The servery was clogged with scullions when Gael retraced his steps from Barris’ quarters. Boys pushed at the back of the crowd to get their turn at the hatch, boys jostled elbows at the hatch itself and scrambled to fill their trays, boys with loaded trays shouted and shoved their way through the mass to get to the Regenen Stair.

Gael dismissed a nascent idea of threading his way through the kitchens to access the deserted Lake Stair instead. He’d have every cook from the sauce master to the fruitery decanen yelling at him to get out, including even Barris, who was back at his command in the regenen’s kitchen. The evening feast was about to begin.

In any case he needed a messenger, and a clump of them waited by the door to the wood scullery, ready to run between the kitchens and the great halls as required by the cooks and the servers.

Gael tapped the nearest on the shoulder. “You! Boy!”

The lad’s eyes grew large when he realized who had accosted him. The press was too close about him to permit a bow, but he made one anyway, bumping into his annoyed cohorts with rump and head.

“My lord Secretarius!” he gasped.

Gael drew breath to give a message for the regenen, but then let it go without speaking.

Before his journey to Olluvarde, he might have sent this request by messenger. Even this noon, when he’d just returned, Carbraes would have welcomed Gael’s plea. But now, in the wake of Dreas’ death, Carbraes’ response . . . might lack the goodwill Gael required.

And Gael was late in waking Keir. Hells! He’d wanted to do that personally, but this messenger would have to go to Keir, not Carbraes. Gael must speak with Carbraes in person for the plan he was evolving to have any chance of success.

He gave the necessary instructions to the messenger, who provoked more complaint—from both his fellows and the kitchen scullions—when he followed his nod by ducking low enough to ram his way through the mob.

“Where does the regenen bide?” Gael asked the messenger cursing next to him. No doubt Carbraes would be making his way to one of the great halls, but there was no knowing which he had chosen.

“In Lord Dreas’ apartments, Secretarius.” This boy merely bobbed his head respectfully, more careful of his neighbors. “He dines in conference with the march.”

Apparently the march’s demise remained unknown as yet. That would not last, but he would not break the news.

“Thank you, lad,” Gael replied, turning to wade through the swarming boys.

Traffic on the Regenen Stair was as heavy as Gael had expected, and he dodged through the place of arms on the next level up, heading for the Lake Stair and collecting some curious glances from the warriors putting away their training mats and butts. Given that this time of the day normally saw him in the vaults, checking in the metals from the smithies, his presence elsewhere would occasion remark.

The Lake Stair was beautifully untrafficked, and the view from its arrowslits lovely. The angle of the evening sun—still fairly high in the sky, this being summer—made the blue of the water luminous and the green of the forested shores very rich.

This stairwell led to the castellanum’s quarters, making no connection with those of the march. Gael would need to ascend all the way to the battlements and cross back to the Regenen Stair in order to reach Dreas’ front door. Gael swallowed. No longer Dreas’ front door. But the deserted steps and the peace of the lake would pay for his detour.

Gael pondered as he climbed, mulling over Barris’ assertion that he had neither stolen copper ingots nor disguised them as tin. It seemed there must be a third malefactor under Theron’s thumb, one whom Gael had yet to identify. No matter. He had enough with which to confront the castellanum, provided the regenen was willing to play his part.

When Gael arrived in the foyer between the regenen’s apartments and those of the march, the march’s door was open, with two porters maneuvering a divan out through the portal. Another porter carrying a backless chair followed, and then a boy burdened with a chamberpot and a quilt rack.

Gael frowned and stopped the boy with the chamberpot.

“Is the regenen within?” he asked. He’d expected to find Carbraes alone and grieving. This parade of porters moving Dreas’ possessions disconcerted him.

“Yes, sir. You’re to go in to him, sir. He sent a messenger to fetch you, sir.” The boy craned his neck, apparently expecting to see said messenger conducting Gael into Carbraes’ presence.

“I’ve come on my own errand,” Gael reassured the boy. “I’m sure your friend will be along shortly.”

“Yes, sir!” The boy bowed, and his chamberpot wobbled.

Gael reached out a quick hand to steady it. “Get along with you now.”

The boy grinned and scampered toward the stairs in the wake of the porters. Gael passed through the two anterooms just inside the door—both strangely bare of furnishings—and on into the receiving room. This space still possessed its wall hangings, beautiful renditions of maps on leather, but nothing else. Carbraes stood next to an open casement overlooking the artisan yard’s rampart above the lake.

Beside the regenen stood a short, wiry troll with bowed legs. He wore a rust-colored tunic and a matching leather cap with a strap beneath his chin. His eyes glittered, very bright.

Dreben.

Dreben had organized a gladiatorial ring for his own pleasure. Dreben regularly beat his bastan to vent his own spleen. And Dreben had pounded Gael thoroughly in that stupid fight on the Cliff Stair.

Hells!

“My lord Secretarius,” called Carbraes, his gaze stern, “come meet the new march of my legions. My magus has already had that pleasure. Now it is yours.”

Gael contained the string of curses boiling up to lift from his tongue, instead walking composedly—he hoped it was composedly—across the room to bow and murmur, “My lord March.”

Dreben returned his bow and his greeting, “My lord Secretarius,” but his eyes gleamed with malice.

“Lord Dreben will be invested with his office on the morrow’s afternoon,” said Carbraes, deadpan, “but must take up his duties immediately. My warriors must not go leaderless for even a day.” He turned to the new march. “Go down to the First Bellatarius, my dear Dreben, if all is in train to your satisfaction here. He is expecting you.”

Dreben bowed deeply to the regenen. “I am satisfied and more, Lord Carbraes. I thank you for this honor!” He nodded at Gael, his glance scornful, and tramped from the room.

Next scene:
The Tally Master, Chapter 17 (scene 83)

Previous scene:
The Tally Master, Chapter 17 (scene 81)

Need the beginning?
The Tally Master, Chapter 1 (scene 1)

As Gael crossed the lower great hall, he saw that the tables and benches were already in place and the salt bowls set out. The afternoon was later than he’d realized, giving way to early evening. Scullions and porters thronged the Regenen Stair, bearing ornate chairs for the high tables, as well as trays of plates and serving spoons. The regenen’s servery was not yet clogged with servers, but it would be soon. The cacophony of clanging spoons and shouted orders coming through the hatch along with the aroma of roast fowl and caramelized cherries indicated the night’s feast neared readiness.

When he peered through the hatch, he saw that not only were all three hearths in use, but the broiling pit as well. Multitudes of boys turned more spits than Gael could count, while the decanens arranged beds of greens on platters to receive the roasted birds when they were done.

Relief washed through Gael as he caught sight of Barris, alert and well, cropped brown hair tidy, issuing directions to the almost constant stream of underlings that approached him and then veered away to obey his orders. Whatever dread consequence Theron planned for the cook, he’d not set it in motion yet.

Barris, despite the fever pitch of the kitchen, noticed Gael’s arrival almost immediately. He nodded across the bustling space, waved a decanen to take an opteon’s place between two of the hearths, and gestured for the opteon to stand in for Barris himself.

Gael studied his friend as Barris threaded his way to the door beside the servery hatch. When last he’d set eyes on the cook, Barris had been defeated, guilt-ridden, and slumping. He looked much better now, authoritative and confident, apparently unfazed by the sight of the friend he’d betrayed.

Gael forced the frown he felt gathering off his face. He’d thought he presented a calm front, but what had Barris perceived that caused him to break off from his most paramount duty to talk with Gael?

When Barris reached the door and opened it, he neither stood within its frame to begin conversation nor stepped out to the servery, but beckoned Gael within. Gael followed him along the kitchen wall, dodging around a decanen folding nut meats within croquettes of nut butter at a side counter, and then ducking through a small doorway on the endwall. They climbed a spiral stair so narrow that Gael’s right shoulder brushed the newel post, while his left touched the outer wall. One landing up, Barris unlocked another small door and gestured Gael through it.

The chamber within was a generous wedge-shaped triangle, the wall with glassed-in arrow slits very curving, like the outer rim of a pastry. A scattering of divans and chairs upholstered in dark brown suede clustered on pale green matting. Banner-like hangings of deep green leather framed rectangles of stone wall carved in abstract spiraling designs.

Gael felt as though he’d stumbled across one of the forest shrines erected and then abandoned by the ancient tribes who dwelt in the Hamish wilds before ever the Hamish folk came to them. So this was Barris’ receiving room. Gael had never entered the cook’s quarters. Somehow they’d done most of their conferring in the servery outside Barris’ kitchen or else within Gael’s sitting room. He wasn’t quite sure why, but so it had always fallen out.

Barris took up a stance beside one of the casements, the indirect light limning one cheekbone and the side of his upcurving nose, making the hidden tension in his face visible.

“Sit or stand as you please,” offered Barris, offhandedly. “I understand you may—” Breaking off, he shook his head.

Gael thought about standing, uncertain whether Barris doubted Gael’s forbearance—the obvious reason for his hesitance—or if perhaps Barris himself no longer welcomed Gael’s presence. Then he sighed and sat. It had been a long day and looked to continue even later.

Barris nodded, his stance softening a touch. “I’ve had time to think and to realize that Theron wasn’t just accumulating tin to use for bribes. He was targeting you, wasn’t he?”

“That seems likely. I intend to press him for explanations presently.”

Barris nodded again. “Then it’s as well that I make my confession now. The less leverage he has, the more you have, the better.”

“You are still my friend,” said Gael.

Barris’ jaw bunched and his shoulders stiffened. He moved away from the window casement, pacing impatiently to the next embrasure over, and then back again, his steps choppy and short. “Then you’re a better troll than I am,” he growled. His breath came hard through his nostrils. “You fool! I stole from you, lending myself to your enemy.”

“Then you owe me atonement,” said Gael composedly, “and the grace to accept my forgiveness, do not you think?”

“Hells!” Barris cursed.

“You are going to tell me the whole truth, are you not? Unlike last time?” Gael couldn’t quite keep the hint of sweet malice out of his tone.

Barris flinched and swallowed. Then swallowed again. Drawing a rasping breath, he finally pushed past his disinclination to speak, but his first words seemed rather beside the point to Gael.

