Nearly a year ago, Theron—castellanum of Belzetarn—had decided it was time to get rid of that thorn in his side, Gael. Time to bring the smithies and their tally chamber under the castellanum’s control. Or maybe Theron had been dreaming of this ever since he took office, but only put his schemes into action when an old, cold murder by Barris came to his attention.

Whether a long-held desire or a new one, Theron blackmailed Barris into stealing tin ingots. Not too often, and not blatantly, lest Gael notice the thefts too soon. Theron planned to build up a substantial cache as evidence of Gael’s perfidy.

Nor was Barris a quiescent victim. Sometimes he refused, and Theron had to find opportunity to renew his threats against the cook, because acting on them would destroy Theron’s leverage against him.

But every four or five deichtains, Barris would steal a tin ingot from the carry sack of the chronically late scullion who transported the metals from the vaults to the privy smithy. And late at night, when most of Belzetarn slept, Barris would hand the fruits of his theft to the castellanum, who then secreted them in the clogged latrine that he insured was never cleared.

So had the pillaging of the tally chamber begun, and so it proceeded, a slow and quiet erosion of which Gael remained unaware.

But then another player entered the game.

Two moons before Gael discovered the arrears in his tallies, Nathiar—Belzetarn’s magus—visited the nearby copper mines, there to prospect a new seam of ore. He went at Gael’s behest and with Carbraes’ permission, but not all his activities were licit. For Nathiar longed to create magical weapons to counter those used by their enemies on the battlefields, although Carbraes forbade such risky experiments.

Nathiar located and mapped a rich seam of copper, but he also tinkered with the furnace on-site, ensuring it would develop a clog in its innards, which he would be called upon to clear.

Nathiar returned to Belzetarn most indirectly from the copper mines, detouring far out of his way to the tinworks, where trolls scraped graveled streams for pebbles infused with the valuable metal. He claimed to be assessing the ore content of the many tributaries, but in truth he was there merely to thrust his loyal porter Lannarc into the job of teamster, to guide the mule that carried sacks of tin nuggets to Belzetarn’s vaults.

Had Fintan—the teamster who’d accompanied the tin mule for years—broken his leg accidentally? Or had Nathiar helped that accident along? No matter. Fintan was sidelined, while Lannarc took over his duties, pilfering a nugget here and a nugget there, collecting them in a drawstring pouch with rose-shaped rivets and passing them to Nathiar in a glade outside Belzetarn.

The magus then had tin.

And when the tap in the furnace at the copper mines developed its pre-ordained clog, Nathiar had copper as well. When sent for, just as he had planned, the magus fixed the clogged tap, of course. But he also created a secret tap leading to a hidden pocket in the earth and a plunger whose action would open the secret tap.

Gael grunted. Really the better part of the thievery had occurred long before he ever grew aware of it. He sighed and opened his eyes. Thin beams of moonlight were sifting in through the louvers of the casement shutters. The moon must have risen.

He stifled a second sigh, turned over, and resolutely shut his eyes. His limbs felt utterly relaxed, and he was sleepy. Why wasn’t he slumbering? He wanted that good night’s sleep. And he didn’t want this involuntary stream of images passing before his mind’s eye. He knew what had happened. He’d uncovered each damning deed himself.

But the tale of the thefts flowed onward, fast and furious in the next interval.

Martell, the privy smith, was late starting his work the day before Gael discovered the discrepancy in his tallies, and Martell’s lateness gave Theron fresh opportunity. The castellanum invited one of the trolls from the Hunters’ Lodge to dine in the lower great hall for a deichtain’s worth of feasting, ensuring that no one would question his anomalous presence in the tower.

The hunter looked entirely human and, like most new-made trolls, wondered if there had been some mistake. Perhaps he was no troll at all. Perhaps he might return home. Theron showed him his error. There would be no returning home for Halko, whose humanity would see him slain in Belzetarn, were his secret discovered.

