Tal didn’t need to feel the hair on his arms and neck stand up to tell him that foul magic permeated this room. He remembered enough of his training from Sorcerer’s Isle to have some idea of what was going on here. Dark spells of binding and powerful incantations designed to confound enemies, as well as many other arcane practices, all were made more puissant by human death and blood. This Leso Varen was a necromancer, a master of the magic of death, and he had undertaken some great spell recently. From the distracted expression he wore as he consulted his notes, Tal deduced things hadn’t gone well for him.
Tal took up a brush and began scrubbing the floor, while Amafi worked on the walls. Tal used his task to memorize every detail he could about the place. He worked his way over toward the bookshelves, attempting to read titles if possible. Many of the volumes bore no lettering on the spines, while others revealed glyphs and markings he could not understand. But a dozen or more were readable, in the language of Kesh, Roldemish, the Isles, and a few other tongues he knew. He memorized them all, determined to make a copy of those titles against the day he reported back to the Conclave.
So intent was Tal on this that he almost didn’t sense someone coming up behind him. As he lowered his head, he felt a hand upon his shoulder. He turned, keeping his eyes low in case it was someone who might recognize him and saw a pair of bare feet below a long dress with a filthy hem. He glanced up and saw a young woman holding a fresh bucket of water. In heavily accented Roldemish, she said, “To clean.”
He nodded, stepped away, and put his hand on the wall as his head swam. She didn’t pay him a second glance as she threw the water on the floor, washing away the bloody mess and leaving a clean area behind.
He stood motionless as the girl walked away, taking the bucket to a larger tub of clean water. Amafi saw Tal standing and yanked hard on his sleeve. Whispering, he said, “You’re staring, Magnificence. Keep your head down!”
Tal returned to scrubbing, all thoughts of recording titles of books driven from his mind. The work went on for another hour, and then he was ordered to carry the tub out of the room. Outside, he found a stairway leading down, and he and Amafi ducked down it. Halfway down a long corridor, he opened a hidden entrance to the servants’ passages and led Amafi back to their quarters. The tub from that day was still full, and Tal said, “We’ll both have to use it, then you will have to empty it by the bucket. We can’t have anyone seeing all this blood.”
Amafi said, “Magnificence, what happened back there? You looked as if you had seen a ghost.”
Tal looked up. “Almost, Amafi. Almost.” He pulled off his blood-soaked tunic and tossed it to his servant. “Burn these,” he instructed, taking off his filthy trousers. He sat in the tub and closed his eyes. But the face of the young woman hung in his mind’s eye like a portrait burned into his memory. Every hair on her head, the smudges on her cheek, and the marks on her face—bruises, some old, some new.
But he remembered her in a time when her face was dusted with freckles by the sun, and her honey-colored eyes narrowed as she regarded him in a way that made him want to die. He ducked his head under the water and washed his hair. As he came up spluttering, he covered his face with his hands, for he had seen a ghost. He knew that tall, slender body. He had seen her run with the other girls at Village Kulaam, back when Talwin Hawkins had been named Kielianapuna—Little Red Squirrel—and she had been called Eye of the Blue-Winged Teal.
Amafi came and said, “What is it, Magnificence?”
Tal felt the urge to shout, I am not the last of my kind, but knew to do so would mean telling Amafi more than he wished to share with the former assassin. Finally he said, “That girl in Leso Varen’s room, with the blond hair.”
“Yes, Magnificence?”
“She…put me in mind of someone I have not seen for years.”
“Ah,” said Amafi as he began peeling off his bloodstained clothing. “A startling resemblance.”
“Very startling.”
They exchanged places, and Tal dried off with a towel. As he got ready for bed—knowing that sleep would probably not come—he said, “Tomorrow, while the Duke gives me my final instructions before we leave for Salador, I want you to find out what you can about who those people were who come to clear away the bodies. It must be someone the housecarl trusts to keep silent. Find out what you can.”
“About the girl?”
Tal considered. “Not yet. For the time being, just find out where she is and who her master is.”
“Yes, Magnificence.”
Tal sat in front of the fireplace, trying to get warm, and discovered it took far longer than it should have.
Eleven
Salador
The carriage rolled down the street.