Gael could point to the exact day, the exact moment, when his dislike for Nathiar had bloomed. True, it had grown and deepened since then. But before that instant, they’d been friends and comrades. Uneasy ones perhaps, but on the same side. After it, no longer, so far as Gael was concerned.

It was twenty-one years ago, when Heiroc’s father still reigned, soon after Gael had turned seventeen. Late at night, he’d been walking along one of the cedar-scented corridors of the palace in Hadorgol, soft carpeting underfoot. The wicks of the oil lamps placed on the wainscoting ledge had been lowered, and the lighting was dim. Shadows clustered within a wall niche sheltering a miniature living pine and hung with a three-part tapestry depicting a mountain landscape.

Muffled giggles sounded from a narrow corridor opening opposite the niche.

Gael paused, frowning. He’d thought he traversed the palace wing to the west of the main courtyard. Had he gotten turned around somehow? Many did, especially courtiers who visited the capital infrequently. But he lived in the place year round, or nearly so.

If this were the western wing, that niche should hold a miniature willow, its shallow tureen placed before a tapestry showing a lazy river flowing through placid water meadows.

Another burst of stifled chuckles emanated from the corridor opposite the niche.

Gael swung into the narrow passage, quickening his stride.

The ornaments were wrong there, too, enameled theatre masks—happy, sad, furious, grinning and on through the whole panoply of stylized emotion—instead of the gallery of metal owls, fashioned of brass and gold; as though, again, this were the eastern wing, not the western.

But Gael was not turned around. This was the western wing. He stopped altogether, slowing his breathing and allowing his inner sight to unfurl.

Tiamar on his holy throne! The theater masks, the miniature pine behind him, even the cherry blossom branches worked in the carpeting underfoot—which should have resembled a flowery meadow, not a branch-laced sky—were the product of manipulated energea. It was all illusion. To what end?

As Gael jerked his head up, Erastys stumbled around the corner ahead, bent over, his arms wrapped around his middle as he shook with laughter. The prince was sixteen, newly come to broader shoulders and more muscular limbs, although he had yet more growing to do to reach full manhood. His face was very flushed, a few strands of his dark hair plastered across his sweaty jaw.

“Oh! Oh! Oh!” gasped Erastys, holding in his chortles. He saw Gael. “Help me stop,” he pleaded in a whisper. “You have to see this! But we have to be quiet, or we’ll spoil it. I have to shut up!” The prince’s eyes streamed tears in his laughter.

A subdued series of thumps sounded beyond the corner just rounded by the prince, then a string of slurred curses, as though uttered by a drunk. Was that Lord Omory’s voice?

“What have you done?” demanded Gael, his own voice low. Lord Omory’s chambers lay off this very corridor—on the east of the palace, not the west. This was the west.

“S-switched the keys,” giggled Erastys. “He’ll trip over the quilt stand Myr Uram keeps just inside his door after nightfall and tumble into bed with the jester.” Erastys spouted another outpouring of suppressed giggles.

Gael’s lips pressed straight. He had to stop this. And there wasn’t time to explain—or argue about—why. He gripped the prince’s shoulder and yanked him along the corridor to a small door camouflaged by the ornate cedar paneling. Opening it, he bundled Erastys through, aiming him toward the servant’s stair located there, muttered “Go! Go!” urgently, and closed the door before Erastys could respond.

Then Gael leaped for the corner ahead, intent on stopping the prince’s prank before it reached its disastrous climax.

Erastys had always loved a joke. Hells! They all had, Gael included. But this joke was not likely to end the way Erastys—and Nathiar? Nathiar had to be involved, given the energea-created illusions—had envisioned. It was understandable that the prince had targeted Omory. The old lord traded on his long friendship with the royal family to scold the boy on every topic under the sun. If it was fun, Lord Omory disapproved. And his fondness for overmuch wine left him vulnerable to the prince’s pranks.

Gael hurtled around the corner just in time to see the door at the far end of the corridor swinging open under Omory’s shaking hand. The old man tottered through and tripped over the quilt stand, just as Erastys had predicted. Ankles wrapped in the jostled quilt, he lurched forward, arms flailing to avoid falling to the floor, and sprawled across the massive canopied bed beyond.

Nathiar—of course, Nathiar—burst from behind the great jade statue of a meditating saint that adorned the far end of the corridor. The apprentice magus pranced in glee, positively yelling his laughter.

An old lady’s piercing shriek interrupted Nathiar’s merriment.

“Wha’—wha’—wha’?” mumbled old Omory, thrashing about on the bed.

Gael halted in dismay.

And then the king’s great aunt arose from the cocoon of her sheets and blankets, thrusting Lord Omory violently from her person.

Gael started forward again, but it was too late, much too late.

“You!—you!—you!” screeched the dowager, breathless, her cheeks mottled.

A bustle of lordly authority approached behind Gael. He spun and bowed low. King Pevarys and his two highest ministers had arrived.

Silver-headed, all three, and garbed in heavy velvet robes, they made a somber trio. The king surveyed the scene, his astute gaze moving swiftly from Gael’s appalled face to Nathiar’s suddenly pale one, to his dowager aunt and Lord Omory, still entangled within the darkened bedchamber.

“See to it, Rikar” the king growled to his lefthand companion, jerking his head toward his great aunt.

Lord Rikar paced gravely forward, lifted Lord Omory smoothly to his feet, and bowed gracefully to the dowager, offering his arm. She took it, allowing the minister to support her out of the room altogether and down the hall. It might have been more suave still, if they’d managed to clear the doorway before Omory vomited messily on the carpet, instead of after, but Rikar gave no evidence of discomposure, murmuring as he guided the old lady around Gael, “I’ll conduct you to a fresh chamber, your grace, and send the lackeys to transfer your belongings.”

Meanwhile, the king and his remaining minister bent their attention to Nathiar, Gael, and Lord Omory.

“What is the meaning of this?” demanded King Pevarys.

Gael clutched after his straying wits. He’d gotten Erastys away in good time. The king had never even seen him, need never know his younger son was present, if only Gael could come up with a plausible story. Fast.

Nathiar’s wits had apparently never strayed, because he spoke up immediately. “Your majesty, I make my abject apology.” Even in youth—he was seventeen, like Gael—his voice was deep and mellifluous. “I tried to stop them, but was too tentative, too tardy in my prevention.”

“What mean you?” asked the king sharply.

“My fellow apprentice”—Nathiar nodded at Gael—“dreamed up a scheme to discomfit the learned Omory, and . . . Heiroc liked the scheme, I regret to say. He found the idea of the prudish lord climbing into bed with Myr Uram exquisitely funny.”

Gael’s mouth dropped open. Was he really hearing this? That he had initiated the prank? For Heiroc’s amusement? That Nathiar had attempted to stop them? The lie was bald.

Nathiar continued, “I’ll admit my sympathies lie with Prince Heiroc in this, and had your lady aunt not arrived so unexpectedly this afternoon, had her usual rooms not suffered from the burst pipe, had the jester kept his usual apartment, I would not have intervened. As it was, I intervened too late.”

“My eldest son never lent himself to this!” King Pevarys snapped.

“It is unlike him,” agreed Nathiar mildly.

“You were laughing sufficiently loudly, methinks,” the king observed, his tone skeptical.

Nathiar went down on one knee, dipping his head. “I was, my lord king, I plead guilty. My sense of humor is reprehensible, indeed. Pray forgive me, my king.”

The king’s lips flattened. He looked in exasperation at Nathiar, then turned aside to his minister. “For Tiamar’s sake, summon Lord Omory’s lackey to him.” Lord Omory had lost his balance after purging his stomach and was floundering amidst the floor skirts of the now-empty bed.

The minister exited the scene, no doubt in search of a page to run the necessary errands.

King Pevarys swung his attention back to the kneeling Nathiar.

“Get up!” the king ordered.

Nathiar rose smoothly to his feet.

The king glared at the apprentice magus, his royal eyes hard. “You’re lying.” The king’s voice matched his eyes. “You knew the dowager was given Myr Uram’s chamber. You knew, and you planned this disgraceful escapade accordingly. You and your fellow apprentice between you. My son”—the king corrected himself—“neither of my sons would distress my great aunt so foully.”

That was patently untrue, but it did not surprise Gael that Erastys’ father did not see the younger prince accurately.

“It’s despicable of you to palm off your misdeeds on another.” King Pevarys glared a moment longer at Nathiar. “You’ll report to the steward of the small chambers in the morning and clean latrines under his supervision for the next moon.”

Nathiar bent his head submissively, but his lips twisted in disgust when the king turned away from him.

Pevarys brought his vexed gaze to bear on Gael, saying nothing for an interminable interval.

Gael shut his mouth. It could all devolve into mutual finger-pointing at this stage: ‘but, he did it, not me’—‘no, he did it’—‘no, he did it,’ and so on. It could, but Gael declined to engage in such a pastime, especially since Erastys could still fall under suspicion.

Nathiar, behind the king, glanced mockingly at Gael.

“I’m disappointed,” said Pevarys. “I had expected better of you.” He held Gael’s gaze a long moment more. “You will attend upon the judge of the petty court for the next deichtain and then present an analysis of his rulings to me when the session closes.”

The king looked Gael sternly in the eyes for long enough to be sure of Gael’s obedience and then departed.

Gael looked equally long at Nathiar, who had the grace to blush.

“Really?” said Gael. He still found it hard to believe that his friend—however uneasy a friend he might be—had lied, and lied in creating a false accusation of his cohort. “Really?”

Nathiar shrugged. “I don’t want to hear it,” he said. “And you can afford his ill will more readily than I. You’ll win back his regard.”

It wasn’t Pevarys’ diminished opinion that rankled so strongly—although it did rankle—but Nathiar’s betrayal. “I . . . relied on you,” he said, after a brief fight for the right words.

“Oh, get over yourself, Gael,” said Nathiar. “Only milksops expect perfect fidelity.”

“Don’t you regret it?” asked Gael. “Wouldn’t loyalty feel better?”