“The castellanum tapped me to cook for the regenen early. My skill at the hearth stood out, and I prided myself on understanding the scullion boys better than the fusty old opteon then presiding over the kitchens. I thought I could manage the trolls better than he did and that I would present more subtle dishes for the regenen’s table.” Barris paused. “The castellanum thought so, too.”

“You’re talking of Theron? This was not before his time?” asked Gael.

Barris grimaced. “Theron was new come to his office as well,” he said. “Else he might have judged more aptly.”

Gael waited, letting the silence stand. If this room of green and brown with its impression of standing stones were indeed a shrine in the forest, there would be no breeze.

“I thought my sympathy for the boys would be enough, that they would attend well to their duties and obey me, because I liked them and they liked me. I didn’t understand . . . that even good boys can be impulsive, irresponsible, lazy. And I didn’t understand that I could grow so angry.”

Barris paused again before continuing. “They needed more rules than I gave them, and punishments for when the rewards failed. I didn’t realize that until after the most defiant of them baited me into beating him.”

Barris swallowed.

Gael repressed an abrupt desire to avoid what came next.

Barris continued, “We stood before the largest hearth, and he darted away from me blindly after the first lash—too heavy a lash—and fell. He tumbled into the flames of the new-built fire. It hadn’t had time to die down yet.”

Horror lurked in Barris’ brown eyes, as though he had just that instant let the lash fall on the shoulders of that poor scullion boy. Gael suspected a similar horror lurked in his own. His friend had intended to punish, not to maim. Or kill. Had the boy died? The burns must have been terrible.

Gael’s heart hurt as he considered the boy’s probable agony and Barris’ agony at his dreadful mistake.

“Gael, I’ve never deserved your friendship. Were Belzetarn not a troll stronghold, I’d have been banished for that innocent boy’s death. But Carbraes holds banishing the banished afresh to be redundant. His standards are less stringent. I doubt Theron even told him of the incident.”

Barris’ self-disgust had given way to sadness, but his gaze met Gael’s straightly. “But Theron would certainly have told you. That was his threat. And I didn’t want you to know. It was long before you arrived in Belzetarn.”

Gael struggled to find words that might comfort Barris, that would soothe the ache in his soul. But there were no words for that. He knew it only too well.

He made his own gaze as direct as his friend’s, determined to give truth for truth. “Earlier this afternoon, I sanctioned an experiment in healing that resulted in Dreas’ death. By accident.”

All the poisoned regret in Barris’ stance turned to rigid shock. “What!”

Guilt shivered through Gael’s belly. He should have prepared Barris for such news, but he’d been thinking of it as a way to convey his understanding and sympathy, rather than as the dire jolt it would be.

“Who will command the regenen’s legions?” demanded Barris.

Gael got to his feet. “I don’t know.”

“Sias in her labor!” swore Barris. “With Dreas gone, Carbraes himself could be unseated!”

Gael remembered the regenen’s recent threat to strike Gael’s head from his body personally. “I should not wager on that, if I were you,” he said.

Barris reined in his consternation, returning to the matter at hand. “Tell me what you wish from me,” he urged.

“How should I repudiate you for manslaughter when I am guilty of it myself?” said Gael, thinking of the Ghriana scout he’d condemned on the day he fought Dreben.

Impatience leaked into Barris’ voice. “For my betrayal of you, Gael.”

Gael suppressed another sigh. “You remain my friend. Do I remain yours?”

Barris’ eyes widened. “Of course, but—”

“Figure it out,” rapped Gael.

Barris swallowed. “You don’t want my regret? No, of course not,” he answered himself. “You already have that. What you want, what I want to give you”—he looked down, then back up—“is my assurance that I won’t do anything like it again.” He nodded. “Which I won’t. The next time someone tries to blackmail me, I’ll tell him to do his worst. Ah, hells, Gael! I’m a fool, and that’s being unfair to fools. Will you forgive me?”

Gael couldn’t help smiling. “Gladly.” Somehow, it was going to be all right. Somehow, he had forgiven Barris, even though he’d wondered if he could before. But there was one more thing he needed to know.

Barris nipped in first. “You know where Theron is keeping his stolen goods? I always handed them directly to him.” Barris’ brown eyes—normally light-filled, and light-filled now with relief—went flat. “Get that bastard dead, Gael. If you don’t get him, he’ll get you. He means to.”

“I know,” said Gael.

“That he aims to take your head? Or that you’ve got him?” asked Barris impatiently.

“Both,” said Gael. “The one thing I need to know is, why did Theron have you steal copper ingots, in addition to tin, and then disguise them energetically as tin?”

Barris frowned. “But he didn’t.”

Next scene:
The Tally Master, Chapter 17 (scene 82)

Previous scene:
The Tally Master, Chapter 17 (scene 80)

Need the beginning?
The Tally Master, Chapter 1 (scene 1)

Gael hated to leave her.

Stepping from the light airiness of her chamber into the close stones of the Regenen Stair was like exchanging the pleasure gardens of Hadorgol for its catacombs. Except that the tunnels among Hadorgol’s tombs were superior to any place inhabited by trolls. But that wasn’t the cause of his reluctance. He wanted to assure himself that she did, in fact, sleep. That she didn’t brood. Dreas’ death was a terrible thing, and Gael could tell that Keir had not accepted his assertion that she was not at fault. She held herself to blame.

He’d wanted to stay and argue her into letting him shoulder the responsibility, but she needed rest. And she could not sleep and listen while he gave voice to his persuasions. He would talk with her later. When it was time to send that messenger to wake her, he’d go himself.

In the meantime, he needed to see how Arnoll’s preparations were proceeding. And he needed to decide what in Cayim’s hells he would do with that ill-fated gong. He pondered the matter as he descended the spiraling steps, down and down and down.

He understood Keir’s point of view. She was more a healer than she’d ever been a notary. He felt that in his bones as he’d not before. Indeed, he felt it literally, with his repositioned nodes tugging his inner framework to greater strength because of Keir’s work upon him.

He and Keir had wondered if the lodestone, embedded within the gong’s central boss, would still multiply a mage’s—or a healer’s—energea, the way it had before it was so embedded. Well, it did. They’d learned that thoroughly today, although at great cost.

Of course Keir would wish to heal others as she had healed him. And who was he to deny her the tool that would permit this? Who was he to deny others ailing that relief?

He almost had to accede to Keir’s wishes.

And yet.

How many others would die—or be seriously injured—as they learned the lodestone’s parameters, as they discovered what else might go wrong and how to avoid it? Already Carbraes had lost someone irreplaceable. The regenen would never again find a friend so dear, a friend he’d known from boyhood. Never again would Dreas eat beside Carbraes, sit beside him on the terrace, walk with him on the ramparts. That was the personal loss. The military loss was just as great. Who now would lead Carbraes’ legions?

Gael dodged along one of the balconies over the middle place of arms to the Lake Stair, wanting to emerge directly into the armor smithy, not the blade smithy. One of the opteogints was training, hacking at the butts with much shouting and clanging.

Keir’s dream of healing trolls was worthy, but she might kill more than she healed in pursuit of it. Searing memory brought Carbraes’ grief-ravaged face before Gael again. Hope was not the same as certain, reliable results. And if Gael were to decide that Keir was right, what then? He’d been given a direct order by his regenen. Along with a dire consequence should he fail to obey. How could he preserve Keir’s lodestone, if Carbraes executed him forthwith? A dead guardian was no guardian at all.

Leave it, he told himself. Let it settle. Your thoughts will clear if you don’t keep stirring them.

The glow of the forges in the dim vaults of the smithies, the smell of hot metal and burning charcoal, and the ringing of hammers comforted him when he strode out of the passage from the Lake Stair, but the rhythm of the smiths was subtly different. They had that finishing-up-the-last-project rush that should come later in the day. Arnoll had obviously succeeded in adjusting the schedule as required.

“All well here?” Gael asked as the armor smith bustled up.

Arnoll grimaced. “I thought the regenen had placed a guard on that damned thing.”

Gael’s heart skipped a beat. Had the gong’s resonance, when Uwen and Adarn dropped it, penetrated all the way from the tower top to the smithies?

“Were there injuries?” Gael demanded. Tiamar, he hoped not. Please not.

“We were lucky,” said Arnoll. “None this time, but why in Cayim’s hells was the gong out of your locked storeroom?”

Gael met Arnoll’s gaze warningly. “Not here,” he said.

Arnoll grunted. “Half the smiths and scullions want to watch tomorrow as we destroy the thing. The other half are requesting leave to visit Errkaleku”—an outlying camp—“so that they can be as far away as possible when we do the deed.” Arnoll snorted. “I can’t say I blame them.”

Gael checked a nod. “They have reason,” he murmured.

Arnoll peered at him searchingly. “Oh?”

“Not now,” Gael reiterated.

“Mm.” Arnoll scanned the area. “The smiths are wrapping up, as you can see. We’ll be using the blade smithy on the morrow, since Olix’s forge burns the hottest. I’ll have the scullions carry down one of the cedar tubs from the bailey sauna later.”

“We’ll be ready?” asked Gael.

“We’ll be ready,” Arnoll confirmed.

“Do you need anything from me? Anything that I can do?”

The smith’s lips quirked. “No. Go check on Nathiar.”

Gael repressed a smile. Arnoll was quite right, of course. The magus was his next destination.

A flicker of movement on the far side of the armor smithy, at the tunnel to the Cliff Stair, caught Gael’s eye. He frowned. No one used that stairway at this time of day. Did some troll playing truant from his proper duties lurk there? Watching others at work while one sat idle was always a popular pastime.

Gael leaned in close to Arnoll, muttering, “There’s a lurker spying on your smithy—or on us. I’m going to feint toward the annealing smithy and catch him.” He didn’t care about a shirker, but a spy . . . was another matter.

Arnoll’s brows rose. “The sooner we finish this business, the better.”

“Send word to me, if you encounter any hitch,” said Gael.

Arnoll nodded. “I’ll start the bladesmithy’s forge heating in the morning and send a boy to fetch you, another to bring Nathiar, when it is time to begin the real work.”

Gael clapped his friend on the shoulder—“Good”—and stepped away.

“Gael?” Arnoll called after him.

Gael paused.

“Get a night of sound sleep.”