Halko lurked in the passage outside the smithies, waiting until all save the trolls in the privy smithy had departed. Then he crept through the shadows unseen, and swiped an unused ingot of tin—for the castellanum—and an ingot of bronze for himself, from the counter between the privy smithy and the armor smithy, where the scullions were gathering everything to go to the vaults.

The privy notary had already made his hurried tally under Martell’s harassment, incorrectly as it chanced, since the stolen bronze remained undetected when Gael reconciled the tallies the next day. The discrepancy in the tin, of course, would be glaring. It started Gael on the track of the thief.

Yet the events of that night—the night before Gael began his investigations—had barely started. Not only had Theron invited a hunter to take supper in the tower; he’d invited the privy smith to dine at the high table itself by Theron’s side, where the castellanum could pour spiked wine into Martell’s cup. Martell had been late to his work once. Theron wanted him late again. And he was.

But yet another player entered the game during this second tardiness, that morning of the day when Gael would find his first evidence of theft. The ingots for the privy smithy arrived long before the privy smith, and Arnoll took one for his friend, the March Dreas.

Gael swallowed down a lump in his throat and turned over again, remembering that Dreas would need no more tin. How had he forgotten? He hadn’t really; he’d just been focusing on other problems, as it seemed he was focused now, stringing the thefts together in their proper order, following from one to the next.

Why? Was there some error he’d made when filling in the gaps? Would passing the entire chain through his awareness show him where he’d gone wrong? Very well. Instead of fighting the play of scenes within his awareness, he would cooperate, let that willful knowing part of him show the unknowing part whatever secret it wanted revealed.

Or at least get to the end of the sequence, when—Tiamar willing—he might sleep!

So . . . Gael had discovered what seemed to him the first theft and sent Keir madly tallying the contents of all the vaults. Which had shown that an ingot of bronze was also missing.

Keir had interviewed all the smiths and confirmed that Martell—artistic, flamboyant, and impatient with record-keeping—was most vulnerable to a thief, and Gael made arrangements to safeguard the privy smithy going forward. But not quickly enough to prevent the further theft that evening, when the hunter took yet another tin and another bronze.

Later still, Gael confronted Arnoll with the ingot he’d taken that morning. And together they unearthed the cache in the wall of the clogged latrine.

So had ended the first day of Gael’s search for his thief.

On the second day of his search, Barris stole an ingot right under Gael’s nose in the morning. But the hunter Halko was foiled by Keir’s presence in the smithy in the evening. And Gael witnessed Nathiar at his illicit forging in the hours later still.

His third day of searching started with Nathiar’s confession, followed by another theft from Barris, this time from under Keir’s nose. And then the thefts stopped, while Gael was absent from Belzetarn.

Theron was ready, with plenty of ingots accumulated and a plan to stash them in Gael’s storeroom sometime after Gael’s return, when Carbraes might be summoned to discover his secretarius with the stolen metal in hand.

Gael had turned the tables on that plan. It had been Theron caught red-handed by Carbraes, not Gael. With unexpected repercussions . . . for everyone, alas.

And there lay the whole of it, from the first theft by Barris a year ago to the last theft—also by Barris—on the day Gael left for Olluvarde.

He straightened his nightshirt, which had become twisted with all his turning over, and pulled his coverlet up to his waist. His breathing had quickened under the mental onslaught. He slowed it deliberately. Perhaps now he could sleep.

Except he seemed to have reached that uncomfortable state in which the body was weary—weary enough to almost hurt—but the mind was alert, all sleepiness passed. Was there something he had missed in all that long sequence of theft after theft? Some pertinent detail?

A vision of Keir’s face, unnaturally white, flashed before his inner eye. She’d been utterly shocked when he’d pronounced the words, “I know.’ How maladroit he’d been in his timing. His reassurance that he would keep the secret of her sex should have preceded his accusation, thusly sparing her alarm. She’d blushed when he did reassure her. It seemed an odd response to relief.

What had she been thinking?

His revelation that he knew her to be a young woman had not been the only time she’d paled. What had he said that other time, to have caused such a reaction in one usually so self-contained?