“No,” laughed Nathiar, “and you don’t think so either or you wouldn’t be here now. Ha! C’mon, you know I’m more fun than prim and prissy Heiroc or even the unruly Erastys.”

Heiroc’s quiet steadfastness was hardly prunes and prisms, but never mind. Gael swallowed. ‘I do prefer Heiroc’ would make him a pruny prism. ‘I prefer you’ would make him a liar. “I agree with your expressed opinion of your humor,” he finally managed, and turned away, ignoring Nathiar’s chuckles at his back.

He’d intended never to speak of the incident again, but when Heiroc heard the varying tales via courtier rumors, the prince guessed the truth, knowing all concerned perfectly well. Heiroc didn’t say much, once he’d badgered Gael into confirming his guesses, for which Gael was grateful. Least said, soonest mended, although Gael’s trust in Nathiar would not mend. Nor had he wanted it to. ‘Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.’

Gael had retrieved himself fairly speedily in King Pevarys’ good graces. The king liked Gael, and favored his eldest son, who regarded Gael as his boon companion.

And on the surface, the doings between the four young men remained much the same. But beneath the surface, Gael and Heiroc grew apart from Erastys and Nathiar. So much so that thirteen years later, when Erastys, as king of Pirbrant, declared war on Heiroc, Gael was shocked, but unsurprised.

But now—now—Gael must consider trusting Nathiar to have his back in the smithy, when he tackled the defanging of the accursed gong.

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The Tally Master, Chapter 14 (scene 69)

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The Tally Master, Chapter 14 (scene 67)

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The Tally Master, Chapter 1 (scene 1)

As the sun was setting on their ninth day out from Belzetarn, the lead scout reported that Olluvarde lay within reach, if Gael cared to order the torches lit. The moon would not rise until half the night was gone, and starshine would provide light too scant for safe travel.

Gael and his escort of twelve had taken advantage of the long days, getting underway with the early dawn and continuing on through the bright evenings, stopping to make camp only with the late sundown.

Their pace had been easy, but trolls and horses both showed signs of weariness. It would be sensible to rest now at the usual time. They’d reach their destination before mid-morning on the morrow.

“Have you a preference?” Gael asked the decanen in charge of his accompanying guard.

The troll—a grizzled veteran—sniffed the air, scrutinized the sky through the tree branches, and spat. “Rain on the way,” he grunted. “You aim to set at the ruins some days, don’t you?”

Gael nodded.

“I’d ruther be under tent hide when the storm blows than either breaking camp or making camp in it.”

And so they lit torches.

Belzetarn’s chandlery fashioned magnificent flambeaus, each one featuring six wax or tallow rods as long as a troll’s arm and an inch thick, with a strand of braided thistlesilk at its heart as a wick. The rods were arrayed around the upper end of a wooden stave, tied securely at the base, middle, and upper ends, and welded together with yet more hot wax or tallow. When lit, they cast a brilliant globe of illumination.

The pack animals in Gael’s cortege carried an oversupply of the superior wax kind, as he would need many in Olluvarde’s underground precincts; and it would not be proper to employ magelight so profligately and publicly.

But surely he could spare a few to get them all under cover before the rain. The harness straps that buckled their fleece sheepskins around the barrels of the horses each bore clever bronze brackets in which two torch handles could be seated, one on each side.

One pair of flambeaus on every third mount proved adequate for lighting their way.

Gael rode tenth in the column, and his view of the flaring spheres of flame, pacing the contours of the darkening land ahead, evoked a strange wonder in his breast, as though he processed toward the ruin of a goddess’ tomb, from which they would draw forth her figure undefiled and raise her to new light and life.

The soft sound of the horses’ hooves, the squeak of their leather harness, the occasional snapping spark from a torch, and the low murmur of the trolls’ voices coalesced into an otherworldly music in Gael’s hearing. The movement of his horse under him, shifting balance and sliding muscles beneath the cushioning fleece, served as a rhythm to the mingled sounds. Each element stroking his senses—the glimmer of torch flames on the branches above, the fresh scent of the cooling air, the music of ordinary noises—seemed fraught with significance. He entered an exaltation utterly unfamiliar to him, riding unmindful of the passage of time.

When they wound their way up a broad hill and passed under a colossal marble arch adorned with statues of toga-draped warriors, he was surprised to realize they’d arrived at Olluvarde.

The troll guards unloaded the pack horses on a terrace beyond the arch and erected the tents. A few others gathered firewood from the surrounding woods. Another two dug latrines in an adjacent courtyard missing all its flagstones. The bustle yanked Gael from his fugue.

He halted a pair of torchbearers before they extinguished the last two flambeaus. “Come with me,” he instructed them.

Keir had described the location of the passage with the murals precisely. Gael led the way through a broken portico, tumbled columns, and ragged courtyards to where a curving stairway descended into a sunken square chamber. The treads were guarded by a heavy marble balustrade and curled around to debouch at the very center of the marble floor, just where a crack extending from one corner marred the stone.

A ponderous arch in the wall opposite the stairway had fallen, blocking any passage. Another to the left gave onto packed rubble. But the arch on the right wall lay open. Gael paced through it, his two torchbearers in his wake. He turned left, following the broad passage that seemed straight for an interval, then gradually curved to the right.

The first mural came into view. Gael’s breath caught. The artistry was beautiful, beautiful.

The magus depicted at his work seemed so lifelike that he might—at any moment—step out of his bas relief rendition to explain his methods to Gael in conversation. The vignettes surrounding the mural featured equally delicate detail, a mix of energetic diagrams and scenes of island living. Gael noted a spinner whose wheel was propelled by a small stone similar to that the magus crafted. In another, a laundress hung her washing on a line strung before a diminutive windmill, its sails also turned by a stone to waft a breeze across the wet linens. A healer clutched a stone in a third vignette, although her patient seemed uninjured and hale.

Gael pried himself away—he was not here to admire the ancient masons’ skill. He passed swiftly along the sequel murals: the tsunami threatening, the magnificent airship garnished with lodestones, the storm in the sky, the airship’s safe arrival, the ruined mooring tower, and—finally—the panel that Gael sought, the forging of the cursed gong.

One of the surrounding vignettes depicted the energetic structure of the lodestone, presumably before it was incorporated into the central boss of the gong. The lattice formed tightly packed octohedrons, with each edge of the eight-sided volumes marked by a heavy line of energea.

Gael frowned. Was this meteoric iron? Legend held that ancient Navellys had once been a much larger land mass, shattered and drowned by a falling star.

The next several vignettes showed a smith magus heating the great bronze disk that would become the gong with his energea, molding its shape, then floating a globe of molten iron into a central void in the glowing bronze.

Next the smith held the gong and its iron boss stable—suspended in midair; the bronze soft, but not molten; the iron fully liquid. Gael almost forgot to breathe, awed by the tremendous skill exhibited by the ancient man.

Two magi eased the lodestone into the molten boss, sustaining the configuration of the stone’s lattice of energea even while its metal dissolved.

The smith allowed the boss to cool a touch, transforming from liquid to a pliant solid that kept its shape, but could be molded. The two magi plucked the edges of the energea octohedrons from opposite sides, their vibration generating curling arcs, which they laced through the encircling bronze, forming rays that fanned outward.

The magi returned to the lattice of the central node to pluck the corner intersections of the energea octohedrons, drawing out yet another set of arcs that curled from boss to gong edge.

The main panel, large and impressive, depicted the instant when the energea array was complete, a sun emanating two separate sets of intertwining arabesques. More vignettes showed the smith’s further cooling of the metals while the magi supported the energea array.

So. This was how the cursed gong that now lay in his storeroom in Belzetarn had been created. It had required not merely two magi, but three, that third a smith as well.

Gael would not be creating a magical artifact. He would be ruining one. But could he do so alone? Or would he need a partner? He suspected he would need a partner. And there was only one candidate possessing suitable skills. A most unwelcome candidate, indeed.

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The Tally Master, Chapter 14 (scene 68)

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The Tally Master, Chapter 14 (scene 66)

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The Tally Master, Chapter 1 (scene 1)

Gael’s cavalcade of thirteen trolls and sixteen horses made good progress en route to Olluvarde. None of their mounts or pack animals fell lame, the weather stayed fine, and such luck as persisted among trolls permitted them to set up camp each evening without petty hindrance and to break camp in the dawning as swiftly.

The woodlands held the seasonal beauty of early summer, delicate and fresh. The pine groves at the start of their journey swished in the variable breezes, dispersing a resinous perfume. The glades of birch and alder farther south appealed even more to Gael’s inclinations.

Trees had been scarce in the riverine plain of Hadorgol, while these Hamish wilds featured nothing but hill after forested hill, laced by swift streams and dotted with frequent springs and lakes.

The white columns of the birch trunks stretched gracefully tall into the fluttering green coins of their leaves, the moving foliage spraying glints of sunlight and dapples of shadow across the forest floor below. The spicy scent of ferns mingled with the more elusive fragrances of shy flowers.

Gael drank the natural loveliness in, as much a medicine for his soul as Keir’s treatment of energea had been for his injured body.

Yet, all the while, as he rode and imbibed the land’s balm, he puzzled over the mystery of the thefts from his tally room: what he knew, and what he did not.

The first theft—not the first that occurred, but the first that Gael had noticed—would have been one of the ten Barris had confessed to, a theft ordered by Castellanum Theron.

The cook had claimed Theron had lately increased the frequency with which he demanded an ingot stolen. Three days before Gael had departed for Olluvarde, Barris had finagled an ingot out of the privy scullion’s carry sack. And Gael had discovered it the following day, when his tallies did not match. Or had he?

Why had his tallies matched after all the other—earlier—thefts by the cook, and only failed to match recently?

He knew a part of the answer. And could deduce the rest.

Barris’ thefts were accomplished in the morning. And, because the privy smith Martell grew especially impatient with his notary in the evenings, the poor scribe just made sure that his evening tallies matched his morning ones. Which told Gael something right there.

A yet-unknown thief—the one who must have caused the discrepancy that tipped Gael off—operated in the evening. After the privy notary finished his own tally.