Gael nodded, and moved off, threading his way among the anvils and counters toward the neighboring smithy. The various decanens greeted him as he passed. He smiled and waved, appreciative of their goodwill.

In the annealing smithy, he headed for the back wall. The annealing smith—a gruff troll with short black hair—followed him.

“My lord Secretarius, how may I help you?”

“Just passing through, Savren,” Gael reassured him.

The smith faded back as Gael reached the tower wall. Gael edged along it, glad of the massive pier that hid the opening of the passage to the Cliff Stair. If a troll did indeed lurk there, Gael could not see him. But neither could he see Gael.

Gael eased around the stone pier.

Right into the hunter standing in its shadow. He was a hunter, clearly, with his leather breeches, soft-soled knee-high boots, and the game bag across his back. He did not belong here. And knew it, too. He scrambled backward from the mild impact of Gael’s shoulder, hastening for the deeper refuge of the tunnel.

Gael put all of his authority into a low command. “Stop. Right. Now.”

The troll broke into a run, swift on his quiet footfalls, breaking into the light shed by a trio of arrowslits at the base of the stairwell.

Hells! The last thing Gael wanted was a chase, but only guilt would impel flight under the circumstances, and Gael needed to know if that guilt concerned the gong or the preparations in train for its subdual.

He pitched his voice to carry, still low, because he preferred not to involve the smithy scullions.

“You do not want me asking after you at the hunters’ lodge. Stop. Now.”

One foot on the lowest step, the troll halted abruptly, his whole carriage sagging. He turned as Gael came up to him, showing a visage twisted with fright, but showing no signs of the truldemagar: nose straight, eyes clear, skin firm. Was he human after all? A Ghriana spy disguised as a hunter? Gael frowned.

“Why were you spying on the armor smithy?” he asked.

The hunter’s lips parted, then shut as his jaw bunched.

Gael came closer, breathed, “I will know.”

The hunter hunched. “Wasn’t,” he mumbled.

“The bailey and the woods are the hunters’ preserve. Why are you in the tower?”

“I—I—I—”

Was that a wobble in the hunter’s voice? He couldn’t be a Ghriana spy. No spy would be so unprepared, nor so unnerved. Gael opened his inner vision to be sure—he was getting quite practiced at doing so in the flow of events—wanting to check the hunter’s nodes. That the nodes were adrift was immediately obvious, but Gael’s attention fastened on the anomaly sparkling on the hunter’s right hand.

Smeared across the curling arcs and demi-nodes was a lace of very familiar energea: the lattice left by Gael in a hidey-hole in the wall of a clogged latrine.

Gael’s own hand thrust out to grip the hunter’s bony wrist. “Open your inner sight,” he growled.

The hunter flinched, but his eyelids fluttered shut and his breathing slowed. In. Out. In. It took him a while. Gael watched the dust motes spiraling in the diffuse light from the arrow slits. The sounds from the smithies were muffled here at the foundations of the Cliff Stair.

The hunter’s eyes flew open. “What—where—how did that—?” he stuttered.

Gael smiled sourly. “I found the two ingots of bronze you stole. I replaced them in the vaults where they belong. And I left a . . . trap . . . in their place.”

So. One of his loose ends had come home to roost at a most inopportune time. He’d not precisely forgotten the matter of the theft, but all his focus lay elsewhere, gathered to cope with the gong and its complications. He did not welcome this intrusion of the older problem, but he could hardly neglect it in this moment.

“What is your name?” he demanded, still gripping the hunter’s wrist.

“H—Halko,” faltered the hunter.

Gael studied him. Halko’s build was slight and lean, his coloring dark. He might have seemed fierce had he not been shaking.

“You stole twice and looked to steal again this evening,” mused Gael. “Why? You are not a thief by nature.”

Halko swallowed, but did not answer.

“Someone forced you to it,” continued Gael, tallying the clues. “And that someone would have to be the castellanum.” It could be no one else.

Halko’s eyes widened. “How did you—how did you—?”

“I’ve been piecing this puzzle together for some time now,” said Gael. “I have nearly the full pattern of it, I believe. Suppose you help me with the last details.”

“What will happen to me?” asked Halko, his anxiety in no way abated.

“That depends”—Gael paused, the better to intimidate the troll—“on how much you help me and how well you convince me that I can trust you to follow my subsequent orders.” If he could dominate his thief through force of manner, he would not need to resort to harsher measures.

“I’ll—I’ll tell you everything,” stammered Halko.

“I think you will,” drawled Gael.

Halko’s nervous glance darted down the passage to the smithies.

Gael let the hunter’s wrist go. “Walk with me,” he said, starting up the stairs at an easy pace.

Halko hesitated, then hurried to catch up. “The—the castellanum said I must do as he said or I—I would be sorry. He—he said he would make the privy smith late and that I should take the tin then.”

“Tin! He said you were to take tin?” Gael probed.

Halko nodded. “And I did take it, just as he said. But—but I also took bronze, because I—I did not believe that I would be safe like he—he said.”

“And the bronze would make you safe?” asked Gael gently.

“No—no, but I knew I had to leave, and I—I thought that if I could—could bring bronze to a troll-witch in the—the wastes, she would—would treat me well.”

“Ah,” breathed Gael. He performed a rough tally on his fingers. “Twenty-five days ago”—the day before Gael found the first discrepancy in his tallies, the day before the gong arrived in Belzetarn—“Lord Theron made Martell late, and you stole one ingot of tin, one ingot of bronze. Then Theron made Martell’s scullion late, and you stole another tin, another bronze.” Or what purported to be tin, but was copper disguised. “But on the third day, there was no tin remaining in the evening.” And Keir would have been present, supervising Martell’s notary. “When you could not steal tin, you did not steal bronze.”

Halko nodded.

“Why not?”

“I—I—thought that I—I—could make the Lord Theron pro—protect me, if I—I were caught taking bronze and tin, be—because I could—could tell his theft of tin. All—also—the notarius was—was there. It—it—would have been hard—harder.”

So, Halko might be thoroughly in over his head, but he was not stupid. Gael wondered if the hunter would speak more smoothly, if he were not so scared.

Gael climbed in silence for an interval, pleased that his ankle had not started to click. He continued outlining his guesses: “When I departed the tower, Lord Theron told you to cease, much to your relief.” They reached another landing and moved across it. “But now that I am returned, and all Belzetarn knows me to be returned, Theron demands that you steal again. Am I right?”

“Y—yes,” Halko stuttered.

“Did Theron say how he would make you sorry? If you refused?”

“I—he—I—I’m not a troll. There was a mistake. If he told the regenen, he’d chop off my head like a spy.” Halko was nearly sobbing.

Gael halted abruptly before the next flight of spiraling steps. “And you believed this?”

“I—I—I—”

“The bronze was not for a troll-witch, was it? You imagined you might return from whence you came, and that the ingots would buy you a knight’s favor,” said Gael, wondering.

Halko gulped and nodded.

“Have you not seen your own drifting nodes?” asked Gael.

“I’m not—I’m not—” Halko could not finish his sentence.

“You are not practiced with either the inner sight or with the energea that it sees,” Gael finished for him. “And you have never even opened your inner vision once you became a troll, until I asked it of you just now.” Gael felt sick, imagining the terror Halko must have felt in the wake of the castellanum’s threats. Was still feeling now, confronted with his misdeeds by the secretarius.

“Open your inner sight now,” commanded Gael.

It took Halko longer this time, but Gael could tell when he at last succeeded, because his jaw dropped.

“Ooooooh,” breathed the hunter, opening his closed eyes.

“You see?” said Gael. “Theron lied to you.”

“My head.” Halko gulped. “No one will cut off my head.”

“No,” said Gael firmly.

“What . . . will you do now?” asked Halko.

“Do you usually give the ingots to Theron personally? Or to someone in his confidence?” Gael thought he knew where Halko had stashed Theron’s tin, but he needed to be sure.

Halko shook his head. “No. I put it where he told me.” The hunter’s voice was much steadier than it had been throughout all the preceding conversation, and he explained the usual procedure.

Gael nodded. So. His guess was correct. “Then he will not be surprised when he does not see you tonight?”

Halko shook his head again.

“Good. Then I think . . . you should go directly to your lodge in the bailey. And Halko?” Gael pinned the hunter with a direct stare. “Stay out of the tower. If Theron comes to you, seek your opteon. He can protect you, even from the castellanum.”

Halko’s shoulders straightened. He bowed awkwardly. “Thank you . . . so much, my lord Secretarius.”

The hunter appeared to be waiting for a formal dismissal.

“I will finish this business tonight,” Gael informed him. “You will be safe even without your opteon by the morrow. Although . . . keep away from my smithies! Or you will not be safe from me.” He allowed his lips to curve upward. “You may go.”

Halko stood not upon that permission, lengthening his stride to take the stairs two at a time. Gael was interested to note that the hunter chose the upward direction. No doubt he had a getaway route well planned.

Gael gathered himself and his thoughts.

He had about three different places he wanted to be right now, but only one could not wait. Theron possessed a gift for finding weakness and exploiting it. The threat he’d held over Halko’s head lacked validity, but whatever he was using to force Barris would be real. And it wasn’t the promise to abuse the kitchen scullions either, no matter Barris’ claims. It would be something much worse.

The only question was whether Theron, with his weasel’s nose for the undercurrents in Belzetarn, was already acting to enforce his threat against Gael’s friend.

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The Tally Master, Chapter 17 (scene 81)

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Keir returned to consciousness slowly.

First there were the sounds. Shouting. Footsteps running, heavy and quick. Hurried orders in a tense undertone. Metal dragged on stone, grating. And the heaving sobs of a man lost to grief.

“No, no, no,” came the choked mutters, threaded through the sobbing.

Keir wondered what had happened. She had a sense that she lay in the wake of disaster. The worst had happened, but she couldn’t remember, couldn’t grasp where she was and what had gone wrong.

“Pater?” she murmured as the blue sky coalesced in her vision, clear and very high above her, curdled with a line of thin clouds to one side. Was she lying on the firm sand of the cove below her hut? Had the orca bitten her? Was Pater running for help?

“Keir?” asked a concerned companion. Pater? But Pater’s voice was deeper than that.

