Path of the Sun: A Novel of Dhulyn and Parno (9 page)

“The common room can wait, I think,” Gun said. “For the moment I’d rather have the privacy of our own rooms.”

The Scholar hadn’t misspoken; he and Mar actually had rooms, a miniature suite comprised of a sitting room with a single window on the stable yard and a tiny bedroom, with just the bed, hooks for clothing, and a narrow cupboard.

“There was only the one table when we came,” Mar was saying, as she pulled the room’s two chairs around for her guests. “But the innkeeper helped us throw together this worktable when we told him what we needed.” Two sawhorses had been set up along the wall under the window, and what was obviously an old door had been placed on it as a tabletop. Stacked neatly and clearly arranged in some order were bound books, scrolls, pens, drawing chalks and charcoal, inks in three colors, and clean, unused parchments and sheets of paper.

“We might be more private in a public room,” Dhulyn pointed out, her hand on the back of the chair Mar had offered her, “where we can easily see who is close to us.”

Gun raised his eyebrows. “Are you trying to tell me you couldn’t tell whether there was someone close enough to hear us, even through these walls? It may be a long time since we last met, but not so long that I’d forget what Mercenaries can do.” He looked from one to the other. “Well? Is there anyone in the rooms around us? Anyone in the stable yard close enough to hear?”

Dhulyn signaled to him, and Parno shut his eyes, the better to concentrate on the Hunter’s
Shora
. No one in the hallway on this side of the stairs, no one in the room next to them. He went into the bedroom, where, he noticed, the bed was tidy. No one in the room on the far side. He came back into the sitting room and went to the window. The innkeeper’s son had finished brushing his pony and was nowhere to be seen.

“It would be fairly simple to climb up this wall,” Parno remarked.

“Oh, certainly,” Gun agreed. “For a Mercenary Brother. I don’t think we need to worry about anyone else.”

“Come now.” Dhulyn sat down. “What is it you have to tell us that we must be so careful no one overhears? Evidently not merely what brings you to Uraklios?”

The two looked at each other, and when some signal had passed, Mar spoke.

“No, though I will have to tell you something of that, to explain how we learned what . . . what’s troubling us now.” She placed her hands on the edge of the makeshift table and hoisted herself up. Gun leaned on the table next to her, and she put her hand on his shoulder.

Parno looked at Dhulyn and lifted his right eyebrow. She blinked twice. There was no one outside of the Brotherhood itself—no land-based people in any case, he amended, that he and Dhulyn would trust more than Gundaron of Valdomar and Mar-eMar Tenebro. And he would have thought that they felt the same. What, then, was making them so hesitant to speak?

“We first came almost seven moons ago,” Mar began. Perhaps, after all, she had only been ordering her thoughts. “There’s no Library here in Menoin,” she said, referring to the strongholds of the Scholars. “But there are Scholars, and one of them came across a reference in one of the ancient books belonging to the Tarkinate that seemed to indicate that the Caid ruins just north of Uraklios, on the other side of those hills,” she gestured out the window, “were once a major city. Valdomar petitioned for the right to investigate and, if possible, excavate the site.”

“The elders at Valdomar have been sending me on this type of investigation,” Gun said. “Ever since I revealed my Mark, they’ve found it useful.” He grimaced. “No pun intended.”

“So I take it you Found this Caid city?” Dhulyn said.

“Here, let me show you.” Gun unrolled a map and laid it out on the table, which it covered like a cloth. “Here, you see? That’s the pass through the hills. Here’s the site of the old city.” He looked up. “At one time it was probably the main city, and the ancient equivalent of Uraklios was merely its harbor.”

“What’s this,” Parno said, laying his finger on an odd design on the map. “It looks like a maze.”

Gun nodded. “A part of one, certainly, though we can’t tell what it was supposed to defend. It’s just to the west of the Caid ruins and may even overlap them somewhat, it’s hard to say.” He fell into silent contemplation of the map.

“Gun.” Dhulyn’s rough silk voice was gentle. “Just tell us.”

He looked at her, lips pressed together, the corners of his mouth turned down. “It was here,” he said, laying his ink-stained finger on a spot very close to the design he’d labeled the labyrinth. “It was here that we found the body.”