No doubt that unknown peculator had acted just as had Arnoll, lurking, awaiting an opening, and then moving quickly to seize an unguarded ingot. Except . . . surely someone in the other smithies would have noticed him. Ravin, a tin smeltery scullion, had witnessed Arnoll’s theft, after all. And Arnoll, the most senior of the smithy opteons, possessed the right to intrude on any of the forges. Surely the mystery thief could not have moved unseen. Unless—

Gael remembered abruptly that Martell had lingered exceptionally late over his work for two nights running. Once when he himself had overslept extraordinarily. And again when the privy smithy scullion had been delayed by a long scolding—a very long scolding—from the castellanum.

A bird fluted on the hillside of birches through which Gael rode, and another answered. The wilds seemed so innocent, so untrammeled, in comparison to Belzetarn’s tower and Gael’s thoughts of the doings there.

The exchange he’d overheard at the hospital, while attending the burned sweep, returned unexpectedly to his memory. The castellanum had required a posset of sleeping herbs. And the castellanum had required Martell’s company at the evening feast, pouring wine into the smith’s cup again and again. Martell had complained of it and refused to accept the castellanum’s second invitation.

Could Theron have drugged the privy smith’s drink? Thus ensuring the smith would sleep late and provide another of the castellanum’s subalterns with opportunity? It fit what Gael knew of Theron that the castellanum would advance his aims—whatever they might be—via multiple prongs. What Gael wanted to know was: had Theron ordered his thief to steal tin? Or bronze? Or both? And why?

Gael’s mount stumbled on a thick root winding across the narrow path they followed. He exerted a slight tension on his rein, supporting the beast’s recovery. The sound of rushing water filtered up from a brook below, soothing to Gael’s ears.

Arnoll’s theft seemed a small misdemeanor when viewed against Barris’ more concerted and prolonged series of the same. It dwindled to complete insignificance when set beside the deliberate campaign prosecuted by Theron through Barris and—perhaps—another unknown troll.

In any case, Gael knew all the story of Arnoll’s doings and why. They were irrelevant to what mystery remained. As were the much more subtle purloinings practiced by the magus irrelevant. Nathiar, too, had explained what he’d done and why.

It was the castellanum—and his other minion or minions; there could be more than one—who Gael sought now.

And yet . . . he had a sense he was missing something, that some other agency was at work in the muddle of thievery and deceit and guile, some other villain who might yet escape retribution, were Gael to pin the remaining guilt on the castellanum alone.

Frowning, he withdrew his attention from circling his unsolved mystery, preferring to enjoy the fresh landscape through which he rode unshadowed by dark thoughts.

Next scene:
The Tally Master, Chapter 14 (scene 67)

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The Tally Master, Chapter 14 (scene 65)

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The Tally Master, Chapter 1 (scene 1)

Keiran’s very first sight ever of the truldemagar had come as a shock.

In Olluvarde’s broad underground passage of bas relief murals, she’d just finished scrutinizing the last panel, her silvery blue magelight glowing about her, when the trolls burst around the far corner by the stairs. They saw her at once and gave a great shout, charging.

She stood paralyzed a moment—in horror. She’d planned to await their approach, but her plans were not what held her motionless.

The truldemagar’s war gear was famous. All the north-land peoples spoke of its beauty and excellence. Keiran had heard the tales, of course, and knew bronze to be superior to the leather coats and flint knives of Fiors’ warriors. But the ferocious glint and clink of shining scale mail surmounted by gleaming helms gave these trolls a presence more alarming than anything she’d imagined. With their forearms and shins encased in bronze greaves, they seemed monsters of metal, alien and terrifying, as they stormed forward.

Heart in her throat—pounding, pounding, like the trolls’ booted feet hammering Olluvarde’s marble floor—she stared.

The tales waxed eloquent on the grotesque faces and warped bodies of the afflicted. She’d known to expect the curving and elongated noses, usually strangely blunt, sometimes cruelly pointed; the enlarged, cupped ears; and the sallow, sagging skin framing watery, bloodshot eyes. She’d imagined the hunched shoulders and crooked arms. But the reality of their deformities combined with the vast power in their muscled limbs and the battle rage twisting their faces unnerved her wholly.

The oncoming scent of their sweat rolled over her.

She turned and ran.

Her pursuers gave another mighty shout, their voices deep and growling.

And her feet responded with a burst of speed.

What are you doing? What are you doing? she asked herself. You meant to stand and await them. You meant to turn yourself over to them.

But she could not make herself stop. Not here underground, hidden from the sight of the sky, where unspeakable things might be done to her, unwitnessed. And how foolish was that? Thinking the presence of the day eye over her might offer any protection.

No matter her panicked logic, she raced along the curving passage like a hare fleeing before hounds, darting around a piece of fallen wall like a startled minnow, vaulting over clumped rubble like a leaping deer, her magelight still illuminating her way, the troll horde pounding at her heels.

Sias! Oh, Sias! she prayed as she panted.

What in Cayim’s hells did she think she was doing? Where in Gaelan’s grief did she think she was going? She’d entered this passage by the stairs far behind her, the stairs behind her troll pursuers. Did she think to burst out through some crack in the earth to feel the free air on her skin along with warm sunshine? Almost certainly she’d be cornered instead in some caved-in dead end, severed from any escape to daylight and freedom.

But she ran, and ran, the passage curving always to her right.

Were the trolls farther in her wake? Was she faster in her sandals and suede tunic with its fringed hem? Were they slower in their mail and boots, with their terrible swords out and weighing their arms?

The passage turned an abrupt corner, slamming into a smaller hallway, on the left a tunnel plunging down narrow stairs into darkness, to the right—oh, blessings! oh, blessings!—a level scrap of corridor running toward a ragged opening in the hillside and cool sunlight.

Keiran whirled right, diving for the light like a seal caught too long underwater and diving up for air.

Six pounding steps later and she was out, carried by her momentum across cracked flagstones to the edge of the terrace, where a tree-studded slope slanted down toward the woodlands.

She doubled back, hurtling up broken steps before the truldemagar could emerge. Fleet as a mountain goat, up and up, she fled out of sight through the forest of columns at the top of the steps, and then ducked behind a crumbling statue into its niche in a fragment of wall.

She crouched there panting and panting, heart slowing from its frantic beat, and knowing she was safe.

The trolls roared, angry and puzzled, as they stumbled onto the empty terrace and saw their quarry nowhere in sight.

She was safe. They’d never find her. She was safe!

And her plans had all gone wrong.

She’d hacked her hair short with the flint knife tucked into her belt. She’d bound her breasts tight, thanking Iona that she was slight, that her facial features were clean cut, not soft, and that she could pass for a boy.

She’d been ready to be taken peaceably. But that mob had been no sane scouting party. They’d have hacked her to pieces, not taken her prisoner. She’d had to run, as her body had known, even while her head argued.

But how could she retrieve her—not lost—her never-offered moment?

Gazing out at the courtyard on which her hiding place fronted, she had an idea. Most of the ring of columns surrounding the space were toppled or become jagged stumps, but one remained whole, towering to thrice her height. She did not think the truldemagar would be good climbers, heavy in all their war panoply. But she—she who had climbed the sea cliffs at home in search of gulls’ eggs—could surely reach the flat capital of that lone stalk of still-standing marble.

She would have to be fast. She could hear the trolls spreading out from that lower terrace, searching as they moved uphill.

Prying herself out of her hiding place—which was not safe, despite her earlier assurances to herself, but which felt so—was impossibly difficult, but she did it. How ludicrous that she’d hunkered there for even a moment. The trolls would have smelled her fear, even if they’d not glimpsed a protruding elbow. And they would not have given up until they found her.

She hustled across the courtyard on cat feet—she must not be heard—and thrust her fingers into a horizontal crack circling the column just above her head, while wedging her toes into another at waist height. Could she climb in her sandals? She must. There was no time to take them off.

The column had been fashioned in great barrel-like segments, and—luckily—time had weathered and widened the joints where they came together.

Up she went, like the climbing monkeys of the south. Just as she pulled herself over the slight outward slant of the capital to stand on its level top, the first troll appeared from below. He was not looking up, but around him, and he did not see her.

Iona’s breath! If she crouched down and made herself small, they might never see her. They could search and search every piece of this ruined hilltop, every niche, every cranny, and never find her.

Her mouth went dry. The scent of pine from the trees ringing the ruins floated up to her, resinous and bracing, prodding her ingenuity alive. She had to get herself taken—alive, not dead—or her plan for her people, for her pater especially, would fail.

Why had that plan seemed so easy in conception? Why did it seem so hard, now? She made herself stand tall, with her arms outstretched.

“Oiyez! Oiyez!” she called in her loudest voice.

The lone troll spotted her instantly.

“To me! Come to me!” he yelled, and his fellows boiled up the slope, while he unshipped his bow and nocked an arrow.

“Stop! Stop!” she screamed, working to keep her voice from a woman’s higher register. “I am truldemagar. I am one of you!”

“You look human enough,” growled the marksman, aiming his arrow.

She got ready to duck low, if he should let that arrow fly.

“But I’m not!” she insisted. “Look with your inner sight. My nodes are ripped from their moorings!”

“Lord Carbraes forbids the inner sight,” answered the troll.

“Then take me to him, and let him check,” she yelled.

Slowly, he lowered his arm. “I suppose we could do that,” he allowed.

The other trolls had gathered around him. After some muttering among themselves and more shouted conversation with Keiran, still atop her column, they agreed to let her down unharmed.

For all that, the moment she came within reach, they plucked her from her handholds, yanked her arms up behind her, and dealt her three swift belly blows.

As she doubled over, retching, one said, “Why he’s nobut a boy!” in astonished tones. “What’s your name boy?”

“Keir—” not Keiran, that was a girl’s name, and she must be a boy “—my name is Keir,” she choked.

“From Fiors, huh?” her questioner said, and then fetched her a thunderous blow to her head.

Her senses reeled into darkness.

“Whups! Didn’t mean to get his pate. That was a welcome, a slap to the back,” said her assailant, as consciousness passed from her.