Someone moved into her line of sight. Neatly made, with solid shoulders and muscular legs, he wore a suede tunic of sage green hue and matching trews. His dark hair—traced by a few threads of gray—hung straightly down to his collar bones. But—sweet Ionan!—he was a troll. Lines bracketed his hazel eyes. The firm, square bones of his jaw were blurred by slackened skin. And—most telling of all—his nose was elongated and hooked, exaggerated from its doubtless aquiline origin.

As Keir drew breath to scream, she noted the kindness in his eyes. Was he friend? Not enemy?

And then it all came back to her.

This was Gael! Her dear friend. Dearer than friend? How had she taken him for just ‘a troll’? His truldemagar had ceased to be the first thing she saw in him long, long ago. When her eyes rested on him, she saw her mentor, her protector, her steadfast companion.

Another sequence of memory dropped, and she sat up with a jerk.

The high terrace of Belzetarn reeled around her. Her stomach fluttered ominously, and her head ached. But the scene was all too clear. Dreas lay like clay upon the beautifully wrought bench of bronze, his skin gray and his eyes staring. Carbraes crouched at the march’s side, one arm gripping his friend desperately, his face buried in Dreas’ tunic, shoulders heaving.

As Keir stared, aghast, the regenen raised his head. His ice blue eyes glared, reddened by his loss as they never had been by his disease. He jerked his gaze away from Keir to address Gael.

“You will destroy that cursed thing on the morrow’s morning, or I will sever your head from your body personally!” he blazed.

Keir noticed that the gong was no longer present. Nor were Adarn and Uwen. Where?

Gael bowed to his overlord.

“Take yourself from my sight!” snarled Carbraes.

“Yes, my lord Regenen,” said Gael, his demeanor remarkably steady in the face of Carbraes’ grieving wrath. “If I may assist my notarius from your presence.”

Carbraes did not answer, merely turning away in disgust.

Gael knelt beside Keir. “Can you stand, if I raise you?”

Keir felt very wobbly, but she wasn’t sure if it was her shaken body or her shaken emotions that weakened her. Gael maneuvered to get his arm across her back, sliding his hands under her elbows. Keir shifted, awkwardly pulling her feet under her.

“Up with you,” breathed Gael, giving her a firm boost.

Upright, she swayed, glad Gael had kept a hold of her. Pulling her nearer arm across his shoulders, he helped her toward the closest door, the one into the regenen’s receiving rooms. The journey to the spiral stairs and down them to her quarters was a slow, arduous whirl through a dim stone corkscrew patched with oblongs of light from the arrowslits. She felt as though she descended into the bowels of some monstrous deformed beast out of legend.

When Gael eased her across the threshold of her own quarters, relief gave her strength enough to lurch unsupported toward her favorite divan, its cushions upholstered in pale aqua suede. She sat dizzily, drinking in the diffuse light and air. Her casements were open and unshuttered; she never shut them when the weather was fine. She needed every weapon she could deploy to combat the heaviness of the tower’s stones, the oppressive atmosphere they produced. She’d been so grateful when she discovered a tanner in the bailey willing to experiment with unusual dyes. The blues and greens he’d used for the leathers and suedes on her furnishings reminded her of the sea around Fiors on a bright sunny day, while the paler blue hangings on her walls echoed its skies. Sometimes she could forget where she was—what she was—when she took refuge here.

Gael closed the door behind himself and dragged a backless chair next to her divan.

“I’ve summoned Medicus Piar,” he said. “I think you should lie down until he arrives. You hit your head hard.”

Keir shook her head and then wished she hadn’t. It throbbed fiercely in response to the motion. But she couldn’t focus on herself now. Mustn’t. Too much else was at stake. Although what that ‘else’ was still eluded her. She was muddled. She had to get unmuddled, or the chance to shape events would pass her by.

“Gael, what happened?”

Gael’s lips pressed straight. “I am responsible for the miscarriage of our attempt to communicate our new knowledge to Lord Carbraes. Not you. Not Adarn.”

“I don’t think you are,” she murmured, still trying to string two thoughts together coherently.

Gael’s chin jerked. “I allowed myself to become abstracted and preoccupied in the aftermath of our discovery. Had I retained my wits—or taken two moments to regain them—I would have noticed that Adarn was tiring. And that his excitement made him unaware of his growing fatigue.” Gael’s lips pressed even straighter. “He did not tremble for nerves or enthusiasm.”

Keir pieced it together. “His grip slipped. He grabbed harder, which caused him to overbalance. And then he fell, taking the gong and Uwen with him.” She swallowed. “If I’d just been less afraid of offending Dreas’ dignity—or Carbraes’ idea of his dignity—I’d have had him lie on the terrace stones. And he’d be alive.” She fought down a sob. She’d not lost a patient before. Pater had said it would happen eventually. It had to happen, since humans were not immortal. Except she’d not lost Dreas. She’d killed him herself, ripping his heart node right out of his energea lattice.

“Keir.”

Gael’s voice pulled her out of the sucking descent of her thoughts.

“Now is not the time to analyze where we went wrong or how to apportion blame. Thinking coherently in the immediate wake of disaster is not possible. It’s like doing a tally when the ingots are being issued. You must wait until all of the metal has gone out, and again until it has returned at day’s end, and then you may ascertain where you stand. Not before.”

She stared at him blankly. He was right, of course. He would be. He knew tallying. Had taught her. And he would know how the tallying of metals might apply to the tallying of responsibility. She could plumb her guilt later. Must plumb it later. Right now she must set it aside. If she could. There was another matter which must be sifted now, or it would not be sifted at all.

“Gael. Will you obey Lord Carbraes?”

Gael frowned. “What?”

“The regenen ordered you to destroy the gong. Are you going to do it?” She felt impatient with his slowness.

“Oh.”

“You must not,” she insisted.

Gael’s vague gaze grew sharp. “I made the mistake of allowing events—and people—to hurry me. I will not make that mistake again.”

“You’ll delay then?” she probed.

“No. I will think, and then I will decide my next step.”

“Gael—”

He interrupted her. “Keir. Stop.”

She bit her lip. She had to get him to agree to a delay. The second trial of the cursed gong had gone as wrong as could be—she swallowed down another incipient sob—but the boost the gong’s lodestone could give to a healer’s abilities was too valuable to sacrifice needlessly. It seemed she was a healer still, despite her truldemagar, despite the truldemagar of her patients. She could not bear to lose something so potentially useful, something that could never be replaced once it was destroyed.

She took a deep in-breath and forced her voice to come out steady. “If you do decide to destroy it, will you consult me before you do so? Please?” The last word escaped her control.

Gael’s eyes darkened. “I will promise nothing.” He read her too well. She had wanted him to promise. But Gael clung to reason when the world went topsy-turvy, precisely because he knew himself vulnerable to emotion. She knew this. She must approach him reasonably, logically. Which was her usual approach. A healer had to stay cool in the midst of turmoil, lest she make some grave error. As she had with Dreas.

Stop it, Keir, she told herself. Now, more than ever she must hold to clear thinking. She could not afford to become mired in guilt or grief.

“I do not ask you to promise,” she said. And she hadn’t, no matter how much she had wanted him to. “I ask you to consider rationally, and to weigh the loss of the good that must accompany the riddance of the bad.”

Before Gael could answer, a knock sounded on her door and Medicus Piar entered, tidy and efficient.

Keir’s concern for the fate of the gong evaporated abruptly for a nearer concern: if the physician examined her thoroughly, as a responsible physician should, he would discover the secret of her gender very quickly.

She glanced at Gael, silently willing him to perceive the danger.

He nodded back, and she admired the adroitness with which he guided Piar into checking her skull—bruised, but no more, the skin not even broken—and her eyes and reflexes and coordination. No feeling of the limbs, no tapping of the internal organs.

She was safe.

Piar prescribed an herbal draft, administered it, and then left her to rest.

“Shall I take over this evening’s tallying?” Gael asked her.

She hesitated, checking the sensations in her body. The bruises at her hip and shoulder had joined the throbbing of her head, but her weakness was passing. With a little sleep—and Pater had taught her how to catnap at will; a healer sometimes had long nights—she’d feel stronger still. “No. No, I’m feeling much better. Will you send a messenger to wake me when it is time?” Her lips twitched as she remembered when their roles had been reversed, Gael the injured one, and she the one urging care and caution. Did he perceive her as being as unreasonable as she had deemed him to be then?

His eyes narrowed. “You’ll lie abed and send the messenger back, if you discover that you need more rest,” he requested.

“I will,” she answered.

He nodded and stood. “Then I’ll leave you.”

At the door, he paused. “And Keir?”

She lifted a brow, trying not to show how shaken she remained.

“I promise to think over my decision regarding the gong most carefully.”

She knew she could trust him to do that. Gael would not have hurried to Belzetarn’s high terrace with the gong, nor allowed her to do so, had he faced that decision at any time other than the moment after his personal miracle—the restoration of his drifting nodes to their origin points. Gael would not have killed Dreas by accident.

She slept before she could cry.

Next scene:
The Tally Master, Chapter 17 (scene 80)

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The Tally Master, Chapter 16 (scene 78)

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Keir had to question why she was hoping so hard for Dreas to convince Carbraes. Was it her healer’s oath to place her knowledge and skills in the service of the ill? But she no longer served as a healer in her community—she was a notary in Belzetarn—and she had sworn that oath to a human teacher regarding human patients. She owed no obligation of care and compassion to trolls. Indeed, the reverse.

And yet . . . if she could restore a troll’s nodes to their proper positions, was not that troll essentially human? And did she not owe a healer’s help—no matter her official status—to that ailing human?

No. She did not. Whether the nodes were in place or not, they were unmoored, making the individual a troll. She owed nothing to trolls. Save her enmity. The sick flash of it trembled within her for an instant, then passed.

And yet again . . . her enmity had become riddled with holes over the past two years, like a cheese nibbled by mice. Gael had earned—and received—her respect, her admiration, her liking. Even her affection. She flinched away from the admission, although Gael was not the only troll to earn her good opinion. She would save Dreas, if she could.

How did one maintain an enmity when it must include oneself? Her pater had said, “I love you. I’ll always love you. Never doubt me, in all the years to come.” And she had been heart-glad to hear him say so. If Pater could love her in her truldemagar, then could she make peace with it also? And if she made peace with her own disease, then how should she relate to that of others?