He delved through his memories once more, a more haphazard stirring than had been his journey through the sequence of thefts. Was it the first day—? No. The second? Yes, that was it.

She’d gotten a report from a smeltery scullion, who’d seen Arnoll removing an ingot of tin from the privy smithy. She was worried by it. And he’d been explaining that she need not be, that Arnoll had been acting under orders from a higher authority. Arnoll’s purloining of an ingot was no cause for worry, although the fact that Arnoll’s tin had proved to be copper, disguised by magery, was.

And then she’d blanched.

He’d assumed she was reacting to the illicit use of magery. But was she?

The very same day that Arnoll took his ingot, Keir had sought Gael’s counsel about her lingering hatred for trolls. It had been an awkward conversation—since he had wished to ignore in himself the very same concerns that Keir raised—and disappointing as well. Gael had judged she was getting past the revulsion trolls provoked in her. The repulsed looks he’d noted on her face in her early days in Belzetarn had long since ceased. And the easy way she had with the scullions, the kind authority she’d exerted in the matter of the bullied lunch boy, had encouraged him to believe she’d adjusted, both to being a troll and being among trolls.

Her troubled questions had shown his hope to be misplaced.

Keir had not adjusted. She’d merely learned to conceal her loathing.

What might that loathing have prompted her to do? Was Keir the traitor who had used magery to cast illusion on the ingots harbored in Gael’s metal vaults?

Surely not! He could not believe it of her. And yet . . . he did believe it. His belly felt sick with it.

Unwillingly, he thought back further, to Martell’s failed scissors, forged of one-to-nineteen bronze or weaker.

Martell had been issued four ingots of tin that day, along with one of bronze and eighteen of copper. Arnoll had stolen one tin ingot in the morning. Halko had stolen one tin and one bronze in the evening. Which meant that Martell should have had two ingots of tin to work with. Half of one went to lining saucepans with tin. The remaining half went into the bronze for the day, along with the other full tin ingot—one-and-a-half ingots of tin plus eighteen ingots of copper—to create one-to-twelve bronze.

But those scissors were not one-to-twelve.

Because that last full ingot of tin was not tin. It was copper disguised as tin. The scissors were poured from bronze made of nineteen ingots of copper—not eighteen—and one-half ingot of tin. The bronze was not even one-to-nineteen, but one-half-to-nineteen or—more properly—one-to-thirty-eight.

And Keir had nattered on about half ingots and wondering how a thief could steal a half, distracting Gael from the metal ratios with her supposed confusion. Deliberately distracting him! Keir must have known all along, because she had sent the ‘tin’ ingot—which was really copper—to the privy smithy.

Hells!

Keir was the one who had done it. Keir had disguised copper as tin. And he’d wager anything anyone cared to name that Keir had also disguised tin as copper, sending it to the blade smithy, where the blades that were made with it—two-eight bronze instead of one-nine—would be brittle and shatter more readily on the battlefield.

That was why she had blanched when he explained about Arnoll’s ‘tin.’ Not because of the use of magery, but because Gael had discovered its use. She’d been operating without the least suspicion raised. But once one disguised ingot came to light . . . it was only a matter of time until the whole traitorous substitution scheme would be revealed.

And when Gael had said, ‘I know,’ she’d assumed that he knew about the disguised ingots. Not about her sex, which was a lesser secret when set against treason. That was why she’d blushed at his reassuring words.

Hells!

Hells! Hells! Hells! Hells!

He sat up, swallowing down his nausea.

His reasoning, the evidence, all hung together, and he did not want it to. He remembered Keir tending his hurts after his fight with Dreben. Keir hugging him when he departed for Olluvarde. Keir smiling at him when he returned. Keir vehement about her desire to heal trolls of their truldemagar.

How could that Keir—the Keir he knew, the Keir he’d worked with, taught, and protected, the Keir he . . . loved?—be the traitor who plotted and acted to ensure the deaths of troll warriors on the field of battle?

