The Sleeping God

by Violette Malan

  “Cousin.” Lok’s voice was curiously flat, as if he was too tired to speak with more animation. Perhaps he’d found being Tarkin to be more work than he’d expected, Dal thought as he crossed the floor to his cousin’s side. He performed a more elaborate version of the counselor’s bow and straightened, forcing a smile to his lips.

  “All is well at the House,” Dal said. “Tenryn-For is settling well into his duties as Walls.” As well as he can after less than twenty-four hours, and after Karlyn-Tan’s Deputy Jeldor-San had unexpectedly refused the post.

  Lok nodded, but with an air of a man who is listening to something else. He got to his feet and gestured to Dal to fall in beside him as he walked toward the smaller, private door behind the great chair.

  “Come with me, Cousin,” he said. “I would ask something of you.”

  If I didn’t know better, Dal thought as he followed Lok through the door and nodded at the redheaded page who waited there and fell into step behind them, I’d think he was drunk. There was just something a bit too careful, too focused, about the way Lok was speaking-and walking, now that Dal thought about it.

  Any other time Dal would have welcomed the chance to walk through the private corridors of the Carnelian Dome, places that the public-even relations like the Tenebros-never saw. As it was, he kept his eyes on his cousin, and only took in the occasional detail, here a portrait of a heavily bewigged Tarkina, there a rug showing the bright dyes that marked it as a product of Semlor in the west.

  Lok finally stopped outside a thick oak door, reinforced with embedded iron bars, whose massive frame was carved to look like snakes. Treasure room or armory, Dal thought, recognizing the motifs of the Culebro Tarkins. The page, pale, wide-eyed, and tight-lipped, once more took up his position to the right of the door, ready to wait until he was wanted.

  Lok unlocked the thick door with a final twist of the key and walked straight into the room. Dal stopped dead on the threshold, until he realized that the reason his mouth felt dry was that it was hanging open. Treasure room he had thought, and treasure room it was, but thought is one thing, and sight another. A long central aisle stretched out between tiered shelving, every shelf covered with dark blue felted cloth, and every finger span of cloth covered. Plates and tableware used on state occasions filled more than half the room, personal jewelry by the basketful-including the cat’s-eye rubies the Tarkina had brought with her on her marriage-and, halfway along one side, the Tarkin’s gold crown, bracelets, ear clasps, and pectoral of woven snakes, every one with gleaming carnelian eyes.

  “The lists say there is a relic of the Sleeping God here,” Lok said, so quietly that Dal almost did not hear him. “A bracelet with green stones.”

  Dal took a step forward. “Did you wish me to look for it?” His voice sounded harsh in his own ears, but Lok did not seem to notice.

  “No, I wish you to find me the Mercenary Dhulyn Wolfshead.” Lok stopped, turned to the shelves on his right and picked up a pendant, a square-cut emerald set in silver wire. He frowned and set it down again.

  Dal almost smiled as he watched his cousin pick up yet another piece of jewelry with a green stone and set it down again. Finally, a chance to learn why Lok found this woman so important.

  “The Mercenary?” Dal said, careful to show no real interest. “What is it about this woman…?”

  Lok had stopped again, this time to pick up a bracelet made of gold links set with square smooth-polished stones. From that, and from the color and thickness of the gold, it was obviously very old. These stones, too, were green, but seemed likely to be jade. As Dal watched, Lok pushed it on over his hand, barely able to move it past the root of his thumb, to where it hung closely about his wrist.

  Dal cleared his throat to ask his question again, but he hesitated, as his cousin had closed his eye, tilting his head back as if he were listening to some favorite music. Glancing down, Dal saw the bracelet on Lok’s wrist move, as if it were suddenly a living thing, its colors suddenly painfully bright, and then fading, dissolving as it was absorbed into Lok’s wrist, until it seemed he had a tattoo there, where his skin had been clear and clean a moment before. Even as Dal took a breath to exclaim, the tattoo faded, and Lok’s skin was clean again. Dal looked up, but his cousin’s eye was focused on the spot on his wrist where the bracelet had been. And his shadow, cast on the wall behind him was not his own, but larger, darker, than it should have been, and somehow the wrong shape. Dal’s own shadow was beside it, pale and small and normal.