She was glad he’d sheathed his sword, before he’d attempted his gesture of greeting.

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The Tally Master, Chapter 14 (scene 66)

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Soon after her arrival at Belzetarn, Keir had discovered that the sentry walk atop the curtain wall overlooking the lake was never patrolled. The enemies of the truldemagar had long since been driven out of the lowlands, retreating to their mountain fastnesses. Carbraes feared no waterborne attack on his citadel, and his march posted no lookout over the lake.

Most evenings Keir climbed a narrow straight stair located between the hospital and the feltmakers in the artisan yard, emerging from the shadows of the crumbling ascent into the sun on the wall top. Several of the shielding merlons had fallen, yielding a sweeping view of the water and its surrounding hills. Keir would clamber onto a smooth portion of stone and sit cross-legged, surveying the panorama.

The evening after Gael departed for Olluvarde, Keir sought her usual perch. The stones under her were warm from their day’s exposure, and the air was mild. The rays of the sun, slanting from behind her, shone long and golden. A riffle of clouds curdled white along the range of peaks on the horizon, and the lake—meandering away from her with a multitude of inlets—was very blue. Somewhere in the forest on the nearer shores, a dove cooed, soft and easeful. The scent of the water drifted upward, liquidly mellow and mixed with the aroma of sun-warmed pine.

She loved this high refuge for its solitude, its peace, and its beauty. The Hamish wilds were beautiful, but altogether different from Fiors, with its inland turf meadows, its coastal salt marshes, and its grass-fringed dunes, all overladen with the tang of the sea. But she didn’t want to think of home—which was home no longer. Not now.

The afternoon and evening had gone smoothly, despite Gael’s absence and despite whatever anxiety had prompted all his precautions. No additional ingots had gone missing. No one had challenged her authority. No one had threatened her person. Indeed, the castellanum had invited her to partake of an excursion on the lake when the next deichtain’s day of rest came around.

She’d thought about it, tempted.

She missed the vast sense of space one experienced at sea, with the waves stretching away forever to the horizon and the distant sky arching above. Even ashore on Fiors itself, the sky was far larger than here in the north with all its hills. Getting out on the water of the lake . . . might be a little like sailing off the coast of Fiors. And . . . even if it were not, she might gain some hint of Theron’s schemes against Gael.

In the end, though, she’d declined the invitation. What might happen to her out on the lake, wholly within Theron’s power, surrounded only by his hangers-on, out of reach of Arnoll or any other friend? How foolish she would feel to have rendered all of Gael’s safeguards futile.

She still thought his apprehension regarding the magus unnecessary. She’d managed perfectly well at holding Nathiar at bay long before Gael became aware that the magus required such restraint. As for the idea that the magus would grow more persistent following Gael’s departure, it was nonsense.

Three times had she almost encountered the magus this afternoon and evening, and each time he—not she—had taken decisive action to prevent the encounter: dodging away into a privy before they could pass one another on the Cliff Stair, turning the opposite way in the artisan yard, and actually leaving the high table when she entered the great hall for her supper.

A slight breeze arose from the water, blowing cool on her face.

Gael had asked her to check on Barris over the next deichtain or so.

The news that yet another of Gael’s friends had stolen from him had shocked her. Even surprised her. Once it wouldn’t have done so. She’d expected trolls to be violent and faithless before she’d ever met any. After living in Belzetarn for two years, after witnessing Arnoll’s unfaltering standards for the armor that would protect his fellows, after benefitting from Gael’s protection herself, she’d come to understand that trolls ranged across the entire spectrum of honor just as did the unafflicted. There might be more brutal trolls than there were brutal men, but trolls who were kind and generous and humane also walked under the sun. What an odd thought that was.

She’d not wanted to admit that it was so, but she could not avoid the conclusion. She had avoided thinking about it. She did not want to think about it now.

Gael’s voice had been dispassionate, phlegmatic even, as he reported Barris’ admission of guilt, as though he spoke of a change in the weather from fair to clouded, or the turn of the tide from outgoing to ingoing. Gael usually spoke calmly, and with composure. She expected that. She’d grown to depend upon it. But some tinge of the warmth and caring that lay beneath his rationality was always present. The deadness of his tone as he spoke of Barris made her hurt for him.

But she’d checked on Barris as he had wished her to.

The cook had babbled about the amazingly festal meal he planned in honor of the march’s upcoming sixtieth natal day. Almost too buoyantly. Keir couldn’t help suspecting that despondence hid beneath his ebullience. But he seemed to be doing as Gael had instructed him: keeping his head down in the kitchen.

She knew Gael worried for his friend. Gael might wonder if any friendship remained in his heart for Barris, but she knew Gael. He wouldn’t abandon a friend, even when that friend proved less reliable, less resolute than he’d believed him to be. She knew Gael, and she worried for him.

But the quick hug she’d given him upon his departure had been foolish. Just the briefest contact, her arms partially around his shoulders, but she shouldn’t have done it.

She was almost glad that he would be absent for nearly two deichtains. His well-being had come to matter too much, as had his opinion of her. She needed more distance, less feeling not more. Gael’s absence was helpful to that end. If only she did not worry for his safety. Her own memories of Olluvarde were too vivid for her to believe the ruins anything but perilous.

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The Tally Master, Chapter 14 (scene 65)

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Gael had one more thing to do before he departed for Olluvarde. Something he had to know.

Descending the Regenen Stair, he barely noticed the clear morning light making bright rectangles on the treads where it shone in through the arrowslits. He navigated the clumps of messengers, porters, and scullions thronging the steps almost carelessly. He even failed to perceive that his ankle gave not one single click in his determined plunge toward the kitchens.

The joint should have clicked after his full descent from the top of Belzetarn to his tally room.

He’d met with the regenen on the uppermost battlements, the breeze stirring their hair, the sun warm on their shoulders, and all the Hamish wilds spread out below them: the pine-cloaked hills, rounded and cradling the shining blue of the long lake, with its myriad inlets; the snow-topped Fiorsmarn peaks to the east; the vast forest spreading across ever flattening terrain to the west.

He’d felt free on the battlements, beguiled by the light and the air, persuaded by Carbraes’ effortless authority and composure that all was well, as though they were sovereign and secretarius over a realm of unafflicted men and women and children. As though the truldemagar were nought but an evil nightmare.

If only it were so.

Diving into the traffic on the Regenen Stair—increasingly heavy as the day advanced—dispelled his illusion of freedom immediately.

Curved and elongated noses, line-bracketed eyes, and large cupped ears marred every last troll in the stairwell. Some possessed crooked shoulders, others crooked thumbs. Some pushed their way aggressively through the crowd, others went cringingly.

Gael saw them all afresh, as though he’d just come among them to live, pity and revulsion combined in his breast. Did he descend into one of Cayim’s hells, to be surrounded by gnarled imps?

No. He was one of them himself. This was home. And he wished it were not.

Nor did his errand—unsavory in nature—ameliorate his milieu any.

But he had to know.

He turned into the servery for the Regenen’s Kitchen, as Barris was setting a large tray of mussels—freshly winkled out of their shells—on an adjacent work table. Drifting through the hatch between the kitchen and the servery, the warm scents of roasting hazelnut scones mingled with the dense sweetness of dried cherries stewing and the sharp aroma of vinegar-soaked onions.

Barris looked up from his clams.

“Gael!” he shouted.

An instant later, the cook hurtled over the hatchery counter to grasp Gael by both shoulders, look him up and down, shake him, gasp “Thank Sias you’re okay,” yank him into a rough hug, cuff him on the upper arm, and demand, “What in Cayim’s hells happened to you?”

Gael couldn’t help laughing, in relief as much as surprise. Surely his suspicions were wrong. Unjust, too. How could he possibly accuse Barris of stealing? He would never have accused Arnoll. It had taken seeing Arnoll with a stolen ingot in hand to make Gael doubt him. Barris should be beyond his suspicion too. In fact, Gael never would have doubted Barris, if Arnoll had not proven . . . fallible.

Barris’ urgent concern for his friend was thoroughly reassuring.

And yet . . . despite his surety in Barris, Gael was not quite sure.

He opened his inner sight. Tiamar be praised! Neither of Barris’ hands bore the energea lattice that Gael had deployed in the hidey-hole of the clogged latrine.

“Sias in paradise!” Barris babbled. “We heard you’d picked a fight with the First Brigenen. We heard he’d picked a fight with you. The castellanum’s notarius said you’d been tapped as the first combatant in the brigenen’s gladiatorial ring. The scullions said you’d been pushed over the balustrade of the top balcony of the high great hall and killed. The march’s notarius said nothing had happened at all. The hospital scullions reported you’d been gravely injured. Sias, Gael! I’ve been worried!”

“I should have sent a messenger, of course,” said Gael. “But I was out of my senses at first, then being treated—most competently, I assure you—and then asleep. I do apologize.”

Barris jutted his chin. “The bruises on your neck tell me it wasn’t nothing,” he said.

“No,” Gael agreed. “We did fight, and I was injured. Rather badly, I’m afraid, but Keir fixed the damages. The boy was training for a healer before he came here, did you know?”

Barris started to reply, stopped, then said, “Wait right here.”

The cook nipped back into the kitchen through the door beside the hatchery, placed a decanter, a goblet, a covered dish, and a soup spoon on a tray, grabbed a tall stool, and returned to the servery with them. He set the tray on the hatch counter, placed the stool beside it, and gestured Gael to sit.

“You should still be resting, not clomping up and down the tower stairs,” he said almost angrily.

“I’m very well, Barris. Truly,” Gael assured him.

Barris just glowered, his brown eyes smoldering.

Gael smiled ruefully and sat. “You’re quite right, of course. I am healing well.”

“Um hm,” said Barris, pouring from the decanter into the goblet—was that knotberry mead? at this hour of the morning?—and removing the cover from the dish to reveal minced parsnips, celeriac, and tidbits of fish in a light broth. The fragrance of the steam rising from the chowder made Gael’s mouth water. He dipped his spoon full, inhaled blissfully, and brought the spoon to his lips. The first mouthful was delicious, warm and soothing, earthily sweet, and mellow.

