed the aid of those loyal to him, of those he both loved and trusted as his own kin, in a land where treachery abounded. Or so his mother told him.

But certainly those second sons and bothers that the Tyr'agnati had sent were not so valuable to the men who remained in the Dominion. He realized it now, at seventeen, when at eight things had seemed so much clearer.

"Markaso," the woman beside him sobbed, and he saw her a moment, unkindly, as she was: too old, too lacking in the fine self-control of a suitable wife, too unlovely for the man that his father had become. She sent letters, of course-but who answered them, if they were answered at all, he did not know.

The hangings to the courtyard were shoved to one side; they flapped heavily against the smooth stone walls as Serra Alina di'Lamberto-the only woman to be sent as hostage to the Northern Kings-stepped into the room with her servants. Valedan remembered her because so many people had been privately proud of Tyr'agnate di'Lamberto for defying the Northerners while acceding to their demands for surety. A woman was, in the end, of no value to a Tyr. He would not have released a son or a brother. To get one, the Northerners would have had to obliterate the Terrean of Mancorvo. They chose, in the end, to accept.

Serra Alina had been given time to dress, but little time to prepare herself for public appearance; she wore no gold, no jewels, no adornments, and the sari that fell so exquisitely was of a simple, pale blue, with no embroidery, no obvious sign of well-crafted artisanship. She was pale, but composed, and although she was of an age with Serra Marlena, she was slender and tall and stern. Too stern, his mother told him, which is why she had never been married off. What man would have a woman so hard in his bed?

He rose at once and bowed correctly.

"Ser Valedan," she said, bending at the knee. "The Kings' Swords have... graciously offered me escort to these halls. For my own safety." She paused. "They are rousing the rest as well, I

believe. Will they all be brought to the Arannan Halls?"

"I-I don't know, Serra Alina." She was so unlike his mother that many found it hard to answer her; to Valedan she was a sword; not to be feared, unless he faced its moving edge.

"Ser Valedan, I will not stand on ceremony here." She rose from the scant half-bow and her servants hastened to straighten the folds of fabric that fell at her back. "What has happened? Why does Serra Marlena weep so?"

"It's-it's the Tyr'agar."

The Serra grew still, although until she did, he would have thought her incapable of being more steely. "What has happened to the ill.u.s.trious Tyr'agar?"

"He's been murdered," Serra Marlena said, raising an angry, reddened face. "Murdered, they say

-by treachery!"

"Who is 'they'?" Serra Alina stepped past Valedan and caught Serra Marlena by the shoulders.

"Who is they, Serra Marlena?"

"The N-Northerners. The diplomats."

"Valedan. Tell me."

He thought he heard the faint edge of disgust in her voice, but he could not be certain. "The

ATerafin, Devon, brought news. From Terafin." He swallowed as Serra Alina left his mother's side and came to stand uncomfortably close to his own. "The Tyr-and the clan-have been killed. "And-and-" He swallowed. "And all of the Essalieyanese hostages."

"All of the Imperial hostages."

"Y-yes."

"Lady of Night." The Serra grew white, whiter than alabaster-whiter than the blindfolded stone

face of the thin boy who stood in the center of the courtyard's fountain. He thought she might crumple. "Who carried this news?"

"A Terafin merchant. He witnessed the killings. They were... they were public."

"Who authorized the deaths?"

"I don't know."

"Was a Northerner responsible for the death of the Tyr?"

"No," a new voice said. They both looked up at once.

Standing in the open door, the hanging's heavy cloth bunched up in a mailed fist, stood the Imperial princess, Mirialyn ACormais. A sword belt hung round her narrow waist, and beneath it lay a chain shirt and hauberk. Her hair was tightly bound, and although she was not a young woman, Valedan noted that the roots and the length were of a color. "If Northerners had killed the Tyr, would they have then had the chance to murder each and every member of the clan Leonne? Not even the children of the concubines were spared." The daughter of King Cormalyn bowed; metal clinked as she rose. "I will not enter farther, Serra Marlena, Serra Alina. But this night has changed your life in Averalaan Aramarelas. Do not sleep heavily."

"Wait, ACormaris," Serra Alina said. The princess paused, caught at the edge of the threshold that had never once been a barrier before. "Our deaths. Will they be public sport?"

Valedan drew breath so sharp the sound pulled the hair on the nape of his neck. Of course. The Northern hostages were dead. He hadn't thought. He couldn't think. Or he didn't want to. But Serra Alina's words gave him no choice. He turned a face now as pale as hers to the quiet princess.