  “Lok, what…?” His voice was paper thin and Dal cleared his throat. Without moving the rest of his body, Lok twisted his head to look at him and Dal saw that Lok’s right eye, clear and beautiful in the unmarred side of his face was green. Not crystal blue as it had always been, but a soft jade green. And Lok’s eye patch had shifted, perhaps because of how he’d turned his head and Dal lifted his left hand to his own face, as if to indicate to his cousin what had happened, but he froze, unable to move.

  Both of Lok’s eyes were green. Both of them.

  Seventeen

  KARLYN-TAN HAD TO STEEL himself not to twitch away from people, not to hug the walls as he walked down the street. He recognized his feelings as the horizon sickness, though he’d never suffered from the fear of open spaces before. There was not too much space, he told himself, just more than he was used to-and too many strangers. Already this afternoon he’d had to convince two young toughs that he wasn’t someone they could prey on. Thank the Caids, Dal-eDal had given him a sword. He now walked with his hand openly resting on the sword’s hilt, as a message to any other tough boys in the area.

  He kept walking, following the market crowds into the Great Square, resisting the urge to run back to his inn-run away from outside. He took a deep breath and looked around him, forcing his shoulders down. Was it his imagination, or was everyone around him walking too quickly, heads ducked, cloaks held more closely than the warm day called for? He frowned. He’d been Walls too long to remember what people on the outside were like.

  Karlyn walked directly across the square, heading for the steps in the southeast corner that would lead him out into Swordsmiths Street and Mercenary House.

  There were several people on the wide stone steps leading from Great Square to the street below and Karlyn’s attention kept being drawn to one of them in particular. Fair-haired, medium height, fair width of shoulders… and the right shoulder hitched up a bit, as if he was used to carrying a pack or heavy bag slung over it. Horizon sickness forgotten, Karlyn increased his pace. He knew that walk and that shoulder hitch even without the Scholar’s tunic; he’d been watching them around Tenebro House for the last two years. So Gundaron of Valdomar was still in Gotterang, and where was he heading now?

  Mar sat in the window hole of the ruin just an alley length away from their hiding spot under the old floorboards of the abandoned granary. She’d been the one to go for water this morning, while Gun went to see if he could get into his Library. They weren’t going to be able to stay out on the streets very much longer, not unless they wanted to start selling things-and what did they have to sell but a few articles of clothing and the tools of their trades? If it wasn’t for having to hide from every pair of guards, and every sound of horses’ hooves, they would have been well able to make a living selling their skills, but as it was, they’d be running out of money and things to barter very quickly.

  She was listening carefully for the short three-note whistle that would mean Gundaron had entered the alley. She’d answer with the agreed-upon variation, and then watch from her hiding spot as he walked to the end of their lane past the entrance to their cellar and turned the corner. She’d wait for a count of fifty and, if the lane stayed empty, she’d whistle again. Gundaron would double back and meet her as she let herself down from her window hole. This was just one of the ways they’d figured out between them-her from stories she’d picked up from Dhulyn Wolfshead and Parno Lionsmane, Gundaron from his fund of reading-of watching if anyone was fol
lowing them, or if anyone had found their hiding place. Still, Mar was getting heartily sick of spending most of her time watching her back.

  When the whistle finally came, she answered it, and Gundaron glanced up to where he knew she would be. When their eyes met, a new look passed over his face, a familiar look.

  Oh, Caids. I know that look. She’d seen it on Parno Lionsmane’s face when he looked at Dhulyn Wolfshead. She’d wanted someone to look at her that way. The blood hammered in her ears and her hands shook, even as a small flower of joy bloomed under her heart.

  “We can’t go on like this much longer,” Mar said, keeping her eyes on the ties to her pack, the knowledge of what she’d seen on Gundaron’s face too new, too fresh to acknowledge. “Money’s not all we can run out of. So far we’ve been lucky, no one’s cared enough about us to steal from us or to turn us in, but how long will that last?” She groped into her pack for the metal cup they shared. “We need help, and we need it soon.”

  “It’s a judgment on us,” Gun said.

  Mar’s hand stilled. “What do you mean?”

  “We’re surrounded by people we can’t trust,” he said, looking up from the small lamp he was refilling with the last of their scrounged oil. “Maybe it’s because we can’t be trusted.”