“Dreben picked no fight with me,” Gael explained. “And I picked none with him. It was a mutual craving. I think.”

“Sias! What got into you?” breathed Barris, leaning against the hatchery side wall.

Gael considered his answer. He had no desire at all to describe the original provocation for his rage against the brigenen. If Barris had never seen the execution of a Ghriana spy, better he remain ignorant of the reality. And if he had, better he not be reminded.

Truly, it was the theft from the tally room that had Gael more vulnerable to his emotions—worry, discontent, wrath—than usual. And that theft was why he sat here now, sipping Barris’ wonderful fish chowder.

“Someone is stealing my tin,” he said abruptly.

Barris paled, his skin suddenly bedewed by a sheen of moisture, his eyes shifting and full of guilt.

Gaelan’s tears. It was Barris, after all.

Gael swallowed his mouthful, paused a moment, and then asked, very gently, “Barris, what really happened yesterday morning, when you fed smoked fish to me, to Keir, and to the privy smithy scullion?”

The cook seemed to be tongue-tied.

“It is best you tell me,” said Gael softly.

Barris moaned. “Thea, Iona, and all the handmaidens of Sias in paradise,” he whispered. “I’m sorry, Gael. I’m so sorry.”

“Say it,” Gael directed.

“I took it, so help me, I took your tin,” said Barris lowly.

“Why?” asked Gael. Gaelan’s grief, but he couldn’t imagine what might have provoked his friend to such an act, any more than he’d been able to understand Arnoll’s motivation before the smith had revealed it. What other secrets of Belzetarn was he about to uncover?

Barris choked, again speechless.

Gael glanced hurriedly around the servery. It was deserted at the moment, but a scullion was sure to enter soon, pursuing some errand. And if a scullion failed to materialize, one of the other cooks would poke his head through the hatch with a question.

“We should not be overheard,” murmured Gael.

Barris nodded, infinitesimally.

“Where can we go without drawing undue attention?” asked Gael, voice still low.

“Mead cellar,” said Barris, barely audible.

Gael picked up his goblet of knotberry mead, sipped, and then exclaimed quite loudly, outraged, “Opteon, your mead is vinegar! Has the cellarer failed to store the new barrels at the back, failed to bring the older ones forward?”

Barris made the expected reply. “Sias forfend!” he roared, voice steady enough despite the anguish on his face. “I’ll see for myself this instant!” Finding enough anger in his pretense, he stuck his head back through the servery hatch. “Lodis, take over for me for a bit, will you? I need to assay the latest opened cask in the cellars.”

Lodis yelled back, “I have the hearth,” and then Barris led the way down the Regenen Stair to its very bottom, where the last few treads formed a tight alcove beneath their surfaces, sheltering only dust and shadow.

The servery providing for the bottle scullery and the cellar was dim and very quiet. Barris crossed the narrow space in five swift strides, his clogs clopping on the cold stone as he pulled his fibula of keys from his apron pocket. A quick twist of his wrist, and he had the meadery door unlocked.

Gael allowed the cook to usher him through. He avoided glancing at Barris’ face—not wanting to see his friend’s likely discomfiture—as he walked into the vaulted space. It reached far, far back, lit by a series of barred, arched openings placed near the top of its outer wall. Great barrels rested in cradles throughout, while smaller casks occupied racks along the edges.

Barris walked around the first rank of barrels to where a low ledge protruded below one of the barred windows. The fragrance of scythed grass floated in from the artisans’ yard, along with the shouts of an opteon reprimanding a careless apprentice.

Barris hunkered down in the ledge like a scullion being disciplined, his elbows on his knees, staring at the floor. Gael lowered himself beside his friend. Now that they were here, now that they could speak freely, Gael found he didn’t want to speak at all, didn’t want to ask any questions, didn’t want to know . . . anything that Barris might tell him. If dwelling in a troll citadel inevitably resulted in broken loyalties, then Gael didn’t want to dwell in one. He rather thought he hated Belzetarn. But, then, he always had, hadn’t he? From the very beginning.

Reluctantly, Gael shifted sideways to better view his friend.

Barris still stared at his feet, his back hunched, and his hands clutching his hair.

“Well?” demanded Gael, his voice hard.

Barris jerked upright, and started to talk, his words low and dull.

“Theron threatened to hurt the kitchen boys, if I didn’t get him some tin. He said he needed it for leverage, bribes and such. I didn’t want to do it, but”—his voice cracked—“I couldn’t let the boys be harmed.”

Gael sighed. Of course Barris would protect his scullions. They were like sons to him, and like a father, the cook admonished them, guided them, pushed them, shielded them, and loved them. Barris knew boys—with all their impetuosity, irresponsibility, eagerness, and unthinking brutality. He understood them, and managed them well, but his care for his underlings had proved the weakness by which the castellanum could snare him.

Gael sighed again, listening to the hectoring from the yard, still murmuring through the opening in the wall above them. “Why didn’t you come to me?” he asked. “You know I have the regenen’s ear. I could have ensured the castellanum did nothing to the boys.”

Barris looked back down at the floor. “I couldn’t risk it. He’s too tricky. He’d sniggle through with bits of abuse somehow, you know he would.”

“So, instead you stole from me?” Gael could hear his pitch rising. Something didn’t add up. That Barris would do much to preserve his boys was consistent with his character, if the threat were sufficient. But that Barris would betray his close friend and his own integrity to save the scullions from a few whippings or overly forceful reprimands . . . that didn’t add up. “Really, Barris? Really?”

The cook buried his head in his hands. “I know. I know. I’m a ratfink. An arsewipe. A scumbucket. I hate myself.” His voice fell under his self-contempt, ringing true to Gael’s ear.

Gael abruptly felt very tired. What in Cayim’s hells was he going to do about this, just on the verge of his departure for Olluvarde? He’d have to tell Keir, of course. But the wise course for dealing with Barris eluded him. He heartily wished he’d left the matter until he returned.

“How did you manage it?” he asked wearily, almost against his will.

Barris sat back, slumped against the wall. “Jemer was always late, always grabbing a quick bite from me on his way from the vaults to the privy smithy. He would thump his carry sack down on the hatch counter. All I had to do was hold the tray of food over it, and rummage under the flap while Jemer stuffed his face.” Barris shook his head. “Hells, Gael. I’ll understand if you never want to speak to me again.”

“Don’t steal anymore. Hear me?” said Gael.

“Theron already said to wait until you were back before I took another ingot,” said Barris, defeat in his voice.

Gael pursed his lips, thinking. If the castellanum’s scheme—whatever it was—required Gael’s presence, then it seemed likely that its goal must be to Gael’s detriment, not the mere bribes and influence-peddling that he’d told Barris.

“How many have you taken thus far?” he asked. “And for how long?”

“Ten,” answered Barris, “starting last year. Theron stepped up the pace just this deichtain. I don’t know why.”

Hells! This was much worse than Arnoll’s one-time theft, confessed almost immediately after it transpired. Barris had been deceiving Gael for moon upon moon. How many more of his acquaintance would turn out to be stealing from the tally room? The next thing he knew, he’d be hearing Keir confessing. Except that was ridiculous. If it were Keir, the boy need only have fudged the tallies to ensure that Gael never learned there were metals missing at all.

“Did you only steal tin?” he asked. “Never bronze?”

“Bronze?” Barris frowned, looking puzzled. “No, never bronze.”

So. Gael had yet to find every last thief.

“Barris, I can’t see my way in this.”

“I’ve made a right mess for you,” said his friend bitterly. Was Barris still his friend? Gael had no idea how he felt about it at this point. He’d have to sort that out later.

“Don’t steal anymore,” Gael repeated. Barris had said he would not, but somehow Gael felt a need to emphasize that instruction. “Stay away from Theron as much as you possibly can. Just do your cooking. In fact, do even more cooking than you usually do. Plan immense feasts to celebrate . . . anything at all. And wait until I return from Olluvarde.”

Barris looked stricken. “No,” he said. “Turn me in. I deserve it. Carbraes will order me flogged. Or worse. And then I’ll rot in the brig until I die.”

Gael huffed an impatient breath. “I’m not turning you in, Barris. You’ve been my friend—a staunch friend—for years before you did this. Just . . . do right while I’m gone, eh. We’ll figure this out.”

Barris stared back at him, eyes haunted, saying nothing at all.

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The Tally Master, Chapter 14 (scene 64)

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The Tally Master

Keir woke early and went immediately to check on her patient, but Gael had already departed his chambers.

This was a good thing, she decided, indicating that his recovery was proceeding well. She wondered if she would encounter him during the routine of checking out metals to the various smithies and lodges supplied by the tally room, but she did not.

Another ingot of tin went missing from the carry sack of the privy smithy’s scullion somewhere between the vaults and the forges. Keir had almost expected it, especially as she didn’t keep the boy in sight for every moment of their descent down the Regenen Stair.

She darted aside to the tally room, hoping to find Gael—where was the man?!—and only caught up with the scullion just in time to supervise the unpacking of his sack. She fetched Martell another ingot of tin to replace the missing one—he needed it for the work he had planned—and tallied it properly on her parchment, making a note of the new theft.

By the time she finished ensuring that Martell gave his notary the chance to make his own tally of the privy smithy’s disbursement, she was . . . not truly worried about Gael, but concerned. Ordinarily, she’d trust him to be sensible, more sensible than she herself would be in like circumstances. He was the one who’d taught her that prudent rest and nourishment ensured accurate work, well done.

As a healer, she’d tended to focus on her patients at her own expense. Pater had chided her for it, but Gael had induced her to take the matter seriously, even though—or perhaps because—it was tally sheets, not the ill and injured, under her care.

But Gael had been less measured lately. The discovery that someone or some ones were stealing tin and bronze out from under him had unbalanced him a trifle. And then learning that his friend Arnoll was one of the thieves had knocked him further from his sensible ways.

