but given the size of the room, Severn wasn’t certain that the conversation—if it were to be a conversation and not an interrogation—would carry that far.
“You have requested an audience,” the Emperor said. “Your concerns were brief to the point of opacity. You are new to the Wolves.”
Severn nodded.
“And the Wolves are of personal import to me. They are part of the Halls of Law, the single edifice I consider most important to my Empire; more important than even the palace in which we now meet.”
Severn said nothing.
“Your first task with the Wolves involved a series of murders that occurred decades ago.”
“Twenty years, two months,” the bearded man said, “for the first such murder.”
“I have heard no report that your mission was complete.”
“The mission,” Severn said, “was impossible to complete.”
“Oh?”
“The man responsible for commanding those deaths is himself dead.”
“Is he?”
“Yes. He died shortly before the last few murders.”
“You are certain.”
“I am certain.”
“If such a death did take place, Private, why were the witnesses recently sought by the Halls of Law killed?”
Severn met eyes that were orange. Red was the Dragon death color; gold the happy color, as it was in Tha’alani eyes. The Emperor’s hair, jet-black, was pulled back over his forehead and tied or braided; his unwavering gaze meant Severn couldn’t tell.
Severn didn’t immediately answer the question. This was a mistake, judging by the shift of eye color; more orange darkened the Imperial eyes.
“They were killed by a Barrani man who did not wish the information contained to resurface.” No, he thought. That, too, was wrong. He bowed his head for one long moment, and accepted that there was nothing he could hide from this man; nothing he could leave unsaid.
He lifted his head. All of Elluvian’s many lessons on proper posture and proper speech, admittedly less of the latter, Severn now set aside.
“One witness survived. If it is your desire, the Tha’alanari can be called to confirm what I now say: he, and the three who did not survive, were participants in the decades-old murders. They weren’t present as witnesses, but as accessories. But I would ask, as one of the officers investigating this case, that the Tha’alanari not be called in. The memory of one such man was enough to cause possible permanent damage to the Tha’alanari.”
“And you believe that the other three were killed in order to preserve the sanity of the Tha’alanari?”
“I believe that was the intent, yes. The Tha’alani were not involved in these crimes.”
“And the man who was?”
“The man who was is a Lord of the High Court. A ruler of one of the familial lines of that court. He came to power twenty years ago. He was not expected to rule; he was, however, expected to be a powerful tool for the line he now rules.
“He took the line itself in order to stop the murders of the Tha’alani. His lord at the time was responsible for the deaths that had occurred. Had he not assassinated his predecessor, the murders would have continued until either the Tha’alanari were entirely broken, or the Tha’alani themselves were.”
“What did the Tha’alani know that made this desirable?”
The silence that followed the question was far too long. Severn drew breath and held it, considering the man—the Dragon—who sat above him. He was the man to whom Severn would swear personal loyalty—a vow that had not yet been demanded, although Rosen had said he was no longer on probation.
Personal loyalty meant many things to many people.
It meant one thing to Severn Handred. He had not fully assessed its meaning when Elluvian had brought him to the Halls of Law on that first day. Nor had he assessed the meaning when he had been offered the job. When he had been accepted. He’d had little time in which to do so.
Little desire to do so. His focus had been the Halls of Law, and some method of legal employment that would allow him to hang desperately to the edges of the only oath he had ever made that mattered to him. He had thought that it would be the only oath that would.
But now he saw clearly. What the oath meant to men such as Elluvian or the Wolflord was not lodged in the spoken words they had offered upon their own inductions. The words themselves were said by every single man or woman who had ever joined the Wolves, but the weight of the oath, the personal meaning, would be different for each.
Would have to be different for