“I wouldn’t trust that. Traditions fall away.”

“I am still the prime consort of a matron of Ilor’Hosmyr’s line.”

Balniss looked at him with a touch of pity. “Be careful, Taul. Go quickly to have the testament made.”

“Shouldn’t you come with me to have it written properly?”

Balniss hesitated, so unlike him. “No, you go. I will work on these other things. I’d rather not show my face in Daushalan’s temple.”

“As you wish.”

A chill rushed through the tavern. It was already night, and the patrons had returned to their work. The brothers parted in silence, with determined faces.

Three days later, they met again in the steward’s office of the valley estate. The fieldhands were out working. His fingers tingled with the desire to work alongside them. Already, he felt like a new man.

“There is a pattern here, then?” Taul asked, looking over the documents his brother had brought him.

“It’s very faint,” Balniss said. “Nothing that could stand up in a magistrate’s court. Still, it is a sign of something.”

“Yes, yes. Very good.” He didn’t sound convinced.

Balniss got up and paced.

“You’ve been strange since I told you all this,” Taul said. “Even more than usual.”

His brother frowned. “There is one thing, one more weapon you may use when facing her.”

“What is it?”

Balniss’s lips pursed tightly, holding in a terrible secret. A breath hissed from his lips, and he hesitated. He paced about; the words refusing to exit.

“Are you going to tell me or not?” Taul asked. “I have enough burden at the moment.”

“I shouldn’t tell you. But you are my brother.” The word lingered awkwardly in the air. Brothers weren’t meant to have bonds since they may end up in rival houses. Some thought the diviners existed to give men a place to have such friendships.

Taul sat back, his hands resting on the evidence. “Yes, that we are.” Regardless of what may have happened when they were young, Balniss had been a brother to him. Taul wouldn’t cast that aside now.

“There are things I could tell you… for example, my reasons for becoming a diviner. The truth of it all.”

He seemed constrained by a bond of his own.

“What is it?” Taul asked. “You act like you’re bound to a consort.” He half chuckled, half accused him.

“Change is coming, brother. I want you to be on the right side of it. I can’t say it openly. Use your head. Think a step further, Taul.”

Balniss looked uncomfortable, like a twisting rope.

Taul pressed his temples. “If you would just say it plainly. I can’t face the high matron and her consort on hints and wild imaginings.”

Balniss sighed and, with his finger, drew a glyph in a puddle of water on the table. Taul chuckled, hands raised. What could be so mysterious? The weather? A change in the seasons? What could a diviner like his brother be so worried about? He looked down, tapping the edge of the table lightly with ink-stained fingers. “Tell them, if you wish, that it is in your power to inform them of their actions.” Balniss looked him straight in the eye, lips tight, and then pressed a finger to his lips. “And even suggest their wrath.”

Taul stared at the Naukvyrae glyph, all too familiar from the increasing graffiti even within Halkamas. The silence sat between them like a heavy shadow and Taul’s ears rang annoyingly.

“You mustn’t tell them about Hosmyr,” he blurted, suddenly terrified. “Or have you already?”

Balniss shook his head.

For the first time in his life, Taul wondered if his brother was being truthful. There was a hard edge to him, a new loyalty of which he was not aware—a bond as strong as a consort’s.

“You must have multiple weapons with which to threaten,” Balniss said. “Deploy them as needed, saving the strongest for last—and none if she agrees immediately.”

“Which she won’t?”

Balniss’s eyes smiled gleefully.

“What amuses you?” Taul asked.

“I’m imagining the crone receiving your demand.”

“You seem happy to be against our high matron.”

“She is a sham,” Balniss said. He squinted, a sneer on his lips. “Like all of them. That will change soon enough. You must prepare.”

He’d never been so blunt, and Taul itched all over, sweat building. He was no conspirator. Except now, he did more than the propagandists with their bloody paint and slogans.

“Stay at the valley estate from this day on, if you can,” Balniss said.

“You make it sound dire, brother.”

Had Balniss lost his senses amidst all those scrolls? Outside, the servants raked up piles of gold lined purple leaves and carted them off to mulch the gardens.

“And what outcome do you see for me?” Taul asked. He’d not wanted to ask, but now the question was out.

Balniss’s eyes softened. “Nothing good, brother. Nothing good.”

“But good for your friends?” Anger tinged his voice.

If his words hurt Balniss, he made no show of it.

“I have work to do,” he said. “The next audience is in eight days. And then winter. You could wait for spring.”

Winter, with its dead calm, wouldn’t do. Winter was a time for assassinations, despite the call to contemplate and rest before the goddess’s return. All that time to sit in a house where his matron consort would not speak to him. All that time expecting knives to strike from every shadow. An entire season of hoping Maunyn didn’t find out who had taken the boy.

Taul shook his head. “No, let it be in eight days, before the goddess leaves us for winter. Let it be then.”

Balniss nodded, doubt in his eyes; a sparkle, an edge that Taul had never noticed before. Had he been so blind all these years? So focused on Ryldia while the world changed around him?