Part 30 (1/2)
Parno needn't have worried about moving closer, she'd been well-trained in the night.w.a.tch whisper.
”First, if this were the morning of a battle, what would the Wolfshead do for her pains?”
”First,” Parno said quietly. ”When there is training, pain can be ignored, as I'm sure you already know. But in order to ignore pain, there must be a distraction. When there is no fighting, distraction of a kind can be found in drugs. Your herbalist can tell you which are best. The Wolfshead does not like drugs. She says that the pain exhausts, but the drugs make you stupid. Better tired than stupid, she says.” Parno smiled. Dhulyn had never been any great fan of the stupid. ”As for the day of battle, the necessity to kill others is often in itself a powerful distraction.” He turned and looked again at Dhulyn. She slept, but under the weight of blankets she still moved and s.h.i.+fted as if, even in her sleep, she sought relief in movement for overtaxed muscles.
”And the second?” he said, turning back to Rehnata.
”Is she,” here the girl looked away, not wanting Parno to see what was in her eyes, ”is she Seeing? Seeing?”
Parno frowned. This would be the first of many such questions, now that Dhulyn was no longer hiding her Mark. ”I think so. She has not said it, but it seems when there is more pain, there is more Sight.”
HE TURNS TOWARD A CIRCULAR MIRROR, AS TALL AS HE IS HIMSELF, REFLECTING A NIGHT SKY FULL OF STARS. HIS LIPS MOVE AND DHULYN SEES THE WORDS FROM THE BOOK. ******* HE SAYS, AND **********. HE MAKES A MOVE FROM THE THIRD Pa.s.sAGE OF THE CRANE SHORA, AND SLASHES DOWNWARD THROUGH THE MIRROR, THROUGH THE SKY, SPLITTING IT, AND THE GREEN-TINTED SHADOW COMES SPILLING IN LIKE FOG THROUGH A CAs.e.m.e.nT. . . .
”Have I been asleep long?”
”A few hours. Is the pain better, or worse?”
”Better, I think.”
Parno turned her hand over and kissed the palm. She pushed herself up on one elbow, and, using her grip on Parno's hand for leverage, managed to roll onto her side so she was still lying under the covers, but able to see her Partner without twisting her neck.
”Anything?”
”More discussion, but they're agreed. Dal will meet you at Yerloa's Spring at the hour the moon sets tomorrow night. That will bring you to the north gates of the city just as they open, and we'll meet inside the Dome just as the morning watch is settling in and getting complacent.”
”What of the Tarkina?”
”She'll stay here where it's safer. Mar and that Scholar boy as well.” He took the hand he still held, and b.u.mped it softly against his lips before adding, ”Well-watched, as you advise, but I still say you should let me kill the twisted little book reader.”
Dhulyn sighed. ”It is the purpose of Scholars to learn, and this one has learned something of the world that his Library neglected to show him. Let him live with that knowledge, and with the knowledge of the evil he is capable of. And let us not forget, we may yet learn something from him ourselves.”
Parno shrugged, though his own smile did not touch his eyes. ”It's your decision, I suppose. Let me know if you change your mind, though. I'd be happy to kill the little dung eater later.”
Dhulyn tugged his hand. ”I've Seen Gun helping Mar. They were both looking into that bowl of hers.”
Parno sat back, releasing her hand and placing his own on his thighs. ”They've been wondering, the Tarkin especially, whether you've Seen anything. I don't think they're going to care much about Mar and her bowl.”
”Daresay you're right.” Dhulyn began pus.h.i.+ng back the blankets that covered her. ”I saw Lok-iKol again, and I killed him again. Sometimes he had two eyes, sometimes one.”
”But you still See his death, so that's to the good. Nothing we've done so far changes that?”
”Evidently.”
”What aren't you telling me?”
”I Saw Tek-aKet on the Carnelian Throne.”
”So why don't you look happy about it?”
She shrugged as best she could lying propped up on one elbow. ”I was standing next to him with my sword out.”
Parno nodded his understanding. ”Armed in the presence of the Tarkin is one thing, but weapons out in the throne room? That's not likely.”
”Exactly what I thought. The throne room might have been just an overlap from the image of Lok-iKol, but . . .”
”You don't know for certain.”
”I don't know for certain.”
When she looked into Parno's eyes, she saw there the same knowledge he would see on her face. She couldn't know for certain. She never had, and this is what the loss of her tribe really meant-not just her mother and father, but the loss of all and any who might have taught her to School her Visions, to read them properly, even to guide them. That had always been the drawback, the flaw, to using her Sight. But with so much, and so many, relying on her now, what else could she do?
”I need to know more about how the Sight works,” she said. ”I can't go on hiding from it.” She looked up at him. ”That's the lesson the Scholar has taught me me.”
”When this is over, we'll go looking for some answers.”
”It seems the Scholar might have answers.”
”You just don't want me to kill him.” Parno's swift grin faded just as swiftly. ”There's something else, isn't there?”
She nodded, lower lip caught between her teeth. ”The Green Shadow fears the Marked, for reasons unknown to us. It follows that the Shadow has knowledge of the Marked, also unknown to us. In killing it, might I be destroying the source of the very information I seek?”
”Do we have a choice?”
She kept her eyes down.
”You Saw Tek on the throne, so that has to be good,” Parno said, in the firm tones of a man telling the surgeon to go ahead and cut.
”I Saw him on the throne,” she agreed.
”Watch Dal, my soul,” he said after a moment's silence. ”I've made it clear he's not to think of me, but . . . watch him.”
”I do not like these Houses of yours,” Dhulyn said, taking his offered hand and letting him pull her out of the bed.
”They're none of mine,” he said.
But Dhulyn had noticed that he'd called Lok-iKol-and even the Tarkin himself-by their diminutives, Lok and Tek. As if he felt somehow free to speak of his old kin as he must have done when they had all been young together.
”Dhulyn Wolfshead.”