She’d have felt more comfortable, if she’d seen for herself that his internal injuries were continuing to heal and that he’d been resting properly. Early rising was not a good idea in his present circumstances.

On her way back up the Regenen Stair, after delivering Martell’s replacement ingot, she chewed the dried cherries she’d wheedled from Barris. Tart and sweet at once on her tongue, they spurred her slowing steps and flagging thoughts. What would she do, if she again failed to find Gael in one of the usual places? Go searching for him, asking all and sundry if they’d seen him?

As it chanced, Gael was not in the tally room when she arrived there.

She considered summoning a porter and asking him to question all of his cohorts, as well as the messenger boys, to learn where and when Gael had last been seen by one of them.

No. She refused to imitate a mother hen, as though the secretarius were her lost chick. Clearly her dip into her old profession of healer had unbalanced her as badly as the ingot thefts had unbalanced Gael. Wrinkling her nose at the absurdity of it, she opened the inner casement shutters. The eastern sunlight streamed in to warm the air as she got out ink pot and stylus, and settled to tallying within the shelter of her cabinet-wrapped desk.

An indefinite time later, the latch of the tally room door clicked as it lifted.

The familiar act of transferring the smithy tallies to a master list had restored her usual tranquility. When Gael stepped beyond the cabinets flanking the doorway, she neither demanded to know what he’d been doing, nor that he allow her to examine his injuries. Such tactics had never worked well on Pater, who hated coddling, and they weren’t in keeping with her nature anyway. Senseless to begin unpleasant and needless nagging now.

“Ah. Keir,” Gael said, as he glanced her way. “Perfect.”

He looked trim and fresh, color good, moving easily. Buoyed by these observations, she sedately reported her own doings: checking out the metals, supervising Martell, noting the fresh theft, and beginning the day’s usual tally work.

Gael drew up his chair while she spoke, and nodded when she finished.

“I’ve tracked down another of our thieves,” he announced, “although this one stole directly from the mines, before ever the metals entered Belzetarn.”

“The magus?” guessed Keir. Gael had spoken of the magus poking illicitly around the mines.

“The magus,” he confirmed. “Performing illicit experiments to determine if it were possible to create weapons in Belzetarn that resembled those wielded by our Ghriana foes.” Gael frowned slightly. “Nathiar succeeded in forging a sword energetically and imbuing it with a living heart node. I don’t know if the blade would hold up under the stresses of battle.”

“Mark of Gaelan,” Keir exclaimed, blankly.

“Indeed,” agreed Gael. “I’d thought the rumors of extraordinary powers attributed to the Ghriana weapons were just that: rumors.”

“Hm.” Memories of the warriors of Fiors and the weapons they carried nibbled at the edges of her thoughts. “My people wielded flint knives, threw spears and shot arrows with flint heads.” Why did she speak of them as past? Surely they did those things yet. But they lay in her past.

“Yes?” said Gael.

“The flint knappers imbued the flint with nodes and arcs of energea,” she said.

“Interesting.” Gael’s left eyebrow lifted. “I wonder if secluded tribes throughout the north have developed such methods all unknown to the rest of us. Nathiar observed the Ghriana blades in action via his inner sight and confirms that they are indeed energetically enhanced.”

“You’ve spoken with him?” blurted Keir, startled.

“Confronted him at daybreak after I’d watched him at work in the receiving room of my official quarters,” said Gael.

Sias in paradise! Had Gael gotten any sleep at all? He must have, to look so spry.

“He admitted his guilt?” asked Keir.

“He did,” said Gael. “Furthermore, he’ll be admitting it to Carbraes himself. Likely has done so already, as he entered for his audience with the regenen just as I was departing.”

“You refrained from telling Carbraes?” questioned Keir.

Gael’s lips stretched in a wry smile. “I permitted Nathiar that honor,” he said.

Ah. No need to ask if the magus would follow through. With that smile, Gael was very sure that he would.

“The tally room was always so peaceful.” Keir sighed. “Now it feels like it’s under attack.”

“It is. It has been,” said Gael. “We just did not realize it until the day before yesterday.”

Keir bit her lip. That was true, of course, given that the magus had arranged to steal his metals at least a moon before, but she didn’t like accepting that her prized peace had been an illusion. Or admitting that she made her own contribution to disrupting that peace. But she wasn’t going to think about that.

“Which is why,” continued Gael, “I should particularly prefer not to be away from Belzetarn right now.”

A sinking sensation pervaded Keir’s middle. “You’re going to Olluvarde,” she said.

Gael nodded. “I must. Carbraes insists on all speed in resolving the risk presented by the cursed gong.”

“But did you tell the regenen of the ingot thefts?” asked Keir shrewdly, guessing that he had not.

“I did,” said Gael, surprising her. “He’s concerned, naturally, but feels the gong to be the higher priority.”

“He’s so certain you’ll sort out the thefts, he’s not worried,” Keir speculated.

Gael’s lips quirked upward. “Exactly.”

“Don’t you find the thievery disturbing?” she probed. “Too disturbing to let it be?”

“Were it my own choice, I’d settle the thieves before I departed,” Gael conceded. “But I’ve always preferred my tallies to match, whether in the tally room or in life. I don’t like anomalous loose ends.”

Keir frowned. She agreed with his personal assessment. His calm and ordered way of proceeding was one of the things she liked so much about him. Especially within the aggressive milieu that was the troll citadel of Belzetarn.

Gael continued, “I suspect that any sovereign—whether he rules over a kingdom of men or a stronghold of trolls—possesses more loose ends than resolved situations.”

Keir’s lips pressed together. “In other words, Carbraes is used to it,” she said, “and expects you to take it in stride.”

“Perhaps not quite that,” said Gael, “but he certainly expects me to attend to the more dangerous issue rather than the one that makes me personally uncomfortable.” Gael smiled at her, his expression unforced. “Which means, Keir, that I’ll need to get clearance to travel from either you or the physicians in the hospital. I do intend to guard my health.” His eyes warmed as he repeated her advice from the previous evening. “Do you have a preference as to which?”

And so she had her reward for fending off the lure of mother-henning that had assailed her so oddly.

Did she have a preference? Silly man. Of course she wanted to examine him herself and assure herself with direct evidence that he was healing well.

She led him into the room beyond the tally chamber—a generous space where they compounded inks and glues, as well as adhering the edges of individual parchments together to form scrolls—and gestured for him to lie on one of the large work tables.

She checked his innards with touch and sound first, auscultating his chest and abdomen carefully, relieved that her firmer taps produced no winces in him. Opening her inner sight, she noted that while his arcs still shivered a hint too rapidly, the pulsing of his nodes was steady and strong. Good. She sent a trickle of energea into his pale green plexial node and along the arcs radiating from it, before she closed her inner vision.

“So?” asked Gael, swinging his legs around so that he could sit.

Keir nodded. “Don’t fall off your horse, and you’ll be fine,” she said. “No jumping, running, or fisticuffs, of course.”

“Of course.” Gael smiled. “I’ve arranged to leave today, shortly after noon,” he said. “The scullions are packing for me now.”

Keir gulped. She’d been envisioning the morrow for his departure. “Taking things a bit for granted, aren’t you?” she chided.

“I felt good,” he answered simply.

Keir’s lips twitched up. “You’ve healed more swiftly than I thought you would,” she admitted. “You’re tougher than I realized.”

“Or you’re a more skilled healer than you realized,” returned Gael.

Keir sniffed, disdaining the compliment.

“The regenen has named you Secretarius pro tempore while I am away,” said Gael, “and Arnoll to serve as your opteon in potestas. You may choose your own messenger to accompany you about your duties.”

Keir felt her eyes widening. “This is all very official,” she murmured, resisting the sensation of uncomfortable responsibility descending. She didn’t want to rule Belzetarn’s metals. Someone who hated trolls shouldn’t rule Belzetarn’s metals.

“You’ll be fine,” said Gael.

“Do I really need a messenger?” she protested. “By my side at all times?”

“Couldn’t you have used one yesterday?” asked Gael.

She had to admit it would have spared her a few trips up and down the Regenen Stair.

“I’ve had you to run my errands and carry my messages. You’ll need someone. And we should probably keep him, even after I’ve returned.”

Keir nodded. “I’d best choose carefully then,” she quizzed, “if we’re to be stuck with him.”

“You’ll do fine,” repeated Gael.

“I suppose the regenen believes too many trolls are likely to step on my toes or crowd my prerogative. Thus Arnoll,” she said.

“You’re quite skilled at exerting authority, Keir. I’ve watched you,” said Gael. “And the regenen sees it too.”

Keir’s face heated.

“But I requested Arnoll for you, because I’d like you to have immediate recourse, should you need it.”

Keir straightened her shoulders and looked Gael directly in the eyes, pushing down a thread of unease. “I’ll keep the tally chamber sacrosanct for you,” she promised.

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The scent of mint tea, the fragrance of toasted almond scones, and the sharp bouquet of pickled eggs entered with three tray-laden scullions. Nathiar leaned again on the slanting end of his divan, gesturing for the boys to serve him and his visitor.

As the scullions pulled various low tables into position and set out the dishes, Gael realized he was hungry. Too angry to be hungry earlier, he’d intended to spurn the suggestion that he break his fast along with Nathiar. Now . . . he decided he preferred to be sensible. He took a sip of the tea, enjoying its warmth and the contrast of its cool flavor against its temperature.

“The pepper sauce that accompanies the eggs is particularly good, my dear Secretarius,” said Nathiar. “Not overly spicy. Do try it!”

Suppressing a smile, Gael ladled sauce over his eggs. No doubt Nathiar wished to intimate that he would delay his story, hoping to irritate his audience. Nathiar loved irritating . . . everyone. Gael refused to be irritated. Nathiar would not have admitted that the old rumors were false, had he intended to remain silent about the truth.

The scullions filed out, closing the door behind them.

Nathiar spooned lingonberry jelly onto his scone and took a bite.

Gael permitted himself a smile, while Nathiar chewed.

“The ambassadress was indeed proper and prudish. She disliked Erastys on sight, and he reciprocated the sentiment,” said the magus.