Despite her moral confusion—and despite Gael’s unease, which she noticed amidst her own turmoil—she felt glad when Dreas waved her forward.

Carbraes got to his feet slowly and stood, not like an old man, but like a massive tree just beginning to fall or a mountain shivering at the start of an earthquake. Like he’d taken a mortal wound, but did not know it yet. Or would not own it.

“My lord March is in your hands,” said the regenen, his tone somber. “Speak your needs in order that you may treat him well and draw him safely through the fire.”

Keir swallowed. Lord Carbraes in this dark mood was even more intimidating than when he emanated his usual authority.

“I need Lord Dreas to lie flat,” she said. “And then I will be able to arrange Uwen and Adarn so that the angles are right.”

Carbraes inclined his head. “Summon my messengers please.”

Keir glanced nervously back at the door through which they’d arrived on the terrace. Were the regenen’s messengers waiting there? And should she go get them? She certainly didn’t want to send Uwen or Adarn. And it didn’t seem right to send Gael.

“For pity’s sake!” exclaimed Dreas. “We’ve enough of us right here to manage things. No need to involve a passel of overexcited boys.”

Carbraes sniffed, but his eyes warmed.

Dreas hopped up, scuttered over to another cluster of bronze-forged terrace furniture, and started dragging a long, low bench into the clear. The metal legs grated on the stone. Keir’s momentary paralysis snapped and she rushed to his side to help. The sun felt warm on her back. Dreas grinned at her. “We’ve got this, lad! Cheer up!”

Keir felt abruptly better. She’d envisioned Dreas lying on the flagstones, the way Gael had lain on his sitting room floor, but she could make the bench work.

Gael’s voice came over her shoulder. “Please sit, my lord March. Keir and I can set this up.”

And it was simple, really. Since Dreas would be elevated above the terrace flagstones, Uwen and Adarn would need to be equally so. But there were plenty of furnishings to borrow for her purpose. She adjusted Dreas’ bench so that the sun would be in no one’s eyes. Then she set two chairs on one side of the bench, and instructed Adarn and Uwen to climb onto them while she and Gael held the gong. Adarn’s legs trembled slightly as he made the high step up. His hands trembled when she and Gael transferred the gong into his and Uwen’s grip. Small wonder he was nervous. This was the march. And they performed under the regenen’s observation.

Carbraes remained standing through the whole operation, looking down his nose at their efforts. “This all looks rather slipshod,” he complained.

Keir quelled her impatience. Once she allowed the regenen’s stature to fade from her awareness, his nerves were familiar. Just so had the brother or mother or dear friend of an injured patient back on Fiors criticized her preparations.

She went to him, smiling warmly.

“My lord regenen, the nature of the patient’s bed or room or blankets matters little. My skill as a healer will be the determining factor.” She carefully avoided mention of the energea that lay at the heart of the advanced techniques. That would not reassure the regenen. “My training was thorough, and Dreas will receive only my best.”

Carbraes grunted. “You did not train for this, surely. Or have I been misinformed about how Fiors treats its trolls?”

“Fiors banishes its trolls, of course,” she replied steadily. Now she must mention the element he hated, if she were to assuage his qualms. “But drawing energea through one’s nodes, and controlling its speed and direction, is the basis for every healing a healer performs. Using the gong’s lodestone to move Dreas’ nodes is a healing technique. I will not be doing anything foreign to my experience,” she concluded.

Carbraes’ tension eased. “May I watch?” he asked.

“With your inner sight?” she clarified. That was rather the whole point of this exercise, she’d thought.

“Yes.” Carbraes sounded oddly humble. “I wish to assure that—” he broke off.

Keir reminded herself again that he was more the anxious kin here than the ruling commander. Indeed, he’d probably agreed to this more because he could not bear to deny his friend—progressing fast in his truldemagar—than because he wished to understand what other marvels the gong might generate.

“Of course you may watch,” she said gently. “We would prefer that you do.”

She led him to the foot of the bench. The sun would be in his eyes, but that shouldn’t affect his inner vision.

“But,” continued Keir, speaking to Dreas, “my lord March, you must not open your inner sight. That would increase the resistance of your nodes, which would be counterproductive in what we wish to achieve.”

Dreas smiled at her. “Shall I lie down now?” he asked.

“Please,” she responded.

She helped him settle his arms comfortably at his sides. She noted that Gael came to stand beside Carbraes. Good. Carbraes could likely use a companion. She frowned at Adarn, whose hands and arms still trembled. The march might be higher in the regenen’s esteem than was Gael, but Gael was Belzetarn’s secretarius. Surely the boy should have accustomed himself to dealing with trolls of rank after running the tally room’s errands for two deichtains. He shouldn’t be that nervous.

She took her own place, standing opposite Uwen and Adarn. The gong was a touch low. She needed the boss to be heart high.

“Lift it just a little,” she directed.

Uwen and Adarn complied.

“Good.” She nodded. “Remember to be trees in the breeze, not rock on a mountain,” she admonished them. Then she closed her eyes, drawing in a long, easy breath.

The scent of sun-warmed stone surrounded her. The air was very still, any breeze shielded by the apartments ringing the space. Someone coughed. The terrace felt very hard under her feet. As she exhaled, her inner vision opened and the silvery arcs of Dreas’ energea sparkled in her sight, curling from and between his pulsing nodes.

The silver sphere of his root node had strayed far from its proper place, drifting almost to where the abdominal node should rest. Keir reached within herself, drawing power from deep within all her nodes through will alone, and channeled it out through her own heart node to splash on the living node of the gong’s lodestone. The cascade of sparking green raced through the lattices of the lodestone, turning corner after corner, before surging back toward Keir.

She raised her hands, using the demi-nodes in her palms to catch the stream and direct it onto Dreas’ root node. The green spate foamed against the pulsing silver, edging it back and back toward where it belonged. The curling arc connecting root to abdomen stretched in its wake.

Good.

Keir adjusted her palms to split the stream coursing from the lodestone, directing one stream to retain pressure on Dreas’ root node, aiming the other toward the softly pulsing white orb that formed his abdominal node, which was far too low.

Slowly, more slowly than the root node, the abdominal node eased toward its anchor point. When it arrived, Keir split the lodestone’s output into three streams. Two kept root and abdominal nodes in place. The third began the push against the pale green sphere of the plexial node.

The process felt smooth and natural, for all that she’d done it only once before. For Gael. But pulling energea, splitting it, directing it, healing with it was what a healer did. She’d been braiding streams of it for more than a decade. This was her calling, for all that she’d forsaken it when she came to Belzetarn.

Now for the heart node, vivid green like her own heart node, like the living node within the gong, but located above Dreas’ heart home.

Delicately, she lifted the energea splashing against Dreas’ root node. Would it stay where she’d placed it? Dreas was many decades further gone in his truldemagar than had been Gael.

Ah! Yes! The node quivered, but did not slip. She turned the freed stream of energea against the heart node, pushing it down and down to where it belonged.

She felt more confident lifting her energetic grip on the abdominal node in preparation for directing the stream to the aqua demi-node of the thymus. If the root node had stayed put—and it had—then the abdominal node should not slip either.

Deftly, she made the switch, holding the plexial and heart nodes steady with two gushing currents of energea, while using the third to push the thymus node. As the glowing aqua sphere glided slowly into place, the angle of the torrent spewing from the lodestone changed ever so slightly.

Keir raised her hands to compensate.

She had time to think damn it, Adarn! and then the angle skewed wildly.

The midst of an energetic working left the patient at his most vulnerable. Frantic, she reached high overhead, desperate to catch the moving stream. Her own heart’s fountain would not be enough. She had to have the lodestone multiplier.

Got it!

She folded the third stream into the one holding Dreas’ heart. Never mind the thymus. It could float. So long as his heart remained stable, all would be well.

But the lodestone stream was still moving.

She stretched higher still, catching it, catching it, and folding the plexial stream into the heart stream.

A deep booming sound roared in her ears. Her knees went weak, her arms felt like dead eels, and her stomach quivered. She felt every joint in her body failing.

I. Will. Not. Lose. Dreas.

Clamping onto her patient’s heart node, she fell.

And falling, she ripped his node right out of its energetic lattice.

Her knee, her right hip, her right elbow, and her shoulder hit hard stone with punishing force. Her head hit wrought bronze, and her vision went dark.

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The Tally Master, Chapter 17 (scene 79)

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The Tally Master

They found Lord Carbraes on the stone terrace within the ring of elite apartments just below Belzetarn’s high battlements. The sun had moved westward enough to cast a crescent of shade outside the quarters of the magus. The flue column from the smithies—looming and massive—acted as a sundial, the finger of its shadow still blunt and stubby, but pointing northeast as the afternoon advanced. No smoke rose from its maw at this hour; the charcoal fuels in the forges would be well settled, emitting merely intense heat. The air quivered in a column above the flue.

Carbraes sat in one of the backless bronze chairs in the sunlight outside the march’s chambers, with Dreas in another chair next to him.

Gael almost hated to intrude. The regenen looked easy—even happy—laughing at something Dreas had said, his silver-blond head thrown back, his broad shoulders relaxed, his muscular legs stretched out before him. Dreas, too, conveyed an attitude of comfortable contentment. Despite the march’s thinning white hair, wizened face, and skinnier limbs, his truldemagar seemed less pronounced.

The regenen and the march lost some of their carefree demeanor when Gael and Keir emerged from Carbraes’ public rooms, conducted by a messenger boy. When Adarn and Uwen maneuvered the gong through the narrow doorway, the regenen resumed his normal taut alertness entirely.

The messenger announced the four petitioners—“The Secretarius Gael, the Secretarius Pro Tem Keir, the Peregrine Decanen Uwen, and the Notarius Pro Tem Adarn!”—and retreated.

Gael bowed and murmured, “Regenen.”

Keir, Uwen, and Adarn followed his example. “Regenen.” “Regenen.” “My lord Regenen.”

“There is a difficulty?” Carbraes’ tone was testy.

“There is . . . a complication,” Gael responded. He’d not been able to settle his mind enough during his climb to plan how he would present the new development.

