Pellin was almost sure the mournful tone of the boy’s voice was an affectation. Almost. “What opportunity is that?”
Mark looked at him in surprise. “Why the war, of course. With your position and my skills we could steal half the treasury with no one the wiser. I could live like a king for the rest of my life without ever having to orchestrate another con.”
Weeks earlier, Pellin would have turned on his apprentice in disgust and offered some sort of remonstrance. That was before. He paused a moment to consider that thought. Before what, exactly? Before Bronwyn had thrown his objections to apprenticing the urchins back in his face? Or was it before Mark had stymied his theology with his experience and indifference? No. It had been just after that. Outside the doomed village of Broga, Mark had sprinted off to save Pellin and Allta from a throng of broken villagers, each with a vault, all screaming for their blood.
Such sacrifice demanded forbearance. Instead of worrying over the boy’s larcenous instincts, Pellin allowed himself a measure of amusement. “Should we turn the horses and make for Cynestol?”
Mark looked at him, his young face already too skilled at hiding his thoughts for Pellin to pick up any indication of what he truly felt. Then a grin snuck up the sides. “No, Eldest. It’s more fun to steal the money than it is to spend it, and that kind of wealth draws all sorts of unwelcome attention,” he said without irony. “I think my conning days are probably behind me.”
Pellin smiled. “Don’t be too sure. The world changes, and the mission of the Vigil will have to change with it. In the past, we’ve considered ourselves almost military in function. It may be that your skills will be what are required in the future.”
“Truly?” Mark asked.
He nodded. “I’d be a fool to deny the possibility.”
At that, Mark settled himself on horseback and proceeded to doze. Allta pulled his mount closer. “That was well done, Eldest.”
He blinked. “What?”
Allta pointed to his sleeping apprentice. “Offering the boy encouragement instead of berating him for wanting to steal. I don’t think Cesla or Elwin could have done it any better and probably not as well.”
Two things about that startled Pellin. How could he be startled after seven hundred years? First, that Allta would expend the necessary verbiage to tell him, and second, that he seemed to think such an inconsequential bit of conversation would be important. Perhaps Cesla and Elwin’s skill with people wasn’t connected to their gift. Maybe it was simply a way of encouraging people that could be learned.
“Custos is right,” he said to his guard. “There are things that can’t be learned from books.”
Allta nodded, but his glance strayed to the shining domes of the city. “When we left I assumed that we were headed to Cynestol to speak with the Archbishop.”
Pellin shook his head. “No. I meant what I said. I have no intention of coming close enough to Vyne to allow him to ‘protect’ me. We’ll be going a bit farther south.”
Allta pursed his lips. “The only place farther south is Port City.”
He didn’t answer his guard’s implied question at first. In truth, he would have preferred delaying the discussion until they were at sea. As a Vigil guard, Allta had sworn his life to protect him, but as Pellin had already learned, that oath could turn the guard’s obedience on its head.
“You mean to go to the southern continent?”
He sighed. “There’s no help for it, my friend. The command of the Fayit leaves little room for doubt.” At the look of consternation on Allta’s face, he sighed and reined in. Allta stopped and faced him, and Mark’s horse, chosen on the basis of its herd instinct, walked a few steps farther before, curious, it turned and came back. Pellin shook his apprentice. “Wake up, Mark. I have news to give you.”
His apprentice pulled himself upright and took a moment to express his disappointment that the landscape had changed so little since he’d fallen asleep. “What news, Eldest?”
“Our purpose,” Pellin said. “You’ll need to know it in case I fall and my gift passes to you.”
He wasn’t sure whose objection came to him first, but he cut his hand through the air and Allta and Mark gave him silence. “I do not mean for you to shoulder my task, Mark, but the purpose behind it must be passed on to what remains of the Vigil.”
Mark and Allta nodded, mollified.
“But the truth,” Pellin continued, “is that there is now no one in the north who can accomplish what the Fayit has asked me to do.”
Allta looked to Mark before speaking. “And you believe his quest for you was different than rest?”
Pellin nodded. “When Ealdor spoke to me, I had a sense that he meant to keep our conversation a secret, just as he communicated to Dura, Fess, and Toria Deel.”
A sliver of doubt, like a shard of glass stuck in his finger he could feel but not see, cut him as he said this. “I can explain our different experiences in no other way.” He hadn’t meant to digress to this topic, but they had nothing but hours and days of travel before them and perhaps it was just as well. “We did not speak of it directly, but I have no doubt the command I heard was markedly different than the one Toria Deel and Fess heard.”
Mark nodded. “Sense. After he appeared, Fess followed Lady Deel from the hall to speak with her. I tried to hear what they said to each other, but they were in the center of the courtyard and I couldn’t get close enough to eavesdrop without being seen.”
“Your curiosity is understandable,” Pellin said. He stopped before he could add his customary remonstrance about spying. Doubtless the boy already knew his feeling on the subject. “In truth, I
