“The Watchers are his…bodyguards. No, no, no, wrong word, wrong word—” Shinobu gripped Briac’s shoulder, hoping to help him focus. Briac gathered himself and continued, “They watch for him. One pair is always awake in the world, waiting for his signals, checking on him. But there are more, hidden There. If something happens to the Middle, the Watchers look for him here in the world, and they also know how to look for him There. If Quin hadn’t found the Middle and me, lost in the blackness after the attack on the estate, his Watchers would have come for him eventually. So he can never be lost or trapped There for long.”
The words flowed from him smoothly, as if he had, perhaps, committed this explanation to memory years ago and was now reeling it off by rote.
“But he’s dead,” Shinobu said. “The Young Dread killed the Middle on the airship. If they’re looking for him now, they’ll never find him.”
Briac looked tormented, as if he were waging, and losing, a fierce internal battle not to speak. “I promise you they don’t know that!” he said at last, the words tearing from him. “They have no idea he’s dead. They’re waiting for him to use them for their real purpose.”
“What’s their real purpose?”
Through gritted teeth, Briac answered, “Getting rid…of us.”
“Getting rid of Seekers?” Shinobu repeated.
“He’s been whittling down our numbers decade by decade,” Briac whispered. His face was red with the effort of speaking against his will. This information, Shinobu understood, was a treasure Briac had been hoarding to himself for a very long time.
“The Middle Dread has been getting rid of Seekers? Recently?” Shinobu repeated again, trying to grasp why and how this would be.
“He’s been getting rid of us for a long time.”
“That can’t be right,” Shinobu responded, almost to himself. The Dreads weren’t meant to interact with Seekers unless meting out justice or giving them their oaths. “There are entries in the journal that mention him killing Seekers—but that was centuries ago, and anyway the Old Dread stopped him—”
“Stupid!” Briac cried suddenly. “You deserve to be slapped, kicked, hit, hit, hit—”
“Stop!” Shinobu dug his fingers into the man’s arm.
Briac closed his eyes for a time. When he opened them again, he took a breath and said, so quietly Shinobu could scarcely make out the words, “He wants us gone.”
“He—”
“He turns us against one another. We kill each other for him. Sometimes we sign our killings with the emblems of other houses, to make Seekers take revenge on each other—to confuse them, to misdirect them. Maybe he gives us something in return. And the Seekers who help him think they’re the only ones, his favorites, safe. Until someone comes after them.”
Shinobu was silent as he tried to digest this statement. If the Middle Dread had been turning Seekers against each other…all at once a host of things made sense—the isolation and emptiness of the estate; the vacant apprentice cabins that had once been full; Briac’s and Alistair’s silence about other Seeker houses; Briac’s possession of the fox athame, even though it rightly belonged to John’s family; even the cruel, murderous use to which Briac had been putting that fox athame.
“Why would he do that?” Shinobu said at last. “Why would he want Seekers to kill each other?”
He watched the strained workings of Briac’s facial muscles. At last the man said, “When there are so few of us left that we’ll be easily disposed of, the Middle and his Watchers will put a final end to us.”
“He wants to put an end to us…because Seekers have been breaking the Seeker laws?” Shinobu asked at last.
Briac laughed, an unpleasant chuckle that quickly turned into something high and frightening. “He doesn’t care about the laws. He wants what Seekers have—our artifacts, our athames, our tools. He wants to control them…”
“Why?” Shinobu asked. “He’s already a Dread. He already has every—”
“Why? Why? If he has control, no one else does…” Briac was panting as the sparks circulated riotously around his head, accelerating.
“Explain that,” Shinobu said.
Briac took several shuddering breaths, attempting to quiet his thoughts. “He has his reasons, reasons, good reasons or bad reasons…How can I know them? It’s between him and the Old Dread. Those two…He hates the Old, always eavesdropping on his mind, seeing what the Middle does, punishing him when he does wrong. This is how he gets out from under the Old Dread’s control…”
Briac’s mind had scattered again, and the sparks were not