“It will be difficult,” Kathryn warned.
Tylar’s mind was already spinning. “We’ll bring fire-torches and lanterns. We can burn a path through to Gerrod’s study.”
Kathryn held up a hand. “That is all well and good, but that is not what I meant.”
Tylar stared at her.
“First, you’ll have to get through Argent. That will be the difficult part.”
Tylar opened his mouth to speak.
“No,” she said more firmly. “I know what you’re thinking. Bullying your way through. You can’t divide this house more than it has been already. Castellan Mirra has already succeeded in breaking the trust and fellowship of our Order. Do not serve her further by waging a war with Argent when the enemy is at our door.”
“What would you have me do?”
She sighed. “It is time we worked together to unite our Order. Argent was once a great knight. We’ll have to make him remember that.”
“Might be easier to pull a pig through a keyhole,” Rogger said.
Kathryn touched the man’s elbow and silenced him. She kept her eyes on Tylar. He slowly nodded his agreement.
A new voice interrupted from the narrow doorway. Dart leaned on the door’s latch, worn and haunted. She looked as if she had taken a beating, though not a mark marred her. Laurelle abandoned her place by the hearth and hurried toward her.
Dart held her off with a raised palm. Her arm trembled. “The skull. You said it came from Saysh Mal.”
Tylar nodded.
“Then perhaps you should talk to Brant. He was raised in that god-realm.”
Tylar frowned at Kathryn, not recognizing the name.
“It was the boy who helped rescue her,” she explained. “A Hand from Oldenbrook.”
“And he hails from Saysh Mal?” Rogger asked. Suspicion rang in his voice. “How long ago did he leave that realm?”
Dart shook her head, unsure.
Laurelle answered. “He arrived at the Conclave in Chrismferry some four years ago.”
Dart glanced to her, startled, but Kathryn knew the dark-haired girl was held in high esteem back at the school, both handsome of figure and of a rich family. Raised to such a station, little probably passed beneath Laurelle’s notice at the school. Especially a striking boy. But now she seemed slightly abashed by her knowledge.
Rogger mumbled to Tylar and lifted one eyebrow. “So he came about the time all fell to ruin in Saysh Mal.”
Nodding, Tylar turned to Laurelle. “Do you know how he came to be so far from home?”
She glanced to Dart and shifted her feet slightly. “Rumors only. You know the prattle that gets passed around school.”
“Tell us.”
Again a blushing glance was passed to Dart. “He arrived in chains. Exiled, I heard. Sent to the school to get rid of him.”
“Who sent him? Who banished him?”
“I heard tell it was the god of his realm.” Laurelle studied her toes. “She banished him, forbidding him ever to return.”
A WREATH OF LEAVES
“They still shouldn’t be here,” Liannora said. “Tell him, Sten.”
Brant sat across the dining table. He would have preferred to have broken bread with the giants back in his rooms, but the captain of the guard had insisted the group all share the final bell’s meal together, for safety’s sake. All had heard the rumors of daemons beneath Tashijan. Brant kept silent about his own involvement.
Watching from the side, he found it surprising how little the others seemed to be truly worried about the storm, the whispers of daemons, and the bustle of knights in the lower levels of Tashijan. Up higher, a certain degree of orderliness and routine persisted. To Liannora and her two lapdogs, Mistress Ryndia and Master Khar, it was all so much high adventure, requiring such brutal sacrifice as tolerating a meal served late.
And what a meal it was. The board was piled high enough to feed thrice their number. A covey of roasted grouse, stuffed with nut mash and corn, centered the table, surrounded by steaming loaves of oaten bread along with cheeses, both hard and soft, and boiled eggs painted in the Oldenbrook hues of blue and silver. A pair of scullions hauled off a large kettle-bowl of winter squash stew, requiring a pole through the handles to lift it from the table.
Such was the enormity of the fare that the captain of the guard shared a few plates with his men at the doors, who ate standing. While at the table, Sten and the Hands sipped tall crystal flutes of warmed sweetwine.
Brant suspected such largesse was mostly to keep the visitors calm and sated, as much a strategy of the warden as the flaming fortifications below. Chaos in the upper reaches would only hamper efforts below.
So he stayed silent during the long meal.
But Liannora was not satisfied with the fare alone. It seemed entertainment was also necessary this night.
“To keep these wolfkits, on our level, among our rooms, unbathed,” she sniffed and nodded to Sten. “If nothing else, it’s unclean.”
“They will be kept to my chambers,” Brant said.
“How can we know that for certain? Did they not worry themselves free of your giants’ charge, escaping away?”
Brant’s chair rested before the room’s hearth, the fire in full blaze behind him. He felt already near to roasted, and with his brow moist, he found little patience to dance with Liannora. “They’re staying here.”
“That is not your decision,” Liannora said. Plainly she remained upset at being snubbed earlier outside the castellan’s chambers, and now sought to punish him. “In all matters of our security and well-being, Sten is the final word.”
Ryndia and Khar nodded their agreement, murmuring their assent over their goblets of wine.
Brant turned to the captain of the guard.
Something in Brant’s eye gave Sten pause. “Mistress, perhaps it would be better…until the matter is settled below-”
Liannora touched his arm, silencing him. “These are indeed difficult times. We must try our best to be of service to Tashijan. Keeping the cubbies in these fine quarters will strain our welcome here. If any of us should become ill from our confinement with them…”
Ryndia lifted a fold of cloth to her nose. “I smelled them when I walked past Master Brant’s room on my way here. It all but made me swoon.”
Khar nodded, whistling a bit through his thin nose. “And their howling…pierced right through the wall to my bedchamber. I doubt my slumber this night will be undisturbed. Such disorder will surely burden my constitution.”
Brant scowled at the pair of Hands. Ryndia was as hearty as a well-fed cow, and Khar was known to sleep entire days away.
“If that be the case,” Sten began, avoiding Brant’s eye, “then we have a duty to rid them from our level. I’m sure my guards can find some lonely cage, away from the bustle, for the pair.”
Brant stood up, knocking his chair back, almost into the hearth’s flame. “They’ll not be moved.” He stared across the breadth of the table. “I will not play this game of yours, Liannora. If you’re upset with me, then state it plainly. Quit these little pokes.”
Liannora opened her eyes wider, the picture of innocence. “I’m certain I don’t know of what you’re clamoring