Gael nodded. That fitted Erastys’ character much better than the story that he’d fallen in love. Or even in lust.

“It would have been better if the lady had simply left the day after she arrived, but she was determined to do her duty and stay for the full four deichtains as planned. Her disdain for Erastys grew with each passing day, and she troubled very little to hide it. The king devised a retaliatory prank to which I lent myself.” Nathiar’s lips curved. Apparently he still found the prank amusing, despite what must be its codicil.

“The lady was tricked into entering the king’s bedchamber—as though seeking amatory adventure—and infuriated when the court jester leapt up from Erastys’ bed while the courtiers emerged laughing from behind the wall hangings. She stormed out, encountered Erastys doubled over with mirth in the hallway, and . . . cursed him. Energetically.”

Oh. That was a far different tale. A far more dreadful tale.

“We’d thought the lady dabbled in the manipulation of energea, but we were wrong.” Nathiar’s eyes were uncharacteristically shadowed as he gazed into the past. “She was a most accomplished enchantress.”

Gael could see where this was going. “You tried to lift the curse,” he said.

“I had to,” said Nathiar. “I could not leave my king to suffer . . . that!”

Gael felt as though he heard himself recounting the events from the battle on the plain between the rivers. He, too, had felt that he could not suffer his king to go down to defeat and dishonor.

“What was the substance of the curse?” Gael asked.

Nathiar swallowed. “That he would lose potency whenever he lay with a woman.”

Ah. The ambassadress had chosen an exemplary revenge. Gael could think of nothing else that would punish Erastys so aptly.

“I brought every ounce of energetic strength to bear on the lifting of the lady’s evil scourge. And tore my nodes from their anchorages in the doing. And failed nonetheless.” Nathiar’s voice was low.

“You failed?” Gael had expected . . . a different result. “Erastys is cursed even now?”

“Unless he located a magus more powerful than I. Or persuaded the lady to recant.” Nathiar shook his head, forcing the bleakness from his gaze and a scornful smile onto his lips. “Don’t look so sorry, Gael. Much you ever cared for Erastys.”

“He was my friend. Before we all left boyhood.”

Nathiar chuckled. “Our boyhood was long ago, as are the years when Hadorgol and Pirbrant fought so bitterly. Leave it be.”

“Why did you stay with him?” asked Gael abruptly. “After the truldemagar came upon you?”

Nathiar’s brows lifted. “Have I not bored you enough with old history?”

Gael met Nathiar’s eyes steadily.

Nathiar sighed. “He begged me to.”

Ouch. Seeing his own loyalty to Heiroc in Nathiar’s loyalty to Erastys was painful. And a bit strange. He and Nathiar shared so few traits—or so Gael hoped—but loyalty to their respective sovereigns they held in common.

Gael finished his meal in silence, thinking. Perhaps Nathiar thought as well, for he did not speak either. The sunlight through the casements brightened, the spots of color on the carpets and furnishings intensifying.

“I cannot allow the regenen to remain in ignorance of your escapade with my tin and copper,” said Gael at last.

Nathiar’s mouth twisted with his typical humor. “Of course not, my dear Gael. What do you take me for?”

“But I will leave the telling to you, if you wish it.”

Nathiar went very still. “Will you now,” he said softly.

“I will tell him that you have something to inform him of,” said Gael sharply. “And—” he subdued his sharpness “—I’ll tell him that I perceive the force of your arguments.”

“I wish I may see it,” chided Nathiar. “Really, Gael, you know you’ve disliked me from even before I supported Erastys against Heiroc. Nor have I supported him so selflessly as you always supported your own king. I was always in it for my own gain. You can’t possibly like me now. Or agree with me.”

“I don’t,” snapped Gael, already regretting his rash pledge. “Understanding the issue need not reach so far as liking or agreement.” The horror was that he wanted to protect trolls such as Keir and Arnoll and Barris—and Carbraes himself—while also wanting to protect the unafflicted, such as that poor Ghriana boy who’d died just yesterday. And he could not do both.

Nathiar vented a loud bray of laughter. “That’s better,” he said.

Gael interrupted him. “I’ll be absent from Belzetarn for two deichtains on an errand for Carbraes,” he said abruptly.

“And?” said Nathiar, very much at his ease.

All Gael’s suspended anger returned. “While I am absent—” his gaze bored into Nathiar’s “—you will not even enter a room, if Keir is present within it.”

Nathiar broke into chuckles. “I thought I saw you eavesdropping on my conversation with the castellanum at the high table the other evening.”

“I could hardly avoid it,” said Gael drily. “We did share a table.”

“True, true,” replied Nathiar. “Why so protective of your notary?” he inquired. “One would think he were a maiden, not a lad, the way you go on.” Nathiar’s gaze held a knowing look.

“He is my notary, mine to protect. And he is young,” said Gael, hanging onto his calm demeanor with effort.

“Not so young as you think,” said Nathiar slyly.

“What in Cayim’s hells do you mean by that?” demanded Gael.

“Merely that the boy’s already given me a civil setdown.” Nathiar snickered. “Quite effectively, too.”

“Don’t make him give you a second one,” growled Gael.

“Oh, I won’t,” promised Nathiar. “Once was embarrassing enough, my dear Secretarius. I assure you.”

Gael’s lingering sympathy evaporated.

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Neat and clean, Gael presented himself at Nathiar’s door with a smart rap on the wood. He’d recovered the anger he initially felt upon seeing the magus’ stolen supplies, but it was a cold anger, no longer heated.

Nathiar himself answered Gael’s knock. He looked remarkably fresh, given his late night and strenuous magery, his muddy green eyes without the typical redness in their whites, his thick lips firmly closed. He wore a robe of orange suede embroidered with purple arabesques and dotted with bronze rose-rivets. His silver hair hung in its usual multiple braids.

His brows rose when he saw Gael. “W-e-e-l-l,” he drawled. “Fancy meeting the secretarius just outside his proper chambers. Have you decided to occupy your official residence after all?” His voice was deep and mellifluous.

“May I come in?” answered Gael.

Nathiar’s brows lifted still higher. “Sabel’s gifts! To what do I owe this honor?”

Gael said nothing, and Nathiar ushered him inside.

The receiving room was richly appointed with textiles—so rare in the north—and intricately carved furniture. Wool carpets worked to resemble flowery meadows covered the floor, brocade tapestries depicting a magus at work hung from the walls, and divans upholstered in turquoise satin or yellow velvet or spring green damask provided seating. Delicate bronze figurines rested on low, red-lacquered tables. Spatters of colored light, cast by the stained-glass ornament edging the paned casements, dotted the surfaces erratically.

Gael’s lips tightened. All this wealth could only be spoils of war or pirate booty. Belzetarn’s artisans had little wool or linen or leisure for luxury work at their disposal.

“Have a seat,” said Nathiar. “The boys will be here with food soon. We shall break our fast together.”

Gael remained standing and proffered the rose-riveted pouch he’d brought with him the previous night. “I understand this is yours, Magus. I wish to return it to you.”

A gleam of humor sparked in Nathiar’s eyes. “S-o-o-o, where did you find it?”

“Tucked into the pack straps of the mule from the tinworks,” said Gael levelly.

“Goodness! How ever did it get there?”

“I’ll mention that it has tin dust within it,” said Gael. “I’ll further mention that I’ve been next door—in my chambers—and have seen what you store there.” Gael unclenched his jaw. “You have some explaining to do.”

Nathiar started to laugh.

“Well?” said Gael.

Nathiar’s laughter grew louder. The magus fetched out a purple handkerchief from his sleeve and wiped his eyes. “W-e-e-l-l, this is awkward,” he said, subsiding.

“For you,” said Gael. “I’m waiting, Nathiar.”

“Yes, I see you are. Dear me. Won’t you sit down? We may as well be civilized while we converse.”

Gael let his hand fall, the pouch still in its grip. “How is stealing the least bit civilized?” he inquired.

Nathiar started to laugh again, but repressed his merriment. “Very well, I’ll admit that I’m not the least bit civilized, but I do prefer comfort. You need not sit, if you do not wish to, but I shall!” He strolled over to a turquoise divan and lowered himself onto it, leaning one elbow on the upward slanting end.

Gael followed him, deliberately coming to stand too close, forcing Nathiar to crane his neck uncomfortably, should the magus wish to meet his eyes. Nathiar chose to study the nails on his left hand instead.

“How much do you know?” queried the magus.

“Assume I know it all, and you’ll be close,” grated Gael.

“And, yet, I’d rather not confess any small detail needlessly,” said Nathiar. “Why accept needless guilt?”

Gael shifted his stance impatiently. “Lannarc stole tin for you before it was weighed. You fashioned a covert ore tap in the oxhide furnace at the copper mines. You’re storing your stolen tin and your stolen copper and your stolen forging tools in my chambers.” Gael refrained from emphasizing ‘stolen’ and ‘my,’ just barely.

“I see,” said Nathiar. “No doubt you wonder what I am doing with all that?”

“No.”

Nathiar’s brows jumped again. “No?”

“I saw you hardening the edges of the enchanted sword you’d no doubt forged from the fruits of your thefts,” said Gael.

“W-e-e-l-l, my dear Secretarius.” Nathiar chuckled. “It would appear you do indeed know it all. I am in your hands, as they say.”

“I suppose I need not ask why.” Gael had expected to grow more angry once the magus had admitted to stealing. Instead, he felt merely jaded, his anger ebbing.

Nathiar sniffed. “Carbraes permits me magery on the battlefield. He encourages my magery when we besiege a Ghriana stronghold. He beseeches my magery whenever the tides of war turn against us. But he will not allow me to improve the weapons with which our warriors fight.”

“Is it so necessary?” asked Gael.

“You saw my work last night?” Nathiar looked up from his nails.

Gael nodded and took a step back, having mercy on Nathiar’s craning neck.

“With your inner sight as well as the outer?” asked the magus.

“Yes. I perceived the living heart node.”

“All the Ghriana warriors wield blades like that,” said Nathiar.

