“How did it happen, Ludunte?”
The young ixchel man stood with his back to the bulkhead, sweating. “My lord Taliktrum,” he said, “I swear to you I don’t know.”
“Three of our prisoners walk free,” Taliktrum continued, pacing back and forth in the lamplight, his Dawn Soldiers lounging behind him, predators at rest. “Two are allies of my treacherous aunt. The third-tell me, Ludunte, who is the third?”
“C-captain Rose, my lord,” stammered Ludunte.
“Captain Rose,” echoed Taliktrum furiously. “The sadist who kept an ixchel locked in his desk for years. In a birdcage. The only man aboard to oversee an actual extermination-did you know he once killed an entire clan of our people, aboard an Auxlei grain ship? We just gave him his freedom on a satin pillow, Ludunte. And the blane antidote was in your keeping.”
From a far corner, Ensyl looked on with unease. It was not going well for Ludunte. Taliktrum wanted someone to fall on his sword, to accept the blame for the disaster quickly and fully, sparing the Visionary Leader (yet another ridiculous title) any further embarrassment. But Ludunte was not playing along. Taliktrum, never one to endure much contradiction, was furious.
They were in the ixchel stronghold on the mercy deck: a series of crates boxed in particularly deep by other cargo, all but unreachable by the crew that had stowed them. Of course there had always been the danger that the humans would abruptly want something from the crates: ixchel clans lived in perpetual readiness to evacuate their homes. But Taliktrum’s decision to seize hostages had changed all that. No humans walked the lower half of the ship unescorted. They were, in a certain respect, safer than most members of the clan had ever been in their lifetime. But that safety had just been shaken to the core.
“You’re Treasure Keeper to the clan,” said Taliktrum, glowering at Ludunte. “You had a key to the strongbox, and changed its location each month, for the sake of security.”
“I do not choose the locations, my lord.”
“I choose them,” Taliktrum snapped. “And you went alone to collect the pills when we decided on this furlough, this hour’s charity. How could you possibly confuse the temporary antidote with the permanent? It’s inexcusable.”
Atop the hunting cabinet that had become his solitary refuge, Lord Talag nodded in agreement. The cabinet was one of some twenty furnishings from the Isiq mansion back in Etherhorde that had passed, in effect, to the ixchel: old Admiral Isiq had never come for his belongings-some whispered that he’d been quietly killed after the fiasco of Thasha’s wedding-and Thasha herself had forgotten about the crates, or else never realized that any of her family’s goods remained in storage. Or perhaps, thought Ensyl, she knows perfectly well, but wants no reminders of the father she lost in Simja.
“You’d be wiser to come clean, Ludunte,” said Taliktrum.
“But my good lord! I’ve done nothing wrong!”
“You cannot keep secrets from me,” said Taliktrum, raising his voice suddenly. “I have been given a fate. I see further, deeper than you. I see our final triumph as a people-and every selfish, stupid act that impedes that triumph.”
“Then you know I speak the truth,” said Ludunte.
“I know all the truth you speak, and all the falsehood.” Suddenly Taliktrum whirled and seized Ludunte by the jaw. “I must make you see it as well,” he purred. “I must hear it from your lips, know that your mind has accepted the truth, if you are to go on serving me-serving the clan, the clan of course, through me, its rightful leader.”
Ludunte made a grave error, then. His head could not move, but at the words rightful leader his eyes flickered briefly to Lord Talag on his sullen perch. The look did not escape Taliktrum. His mouth twisted with rage. “I will drown you,” he said. “I will call on the clan to sanction your punishment, and they will do so.”
Ludunte closed his eyes, trembling. But he said what honor demanded, and with an air of certainty at that. “If the clan requires my death, I give it gladly. My life is in its keeping.”
“No less than our own,” came ritual response from every mouth. Ensyl spoke too, though the Dawn Soldiers shot her hateful looks. To those fanatics she was as much a traitor as her former mistress. Diadrelu had trusted the giants, and taken one as a lover. Ensyl’s sin was loving Diadrelu-adoring her, believing in her to the point of rebellion. She had defied Taliktrum, taken Dri’s body from him, delivered it to Hercol. Yes, she was a hypocrite to speak those words. She had broken the clan-bond in favor of her mistress. But Ludunte had also sworn service to Dri for the entire length of his training, and yet he had led her into the trap in which she died. Wasn’t that the greater crime? Not by ixchel law, of course. Yet somewhere, surely, there was a law of the heart?
“There are three possibilities,” said Taliktrum. “One, you confused the pills, mistaking the permanent antidote for the temporary.”
“Never,” said Ludunte.
“Two, you deliberately brought the wrong pills to the forecastle house, because you wished, for some reason, for the giants to be free.”
“My lord-nonsense!”
“Three, you told someone of the location of the pills, and they-or someone they told in turn-tampered with the vials themselves.”
“I told no one!” cried Ludunte, with rising desperation. “Lord Taliktrum, why don’t you trust me? Have I not been your faithful servant in all things?”
Taliktrum looked at him piercingly. “Leave us,” he said. “I will speak with my private council, of your faith and other matters.”
He turned, dismissing Ludunte with an imperious toss of his hand. Ludunte’s eyes swept the room in great distress, settling at last on Ensyl. She returned him all the sympathy she could manage, which was next to none. Stiffly, Ludunte walked to the door. Taliktrum’s Dawn Soldiers hissed and spat at him as he departed.
Taliktrum’s gaze fell on Ensyl. “You” was all he said.
She rose and followed him past the file of soldiers. They were silenced by the nearness of Taliktrum, but their eyes told her what they would do if given the chance. Some studied her body, others fingered their spears. He’s destroying them, destroying their minds, Ensyl thought. They’re cut off from every tradition of the clan save obedience and bloodshed. Dri had always warned her that courage without reason was worse than no courage at all. Skies above, he’s a greater threat to us than Rose.
They entered what Taliktrum called his “meditation chamber,” where a single lamp burned upon a table fashioned from the lid of a pickle barrel. Myett was there, of course, watching Ensyl like a nervous cat. So was Saturyk: tight-mouthed, quick-fingered, Taliktrum’s all-purpose spy. More startling was the presence of the Pachet Ghali, Myett’s stern, silver-haired grandfather. The title Pachet was given to few: it was the highest state of learning to which an ixchel could aspire. Ghali was a master musician: so great a master that the old, lost lore of ixchel-magic was said to live on in the song of his flute. Diadrelu had seen the proof. The man’s playing had called swallows from their nests on a cliff near Bramian, and Taliktrum, wearing one of the clan’s two priceless swallow- suits, had been able to command them like a small winged army.
“Close the door behind you, girl.”
Ensyl obeyed, masking her feelings with effort. I’m the same age as you.
“A look passed between you and Ludunte just now, did it not?” began Taliktrum, pouring himself a goblet of wine.
“He looked at me,” said Ensyl, “and I looked back.”
“You will address our leader by his title,” growled Saturyk.
“Which one?” said Ensyl.
“Ludunte was Dri’s other sophister,” cut in Taliktrum. “The two of you were closest to her of all the clan. Do you remain close now, you and he?”
“We never were especially close, Lord Taliktrum.”
“How is that possible? She chose the two of you out of many hundreds who wished to study at her knee. You trained together in Etherhorde. You were partners in the Nine Trials, the Midwinter March. You were in the same watch for three years.”
“One can share many things, Lord, and not grow close.”
“Very true,” said Myett in her satiny voice. “Ixchel blood, for example.”
The two women locked eyes for a moment. Ensyl fought down her anger. Nothing to be gained by sparring
