"Tell me. Tell me, if you will."

"I went to kill the Voyani woman."

Teresa nodded, unsurprised. Although Diora was ice and shadow to the clansmen and women who watched her with envy or desire, her aunt could not help but hear the horror and pity that had colored the words that she spoke when the Voyani woman had been led away, words whose meaning had nothing at all to do with pity. In that, at least, she was well-trained. But Teresa had more than half-expected, after Diora's attempt to find an a.s.sa.s.sin, that the young Serra would attempt to kill the woman herself.

And she knew that, no matter what her almost-daughter might say, pity and mercy were no small part of her motivation. Weakness.

"I had to kill her," Diora continued, hearing the unspoken, unvoiced criticism. "Because she knew too much. About the Radann kai el'Sol-"

"Diora, I told you, he is already doomed-"

"And me."

Serra Teresa froze. "You met her."

"Yes."

"You did not inform me."

"No. It appears, Ona Teresa, that we have both been playing our own games. How very like my father we both are."

"Like his General, perhaps," the older woman said. "Here. Play the harp a while, Diora, if you

wish to continue speaking. My hands tire."

Her niece played the Northern harp as if she'd been born to the North, and for one weary moment, Teresa wished it had been so. "When did you meet Evallen?"

"You knew her."

"Oh, yes," her aunt said, keeping everything she felt out of her voice; schooling it, so that Diora

might know for certain that she was offering privacy and asking for it at the same time.

"Am I anything but another p.a.w.n to you?"

"Yes," Teresa said, holding her heart's words back. "Diora-when?"

"Festival eve."

"And did she-give you anything?"

Surprise. Anger. Resignation. Even a hint of admiration. "Yes."

"Will you tell me what it was?"

"No."

"Ah. Then let me hope that she has not laid the responsibility of the Family upon you, for if she has, you will be forced to bear it, or you will pay the price."

"What price? What price could possibly be more costly than the price I have already paid?"

If Teresa offered privacy, Diora offered none; although her expression did not change, her voice did.

Teresa bowed her head, feeling the sting of another woman's tears, the endless ache of another's loss. Diora's voice was very, very powerful. "Nothing," she said at last. "I forget myself, and you, in the warning. Diora-"

"You called her here."

Teresa did not answer.

"And she perished for it."

"Evallen's path was decided long before it crossed yours, Na'dio," Teresa said coolly. "She is dead now. We are not. You killed her?"

"Yes. But not-but not immediately. The Sword's Edge was there. The Radann Peder par el'Sol. And one other. Ona Teresa, he was not just a servant of the Lord of Night. He was a vessel. One of his kin."

"And does it change your course, Na'dio? Does it change the plans that we have crafted?"

The silence of music played without heart, a curtain behind which the actors prepare for the play, uncertain of whether or not there will be an audience, but certain that an unfavorable audience is death.

"I don't know. I don't know what your plans were, or are-and I think you understand now that you don't know all of mine.

"But if the Lord of Night was the hand behind the Sword and the General, then 1 will take him into account, and there will be a reckoning." She lifted her youthful face, and the moonlight whitened it, hiding any imperfection, robbing it of any expression that was not grim and cold. "I swear it, by the Lady. 1 swear it by Faida, by Ruatha, by Deirdre."

"Diora-"

"Help me, Ona Teresa. This has grown beyond me, and I cannot allow that. I have sworn."

And what of my oaths, Teresa thought, as she carefully caught her almost-daughter's icy hands and stilled the singing of the harp for the evening. What of my oaths to protect you, to watch over you, to keep you safe? What of my oaths to my own ghosts, my own dead?

But she nodded, not trusting herself to speak with a voice that Diora would accept as truthful.

Alesso di'Marente stood shoulder to shoulder with Sendari di'Marano as they faced the Widan Cortano di'Alexes-the Sword's Edge-and his two companions, the kinlord, Isladar, and another emissary from the Shining Court, one whose human seeming was superficial enough that no one, on second glance, could mistake him for anything other than what he was: kin to the Lord of Night. Cortano had dispensed with the pretense of procedure and summoned them, from their sleep, to his personal chambers.

