his arrival at the heart of the Common. In that fact, she could see the hand of one of her own. And if not that . . . she exhaled, and met Duvari’s steady gaze. “Every moment I spend in your company, or in the company of my Kings, is a moment lost to me—and the trail, so very slender to begin with, grows cold and stale.
“I will attend the Kings in the Hall of Wise Counsel on the morrow.”
One did not dismiss Duvari without a great deal of effort if he did not wish to be moved. Were he in the presence of the Kings, it would be much simpler; the Kings would not allow him to overstep his bounds because it implied a strong lack of courtesy on their part. Absent the Kings, Duvari could not as easily be contained. “I ask you again, Sigurne: Where is Meralonne APhaniel?”
“I am not his keeper, Lord of the Compact.”
Duvari rose. “You do not know.”
“I am not,” she agreed, “aware of his exact disposition, no.”
“Guildmaster.” Duvari bowed; it was not the gesture she was expecting, and some hint of a cool smile adorned his lips as he rose. “Perhaps the time has come that such ignorance now presents a danger to us.”
“If I am certain of nothing else, I am certain of this: Meralonne APhaniel had no part to play in the appearance of the demon in the Common. Nor had he any part to play in the architectural transformation of Avantari.”
“And I have mentioned neither, Guildmaster.”
She stiffened, drawing herself to her full height almost instinctively.
Duvari’s eyes narrowed, as if her posture answered a question he’d not yet asked. “On the morrow, then.”
She nodded, and escorted him out of the room. She resisted the urge to escort him off the premises, in large part because the walk to the doors and back was long and involved a not inconsiderable number of stairs. She did, however, make certain he left.
Only once she was certain did she retire to her own Tower once again. Duvari did not let information slip; it was not his way. Nor did he trade information in any obvious way; he absorbed it, filtered it through his constant and enduring suspicion, inferring—from any gesture, any word, any pause—what best suited his purposes.
He therefore offered information in a like fashion. That he was suspicious of Meralonne was not a surprise; Duvari was suspicious of any man—or woman—of power in the Empire who was not one of the Twin Kings. Even the Princes were not immune until their fathers passed on. But he had come seeking Meralonne when he was almost certain Meralonne was not present in the Tower.
It offered either criticism or warning—and given Duvari, one could hardly avoid the former. The latter, however, was telling.
Oh, it was cold in this room. She paced the floor, glancing at the grate in which the embers of a fire burned low. Decades of conservative use of magic stayed her hand; she had cast only one spell, and waited its outcome now. In the long years since she had taken the helm of the Order, she had used it only a handful of times. The time was coming, she thought, when it would cease to have any effect at all.
Perhaps tonight was that night.
Not yet, she thought. Not now. She had not lied to Duvari; the presence of the Kialli lord in the Common was her greatest concern. She had not been entirely truthful, however; if she was not aware of the minutiae of the changes that occurred in the Terafin manse, she understood that it presaged a shift of power that no one could have predicted. It compelled Meralonne, fascinated him; had she had any hope of keeping him away from Terafin, she would have forbidden his acceptance of the offered contract.
She would have failed, and knew it.
But that failure, she could accept. Walking over to the Tower’s windows, she stared into the deepening darkness of night sky, seeing the clarity of stars, of moons. It had been an hour. Two. Meralonne had failed to answer her summons—but delay was not unusual; if he condescended to obey, he did so in a way that did not, in his own eyes, either demean him or elevate her.
At the end of a third hour, she surrendered. It was now late enough that the sleep she required for the audience on the morrow would be sacrificed if she continued to pace. Exhaling, she left her