“Good knowing you, Ren,” someone said.

“Ren the Dark,” another said.

They chuckled. What did they know? His master inspired fear and with good reason, but none of them was a… was a… what, then? His jaw blushed hard and hot. What was he if not the son of Maunyn's black blade? They should have let him into the back room at once, to be in their master's company like a true Mornae.

Nevyll stood apart and pushed the door in. “In you go.”

The ball of shadow dissipated, twining about Ren's fingers, caressing his skin.

The door opened to a dark hallway, devoid of all light. If it wasn’t for his own excellent dark sight, he would have tumbled down the stone steps. Ahead, the darkness was thicker, denser, swallowing whatever light crept in from under the door.

At the bottom, he stood at the entrance to a long hallway with arched openings along the sides. Pure silence enveloped the place and made him want to scream to break its hold on him. There were no obvious glyphs or enchantments but the place throbbed and was unnaturally warm. His fingers glanced off the kith wall. Powerful sorcery reached for him, and he plucked at it, daring it to try.

He swallowed as his fingers went numb. He'd have to be careful here. Out of habit, he wove the Dark into a ball of shadow, but resisted the urge to hide. Who did he pretend to hide from here? He despised being so exposed, but Maunyn awaited him.

He inched down the hall, passed the first door, and then the second. It was only at the third door that he noticed a thin stream of light embedded in the stone running down the center of the hallway.

The darkness crowded, allowing him to see only the stream and an arm's length around.

A door opened ahead. A servant waited. No, a squire. Taller than Ren, but with a boyish face, hair streaming down either side of his face. Daggers at his hips. The young man looked at him with disdain. As Ren approached, the young man stepped aside. Ren prepared to hand over his weapons, but the young man just motioned him inside and closed the door.

The soft strum of lyres and breathy flutes reached him as the oppressive darkness receded, pushed back into the hallway. The chamber was expansive and divided into sections by arches and columns. Translucent drapes separated the sections. Shadow shapes moved on them.

The squire pointed down the center and to the back.

Dread choked him. A crushing fear came on suddenly. Ren regretted insisting on seeing Maunyn and wanted to turn back. But the boy! The men were right. He'd gone soft. Damned boy. And yet he needed to know. No, he demanded to know what had happened, but his mind was a blank on how to do it. He wanted to strike Maunyn with his blades, poor little steel blades against legendary black knives.

He moved past a section of the vast chamber where a gauzy curtain lifted away lazily. A man sat between two lovely priestesses, fantastical in their beauty, like nothing Ren could even imagine. They each held a glass of wine and were bare as the day they were born. Their eyes turned down from him like he was a servant.

He moved on, eyes on the light-infused floor guiding him to his master. He heard voices, singing, whispers, and other sounds of pleasure, but did not turn to look.

At the back, a line of knights stood along the wall. They stood a head taller than him, each one a Mornae model. One pressed his hand to a kithaun plate in the door behind him. They were stone-faced, weapons ready, but relaxed. What did thrice-badged knights have to worry about with a street urchin raised to weave a ball of shadow?

The wall behind them flickered and twitched until there was nothing but another open space, a large chamber with a fine ironwood table at the center. Seven lords, each as grand as Maunyn, were gambling. Ren stepped inside.

Heaps of marble, silver, and gemstone chits sat in piles on the table. One lord tossed a dark red garnet gracefully in the pot. They didn't look at him. They didn't care who he was. Each one had long hair, glimmering with goddess-light, faces angled with narrowed eyes, silver and gray and almost white eyed.

They bore sigils of vines and hammers and beehives. Only Maunyn bore the fox, embroidered on a black silk tunic, twisting about a silver-faced goddess in glossy black thread, maw snapping. Servants moved in and out from the table, filling glasses, their eyes low and fixed on their target.

Each lord had his own servant serving him and a squire standing at his right shoulder, bearing Nishmur or Maetar spears.

“You are too kind to your servants, Maunyn,” one lord said as he tossed a marble chit on the pile.