Alesso was furious.

Sendari knew it by the stillness and the silence in which he cloaked himself. He carried two swords; Sendari thought that these were not his only weapons, although they were the only visible ones. Beneath his robes, he wore the gift of Baredan di'Navarre-an old friend, a new enemy, and a man with a canny sense of what was valuable and useful.

"Widan Cortano," the General said, his eyes slightly narrowed in the poor light. "You summoned me, and I have chosen to answer that summons. I am pleased that Sendari had the forethought to warn me of the possible presence of the kin; the carelessness of the Shining Court in sending their emissaries has already cost me four of my most valued serafs. It is not yet dawn, but it will be; my presence will be required. Shortly."

The Widan Cortano looked neither concerned nor angered by Alesso di'Marente's words; the General's tone was neutral, and if the words were-almost-confrontational, they were not offensive enough to force the sword-sworn hand, unless the Widan already desired to move. "General," he said, inclining a majestically white head, "it was not at my insistence that you were summoned, but at the forceful request of our allies."

"I see." The General turned on his heel, pivoting neatly to face Lord Isladar. His anger was no better concealed. "What did you feel so important that it could not wait until our agreed upon meeting?"

The kinlord gave a low bow.

It unsettled Sendari, and readied him. Of the kin, this Lord was the quietest. He did not possess the overweening arrogance that made the kinlords so insulting; nor did he insist upon displaying his power as if it were plumage, and he a peac.o.c.k in season. He was quiet in most things, and offered his counsel seldom, but when he did, the Lord of Night listened. Or so it was said. Sendari had not yet met the Lord of Night, and he had no intention of ever doing so. Let the rest of the Court please itself.

"General Alesso," Isladar said smoothly, "please, allow me to introduce Kovakar. He is a lieutenant in the army of Lord a.s.sarak."

"Lord a.s.sarak has no dealing with the Tor."

"Indeed, General Alesso, that was my response. But it appears that Lord a.s.sarak is impatient."

"Lord a.s.sarak is impatient," Kovakar hissed, "because of your folly, Lord Isladar. How much longer will we be forced to defer to these?" He raised his head, and lifted his shoulders; the robes that he wore bore the sudden shift in growth for no more than five seconds. "The only threat to us in the South are the Wandering clans. You know what they were before they abandoned their cities. Cor-tano, you yourself a.s.sured us-"

"I said that they were not a political force," the Widan said, in a deceptively mild tone.

"We will no longer tolerate these games of human politics," Kovakar replied, raising hands that were now long, clawed ebony. "Lord a.s.sarak has dealt with humans before, and he has decided that it is time to deal with them again.

"You, General," he spit to the side as the word left his lips, "are to finish the Radann. They were in league with the Wanderer that Lord Isladar lost-you will bring them to me. Now.

"If you do not," he added, "remember that there are thousands of clansmen who desire the Tor Leonne; we require only one of them to achieve our goals."

"And those goals, Kovakar?"

Kovakar seemed momentarily nonplussed at the tone of the General's voice. He glanced to the side, but Lord Isladar was studiously examining the screen opposite them.

"To defeat the Empire, of course."

"And you intend to do this on your own when you cannot even field a small unit of the kin to join a greater army of clansmen at the agreed upon time? You will remember that it was the delay of the Shining Court, and not the delay of the Tor and its human politics, that has crippled the war?"

Kovakar's smile was hideous and triumphant as he again glanced at Lord Isladar. "Lord Isladar did not have control of his little pet, and she escaped, destroying two thirds of the kin that had been a.s.sembled to serve you."

"Pet? What is this, Isladar?" Cortano said softly, touching the black center of his beard as he often did when the hunt for answers was upon him. "Did you lose little Kiriel?"