  “I’m trusting you,” she said, touching his forearm lightly with her fingertips. It felt just as hard as the metal cup in her other hand. “And you’re trusting me. And… we were used by the people we did trust, both of us,” she added. “That makes a difference.”

  Gundaron rubbed his face with both hands, the corners of his mouth turned down. “I don’t think the Mercenary Brotherhood are going to feel that way about me.”

  Mar pressed her lips together. She did trust him, just as he trusted her. And yet there was still something Gun wasn’t telling her. What could be worse than what she’d done, betraying people who had saved her life? Maybe it was because she hadn’t read the stories Gun had, maybe it was because she’d spent so much time with the Mercenaries, but she honestly didn’t believe she or Gun were in any danger from the Curse of Pasillon.

  “Gun,” she said finally, handing him the cup. “Maybe we should try to get out of the city.”

  He looked at her, their fingers touching on the cold metal of the cup. “But you wanted to tell them, the Wolfshead, I mean, and Lionsmane.”

  She nodded, lower lip caught between her teeth. “We’ve been sent away from Mercenary House twice now,” she said. “What if we don’t get a chance to tell them?”

  “Tell them what, Lady Mar?”

  Interesting, Karlyn thought once the cup had been picked up and they’d made room for him in the only corner high enough to let them all sit upright. They’d dropped the only thing that they might possibly have used as a weapon, to cling to each other. He wondered if they’d realized it themselves. Judging from the way they carefully avoided touching in the confined space, Karlyn rather thought they had.

  Like anyone who’d commanded troops, he was a good judge of character. The girl looked nervous, he thought, and a little too pale. But her jaw was firm, and her mouth a resolute line. She was tougher than her noble birth and her town fostering might lead some to believe. After all, she’d come over the Antedichas Mountains with two Mercenaries, met the Cloud People, and lived to tell of it-not to mention surviving those particular four days in Tenebro House. Karlyn looked to the Scholar.

  Though he was a few years older than Mar-eMar, Gundaron was likely the younger in experience-that being the trouble with book learning. The boy was frankly terrified, in Karlyn’s opinion. Where the girl was pale, the boy was white-faced; where she was firm and resolute, he held himself so stiffly he had a slight tremor in his hands. And he blinked too much. But for all that, Karlyn thought, impressed almost against his will, Gundaron was keeping his fear firmly in check. What could have frightened him so badly? This was the first real emotion Karlyn had ever seen in the boy. What had woken him from his Scholar’s daydream? Was it the girl? Or something more sinister?

  “We didn’t harm the House,” Lady Mar said, breaking into his thoughts. “I know you have no reason to believe us, but we didn’t.”

  “Perhaps I have no reason,” Karlyn said, “but I believe you. What decided you to leave when you did?”

  Lady Mar took a deep breath. She was wearing the same clothes she’d had on when she’d arrived with the Mercenary brothers, now much creased and dirty. But she seemed not to notice any discomfort. “I’d been used,” she said, a bitter twist to her mouth. “I didn’t know how badly just at first. I knew I’d been lied to, though, and I couldn’t stay where there was no one I could trust.”

  Tough, all right. Tougher than some other cousins of the House he could name. Karlyn turned to Gundaron. The Scholar clamped his jaw, not like someone determined not to speak, Karlyn thought, but like someone who expected the words to burn on their way out. The Lady Mar put her dust-grimed hand on the Scholar’s arm.

  “I know you have no reason to believe me,” Karlyn said, deliberately echoing Mar-eMar’s words. “But you can trust me. I did not choose to leave Tenebro House, I have been Cast Out for refusing to hunt for Dhulyn Wolfshead and Parno Lionsmane. I believe we are allies.” The two youngsters glanced at each other before looking back at him. Was there hope in their eyes? “What is this you were saying about Mercenary House,” he asked them.

  “We’ve amends to make,” Lady Mar said, her eyes flicking toward the Scholar. “And information to give. But we can’t get anyone to listen to us.”

  Karlyn nodded. “I believe I can,” he said. “Let’s get you cleaned up. I believe they might listen to me.”