Dhulyn frowned, her blood-red brows drawn into a vee. “A shepherd?” she suggested.

Gun and Mar both shook their heads. “How much have you heard about the death of the old Tarkin, Falcos’ father?”

“The old Tarkin? It was
his
body you found?” Parno gave a silent whistle. “We’d been told a sudden illness, nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Well, I’ve never heard of the kind of sudden illness that can cut a man into pieces and leave strange marks carved into his skin.”

“You sure it was the Tarkin?” Dhulyn said.

“They pretended it wasn’t, and we pretended to believe them,” Mar said. “What else could we do? But it’s not as though we didn’t recognize the body. We’d seen Tarkin Petrion several times by that point. And besides ...” Mar swallowed.

“Besides,” Gun said, “we could recognize what was left of the clothing. It was later that day the Tarkin’s illness was announced, and two days later his death.”

Dhulyn leaned back in her chair. She braided the fingers of her right hand in the sign against ill luck. She looked from Gun to Mar and back again before glancing at Parno. He shrugged one shoulder.

“There’s more,” she said. “Isn’t there? Even if the Tarkin was murdered—however gruesomely—and his people covered it up, that in itself would not send you looking for Mercenary Brothers.” Parno could hear the unspoken question that tightened his Partner’s voice. Where were the Brothers
they
had come looking for?

“Tell us,” Dhulyn said.

“This was not the first.” Gun cleared his throat and said it again. “This was not the first body found mutilated. If even half of what I have heard is true, there have been at least seven.”

C
LEONA OF ARDERON sat sideways in the wide window seat of the salon.
Her
salon. Large, and overly furnished for Cleona’s taste with prettily embroidered stools and tiny tables, it was the public room of the Tarkina of Menoin’s apartments. There was a smaller, more intimate sitting room within, where Cleona could expect to begin her day privately, with only her maids and attendants.

And perhaps her husband.

“Well, he’s certainly pretty enough,” she said aloud.

Alaria appeared at the door of one of the inner rooms. “Ah, but has he been trained in the arts to please a woman?” Her solemn face dissolved into a grin, and Cleona felt herself relax.

“I thank the gods for whatever impulse possessed you to come with me,” she said to the younger woman. “I just had a sudden image of what I would be feeling right now if it were Lavanis standing in that doorway instead of you.”

Alaria immediately raised her brows, made her eyes as round as possible, and hitched up her shoulders. She minced her way between the furniture in such as way that Cleona was already laughing by the time Alaria reached her.

“That is so perfectly Lavanis,” she said, hand against her side. “Except that all the while you should have been lecturing me on politics and chiding me for not having studied the histories of Menoin since the time of the Caids.”

“And all the while implying,” Alaria said in a nasal voice, “that
she
would have made a better choice than you.”

Cleona felt her smile freeze and was sorry, as the light suddenly left Alaria’s face. They both knew that Cleona had tried very hard to arrange that it
should
be someone else who came. But the Tarkina’s own daughters were not of an age for the marriage as it was originally planned, with the late Tarkin of Menoin, Falcos Akarion’s father. And when the circumstances changed, well, they had changed too late to make any difference to Cleona. Alaria was one of the few who had known that Cleona had been about to ask their Tarkina for permission to marry when the representatives of Menoin had arrived, asking for their ancient rights and throwing all her hopes and plans into the wind.

“Alaria, why did
you
come?” Cleona waited patiently as her cousin came the rest of the way across the room and lowered herself onto the closest of the backless stools scattered through the room.

“What was there for me at home?” Alaria said at last. Her tone was matter-of-fact and practical, but Cleona remembered the child she’d found weeping in the Tarkina’s garden not so many years before. “I’m the younger daughter of a small House, after all,” she pointed out. “Not quite close enough to the Royal House for any real advantage and too close to allow me to enter the Guard or choose some other profession. The best I could hope for was marriage into a daughterless family, and even there, my mother and the Tarkina would have had the last say, not me.” Alaria shook her head. “You know perfectly well I could have ended up an unpaid assistant in my mother’s—and then my sister’s—stables. Tolerated by my nieces and nephews. The landless aunt.”

