I nodded, more confident in my suspicion. “Tell me anyway.”
“Alright,” Gael said as she started to pace the room. “She’s young, older than a decade and a half, but less than a score. She’s pretty, but not remarkably so, with a steady gaze and a self-assurance that older women might envy.” Gael lifted her hands, conceding. “I don’t know what you’re looking for, Willet.”
“That’s alright.” I waved. “You’ve already said it.”
Rory lounged near the door, watching our discussion as he spun a dagger on the back of his hand, making it look easy. “How many times did Mirren delve people in the throne room, Rory?”
His shoulders made the trip to his ears and back. “Twice that I saw, but she tried to hit you a couple of times before I got you away.”
I shot a glance at Bolt. He was looking at me in expectation.
“How long did each of her delves last?” As much as I wanted to, I didn’t add any qualifiers to the question. I didn’t want to prejudice his answer.
“About as long as yours, maybe just a bit longer, but she was pretty deft with her touch so it was hard to tell.”
I looked at Bolt. “Fess has Bronwyn’s gift,” I said. “He has to. It came to him as soon as she died.”
He nodded. “And we now know Cesla’s gift didn’t go free. That traitor is still running around with it.”
“That leaves only two possibilities,” I said. “Either Mirren came into Laewan’s gift after Bas-solas, or she came into Jorgen’s gift when Fess killed him.”
Bolt gave me one solemn nod. “I still need to thank him for that.”
“I hope you get the opportunity,” I said, “but either way, Mirren is too good.”
“What do you mean, Willet?” Gael asked.
Bolt answered for me in a voice raspy enough to peel the bark off a tree. “He means that she could never have learned how to use the gift that well on her own in such a short amount of time.” He looked at me with murder in his gaze. “I’m going to kill him this time—mark my words. I should have done it already.”
“Kill who?” Rory asked. “Stop talking around the answer and just say it, yah?”
“Volsk,” I said. “He’s the only one who could have given Mirren the training she needed to keep from breaking her own mind.”
“There’s another possibility,” Gael said. “If Mirren has one of the two missing gifts, couldn’t the holder of the other one be her trainer?”
I shook my head. “That just forces the problem back a generation. Who would have trained that person?”
“Maybe Cesla,” Rory answered.
“If she were working for Cesla,” I said, “she wouldn’t be walking around in the daylight.”
“Maybe she doesn’t have a vault,” Bolt said.
“Either way I think I need to have a look inside Mirren’s mind.”
Bolt’s expression turned even more stony than usual. “What are the chances that you’ll be able to do that without Mirren or Gehata knowing you’ve done it?”
“Virtually nil,” I said.
He nodded. “Then as soon as you do, you’ve signed your death warrant. Gehata won’t rest until you’re dead. What he’s done is punishable by death. He’s taken the gift of domere and turned it into a tool to exercise his power. If Pellin or Toria Deel were here, they’d put their hands on him and snap his mind like a dry twig. So should you.”
He shook his head as if struggling to refocus. “We have to get into the cathedral and persuade Bishop Serius to aid us.” He cocked an ear, listening to the bells outside. “The nobles will be gathering at the cathedral to mourn. We should be—”
A thumping at the door that began close to the top and dropped toward the floor interrupted him.
“A servant?” Gael asked.
I moved to rise as Bolt and Rory pulled weapons. “Only if they decided to fall against the door instead of knocking on it,” Bolt said. He motioned to Rory. “You stay between me and Willet.”
He unbarred the door and opened it just enough to peer through the crack before opening it wide. Hradian lay on the floor, his arms and legs moving as if each of them belonged to a different person.
“Rory!” Bolt snapped. “Is anyone else in the hallway?”
Our thief peered out the open doorway, a knife in each hand before he stepped over the lieutenant’s twitching form to check the length of the corridor. He pointed to the left and stepped back as if preparing to run. “I hear someone running.”
“Stand!” Bolt said. “They’re too far away by now.” He motioned Rory back into our quarters as he grabbed one of the lieutenant’s arms and dragged him inside.
Hradian peered up at Bolt, his face knotted in confusion. “Errant Consto?”
Bolt lifted the lieutenant and put him on one of the couches. “Delve him.”
I was already moving, peeling the gloves from my hands. I placed my fingertips on his brow and tunneled through his brown eyes and into his thoughts, expecting the river of multihued threads that comprised the lieutenant’s memories. His current flowed before me, eddying and swirling, agitated. Instead of the distinct colors I’d come to expect when delving, his stream of consciousness held the singular hue of mud. I reached into it for one of the threads that constituted Hradian’s most recent memories. Nothing but disconnected impressions came to me, sounds without meaning, smells without context, flashes of multicolored light instead of vision.
Vertigo took me, and I slipped deeper into Hradian’s mind, carried along on the tide of memory. A recollection floated past, whole and green like a promise of spring, and I grabbed it. I, Hradian, stood in a line of similarly attired men, all of us gifted, but it was my name that had been called. I stepped forward in response, called to be a successor to the