Lord Isladar shrugged, as neutral in expression as Alesso. "She is what she is, Cortano. The Kialli are not born; they have always been. But children grow, and before they reach their full strength and accept their duty and their destiny, they test the limits of authority placed upon them. They break ties that they do not understand, and only when they have retreated to stand on their own, to know their own power, do they return.

"But she will return; I have seen it. And she will rule."

Cortano smiled and shook his head. "A worthy endeavor, or so I have always thought. You are the study of a lifetime, Isladar. It is my honor to preside over the Sword's Edge while you attempt your long return."

"Attempt?" Kovakar spoke, the two syllables the strike of lightning and the thunder that follows. He turned to the kinlord, Isladar, with open surprise. "You allow this? You allow these to question you?"

"I am not so fearful of my own status that I must see it slavishly worshiped at every possible moment, Kovakar," the kinlord responded. "It bores me. And besides, I've noted your tendency to defer, with what might pa.s.s for grace among the Kialli, to the mortal members of the Shining Court."

"Not so," Cortano said softly. "I do not believe that Kovakar has graced the upper chamber."

"The upper chamber is attended by footservants and Generals who have been placed under our Lord's geas," Kovakar replied, unriled. "And the Lord a.s.sarak has decided that this will change.

Starting now."

He was agile when he moved. He was deadly, and of the kin, he was powerful enough to take no master's name as part of his known ident.i.ty. He was Lieutenant to a.s.sarak, a step away from the Fist of G.o.d, and he intended to show these humans who they dealt with.

His victim's eyes were barely rounding in the way shocked mortal's eyes often did as he covered the distance between them, moving slowly for a Kialli of his stature.

Isladar was not a threat; in matters of the Court, he involved himself only when his pet was threatened, and even then, seldom. The mage, Cortano, was dangerous- but he was ambitious, and he desired things that the merely human court could never offer him.

But the human General's mage was disposable. Lord a.s.sarak had made that quite clear. The Lady Sariyal says that these two are not merely allies, but "friends." A weakness, Kovakar. Use it.

He caught the mage-born human by the throat, closing his hand in just such a way as to allow breath through. He would also, in time, allow a scream or two to reach the ears of the man who needed to learn this lesson: The Kialli served no human interest for long; they were masters.

Kovakar did not intend to be quick or clean. The Lord kept a very tight rein upon subjects who had not seen the flats of this world since the Sundering and the Choice, and the sweet songs of the fields of h.e.l.l no longer slaked a thirst that had been ordained by that Choice. He had desired this return, but found-as his kin did-that the world was a much changed place. The glory had gone out of it, and the grandeur; there were mortals, and more mortals, and their pigs and cows and sheep. Here, wilderness meant the absence of human "civilization"; the trees were short and silent, the gra.s.ses tame, the forests devoid of the shadows and the light that had always been the bane of the Kialli.

Oh, there were souls, little flickering shards of immortality trapped in flesh that aged so quickly one could almost smell it decay, but they were the only compelling thing that remained in the Sundered Realm.

We will change that, he thought.

At his back, he heard the hiss of steel, slowly drawn, a lingering lovely sound that sent the mildest of shivers along his ear ridges. He turned, holding the mage whose hands now burned ineffectually at an ebony claw, and smiled, showing teeth. "General," he said, making of the word an insult. "You are almost beneath notice, but not quite. I would not turn my back upon the steel you wield if I were not guaranteed an alternate form of protection. But come. You have shown an interest in the fate of this mage-born mortal. I a.s.sure you that I will not disappoint that interest.

"Remember who we are."

"I have never forgotten it," the General Alesso di'Mar-ente said calmly. He turned to the Widan Cortano di'Alexes. "Cortano."

"General."

"If you feel that the demon is correct, then you will find another clansman to replace me." He turned to the kin-lord. "Isladar, if you interfere, you will be forced to dirty your hands with the blood of the Dominion."

"Indeed." The kinlord's expression was completely neutral, but his lips turned up at the corners in what was almost-but not quite-a human smile.