And yet . . . she was.

He had no doubt at all, despite his inability to reconcile his experience of Keir with his knowledge of what she must have done.

He felt worse than sick, and lay down again.

Was there any doubt? Any doubt at all? He wanted there to be doubt. Desperately wanted it. And could not find any grounds for it. None at all.

What would he do now?

He felt dizzy, as though someone had reached into his skull with a long-handled spoon and stirred. All his thinking had led him to this, but now he could not think at all. Could not reason his way to equilibrium, to clarity, to understanding. He felt lost.

Hells, Gael! Get a decent night’s sleep, said some still, small voice inside him—the force of habit perhaps. Obediently, he buried his head in the cushion beneath it. And against all expectation, sleep claimed him.

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When Gael stepped through the doorway into his chambers, he took one of the rush lights left inside for him by the tower scullions and lit it from the nearest stairwell torch. Then he locked the door behind him, crossed to his bedroom, and kindled two more rush lights.

The stamped leather of the hangings and the golden wood of the chests along the walls looked warm and welcoming in the mellow light, but Gael did not feel the sense of homecoming that both the smithies and the tally room had evoked. These chambers were his, and very comfortable, very pleasant, but they lacked something, he wasn’t sure quite what.

The quick wash at his ewer and bowl, however, together with cleansing his teeth, lacked nothing. After a morning spent in the saddle and an afternoon of alarm and exertion of a different order, it felt wonderful to be clean. Clean and weary, with his inviting sleeping couch awaiting him.

He paused in the act of donning his nightshirt, looking down the compact, olive-skinned length of his body. He did enough shifting of the heavy oxhide ingots in the course of his tallying to keep strength in his arms and pectorals, and he climbed Belzetarn’s stairs with sufficient frequency—even when no ingot thief needed to be tracked down and stopped—to do the same for belly and legs. So what was different?

The bruises from his fist fight with Dreben had faded entirely, but that wasn’t it.

His breath caught on a hope he’d not dared indulge.

What might Keir’s re-positioning of the nodes in his energea lattice do over time?

Shivering slightly, even though the air was mild, he threw his nightshirt on over his head, closed the inner shutters of his casements, blew out the tallow dips, and lay down upon the fleeces cushioning his sleeping couch, suddenly not weary—and no longer sleepy—at all.

With a gentle in-breath, his inner sight opened on the curling silver scrolls of his arcs and the glowing spheres of his nodes—violet through blue and green down to white and silver. They still held their new positions, their proper positions, and they were subtly pulling his arcs into their proper configurations as well.

That was the difference he’d discerned in his body, the flesh and bones of which were governed by these secret flows of energea. Keir was right. The differences might be so small now that no one save he himself could see them. But over time, in his face especially, where his troll-disease was pronounced, he would come to look human again.

Until his nodes drifted anew under the influence of the truldemagar and began pulling his arcs into deformity.

He let his inner sight fade, thinking. He could not destroy the gong, the one thing in the north that might reverse the dread decline of the truldemagar. Keir was right about that too. And yet Carbraes had ordered him to do so. On pain of death.

He must injure the gong. He mustn’t injure the gong. Was there some way to reconcile this paradox?

He brought the panel in Olluvarde to mind—the one showing how the ancient smiths melded the lodestone of Navellys into the gong’s central boss, encouraging the node’s unusual energea to spread throughout its hemisphere. He thought about the structure of healthy nodes versus that of diseased ones, the pattern of each repeated, not only from boundary to boundary, but at depth. Within each lone energetic diamond in a healthy node could be found a further array of diamonds, if only you could look close enough. And within those smaller diamonds were ones yet smaller still. The structure of a healthy node had no real end.

The ancient smiths had devised a way to make the lodestone’s node larger. He was almost certain that a large node could be made smaller, with its integrity intact. Could one also subdivide it? Create two smaller nodes of identical energetic pattern? Or, even better for his purpose, one large node—slightly diminished—and one tiny node?

