“Eklor lives,” Kreya repeated. “There’s a threat.”
Grand Master Lorn considered them gravely for several minutes. He clasped his hands behind his back and crossed to one of the draped windows. An unseen construct rolled the curtains back with a soft whirr, and sunlight flooded in. For an instant, Zera could only see the light, but when her eyes adjusted, she saw the mountain range that lay beyond the glass. “It has been many years.”
“Enough time to rebuild his army.”
“Enough time for a man to change profoundly,” Grand Master Lorn said. “I have seen many things in my tenure as the head of the Bone Workers Guild. Many changes. Many bright-eyed young students who believe their workings will fix the world. Many bleary-eyed old masters who have lost the ability to affect that same world.”
Kreya opened her mouth to respond, and Zera elbowed her.
Grand Master Lorn was leading somewhere, and there was a chance he would end up where they wanted him to. They needed to give him space to pontificate. It was his way of feeling in control of the situation, and it cost them nothing to grant him that.
Kreya gave her a subtle nod, to say she’d be patient.
“I believe in second chances,” he said. “And I hope, in time, you will too.” Raising his voice before any of them could ask what he meant, Grand Master Lorn called, “Enter.”
Soundlessly, the brass doors swung open.
And Eklor walked in.
Chapter Eighteen
It’s the poison left in my body,Kreya thought.
That was why she was seeing things. Things like Eklor’s strolling into Grand Master Lorn’s office and smiling at them as if they were old friends. She must still have had stone fish venom in her blood. Except that the others saw him too.
Beside her, she felt her friends tense. Stran swore loudly and colorfully. Marso whispered, “I saw it, I see it, I saw it, I see it...,” and then devolved into humming under his breath in a minor key. As much as she sympathized, Kreya wished she could ask a rag doll to silence him. She had tothink!
A bone was pressed into her palm, and Kreya glanced to see that Zera was subtly handing talismans to all of them. Closing her fingers around it, Kreya felt the grooves of the strength carving. She didn’t stop staring at Eklor the whole time.
He looked the way she remembered, for the most part. A few more creases in his face but still handsome, with sharp cheekbones, gray-tinged skin, and hair so black that it gleamed blue in the candlelight. He wore a bone worker’s traditional ankle-length coat, with embroidered pockets. He did not look, and never had looked, like a man who dealt out death the way a card player dealt out cards.
“Grand Master Lorn,” Kreya said evenly, “it appears that there is a genocidal war criminal in your office. Are you aware?”
The grand master circled his desk and sat. He folded his hands and rested his chin on them. “I admit I had a similar reaction to you when Master Eklor requested an audience a week ago.” To Eklor, he said, “Perhaps it’s best if you explain?”
She didn’t want to listen to an explanation. His blood should have already been spilled on the marble floor, and it was only the shock of seeing him here, in what should have been the safest place in all of Vos, that stayed her hand.
Jentt broke his paralysis first and was moving faster than Kreya could think. He darted toward Eklor, a flash of silver in his hand, and his knife impacted on a marble sculpture. Stone chips clinked on the ground. Spinning around, Kreya saw that Eklor now stood beside the grand master’s desk. Lorn held a talisman in his hand and was panting slightly, though he quickly got control of his breathing and sat at his desk again. Clearly, he’d moved Eklor out of Jentt’s path.
But... why?
Kreya felt as if she were screaming from within her skin—her mind, her soul, her very blood felt as if it were screaming. She couldn’t make sense of this. Eklor, here! And the grand master, protecting him?
“Excellent speed there, Grand Master,” Zera said drolly. “One ofmytalismans, I presume? Delighted you’re a customer.”
Of course the grand master had been ready for an attack. He hadn’t risen to his position by being naïve or stupid. He’d predicted their response.
Eklor held up his hands, palms out, as if that made him lookinnocent. “What I have done is unforgivable. Yet I am here, to ask for forgiveness.”
“For killing Jentt?” Kreya demanded. “For slaughtering hundreds? Or for rebuilding your army to do it all again?”
“There’s no army,” Grand Master Lorn said with the supreme confidence of a man who, to the best of his knowledge, had never been wrong. In the face of such a declarative statement, Kreya cycled through a half dozen responses, none of which were respectful of his office.
Before she could say anything unfortunate, Stran stepped forward into the sunlight that poured through the window. He displayed his chest, and the ugly red of his wound gleamed in the light of day. “With all due respect, great sir, there is.”
“You can’t say he was scratched by a kitty-cat,” Zera said lazily. She made cat claws with one hand. Kreya noted that her other hand rested casually in a pocket, undoubtedly a pocket with a powerful talisman. She felt a surge of gratitude for Zera. Her friends were willing to go up against the grand master of their guild, if Kreya gave the word.
“The guards at the wall reported thieves breached the wall,” Grand Master Lorn said. “They fired upon and injured the intruders—thatis where you received your wounds. Illegal activities.”