Keir entered the brief pause after Gael’s statement. “The boss of this gong”—she gestured toward the artifact, held between Uwen and Adarn—“is formed of an ancient lodestone of Navellys. That lodestone retains many of its original properties, even in its present location, surrounded by energetic bronze. Without sounding the gong, the lodestone may be used to accomplish feats much more beneficial than the weakness produced by resonance. I used one of them just moments ago.”

“It heals trolls!” Adarn burst out. “Keir healed Gael!”

Dreas shifted in his seat, drew breath, but then subsided without saying anything.

Keir directed an exasperated glance at Adarn, but she did not correct him, waiting on Carbraes’ reaction.

Carbraes studied each of them in turn, taking his time. He gazed longest at Gael. “I see no change in him,” the regenen stated.

Keir nodded. “Over many months, the repositioned nodes will drag the physical structures toward health. Insufficient time has elapsed for that to have occurred yet.”

Carbraes’ nostrils flared. He scrutinized Keir’s sober face. “You are in earnest,” he concluded. “This is no chimera. And not trivial,” he added.

Keir dipped to one knee and bent her head. “No, my lord Regenen, not trivial in the least.”

Carbraes returned his attention to Gael. “Explain,” he said quietly.

Gael nodded. “Keir could best do that. He”—Gael narrowly missed saying ‘she’—“understood the energetic diagrams I brought back from Olluvarde and perceived their ramifications. He used his healer’s training to control the lodestone.”

“Very well.” Carbraes extended his hand toward Keir, allowing his fingers to open. “Tell me what I must know to understand your finding.”

Keir, still kneeling, bit her lip. “You know that when a mage attempts a magery too great for him, the riptide of energea roaring through his nodes tears them from their anchoring.”

Carbraes’ lips curved slightly. “I understand the root of the truldemagar, yes.”

“And do you also know,” continued Keir, “that no force of energea has been found adequate to re-anchor torn nodes. Nor, indeed, adequate to even return the drifted nodes to their correct positions without ripping the nodes of the healer who attempts it?”

“Ah, I confess I had not concerned myself with the technical details of the impossible,” replied Carbraes.

Keir swallowed. “It is a pertinent point, my lord Regenen.”

Gael understood Keir’s formality. She was about to upend Carbraes’ world. It was prudent to show respect in such an exercise.

“Used with the correct angles of force, the lodestone will supply a stream of energea fully equal to that the mage—or healer—pulls through his own nodes, thus doubling the power available without endangering the practitioner’s nodes,” said Keir.

Carbraes pursed his mouth. Given his disapproval of any manipulation of energea in Belzetarn, no doubt the contemplation of such a dynamic display as Keir described repulsed him.

Keir carried on, not acknowledging the regenen’s discomfort. “This doubling of the energea at my command allowed me to move the secretarius’ root node to its proper position and hold it there while I moved his abdominal node. I progressed upward through his nodes in a chain, holding the most recently repositioned node while moving the next malpositioned one. I urge you to open your inner sight, my lord Regenen, and observe the results within your secretarius.”

Carbraes’ lips pressed flat. He glanced at the march beside him. “Dreas? Will you?”

Dreas clearly did not share his friend’s disgust at Keir’s proposal. His eyes were alight, and he’d leaned slightly forward through all of Keir’s explanations, hanging on her words. At Carbraes’ request, the march nodded. He settled back in his chair, straightening his spine and lifting his crown. On a long, slow exhalation, he closed his eyes.

Gael wondered what he saw. Gael had not yet examined his own newly aligned nodes. He could feel their effect—still that subtle sense of rightness—but he had not seen with his inner sight.

When Dreas opened his eyes, some moments later, the march had let go his initial wonder, replacing it with a determination oddly similar to Keir’s when she realized what it all meant.

Dreas addressed Gael. “Your nodes yet float. They occupy their proper places, but will drift over time.”

“So I understand,” Gael answered.

“How does it feel?” asked Dreas, a wistful tone in his gravelly voice.

Gael groped again for words. “Like a swallow of water when you are thirsty. Like the folding of a cloak around your shoulders when you are chilled. Like sitting on a cushioned chair when your legs are weary. It feels . . . right, my lord March.”

Dreas turned to Carbraes, who was looking more sour than ever. “Carbraes! You must command Keir to perform this feat again.” Dreas glanced at Keir. “Are you able to repeat yourself at this time? Are your reserves too drawn down?”

“No, my lord March,” replied Keir. “I can oblige you with one more healing, although not two.”

Dreas continued to press the regenen. “While Keir does his deed, you shall observe it. You must. And I shall be Keir’s patient.”

Carbraes’ jaw pulsed with tension. Gael half expected the regenen to thunder his response, but he did not. Always Carbraes retained control of himself and those around him. The regenen spoke most mildly to Gael and his cohort. “Please give me privy conference with my lord march.” He waved a hand toward the crescent of shadow on the far side of the terrace.

Gael found his feet carrying him to obey Carbraes’ bidding almost without his own volition. Keir and Uwen and Adarn came with him, clustering in the shade and watching the interchange between the regenen and the march. They could hear nothing, but the emotion in the conversation was clear: Carbraes angry and vehement, Dreas pleading, but firm.

Keir stared, intent. Uwen—still gripping his side of the gong—studied his knees, but found his gaze drawn inexorably back to his arguing commanders. Adarn—also clutching his side of the gong—bounced on his toes, eager.

“Do you think he’ll say ‘yes’?” the boy whispered. “Oh, I hope he’ll say ‘yes’!”

Gael felt he was overlooking something, some important detail that would govern their success or their failure. This was all moving much too fast. Surely they should all sleep on it before coming to any decisions.

Across the terrace, Carbraes sat back, resignation in his posture. Dreas leaned forward and beckoned.

Next scene: coming March 3.

Previous scene:
The Tally Master, Chapter 16 (scene 76)

Need the beginning?
The Tally Master, Chapter 1 (scene 1)

As Gael locked the tally room door, his fibula of keys pinned to his waist once more, a muscular boy with curly chestnut hair and a sprinkle of freckles across his cheeks and nose rounded the newel post of the Regenen Stair.

“Adarn!” Keir exclaimed. “Good. I’m needing you.”

Ah. So Gael had remembered correctly. Adarn was one of the reformed bullies. Interesting that Keir had selected the boy as her messenger. And interesting that Theron had released him to the tally room. More of the castellanum’s courting of Gael’s notarius?

Keir swept Adarn along with her, murmuring explanations to the boy as she followed Gael up the nearly two spirals to the landing outside Gael’s chambers.

There Gael discovered a black-browed warrior in full regalia: bronze scale mail, bronze greaves, bronze helm, scabbarded sword and knife at his belt, brown tabard with a stooping golden bird of prey depicted on it. One of the Peregrine opteogint.

The warrior stood very straight and struck his chest with his closed fist as Gael stopped before him.

“Secretarius!” he barked.

Gael frowned, but returned the salute, allowing the warrior to lower his arm and stand easy.

Turning to Keir, Gael asked, “What is this?”

Keir grimaced. “When two locks were not enough to prevent meddling with the gong, the regenen ordered a guard placed. The whole tower learned what rests in your storeroom in the debacle with the cleaning scullions. Lord Carbraes does not want a repeat incident.”

Gael repressed a sigh. “Of course.”

Keir greeted the warrior. “All well here, Uwen? The boys have not recommenced tapping your mail?”

Gael’s eyes narrowed. “Scullions were baiting a warrior?”

Keir stifled a snicker. “On a dare. Yes.”

Uwen smiled, utterly changing the fierceness of his visage in repose to something genial, approachable. “Once the notarius granted me permission to be creative, the problem ceased.”

“And, ah, how were you creative?” asked Gael.

“The boys had not realized I was quick enough to catch their tapping fingers. Or strong enough to keep those fingers in my grasp, once caught. They found it quite embarrassing to sit at my feet simply waiting until I chose to let them go.” Uwen’s smile broadened into a grin. “I kept each tapper longer than the last. They stopped their prank quite resoundingly.”

“Indeed.” Gael gestured at his door. “May I?”

“We’ll be accessing the gong, Uwen,” clarified Keir, “so you’ll need to accompany us. And I’ll need your help with it, in any case.”

Uwen’s eyebrows rose, but he stepped aside.

Gael unlocked the portal to his chambers and passed within. The sitting room was very tidy, with the backless chairs and slant-end divans aligned precisely, the trays on their tripod stands exactly level, and the floors immaculately dustless. The glass panes of the casements showed the effects of rigorous cleaning, with both inner and outer shutters open and no smudges visible in the afternoon light. Someone had even removed the stain that had disfigured one of the leather hangings that covered the stone walls.

It should have felt like home. These chambers had been home for the past seven years. But Gael felt less relaxed in his private sitting room than he had in either the smithies or the tally chamber. Maybe it was just that he intended to tangle with the cursed gong forthwith. Or rather—to let Keir tangle with it.

Keir bustled about, closing the inner shutters, pulling a divan out from the wall, shoving several tripod tables out of the way, and generally arranging things to her liking.

“I’ll need you lying down, Gael,” she instructed.

Gael started to obey, sinking onto the divan. He stopped halfway to survey their presumed helpers. Uwen stood waiting beside the closed door, broad-shouldered, armed and armored, formidable. Beside him, Adarn—although a well-grown lad—looked nervous and very young, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. His head rose only to Uwen’s shoulder, if that.

Gael’s prolonged scrutiny gathered their attention. He waited a moment, then nodded and started the explanation he felt was due to them. “You know Lord Carbraes has consigned the gong of the ancients to my authority.”

Both the boy and the warrior nodded.

“Keir and I believe the gong may possess a power other than the weakness generated by its sounding. We are going to attempt to prove our surmise true or false. Now. In this room.”

Uwen frowned. Adarn swallowed.

“Your role, should you choose to accept it, will be merely to hold the gong at the angle Keir specifies. I do not expect you to be in any danger. But the gong is perilous, and I could be wrong in my assessment. I have the right, granted by the regenen, to require your duty in this trial. But I will not do so. You may choose freely to assist. Or not.”

Uwen’s frown deepened, and Adarn positively gulped. Keir—seen out of the corner of Gael’s eye—looked exasperated, but she said nothing.

“We will not be sounding the gong,” Gael added.