He reviewed his knowledge of energetic theory from the days when he studied under Korryn. He was almost certain that could work! And if it did . . . there was his solution. When the iron grew soft enough, but before he and Nathiar wrought the necessary destructive transformation, he must separate a droplet from the whole, preserving its lattice of energea intact. Once the droplet cooled sufficiently to crystallize its energea—only a moment or two—he could proceed with the dismantling of the gong’s lattice without harm to the separate miniature node.

If that were feasible, he could serve both Carbraes’ and Keir’s opposing goals for the artifact, without compromising on either. The small droplet, with its lattice of energea preserved intact, could be used to heal trolls in Keir’s hands. While the energetic lattice within the lodestone at the heart of the gong could then be torn asunder, rendering the gong’s resonance harmless as Carbraes wished.

But was that indeed his best course?

Were there any alternatives?

He envisioned stealing the gong—now, in the dead of the night, absconding with it into the wilderness—and snorted. Where would he go? Where could he take the artifact that it would be safe? How would he elude the scouts that Carbraes would surely send after him? It was a ludicrous scheme.

Could he hide the thing within the confines of Belzetarn?

Flee south with it to Hadorgol, hoping to beat his pursuit, hoping King Heiroc would welcome him back?

No, fleeing with the gong intact, or hiding it, was mere fantasy. He could not safeguard the thing unscathed. Subdividing it to preserve the healing lattice apart in a small fragment was his only real option.

But if his attempt to subdivide the node on the morrow failed, what then? Would he destroy it and Keir’s hope—which he shared—for healing trolls along with it?

No.

He would halt the subdual of the gong, giving him time to evolve another plan to preserve the lodestone’s lattice. Nathiar would be annoyed at the abort, and Arnoll bewildered. Carbraes would be seriously angry. But he was certain he could effect the delay and weather the consequences. Better that than destroying the one thing that could reverse—even if only for a limited time—the truldemagar.

With his decision made, all his weariness returned. He pulled his thistlesilk coverlet up over his legs and drifted toward sleep.

The fleeces under him cushioned his torso and limbs. His coverlet caressed his hands like warm air, soft and light. The leather hangings exuded their familiar and comforting aroma. The silent darkness of his room soothed his ears and his closing eyes. His sleeping couch was wonderful, so much more easeful than a bedroll on the forest floor.

But as he hovered there, just at the edge of sleep’s release, welcoming it, sleep did not come.

Instead, each episode in the plundering of his tally room—discovered and revealed almost in reverse order by him—arranged itself in his mind for his review, the whole sequence from start to finish.

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Gael stared a little blankly at the closed door of his tally room and then at the copper ingot in his hand.

Right. He needed to secure the ingot behind a padlock and then check to see where Keir had left the evening tallies. Had she finished before Dreben’s warriors seized her? Had they found her at her desk, quill poised over parchment? Or did they drag her away from the vaults on the level above? Had they permitted her to secure the vault doors?

Shaking himself from his dazed numbness, he hurried for the steps up, following in Carbraes’ wake. Carbraes was likely climbing all the way to the regal chambers at the top of Belzetarn. Gael had merely eight twists around the newel post to go.

Outside the stairwell’s arrowslits, the sky shone a deep luminous blue, but the land below had fallen into dusky shadow. Boys called to one another in the artisans’ yard. The gate guard yelled a verbal salute to a superior officer passing from the yard into the bailey. The long summer evening was winding to its close.

Gael climbed.

What exactly had he hoped to achieve by revealing Theron’s thefts to the regenen? A stop to the thievery? He’d succeeded, if that were so. Theron would not be pilfering from the tally chamber again. Or—if the castellanum ignored Carbraes’ prohibition—his head would shortly be forfeit.

But the collateral damage—the disclosure and broadcasting of Keir’s secret, her imprisonment, Carbraes’ doubt of Gael’s loyalty and his demand for proof—made the entire confrontation a failure.