"Serra Alina-" Princess Mirialyn seemed as pale as the Serra, although that was natural; she was fairer in color. "Do not act rashly, but wait. I will-I will do as I am able." She swallowed, and Valedan felt the first deep chill of real fear. Mirialyn ACormaris was known for her fearlessness and her honor, yet even he could see the apprehension in her unblinking eyes.

Serra Alina bowed. "Serra Marlena," she said without turning, in a tone too quiet to carry to the door, "you humiliate us all by this... public display. Do you wish to dishonor your husband's choice? Cease this crying at once. We are Annagarian; the men will be here soon."

She woke from sleep with a scream. Not a m.u.f.fled scream; not the cries, pathetic and whimpering, that so often accompany nightmare. No, she screamed, and across the narrow hall, in a set of rooms occupied by the quietest of the men who served her, Teller sat bolt upright, his own dreams and sleep thrown off so completely he might have been waiting, awake, for this moment.

He was halfway through the door when they collided, he a slight and slender man, and she, a slight and slender woman, both in their nightclothes, both running as if the lives of their loved ones depended on it.

"Jay?" He caught her shoulders, held them in the brace of fingers that were used to waking her from the seer-touched mora.s.s of nightmare. "Jay!"

She met his eyes in the half-lit halls, and he knew at once that this was no waking nightmare; her gaze, framed as it was by eyes both wide and round, was here, and not in the half-world between dream and wakefulness. He almost took a step back at what he saw there. Because he hadn't seen it for years and years, and that youth was not a youth he had any desire to recall so clearly, in the dark.

"Where's Avandar?"

Things had to be tough if she wanted him.

Another door opened in the narrow hall, and a woman peered out from behind it, tentative, as if she might interrupt something that she'd rather not. "Jay? Is that you?"

"It's us," Teller replied. He met Finch's shadowed gaze and shook his head; saw her relax even before he began to speak again. "Jay's-"

"Jay's fine." Jewel Markess ATerafin said. "But if Jay doesn't move quickly, a lot of other people aren't going to be. Where in the h.e.l.ls is Avandar?"

"He is," came the dry reply, "not in the h.e.l.ls. You summoned me?"

"Summon is about right," Finch murmured, thinking of how well he fit in with the canon of other summoned creatures. Avandar might live with them, he might serve the same woman they all served, but he wasn't one of them. The fact that he was mage-born didn't keep him out-they'd all met one or two that they could tolerate, maybe even like-and it wasn't that he was a domicis, and used to running the lives of anyone who happened to live under the same roof, or in the same wing of the building, as he did. It was his chilly arrogance, his aloof distance, his almost open contempt for anyone- anything-that didn't meet the hidden criteria by which he meted out his approval.

Stealing a glance at his profile, she was chagrined to meet his piercing gaze. He was a striking man-not the sort of man that she would have ever guessed would be a servant to anyone else's whim or desire, be they King or even G.o.d. But he had chosen the life of a domicis, and he fulfilled it, if not graciously, then well.

Jewel, used to this exchange, ignored it. "Yes, I did. Wake Morretz. Tell him we need to see The Terafin at once."

"We?"

"I.".

"Very well."

Jewel sat in the near darkness of mage-light. Amarais Handernesse ATerafin-The Terafin-sat as well; there was an intimacy in the setting that spoke of the years of trust between them. Morretz, the domicis of The Terafin, stood behind her, his bra.s.s hair pale in the shadows, his blue eyes untouched by the darkness. Avandar, the domicis of Jewel, stood beside her, arms folded almost lazily, hair dark, eyes dark, demeanor cool. They were a study in opposites, these two men. The women ignored them. "Jewel," The Terafin said. "It is late." Jewel nodded and drew breath. "The Ten meet in the morning."

"Yes. It was," The Terafin added dryly, "to be a secret meeting."

"They'll vote to kill the hostages." The older woman stiffened. "We," she said coldly, "will vote. This is not a matter open to House Council discussion, Jewel. It is a decision that I have made, and I favor it."

"Unfavor it," the younger woman said, heated where The Terafin was cool. Morretz cleared his throat, and Jewel subsided, sitting back into the rests of her chair without realizing that she'd begun to leave it. "Terafin," she said, and then, "Amarais."

"This is a seeing."

"Yes."

"Tell me."

"If we kill the hostages, we will lose the war."

Avandar's head swiveled to the side. "You made no mention of war."