“A frightening prospect indeed.” She smiled as she said it, but Cleona was very aware of how accurate Alaria’s words were. “And so you preferred exile here in Menoin?”

“Yes.” Alaria spoke simply, with her usual directness. “Though hardly exile, from my point of view. When I was little, when we did come to court, you were the only one of the cousins who became my friend, who didn’t laugh at my country clothes or—worse—look right through me as someone of no importance, unworthy of notice.” She was leaning forward, her elbows on her knees, staring into the middle of the room

“You? Small chance, my dear.” Cleona spoke brusquely, though again, she knew what Alaria said was true. She might easily have been in Alaria’s stirrups herself, had she not been an only child and therefore the one to inherit. “You had only to get near a horse to prove your worth to anyone. Your mother was a fool to let the order of birth constrain her.”

“Luckily, as it turned out, since it’s meant I could come with you.” Alaria looked at Cleona with her head tilted to one side. “After all, I’ll be in charge of the new line of horses here. And seriously, I had only to imagine what my life would have been like without you at court to begin packing for the journey to Menoin.”

Cleona fell silent, turning the unfamiliar rings on her fingers.

“So tell me,” Alaria said now, “what do you
really
think of Falcos Akarion?”

Cleona smiled again. “We can hope that he’s been given training as a Tarkin,” she said. “And that he’s as useful as he is ornamental. Though that might be hard to accomplish.”

“Well, there’s always the uncle.”

“The uncle does not rule,” Cleona pointed out. “He’s the late Tarkin’s younger half brother, from a second wife. Though I imagine he makes an excellent first adviser. He is too plain to succeed with his looks alone.”

“Uncle to the Tarkin would be a good match, I imagine,” Alaria said, her chin in her hand, though Cleona knew the girl well enough to know when she was jesting. “Even if he
is
quite plain.”

“Shall I ask my uncle-to-be if he is wed? Perhaps you should have him?” Alaria answered Cleona’s grin, but their smiles faded sooner than their light words suggested.

Cleona made up her mind, now was the time. “Alaria. There are things I must tell you, things I was charged to keep to myself until we arrived here.” Cleona bit the inside of her lip. “About why this marriage is so important.”

“I knew there had to be something to make you change your ...” Alaria had begun in triumph, but her voice faltered as she neared the delicate subject of the plans Cleona had changed. “To make you decide as you did,” she amended.

“How much do you know of the history between our two peoples?”

Alaria frowned. “Now
you’re
sounding like Lavanis,” she said, her brows drawn down in a vee. “I know our horse herds are said to have come from Menoin, from here, but long ago, perhaps in the time of the Caids.”

“Not quite so far back as that, I think. The histories tell us that here in Menoin there was once a dispute about the crown between a brother and sister, twins.”

“Even so, as I understand it, the one who was born first would inherit.” Alaria got to her feet, poured out two glasses of watered wine from a pitcher on a nearby table, and returned, handing one to Cleona.

Cleona took a sip, cleared her throat and continued. “True. But there were those among the High Noble Houses who supported the old ways and insisted that, as it had been the mother who was Tarkina, the daughter should inherit.”

Alaria paused with her glass halfway to her lips. “And naturally the Houses lined up, each behind their chosen candidate. I can see where this will end,” she said, looking sideways at Cleona. “But how did they avoid civil war?”

“There is an ancient ritual of the Caids, called Walking the Path of the Sun, that usually settles such matters for the Menoins. In this case, however, both brother and sister passed the test.” Cleona leaned on the arm of her chair as she considered the thought that had just struck her. “It was as if Mother Sun were telling them to resolve the issue themselves.”

“What did they do?”

“Well, silly as it sounds, they finally decided to lay the problem in another god’s lap. They drew lots, the winner to stay and become ruler of Menoin, the loser to go and establish a separate Tarkinate in lands Menoin owned to the south.”

“And the sister drew Ships.” Alaria was looking out into the middle distance, as if she were seeing the toss of the coin, the sunlight flashing on it as it fell, spinning.