Even if Gael followed Carbraes’ requirements to the last tally, what would he win? The regenen himself had said that he honored Gael for his integrity. If Gael subdued the gong, as Carbraes ordered and which Keir opposed—well, Carbraes would entirely approve of that. But if Gael abandoned Keir to Carbraes’ judgment . . .

How was that different from life in Belzetarn in general? The fate of every troll within the citadel was—in the end—Carbraes’ to determine. Gael knew this, had always known it. Why did it feel so fraught now?

Because I don’t trust Carbraes. Not with this. Not with Keir, he realized.

So. The lack of trust ran two ways. And Gael could perceive no way to restore it.

If he abandoned Keir to Carbraes, then Carbraes would know that Gael put his regenen first, but he would also know that Gael would throw not merely a friend to the wolves, but a trusted underling who depended on Gael for protection.

The test Carbraes demanded for restoring his trust in Gael would also show Gael to be less trustworthy than before. Gael felt caught between a rock and a hard place.

The corridor outside the vaults was very dim, no doubt because all four doors were shut. They were also locked fast—good—when Gael checked. He unlocked the copper vault to return the ingot to its proper storage and found all in order there. Which indicated that Keir had at least finished checking in the products from the smithies before Dreben’s warriors came for her.

Gael re-locked the vault door behind him. Opening each of the other vaults in turn—just to be sure—he determined that Keir had indeed finished her duties here. He returned to the stairs, heading down again, still sorting out his thoughts. He needed to assess the status of the tally room. And he had some decisions to make, but he could not make them until his thinking was clear.

Regardless of what Carbraes’ test would do to Gael’s integrity or his safety, he could not abandon Keir. That much was a given. For the night, yes. He could trust that Carbraes’ precautions would keep her safe for so long. But for the long term . . . he would make her release a condition for his work on the gong. More than that, he would insist that Carbraes provide her a reliable escort to see her to one of the troll-queens in the northern wastes. She could not stay in Belzetarn. She required some other refuge.

And if Carbraes refused . . . ? Gael felt his jaw harden. He would free her himself. He’d once been a magus, with all the powers that a magus possessed. He would do whatever was necessary to preserve his notarius from Carbraes’ so-called ‘mercy.’ Since when had Carbraes ever been merciful?

The image of the beheaded Ghriana youth flashed before his mind’s eye.

So. He would free Keir, but he would be intelligent about it. Raw emotion and impulsive action would merely land him in the cell next to hers, doing her no good at all. In the morning, he would place his stipulation before Carbraes. And if the regenen acceded to it, then the matter was solved. If he refused . . .

Gael would pretend to meekness, subdue the gong, and then develop the careful plan that would get Keir out of Belzetarn. Her escape should not be impossible to arrange for a magus wielding his full powers.

The tally room, when he let himself in through its door, proved to be as orderly as the vaults: parchments rolled in their pigeonholes in the cabinets, ink bottle corked, quill cleaned and resting to one side of Keir’s desk. Apparently she had completely finished the evening tasks, although she’d left the glass-paned casements open. Through them the sky was darkening at last. Below, in the yard, a few trolls walking from the kitchen entrance toward the well carried torches.

Gael swung the casements closed and wrote a record of the returned copper ingot.

Tomorrow, after he dealt with . . . more than he wanted to contemplate right now; he was weary . . . he would need to supervise digging the rest of the ingots out of that clogged latrine. Were it not for the gong, he’d do it tonight. But the buried treasure would keep one more day. He wondered just how many ingots were hidden in the foul sludge. At least nine more, going by Barris’ tally, but the hunter would have added his loot to that count as well.

Tomorrow, he told himself, bringing his thoughts back to the fallout from his confrontation of Theron. Really he should have expected something like what had happened. Theron was expert at nosing out weakness, and scrambling back into Carbraes’ favor—or tolerance—over Keir’s vulnerability must have given him positive pleasure. That it also divided Gael’s interests from those of the regenen’s would have been a special grace note.

That was the real issue at hand here.

