Why couldn’t anyone see the problem?

Why did no one help her?

Growing old with so many regrets was ghastly. They chastised her daily. She only hoped that she’d planted seeds in Zaidra’s mind. Soon they’d have more leverage. Truth was coming in the form of the valmasin, coming to set things right in Vaidolin. They’d lay it all bare once and for all.

She shuddered. And then, war. Whether it was bloody remained to be seen.

“Be quick!” she commanded. “Her people are gone.”

Sinnin appeared from a hallway and searched for hair around the seat.

“Not one, high matron,” he said.

Gishna sighed, her chest rattling with each breath. She grasped Maunyn’s arm. “Peace, my consort. We must have peace in my valley, in my city.”

He stiffened under her grip. “As you say, consort,” he said.

“Sinnin, escort me,” she said. “I will study the ledgers once more. We must have options.”

Yes, whatever was happening in Vakayne, whatever conspiracy they effected under the guise of isolation, it must not harm her plans.

“Peace!” she blurted and hacked. Maunyn was already gone. “If he doesn’t make peace, the valleys will erupt.”

Vakayne didn’t have a valley to worry about. It holed up in its dark cleft under the gaze of black peaks. Miles and miles of impassable mountains. They must be rotting away in those black towers.

“Yes, high matron,” Sinnin said. “That wildling champion has certainly stirred them up.”

Indeed, he had. Why had she encouraged Joumina? She must turn it to her advantage somehow.

38

Taul watched Ryldia sitting in the estate’s garden, surrounded by her aunt, cousins, and nieces. They were sitting peacefully as a valley priestess lectured on the herbs and flowers growing in the estate’s gardens. The woman made expert poultices and tinctures.

Silla Lor’Vamtrin, a little lump of gray compared to his tall, willowy consort, sat to Ryldia’s left and watched over the proceedings like a hawk. She agreed to stay indefinitely, and that set the house members on edge because Silla had fortitude no one wanted to challenge. They sat according to Silla’s design, the most loyal members closest to their matron. If another house attacked Lor’Toshtolin now, Taul preferred their doom come from a valley house like Lor’Vamtrin that cared about Zeldra more than anything.

As Silla had promised, the valley air did Ryldia good. Already she looked rejuvenated amidst the flowers and vines. A mass of gray clouds to the east threatened, but even the rains brought peace—at least he thought so. With each day that passed since the audience, he understood Lor’Toshtolin was not the buildings or shops, not the accounts and debt sheets, not even the orchards, as precious as they were. Ryldia was the house. Her relatives acknowledged that. Any threat to her was a threat to all. As Ryldia’s strength returned, it was as if a hidden web had formed between them all. That was the matron’s sorcery at work. His consort wasn’t completely empty.

Of course, they still wanted to replace her. House guards patrolled the grounds and his best knights guarded Ryldia night and day.

Confident that she was safe, he left her in that peaceful setting, sixteen miles from the crater’s grasp. He had decided to follow the agent’s lead. It wasn’t just the traffic of children that defiled Hosmyr, nor the rotting orchards. Everything seemed to unravel just beneath the surface. Had he been so blind all these years, comfortable in his small, yet respectable estate? Isn’t that what Mornae life was about? An orderly house? He wondered, though.

No, it was never about that. That was just an appearance. Orderly for what purpose? An orchard was not just well-kept. Maintaining was for southerners. Mornae orchards, Mornae land, needed much more, both from the soil and plants as from the tenders. There was going forward or going back. There could be no standing still.

And he had been standing still for far too long.

He’d dressed more appropriately this time, leaving his finery, as middling as it was, behind, and donning the garb of one of his laborers, the clothing the house loaned them to wear while working. The clothes didn’t stink, though. His laborers were hardworking, honest valley folk, not the denizens that infested the filthy stone hive of the Bottoms. Valley dirt was honest. In the Bottoms it was a greasy, putrid filth. It clung to everything. Oxen and horses plodded through the streets there; the forges and distilleries of the Upper filled the air with smoke, creating a dense cloud that settled over it all like a blanket.

A cluster of buildings crept up a small hill, each with a shingle outside with what had been their house emblem. The haphazardly arranged buildings climbed atop each other with wood beams, planks, and discarded stone from the crater. Clay and sand mortar held it all together.

He turned away, embarrassed for them. It would be better to leave Vaidolin altogether than suffer this shame. To live in defeat was no way to live. Better to head out and start over.

Would he know when defeat had arrived?

If we were in this place, he thought, we’d know for certain.

People huddled about in clumps, looking to him as if he might be an overseer or steward looking for workers. A fight broke out ahead. Two women glared at each other while their consorts—he guessed that’s what they were—fought each other, knives glimmering against their grimy forms. Others gathered round to watch.

He passed by, noting the ragged tunics, the frayed remains of a badge on one man’s vest. Had he known him at Isilmyr? The priestesses stood aside with quiet terror in their eyes, the rest of them still like statues. What they fought over didn’t matter. Was it work in the crater, or a house’s favor, or even food? It shored up his resolve to see them like this. He would not allow it to happen to Lor’Toshtolin. He could not! If pressed, if need drove him to it, he would trample them all underfoot. The heat from the binding rose from his gut, filling his chest, climbing his neck and enveloping the base of his skull. His eyes moistened with tears. He rubbed them with the back of his hand.

It caused him discomfort to know he could think this way, something he’d never known or acknowledged about himself. Necessity pushed him—just as the black rock of the crater had once pressed his ancestors to the brink.

It was strange, slinking about here like a wolf on the scent of a rabbit. He felt more alive than he had for a long while. His hand curled about the handle of his kithaun knife gingerly, memories of his academy days returning.

He thought back to how he’d enjoyed the bouts, the tourneys, the opportunity to face down an opponent. Wrestling and archery were his best skills to be sure. The memories gave him courage, strengthened his spine despite the growing fear, as he turned into an alley where the rogue had a room in a brothel.

He stood in the shadow of a doorway across the street to wait. It was quiet this time of day, but the agent had said this was when the man set out to work.

Two hours passed. A ragged-looking priestess stepped out of the brothel, wrapping herself in a long shawl. Shameful, Taul thought. He’d not let this happen to Ryldia. He pitied the woman as she scurried down an alley and disappeared.

The ring and bracer ignited with blacklight, then. A whisper thundered in his skull.

There! Get him!

His quarry had exited the brothel unseen, sauntering through the broken shadows of the buildings as if playing a game. Taul ran after him and shadows erupted from the devices, enveloping him in a strange warmth. The voices echoed and chattered, excited to be at work again. Then the rogue disappeared, stepping through a break into a deeper shadow.

Taul paused, his throat in a knot. His hand tightened on the knife handle; his arm and shoulder were unresponsive to the simplest commands.

Move. Move!

His feet remained fixed to the grimy stones. His heart throbbed in his throat. The shadows danced before him as he tried to pierce them. Then he saw it! A shape was watching him, and then it slipped away.

Get him! Get him!

The assassin-thoughts stored in the devices screamed in his mind, frustrated by his incompetence. If you don’t move, we’ll kill you instead, one said.

Taul moved sluggishly, like he was in the boggy orchard.

Don’t struggle with it, a sage voice said.

He moved then, his legs sliding back and forth.

There!

He can’t hide from us!

He chased the lingering trail of the rogue’s passing. He was a hound bound to a scent.

The Bottoms were stirring as he entered the plaza of the east gate market. The shadows eased, and he looked behind him, sensing something there. He stepped backward, into a work line. They pushed and shoved him away. He hid in the arch of a shop entrance across from the magistrate offices. He glanced about, searching for the trail. The devices had gone silent.