Uwen’s face lightened. “I do not fear your trial, my lord Secretarius. I am willing.”

“Good,” said Gael. “Adarn?”

The boy squirmed, glanced at Keir, then straightened his shoulders. “I am not afraid either,” he declared. “I’ll help.”

“Keir will not think the less of you, should you decline,” said Gael.

Keir’s look of irritation ebbed. “Indeed, I will not,” she confirmed. “You may choose freely. Indeed, you must choose freely.”

Adarn grinned. “No, I know. I want to help. Please?”

“Very well,” said Gael, handing his fibula of keys to Keir, leaning his upper body against the slanting end of the divan, and lifting his legs onto its long, flat end. The padlock on the storeroom clunked open. Then came a scraping sound—metal on stone—and footsteps. Uwen and Adarn stationed themselves to one side of the divan, the gong held between them, its metal glimmering in the shutter-dimmed light. Gael noticed that the grip of Adarn’s lower hand fell considerably lower on the disk’s bottom hemisphere than did Uwen’s, the same for their upper hands. Which meant that the boy bore slightly more weight than the warrior. Gael’s lips pressed flat. He wondered if he should intervene. Keir was directing them to raise the gong higher, focusing on the angles she needed. Was she paying any mind to the differing capabilities of her helpers?

“Gael, I’m going to need you on the floor. The angles aren’t right, and I need you flat anyway, not propped up,” came Keir’s clear voice.

They all rearranged themselves, Gael lying on a sheepskin, Keir seated on a backless chair, and Adarn and Uwen across from her, holding the gong just barely off the flagstones. Adarn showed no signs of strain, his eyes alight with curiosity and interest.

“Good. That’s perfect,” said Keir. “Try to keep those positions, everyone.”

Adarn’s muscles twitched. Was the boy trying to lock them in place?

“Not like a stone statue, Adarn,” chided Keir, “but like a tree. It’s all right to sway a bit.”

Gael could see the boy relax.

“That’s right,” said Keir. “Now,” she continued, “I’ll be working with energea, and Uwen and Adarn, you may watch, if you wish. I’d prefer to have witnesses other than myself.”

Adarn’s shoulders settled as the crown of his head lifted. Uwen’s adjustments were subtler, but Gael could tell that he too was preparing to follow Keir’s wishes. Gael allowed his own breathing to slow and his spine to lengthen. This promised to be very interesting.

Keir spoke again. “But, Gael, you must not open your inner sight. I need you utterly quiescent, and you won’t be if you are watching. In fact, I want your outer sight closed as well. Shut your eyes, please.”

Gael switched his gaze from Adarn and Uwen to Keir. She looked calm and confident. Gael closed his eyes. In the reddish black behind his eyelids, his awareness of his other senses deepened. The breathing of his companions in the silence of his sitting room sounded restful and relaxed. The scent of the leather wall hangings perfused the warm air. The sheepskin under him felt resilient and firm.

Even with both his inner and outer sight closed, he knew immediately when Keir began working with the energea of his nodes and arcs. A strange drawing sensation pulled at his root node, located just behind the source of a man’s seed. The tug strengthened and then subsided altogether, segueing into an inward pulsation. Then the drawing sensation started afresh in his belly.

Abruptly, Gael needed no sight to understand what Keir was doing. She’d moved his root node closer to its correct position, and now held it there while she pulled his belly node nearer to its ideal location. The one had been too high, the other too low.

The tugging sensations deep within him were not painful, but they were disconcerting. He kept his breathing very even, uncertain whether muscular tension would impede Keir or not. Surely relaxation could only help.

As she moved from node to node—belly to plexial node to heart and upward—Gael realized that he’d become so accustomed to the subtle tug of the drifting anchors of his energea arcs that it felt normal. But there was a rightness to the new arrangement that Keir imposed. This was where his nodes belonged. It was like coming home, only far more profound than a return to the smithies or his tally chamber. More satisfying than even an imagined return to Hadorgol. He was coming home to himself.

When Keir released her hold on his crown node, he felt utterly new.

“You may open your eyes now,” came Keir’s clear voice.

“Tiamar on his throne,” Gael breathed.

Uwen and Adarn looked awestruck. Keir looked merely serene, not weary precisely, but . . . drained?

“How do you feel?” asked Keir.

Gael shook his head. He wasn’t sure there were words to describe how he felt. Surely no one had felt like this since the ancients used their lodestones to heal trolls. “I feel well,” he said. “I feel . . . right.”

And then Adarn and Uwen and Keir were babbling. “Did you see . . . ?” “Did you notice . . . ?” “I can’t believe it!” “Can I go next?” “How was that possible?” “We have to show the regenen!”

That last was shouted by Adarn.

Keir nodded. “I do think Lord Carbraes needs to know of this.”

Gael tried to sort through his thoughts. He was still trying to understand the miracle that Keir had just wrought, to assimilate what had happened to him, to accept that his truldemagar had been rolled back by years. It was hard to think calmly, or at all.

Someone said, “Let us seek Lord Carbraes then.”

Only as he stood up did he realize that it was he who had spoken.

Next scene:
The Tally Master, Chapter 16 (scene 77)

Previous scene:
The Tally Master, Chapter 16 (scene 75)

Need the beginning?
The Tally Master, Chapter 1 (scene 1)

Staring at Keir’s alarmed expression and dilated eyes, Gael felt a villain. He’d intended to keep his new knowledge of Keir’s gender to himself. For very good reasons. Why had he changed his mind? Keir undoubtedly knew quite well just how dangerous it was to be a woman in Belzetarn. And now her protective disguise was revealed.

What if Gael denounced her to Carbraes? Would the regenen banish her to the wilderness?

What if Gael announced her secret to the tower at large? What might the horde do to her?

What if Gael took advantage of her vulnerability, stuck as she was in a citadel of trolls, far from any defenders?

Tiamar’s throne! She must be wondering all those and more. So unlock your throat and reassure her, you fool! he admonished himself.

He forced himself to refrain from reaching to grip her shoulder. Or rising to fold her in a comforting embrace. Under the circumstances, any movement from him—any touch from him—would be the reverse of reassuring.

“I shall tell no one that you are a girl, a young woman,” he amended.

Keir’s white face flushed red. Her mouth opened, shut. She swallowed.

Gael continued, “I shall treat you just the same. As though you are the boy you pretend to be.” He nodded. “Although . . . how old are you? Perhaps I’d best recalibrate my expectations. You scarcely need parental guidance, do you?” He lifted an eyebrow, hoping his dry demeanor would help restore her equanimity.

“Gael, I’m so sorry!” gasped Keir.

“You needn’t be,” he said. “What else could you do, when the scouts dragged you here?”

She bit her lip. “That was it, of course.”

He nodded again. “Of course.”

“I’m twenty-five,” she said, a slight twinkle returning to her eyes. “Not fifteen. Or sixteen.” The twinkle became quirking lips, barely restrained from laughter.

Gael chuckled. “I quite missed the date on that one, didn’t I?”

“You did,” she agreed. “Gael—”

He tilted his head.

“I knew I could trust you. And I felt a little . . . strange, keeping it a secret from you. But I just thought . . . it would be safer if we didn’t have to worry about keeping our stories straight. Who knew and who didn’t. When I should act like a boy. When I didn’t need to.”

“Very sensible,” he concurred. “And we should continue in that way. For all intents and purposes, you are the boy you pretend to be. Go ahead and act the boy, even around me, so that you don’t slip where you shouldn’t.”

She nodded, then looked at the floor, her cheeks still slightly flushed.

Gael felt a touch awkward, too. What could he do to get them back on their old footing?

His gaze caught on his satchel. Of course. Olluvarde. He’d not planned on explaining the details of his scheme for the gong to Keir, but showing her his sketches of the ruin would distract her—and him—from their present embarrassment.

“I made renderings of most of the bas relief murals in the underground passage at Olluvarde,” he said. “But some of the energetic diagrams surrounding the first panel—the one depicting the creation of the lodestone from meteoric iron—didn’t make sense to me.”

He unfastened the satchel’s flap and pulled the top bunch of parchments out.

“I didn’t study the energetic vignettes that closely,” Keir confessed. “I was too enthralled with the amazing quality of the stonework at first. And then . . . the trolls captured me before I could retrace my steps to see more.”

“What do you make of these?” Gael handed her his sketches.

Like Nathiar, she paged through them in silence. Unlike Nathiar, her face held a look of appreciative wonder.

“These are beautiful, Gael. We should preserve them in a scroll, when you finish using them for a technical guide. Why do you not—?” She broke off, shaking her head.

“Why what?” he asked.

“I was going to ask why you do not make such drawings of your surroundings here, but”—she wrinkled her nose—“why would you want to immortalize a troll citadel.”

“There are other subjects than trolls here,” he said mildly. “But truthfully, I always associated sketching with the more tedious exercises set by my teacher. Perhaps I should reconsider my opinion.”

Her lips curved slightly, and then she returned her attention to his drawings. She went through them more slowly, a frown growing on her face. Her fingers traced a series of broad curves, then tapped on a tangle of intertwined fronds. Her frown deepened.

“This is the base pattern for any energetic pattern that addresses the root node,” she murmured. “Except those lopsided spirals indicate movement. This is very strange.”

She brought the sketch closer to her eyes, scrutinizing the details for a long moment.

Abruptly, she thrust five of the parchments toward Gael, fanning them out.

“Gael, do you realize what these seem to indicate?” she asked, her voice sharp.

He scanned the renderings. They were some of the energetic diagrams that had mystified him. He’d taken particular care with them, figuring they might be critical to Nathiar’s understanding of how the lodestone in the gong operated and thus critical to devising how to make the artifact harmless. But Nathiar had skipped over these diagrams lightly, referring almost exclusively to the ones from the seventh panel while they strategized.

“I didn’t understand how they pertained to the creation of the lodestone,” he admitted.

“That’s because they don’t,” said Keir, a certain intensity to her expression. “Look”—she brandished another set of drawings at him—“these show how the lodestone was adjusted and used to power a spinner’s spinning wheel, and these”—another set—“show how to make it lift a platform up the side of a tower.”

“And that first set?” asked Gael. He was not sure he wanted to know. Keir’s demeanor gave him pause—growing determination mixed with unease.