Carbraes had never needed to doubt Gael before, because Gael had always been in solid support of the regenen’s decrees. Had one of his friends—Barris, Arnoll—been in peril, Gael would have sought Carbraes’ protection for him. And received it.

But Theron had found a way to endanger Keir via Carbraes himself, taking advantage of the regenen’s hostility toward the one whose hand had slain Dreas. When Gael had sought protection for Keir, he’d sought in vain. Theron had created a divide in Gael’s loyalties, which seemed to grow ever wider without any effort at all on Theron’s part.

Except . . . was that really true?

Not really.

Gael’s loyalty had remained strong by dint of his carefully narrowed vision. He chose not to think about the war Carbraes prosecuted upon the unafflicted. He avoided dwelling on the violent discipline exerted within the ranks of Carbraes’ legions. He looked past the nasty back-stabbing that went on in the tower hierarchy under the castellanum’s aegis.

Occasionally, such as when the Ghriana spy was captured, the realities of Belzetarn intruded. He’d always managed to press his awareness back down once the incident was finished.

But Keir’s death—if Carbraes decided she must die—would not be something he could ever forget.

He cast a swift final look around the tally room. The cabinets loomed in its gloom, quiescent like standing stones in the forest. The warm scent of the parchment and the flat one of the ink wrapped him round like a comforting fleece. This had been his sanctuary, but it was all illusion. There was no true sanctuary to be had within Belzetarn.

He walked to the door, passed through it, and then turned to lock it behind him. He was done here for the night.

The torches were lit in the Regenen Stair. Climbing the spiraling steps toward his chambers—just one and two-thirds twists around the newel post—he thought back to his arrival at Belzetarn and Carbraes’ demand that he swear fealty or die. It seemed he was back at that choice again. Would he declare himself Carbraes’ ally and partisan, thus accepting such protection as the regenen offered, with all its limits? Or would he declare himself Carbraes’ enemy?

There was no middle ground.

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The light outside the arrowslits of the Cliff Stair had grown very golden, contrasting strongly with the increasing dimness within the stairwell. The sun must be nearing the tree tops beyond the meadow at the bailey’s gatehouse. Gael, still standing in the latrine and wishing he were not, felt emptied out, as one might after a long day in the open, picking berries or swimming in the river or riding horseback. Except that the evening following a day of satisfying effort would bring a welcome lassitude. Gael felt hollow rather than replete.

Now that Theron had departed, would Carbraes permit Gael to speak?

The regenen gestured him to leave the latrine. Thank Tiamar, since his nose had not habituated to the stench. The air was not much cleaner immediately outside the latrine door, but swapping that close confinement for a sense of the depth to which the stairwell descended, and the equally great height to which it ascended, ushered in a degree of relief.

Carbraes, Gael noticed, lingered long enough to rinse the ingot he still held—as well as his hand—with water from the bucket located in the latrine’s wall niche. He shut the door as he exited. Nodding for Gael to accompany him, he started up the stairs.

“This isn’t the first time Theron has betrayed you,” said Gael, putting together the evidence dropped by Carbraes’ dealings with his castellanum.

“And you wonder why I continue to bear with him,” answered the regenen, climbing steadily.

“He’s skilled at managing the complexities of a large stronghold,” mused Gael. “But how many times may you threaten to cut his head off—and not deliver, given that his head remains attached—before your authority ceases to have meaning?”

“Oh, I delivered. Each time,” said Carbraes.

Gael’s brows twitched.

The next landing, with its passage to the place of arms, came into sight, a cluster of messengers milling about on it.

“My first threat was considerably less than beheading, of course, but it kept Theron in line for some time. As did my second, more serious threat. And my third, more serious yet. His next transgression must be his last.”

They arrived on the landing, and Carbraes sent one messenger to Dreben, another to the prison cells, and three more on various other errands. He directed the rest to precede him up the Regenen Stair. They scampered off through the passage to the place of arms, Carbraes following at a more measured pace and drawing Gael with him.