“Am I?” Maunyn said, casting a baleful glance at Ren.

Ren's resolve melted away. Maunyn gave him the look that he used when silence was needed. These lords were just here to gamble—they were not his lord's intimates. Not like Ren.

“Stand behind me,” Maunyn said.

The squire bearing Maunyn's black spear made room. The young man, a head taller than Taul, was high born and offered no acknowledgment. He held the spear with two hands, knuckles white from the effort. Every second he touched that weapon with bare skin, he grew in power, drop by drop.

Ren watched the game unfold, resisting the urge to yawn. He'd never stood so still. The chits piled up and moved around, sometimes won, sometimes recovered. Maunyn didn't seem to care whether he won or lost. These rich men with their rich games irked Ren. He'd thought himself well off with his mountain of woods and silvers. One sapphire chit on that table could devour his vault in one gulp. His mind drifted to other things. To his boy and what they might do once he recovered him. They'd go south to that tiny lumber farm. He'd find a village widow to care for the lad, one with little expectation but the hope of a hand up. That would give him time to find a proper consort. Then he'd learn to run a lumber business… or he'd head to the border and run some scams… that seemed easier… more certain. But the boy? What would he think of such a father?

Clapping and laughing broke him out of his reverie. The game had ended, and the lords moved on to other pleasures, along with their servants and squires.

Maunyn stood over him. “Never again,” he said in a low voice.

Ren trembled but didn't look up. Maunyn's hand settled on his shoulder like a stack of stone. How easily his master could crush him, and yet how proud he felt to be in his confidence.

“I've given you so much,” Maunyn said. “I wonder if I have been too generous.”

Ren shook his head.

“I urge you to forget this matter,” Maunyn said. “I see you don't mind the crater now. There is much to do here. Important tasks for the high matron herself. Understand?”

Ren nodded.

“Focus on your work,” Maunyn said. “Be diligent. The tasks I give you from now on require great skill and loyalty.”

“As you say, milord,” Ren said, barely able to breathe.

“Loyalty is everything to men like us, Ren. Don't forget this lesson. Nothing, not even the promise of a boy to call son… nothing is more important.”

Ren swallowed the emotion welling in his throat. His master was right. He'd let fantasies carry him away. He wanted to ask about this new work but kept it to himself. This place was too nice for blood splatter. His lord's words seemed inviting, but it was just as likely Maunyn would have him killed later, in an alley, and leave his corpse in the muck of the Bottoms.

And yet…

“I will be loyal, milord.”

Maunyn straightened and released his shoulder. “If you prevail,” he said, “Vaidolin will open to you. And then you will truly know what is possible.”

“That is all I have ever wanted, milord.”

“But fail my matron, Ren...” Maunyn sighed and shook his head. He turned and left, squire marching behind him, bearing the black spear of Ilor'Hosmyr.

A long-held breath gurgled out of Ren like a death rattle, and a nearby servant snickered.

This is it, Ren, he thought. That boy, that good boy, was a sacrifice to your greatness. Tears formed in his eyes. You didn't die in vain. I promise you I'll make it count.

28

Gishna's beloved family chattered around her, but her mind was elsewhere, stuck on the recent audience and that sad man who'd come asking for a child.

Children overflowed for her to pick like flowers, plucked at her pleasure. Yet she would not part with a single one. Not while slots remained unfilled on the dozens of trees lining the scriptorium. Hadn't he ruined her plan, anyway? He was a smudge on a canvas now, this Taul Lor'Nevtar—now Toshtolin, a revered house, practically a founder, harkening back to the third accord. But so much time had passed between that time and the present, an eternity. Those people had no resemblance to the current Toshtolin.

She winced. Or Hosmyr, for that matter. She shivered, recalling the deeds of the first Hosmyr matrons.

And yet, the couple should not have failed if they had only waited. No one waited these days. She hadn’t and had brought herself and her house to the edge of doom. Their bloodline had been born amidst the ancient orchards, the rich soil made so by their sorcery, and now they failed to throw a single shoot into the sunlight.