She placed all except one parchment on his desk and held that one out for his perusal. It was the scene depicting a healer and her patient.

“Don’t you see?” Keir persisted. “The man is not ill or injured, not in the typical sense. He’s a troll!”

How had Gael missed that? Were the curved and elongated noses, the enlarged ears, and crooked thumbs common in Belzetarn become so normal to him that he did not mark them any more? Perhaps so.

He glanced up from the drawing to meet Keir’s intense gaze.

“Those energetic diagrams”—she stabbed the stack of parchments on Gael’s desk—“show how to use a lodestone to move a troll’s nodes back to their proper positions. Gael—” she paused to take a breath “—I could heal you. I could heal Arnoll. I could heal Kayd. Gael—” she swallowed “—you cannot destroy the gong’s lodestone. You must not.”

“You could re-anchor floating nodes?” Gael felt breathless. It had been a tenet of the ages, from the beginning of the truldemagar—whenever that was—that troll-disease could not be healed. The nodes, once ripped from their moorings, could not be reattached.

“No.” Keir’s excitement ebbed, but her determination strengthened. “Not re-anchored. But think! Moving the nodes to their correct locations, and maintaining them there, would gradually drag the obvious physical deformations back to normalcy, and many of the other symptoms along with them. A troll maintained in this way might live to a normal old age. And die a normal, human death. Gael, this is an incomparable resource!” She sounded almost fearful. He felt fearful. This forgotten bit of lore from the ancient world . . . could change everything about their present world.

Or would it? Suppose Keir were to heal every troll in Belzetarn. What then? Would the humans re-admit trolls to their enclaves? Unlikely. Would the trolls even want to go? They’d made lives for themselves here. Would the Ghriana-folk—Belzetarn’s current foes—cease to attack? Would Carbraes cease to defend?

The lodestone contained within the gong—if preserved in its current configuration—might change the world eventually. But nothing would change immediately. Or even within a few years.

So what was he to do with this disconcerting piece of possibility?

He almost wished he’d not shown his sketches to Keir. Surely he could have come up with some other distraction. But if the healing properties of the lodestone were to be plumbed, it would have to be done immediately. The morrow, after Gael reforged the blasted thing—with the help of Nathiar and Arnoll—would be too late. The lodestone would have an altogether different configuration then, and its effects would either be nullified—his goal—or utterly changed.

If the lodestone could generate healing now . . . tomorrow it would likely no longer do so. If.

“We need to know whether the lodestone within the gong still functions as it did outside of the gong,” he decided aloud. “This could all be furor for naught.”

“Yes,” said Keir, her tone definite. Had she reached that conclusion ahead of him? “I’ll need two trolls to hold the gong at the right angle. And I’ll need”—she gulped—“a volunteer.”

“That will be me,” said Gael.

She opened her mouth, closed it.

“It cannot be you,” said Gael. “Or can it?”

She sighed. “No. Drawing energea through my nodes, as I must to perform healing, makes the nodes much more difficult to move. Even impossible to move. Another healer could use the lodestone to move my nodes, but I cannot do so. If the lodestone still works in this fashion. You are right that it may not.”

Gael continued, “I would keep this experiment between us two. And I have no healing skills. Indeed, even my magery is very rusty. Therefore, you shall be healer, and I shall be healed.”

“Gael, what if the lodestone does injury in its current configuration?”

“Then you will cease the instant you perceive the problem and repair it by normal methods, if that is possible.”

She looked at him, her gaze steady for a moment. Then she nodded, firmly.

Next scene:
The Tally Master, Chapter 16 (scene 76)

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The Tally Master, Chapter 15 (scene 74)

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The Tally Master, Chapter 1 (scene 1)

Entering the smithies had felt like coming home. Entering the tally chamber felt like achieving sanctuary when a pack of wolves—or trolls—nipped at one’s tired heels.

The glass casements, as well as their inner and outer shutters, were open, admitting the sweet summer air and light—not the morning’s flood of brightness, the sun was already tilted around to the other side of the tower, it being early afternoon—but a softer radiance, welcoming and easy on the eyes. The dark wood of the pigeonhole cabinets looked mellow and sheltering, a harbor for their precious scrolls. The warm scent of parchment, laced by the flat odor of ink, wrapped Gael round like a velvet cloak. He felt his shoulders let go a tension he’d not been aware of.

Keir remained seated at her desk, head bent forward over her work, her straight, blond hair just touching the dark brown thistlesilk folds of her overly large caputum.

She didn’t glance up as Gael rounded the cabinets flanking the door, merely saying, “Yes? How did the bladesmith reply, Adarn?”

“Oh, did you select Adarn”—one of that crowd that had bullied the lunchboy, if Gael was remembering correctly—“as your messenger?”

The quill dropped from Keir’s fingers, spattering ink on her tally sheet. What was that slight jump about? Had the sound of his voice, when she’d expected the lighter tones of the boy Adarn, startled her so badly?

If so, she recovered quickly enough, turning easily around in her chair, a delighted—and genuine—smile on her lips, eyes shining. The tone of her greeting was calm, however, as she stood. “Gael! You look well!”

Gael found himself speechless for a moment. How had he ever thought her a boy? Her smooth skin, finely molded lips, even her strong chin and straight-gazing gray eyes, all spoke of the feminine. He’d been a fool. And yet . . . nearly all of Belzetarn took her for a boy. Maybe most folks saw what they expected to see.

“I am well, thanks to your good work before I departed,” he replied. “How goes it here?”

“Without hitch. Let me tidy this”—she gestured at the spilled ink—“and I’ll make a proper report.”

Gael went around to his own desk, pulling out its chair, while she busied herself with blotting sand and whisk. As he sat, she corked her ink jar, took a handful of papers from the shelf above her desk, and pulled her own chair nearer to him. Her proximity felt both strange, now that he knew her to be a young woman, and as comfortable as it had been for the past two years.

Gael lifted the satchel’s strap from his shoulder and placed the case on his desk. “I spoke with Arnoll just now, and he said that you’d encountered no lack of respect for your authority.”

One corner of Keir’s mouth turned up. “You’d think I was either a feared tyrant or everyone’s best friend. Every scullion in the tower was eager to run my errands, each smith addressed me punctiliously by my full title—Secretarius Pro Tem—and the castellanum insisted I take your seat at the high table every evening.”

Arnoll—as Keir’s opteon in potestas—must have done a superb job of terrifying the entire troll community. Gael smiled, saying nothing. Keir had clearly gotten over her qualms about occupying the role of authority. He’d seen her scruples in her face, misgivings that were now gone.

“Even Martell began giving his notary a chance without my doing or saying anything. In fact”—Keir looked a little guilty—“I stopped directly supervising the transfer of metals into the privy smithy. I was wasting my time and Martell’s.”

“But, indirectly?” Gael knew Keir too well to think he—she—had dropped the matter and its attendant concerns.

Keir grinned. “I told Martell that I would require that his notary give me an accurate report each evening as to the degree of support and cooperation he received from Martell.”

“I’m imagining you put it to Martell in such a way that you secured his enthusiasm.” Gael could almost hear Martell exclaiming, ‘But, yes, my dear Secretarius Pro Tem, you shall receive most excellent reports of Martell each night, and his notary shall be the envy of all!’

Keir face acquired a more serious cast, and she straightened her shoulders. “My report in brief is that all proceeded smoothly, with fewer than the usual small problems, no major ones, and no interference from the castellanum. But let me go over the details.”

She set her handful of parchments on his desk and started reviewing the contents. The works-in-progress and the ingots checked out to the various smithies were exactly as Gael had expected, save for one thing.

“How is it that Olix forges twelve blades instead of his usual eight each day?” asked Gael, somewhat astonished. Was Keir just that good? Was this what happened when newer, younger blood entered an established position? Should Gael think of retiring? What then would he do, in Belzetarn’s dark tower? A quiver of unease—similar to that he’d felt when he first stumbled upon evidence of theft—ran through him.

“You remember the quartermaster had wondered if we could speed production?”

Gael nodded. The official results from the quartermaster’s audit of the legions’ stores had not been complete upon Gael’s departure, but he’d suspected it would turn up a faster resupply rate in the swords being issued to the warriors. One could not tally for years without gaining a gut sense as to how the numbers were running.

Keir continued, “I met with him, but I took Opteon Olix with me.” Her eyes narrowed. “It turns out that the blade smithy has several decanens ready to move up to opteon, and many more scullions skilled enough to fill a decanen’s boots. They’re running two shifts now, the first starting a little earlier, and the second ending a little later, each producing six blades.”

Gael frowned. “Olix will tire and fall into error, if he maintains such a pace for longer than two deichtains. Does he intend to return to the old schedule at intervals?”

“Oh, Olix supervises only the first shift,” explained Keir. “His decanen confided to me that the opteon must be finding it difficult to fill his leisure time, because he usually hangs about the smithy for a while into the second shift.”

“Incidence of accident?” asked Gael, almost automatically.

“Down,” answered Keir.

“Well done, then.”

Keir smiled demurely. “Thank you, Secretarius.”

Gael drew his mind back to the here and now. Fascinating as improvements to the efficiency of the smithies might be, he had more immediate concerns.

“No thefts while I was gone?” he asked.

“No.” Keir looked troubled.

“And no annoyance to you from the magus?” After Arnoll’s assurances and Nathiar’s admissions, Gael was certain there had been no trespass, but he had to hear it from the party most nearly affected.

Keir smirked. “He’s one of the ones who seems almost afraid of me. He leaves a room, if I enter while he is present. And all those nights Theron insisted I dine at the high table? Nathiar dined in his own chambers.”

Studying Keir’s beaming face, Gael felt abruptly an idiot all over again. It was one thing to pretend to Belzetarn at large that he believed Keir to be the boy she pretended to be. But when they sat in close conference, she knowing herself to be a young woman, but keeping the pretense of boyhood, while he also knew her to be a young woman, also pretending he knew it not—it was too ridiculous.

He drew in a short breath.

Keir glanced at him inquiringly, her face innocently expectant, almost confiding.

“Keir,” Gael said abruptly, “I know.”

Keir’s face went white as a newly washed fleece.

Next scene:
The Tally Master, Chapter 16 (scene 75)

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The Tally Master, Chapter 1 (scene 1)

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