  Parno turned the Tarkin’s sword gently out of the way, using the palm of his hand against the flat of the blade, and, letting his own sword drop to the floor, poked Tek-aKet in the sternum with the forefinger of his right hand. Both men, the Tarkin red-faced but smiling, stepped back from one another.

  “You’re not afraid of the blade, which is good,” Dhulyn said, stepping forward as Parno retrieved his sword. “But you kept your own too low, and too far off the central line. Watch.” She took the Tarkin’s place and came at Parno slowly, her movements exaggerated in such a way that Tek-aKet Tarkin would have no trouble following. She held her sword so that the sharpened tip sagged below her waist. As she advanced on Parno, he once again turned the blade aside with the palm of his hand.

  “Do you see?” Dhulyn said. “Your blade was off-center, and at an angle that made it easy for him to turn it aside, even without another weapon of his own. Now watch where I have mine.” Dhulyn executed almost the identical move, except this time Parno was able to turn her blade aside only by sacrificing his own forward momentum, and losing any chance to turn the move to his advantage. She and Parno lifted their points and stepped back.

  “Did you see, Lord Tarkin?”

  Tek-aKet nodded, brow furrowed. “I thought I’d had good teachers, but you’ve shown me things-” He lifted his shoulders and let them drop. “I didn’t think to watch his bare hand.”

  Dhulyn sheathed her sword and extended both her hands to show the fine scars on the palms. “When it’s life and death, and not for show, everything is a weapon. Kill or be killed, all battles come down to this.”

  “Kill or be killed,” Tek-aKet repeated, his dark brows drawn down into a vee over his clear blue eyes. “I think you have shown me more than a Shora of offense and defense, Dhulyn Wolfshead, I think you have answered a question for me.” He looked up at them, the sheen of sweat drying on his upper lip. “I think I must take back the Carnelian Throne.”

  “There was some doubt of this?” Parno’s eyebrows could not raise any higher.

  Tek-aKet nodded, his eyes hooded. “I never wanted to be Tarkin,” he said, a half smile playing about his lips. “My brother died of a fever, and I had to take his place. It did actually occur to me that this was my chance to take Zella and the children and go to her sister in Berdana.”

  “And
what decides you against that?” Dhulyn said.

  “Zella and the children,” he said. “My family will never be safe with Lok-iKol Tenebroso on the throne. No matter where we go, what we do, he will see us as a threat until he hunts us down and kills us all. He’s been doing exactly that to his own House for years.” He lowered his eyes again, and his face turned to stone. “But there is also this. Lok-iKol is not Tarkin of Imrion. Neither by inheritance nor by Ballot. I find it is, after all, that simple. I will not walk away from my throne, my people, my responsibilities, and leave them to that jackal. I must find some place, some fortress or other, that I can use to rally my army. If I move quickly, then many who are now confused will come to us.”

  “Well,” Parno said lightly. “We’re looking for work, Lord Tarkin. We’d give you a good rate.”

  The sound of hoofbeats on the cobbles of the lane outside the tavern drew every eye to the window and three of the regulars to the door. Karlyn-Tan stayed in his seat by the inner window that let out on the stable yard, polishing the buckle of his sword belt in the sunshine that found its way through the open shutters. The two youngsters were in his room upstairs, smuggled in the back way and even now taking advantage of warmed water and soap. It wasn’t until it was obvious the horse was stopping that Karlyn put aside the buckle and polishing cloth and turned toward the door. He knew the sound of a horse that was being ridden, and there was only one noble he could think of who might have reason to come to this particular inn.

  Dal-eDal entered and stepped immediately to one side so as not to present a silhouette in the entrance-and also to let his two guards enter with him. As soon as his eyes adjusted to the relative dimness of the taproom, his chin lifted as he caught sight of Karlyn-Tan. He crossed the half-empty room with a nod at the innkeeper behind the bar and joined Karlyn at his corner table. Karlyn smiled when the nobleman sat down with his back to rest of room-evidently Dal was sure that Karlyn would warn him if there should be any trouble. Or perhaps he was counting on the loyalty of the two guards, now being served at the bar? The young nobleman looked paler than usual, with lines around his eyes Karlyn had not seen before. When his cup of wine arrived, the fingers that turned it around on the tabletop without lifting it to his lips trembled slightly.