“I’d heard rumors . . .” said Gael slowly.

“Our trolls do not look with their inner sight, of course. They merely see the impossible agility with which those Ghriana blades strike. Thus the rumors. But when I take the battlefield, my inner sight is open, perforce. There is a reason why we lose more battles than we win.”

Gael had never expected that he might find himself at sympathy with any of his old enemy’s views. But if Belzetarn’s Ghriana foes all bore enchanted blades . . .

“Have you discussed this with Carbraes? Really sat down with him? Not merely flung your half-jesting insults at him in passing?”

Nathiar snickered. “Oh, yes.”

“You couldn’t convince him?” Gael wondered what Nathiar was not telling him. If Carbraes still believed Nathiar to be wrong about the need for improved weapons, the regenen would have good reasons behind him.

“Gael, think,” said Nathiar.

Hearing his name on Nathiar’s tongue took Gael aback. It had been so very long ago, but in his boyhood, he and his closest friends had been ‘Erastys’ and ‘Heiroc’ and ‘Nathiar’ and ‘Gael’ to one another. Only within Belzetarn had Nathiar and Gael become ‘Magus’ and ‘Secretarius.’ Longing for that earlier time pierced him. If only . . . if only . . . but neither youth nor health returned when the years and the truldemagar had claimed them. Nor did trust or good will.

“How many swords do your smithies complete each day?” demanded Nathiar.

“Eight. Sometimes ten,” answered Gael.

“And I could create but one in that time,” said Nathiar. “Would you have me train your smiths in weapons magery?”

“Few of them have skill enough with energea to be so trained,” admitted Gael. “Even were Carbraes willing.”

“Which he is not,” said Nathiar.

“But blades enough for the brigenens? The preceptorii? The bellatarii? Made by you alone?” suggested Gael.

Nathiar sighed, and Gael sat on the lemon velvet divan across from Nathiar.

“What do you imagine our battlefields are like?” asked Nathiar.

“I’ve stood on battlefields,” said Gael.

“Yes, you have. In Hadorgol.”

“Are the battlefields in the foothills of the Tahdfiarns and the Fiorsmarns so different?” asked Gael.

Nathiar flared the nostrils of his fleshy nose. “The march insists on drill and more drill, and it is well he does. The trolls devolve into a mob on the battlefield in spite of it. Without it . . .” The magus shook his head. “Without it, they’d fight each other as often as they fought their enemy.”

Gael followed this to where Nathiar was leading him. “With some trolls bearing superior weapons and others not, those-without would fight those-with to gain the better weapons for themselves.”

That was the curse of the truldemagar. Unafflicted men varied all the way from the supremely self-controlled to the utterly undisciplined. But most men occupied some middle ground. Among trolls, the disciplined were fewer, the unruly more numerous, and the middle ranks more heedless.

“Why bother with your secret experiments then? When there’s no use to them?”

“R-e-a-l-l-y, Gael. Why do you think?” drawled Nathiar. “I like energetic experimentation. Isn’t the sheer fun of it reason enough?”

Gael repressed a sniff, refusing to rise to the bait. Nathiar had always loved catching his acquaintances off balance. Gael couldn’t imagine why Nathiar hadn’t tired of it long since, but the magus hadn’t.

“Is that your only reason,” Gael inquired mildly.

Nathiar’s thick lips twisted. “I had some hope that showing Carbraes what is possible might persuade him to alter his position,” he admitted.

Gael sat back, concealing his surprise at hearing his old enemy confess to good intentions. As a youth, Nathiar had loved playing pranks a little too much, but he hadn’t been truly bad. After he’d reached manhood his predilection for mischief seemed to grow nastier, and his concern for his victims—always slight—grew less. He wouldn’t expect Nathiar, as a troll, to possess interest in anyone’s well-being save his own.

Could Gael have misjudged his colleague? It seemed unlikely.

Questions from the past—the distant past—stirred within him. “Why did you do it? Cast that mean-spirited glamour?” he blurted. It had been the glamour that brought the truldemagar upon Nathiar, hadn’t it?

The magus recovered his sardonic mien. “Really, the rumors were endless, my dear Gael. Which ones did you hear?”

“That the ambassadress of Solmundia was prudish. That Erastys fancied her in spite of that. Or because of it. That you coveted her amulet from ancient Navellys. That you attempted to gain your way with the lady—for the both of you—by magical force, and it ruined you.”

“Ah.” Nathiar straightened and glanced at the carpet, more uneasy than Gael could remember ever seeing him. “That was the version we encouraged to spread.”

“But it was not true,” said Gael quietly.

Nathiar swallowed, pursing his lips. “No. It was not true.”

The receiving room’s door swung open before Nathiar could say more.

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As Gael opened the door onto the antechamber shared by the apartment of the magus and that of the secretarius (were he in residence there), a scullion emerged from Nathiar’s quarters. Carrying an empty tray, the boy took two casual steps toward the Cliff Stair and then stopped dead, eyes wide, at the sight of Gael. Unsurprising, given that Gael had never before spent a night (or even a day) in his official chambers.

“S-secretarius,” the boy stammered.

“Are you tower staff under the castellanum?” asked Gael, “Or one of Nathiar’s?”

“T-tower, sir.” The boy bobbed a bow.

“Could you fetch me a basin and a ewer of water?”

“Y-yes, sir! Right away, Secretarius!”

The boy started to scurry away.

“Will you have to go far?” asked Gael. “All the way to the well in the yard?”

“N-no, sir. Th-the castellanum insists that service be prompt. I’ll go to the closet on the next level down. And there are cisterns that supply water up here. S-sir.” The boy looked scared.

“What’s your name, son?” Gael made his voice gentle. He hadn’t meant to alarm the boy so.

“Alton, s-sir.”

“Well, Alton, there’s no need to be afraid. Are there more than merely basins and ewers in the castellanum’s supply closets? Could you fetch me a tooth twig and powder and jar in addition?”

“Of course, sir!” Alton looked surprised. Apparently the closets near the tower’s top held almost anything an important troll might desire. Gael wouldn’t know, since the chambers he occupied were considerably lower.

“What of a fresh shirt? Fresh socks and caputum?”

“I’ll get them right away, sir,” gasped the boy.

Well, those were welcome words. “Are you on an urgent errand for the magus? Or someone else important?”

“N-no, sir. I mean, yes, sir.” Alton didn’t seem to be sure if he were on his feet or on his head.

“Don’t neglect your other duties to administer to my needs,” said Gael.

Alton swallowed, then lifted his chin. “The magus is the only one who needs water so early, sir. I’d never neglect anything for any reason, sir,” he said earnestly. “I’d be honored to bring you whatever you need. Sir.”

Gael nodded. He wanted to get Alton in trouble no more than he’d wanted to startle the boy.

“I’ll await you just inside the door,” he said. “Knock when you return.”

“Yes, sir.” Alton’s stride was brisk rather than fearful as he hastened toward the stairs.

Back in the apartment of the secretarius, Gael scrutinized the receiving room. He’d prefer that the scullion not see the evidence of Nathiar’s illicit doings. He could simply relieve the boy of his burdens in the vestibule, but it would be more natural to allow him to carry the items through to the bastan’s room.

Gael bundled the smithing tools and gloves into the quenching bucket and carried them to the small room on the opposite side of the passage from the bastan’s chamber. It was empty. He left the bucket in a corner and then, returning to the receiving room, covered the biscuit ingot of copper with the leather apron, tucking in the strings so that it looked like a plain piece of hide. Did the ingot seem smaller than it had been? Just as he was checking the sacks of tin pebbles to be sure their openings were rolled well closed, Alton’s knock sounded on the front door.

Gael cast a swift look around—yes, the sacks and the concealed ingot were unremarkable—and went to open the door.

Alton’s eyes widened again when Gael ushered him into the bastan’s chamber to set down his loaded tray on the chest.

“You slept here, sir?”

Gael smiled. “Lord Carbraes urged me to reconsider occupying these rooms, but I haven’t decided if I will, which is why they possess no furnishings. The bastan’s bed was infinitely more comfortable than the floor, I assure you.”

Alton giggled, then flushed and looked at the floor. “I didn’t mean—”

“I intended you to laugh, Alton,” said Gael. “You were not disrespectful.”

“Oh, good,” gasped Alton.

“Is the castellanum very strict?”

“Oh, no, sir. I mean, yes, sir.” Alton pulled himself together with effort. “That is, he’s strict, but he’s fair.”

“Then why are you scared?” asked Gael. “You have done nothing wrong.”

Alton just stared at him, saying nothing.

“Is it because you do not know me? You’ve never served me before and don’t know what to expect?”

Alton nodded, eyes round.

“Have there been others who were unkind to you? Who hurt you?”

“The—the brigenen of the First Cohort. Sir.”

That was Dreben. Gael’s lips compressed, but he stayed silent. Anything he might say would only alarm Alton more.

“The castellanum won’t let any of us boys wait on the First anymore,” added Alton. “They have to manage for themselves. Lord Theron said to tell him if anyone else ever slapped us or threatened us, and he’d take care of him.” Alton’s shoulders had relaxed, and admiration shone in his face. “The castellanum protects us boys.”

Gael was glad to hear it. He might dislike Theron—he did dislike Theron—but he was relieved that the castellanum took care of the trolls under his authority.

“Well, I am not like the brigenen,” he said. “Do you believe me, Alton?”

The boy stood a little straighter. “Yes, sir.”

“Excellent.” Gael nodded. “So. I will perform my ablutions and change my dress and then depart. Do you have a way to enter later to clear away your tray and the chamberpot?”

“I’ll ask the steward for a key, sir.”

“And will there be trouble about it?”

“No, sir. The scullions sweep all the chambers regular.”

Gael had noticed that no dust had accumulated on the floors or in the corners.

“Then I will thank you and bid you depart upon your own business,” said Gael.

“Won’t you need anything else, sir? I can check back again, just in case,” suggested Alton.

Gael’s lip twitched. “You may check back, but do not be surprised if I am not present. My errand here is nearly complete.”

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