Bright stripes of sunlight crossed the stone floor of the warriors’ practice place, casting its high vault into deep shadow. The air was blessedly fresh as Gael breathed it in.

“I know Theron’s limits,” continued Carbraes, “and I can work with him so long as I do. I intend to receive his full worth.”

“Until your last punishment brings an end,” said Gael. He quelled a shudder as they entered into the shadow of the passage to the Regenen Stair. The torches were yet unlit, but it was not the dark that provoked the shiver. He knew Carbraes to be supremely practical. He’d seen that quality in action again and again. It was what made him so effective. But this instance of it seemed chillingly cold-blooded.

“I know Theron’s limits,” Carbraes repeated. “But I no longer feel I know yours. Do you?”

The question hit Gael like the gust from a stormfront. Not so long ago—the day before he discovered evidence of a theft in his tally room, in fact—he would have answered it with a ‘yes.’ He was loyal to Carbraes and all else must be subsumed to that loyalty. Now . . . if he had to choose between Carbraes and Keir, he did not know who he would choose.

Cayim’s hells and Gaelan’s virtues!

“Uh, huh,” responded Carbraes, seeing the reaction in Gael’s face, no doubt.

Or maybe Gael did know who he would choose. He would choose Keir. Except he could not. Not if he intended to live under Carbraes’ benevolence.

They emerged from the dark passage into the merely dim stairwell.

“Who will you choose, Gael?” said Carbraes.

He had to choose Carbraes.

“Let this be a test,” said the regenen, starting up the steps. “You will stay far away from the brig, which should be easy if you attend to your duties. You will trust Keir to my justice. And my mercy, in the event that it is required. And you will destroy that evil gong.”

“But—” Gael couldn’t stem that small sound of protest.

“And then I will know where you stand,” concluded the regenen.

Hells! He shouldn’t have been so smug when listening to Carbraes setting forth his requirements for Theron. The regenen had intended Gael to feel that justice would be upheld, and to see that Carbraes could neither be manipulated nor deceitfully swayed, yes. But he’d also intended his secretarius to see the castellanum’s disciplining as a foreshadowing of his own.

The scamper of the messengers’ footsteps echoed from above in the stairwell. Gael wasn’t sure where the rest of the normal traffic was. Had the great halls emptied out entirely while he and Theron and Carbraes clashed? Maybe.

“But if you lose both Keir and myself—” he hadn’t intended to speak the thought aloud.

“Then Arnoll will become my secretarius,” said Carbraes, unperturbed. Did he measure Gael’s limits even now? Undoubtedly.

“Arnoll would never—” blurted Gael.

“How do you think Arnoll’s survived this long?” asked Carbraes gently. “Of course Arnoll will do as I ask him.”

Gael climbed three twists of the spiral stair in silence, a silence of constriction and disquiet. Carbraes climbed beside him, equally silent, but inhabiting a silence of composure. When they reached the landing—the one right outside the tally room—Carbraes halted, and Gael perforce halted with him.

“I know you try to be a man of honor,” said the regenen.

But he wasn’t a man. He was a troll.

Carbraes shook his head, negating any disagreement he perceived. “You have never accepted your truldemagar, Gael,” he said.

The statement felt like a blow. It was true, but he’d also never admitted it to himself.

“I respect you for that,” said Carbraes. “I even honor you for it. Dreas also held to that standard,” he added quietly.

Gael hardly knew how to respond.

Carbraes handed him the copper ingot he still carried. The metal had completely dried, its washed surface gleaming softly in the dimness. “You’ll want to return this to its proper place,” he said.

Gael accepted it, grasping the truncated pyramidal shape firmly and wondering what it was he saw in Carbraes’ face.

“There are limits to honor when you dwell in a troll citadel, Gael,” said the regenen. “Choose yours wisely.”

After Carbraes turned to go, headed for the next flight of spiraling steps, Gael recognized what he’d seen in his regenen’s expression.

It was sadness.

Next scene:
The Tally Master, Chapter 19 (scene 88)

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The Tally Master, Chapter 18 (scene 86)

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