Tregarro had known that before he came to Kithamar, but some days it still astounded him.
He had joined the brotherhood twelve years before, still healing from the fire that had marked him. He’d answered the call to Kithamar seven years ago, and acted as Andomaka Chaalat’s left hand for three of them. He had been inducted into the brotherhood’s mysteries. He had drunk Kithamar’s water and breathed Kithamar’s air. He had celebrated the most holy rites in the private temple in the brotherhood’s house here. He was as near to a native of the city as he would ever be.
He never would be.
He sat now in a drawing room at the back of the brotherhood’s compound, in the building the servants and staff called the second guest house when the formal members of the brotherhood were present and the shed when they weren’t. The joke was funny because in any other context the shed would have been a magnificent building: carved stone and polished wood. It only seemed humble because it sat beside the formal gardens and the brotherhood’s great hall.
Every now and then, he would amble to the window and look down into the courtyard. Andomaka was sitting in the shadow of a wide cloth banner placed there to shield her pale skin from the sun. Her cousin sat across from her. Elaine a Sal was daughter of the new prince, the next in traditional succession followed by Andomaka herself, and presently weeping quietly about something. They’d been talking down there for the better part of the morning.
But perhaps it was coming to an end. Andomaka stood and took the girl in her arms. They embraced for a moment, Andomaka whispering something in Elaine’s ears before the girl stepped back. Tregarro retreated from the window. Being where the princess might notice him was bad tactics. It risked spoiling whatever moment Andomaka had been building between them, and he gained nothing by doing it. Despite that, he had to fight the impulse to drift back and watch. He wasn’t a man who had gotten where he was by respecting the privacy of others.
Still, the sun had moved another hand’s span in the sky before Andomaka came to him. Her lips were quirked in a little smile.
“That was unexpected,” she said as she took a seat on a silk divan.
Tregarro poured out a glass of fresh water for her from the pitcher in the servants’ closet. She took it from him without acknowledgment or thanks. “She seemed upset.”
“My loving cousin isn’t finding all aspects of palace life suit her, and I am fortunate that she feels at ease turning to me for counsel.”
“I can’t tell if you’re joking or not,” he said, and sat across from her.
“I am and I’m not,” she said, and drank. He tried not to watch the subtle working of her throat as she swallowed. He was a trusted servant to the high priestess, not her lover. There were ways to look at things that exposed the observer more than the observed, and it was better that he avoid them. She put down the glass and settled herself.
“Your cousin coming here,” he said. “Is it to do with the… the rite?”
The crisis that was upon them after Ausai’s death and the failure of the brotherhood’s mysteries wasn’t something they spoke of openly even here. He expected Andomaka to disapprove, but she only seemed thoughtful. When she spoke, her tone was bitter.
“No, I think our failure was so complete it went unnoticed.” She frowned, and her attention shifted. For a moment, he thought she was back in the Temple in the terrible hours after Prince Ausai had died, reliving the catastrophe again the way he did. When she spoke, he knew he’d been wrong. “I had a dream. The old god Shau had come to the city, and he’d taken on the form of two girls. They were both in grief, and that was the joke. And the beauty. One of them was the wolf girl.”
“The one that used the candle,” Tregarro said.
“I couldn’t see the other one.” Andomaka waved a dismissive hand. Tregarro didn’t know if she meant the dream was empty of prophecy or just that she’d lost interest in it.
“Do we think the boy survived?”
“My wolf boy? I don’t know,” she said. “If he did, he wasn’t there. The girl was younger than him, but of the same stock, I’d guess.”
“A daughter? A sister?”
“Too old for a daughter.”
“They start young down there,” Tregarro said.
“She was surprised by me,” Andomaka said, ignoring his words. “Frightened, even. I tried to gentle her, but there was very little time.”
“She snuffed out the light?”
“I don’t think she did, actually. I was looking at her when it died. I think it might only have reached its end. I think she wanted to talk with me.”
“Well, if the candle’s gone, she won’t be reaching back that way. Did she have the blade?”
“I didn’t see it. She might, she might not. She had an interesting face. I liked her.”
Tregarro pushed away the little twitch of impatience. Andomaka often got lost in how things related to her experience of them. It came, he assumed, from looking at all the world as though it were a dream she was having.
“Was she in the boy’s house?”
Andomaka narrowed her eyes as if she were trying to see again what she’d already seen. She shook her head. “She was someplace else. It was much quieter. And there was no wind. Little wolf always had the wind with him. And everything around her was stone.”
“The west side of the river, then. Unless she was at the Temple. Was there anything else?”
“A cot. It was a narrow room. And a… box? It had a symbol traced on it. A deathmark, I think. Do you think that could have been little wolf?”
“Too early to say anything. That makes it sound like it might be the Temple. I’ll go and look. Did she have anything remarkable about her?”
Andomaka reached out and touched the scars on his cheek and neck. He tried to be patient with her. “No,” she said at last. “Her hair was at her shoulders. And it curled. Her face was round.”
“That’s half the Inlisc girls in Longhill.”
“I’d know her if I saw her again.”
“Well, that’s something.”
“You’re angry,” she said. “With me?” She didn’t make it an accusation, complaint, or apology. She never did. If he had been angry with her, it wouldn’t have bothered her. It would only have been another curiosity in a lifetime filled with them.
“I’m not,” he said. “I’m frustrated. And I’m anxious.”
“Hope,” she said, nodding as if he’d confirmed something. “It was almost easier when everything was lost. The wolf boy and the blade with him. And Ausai. And the other boy, that one. Everything scattered and failed. Then we could mourn and build a new plan. If there’s still hope, there’s still something to be lost.”
Tregarro felt an eeriness in her voice that was like an echo only of meaning, not sound. She found ways to say things that made them deeper than the words themselves. It was part of what fascinated him about her and a part of what he feared. He took her hand and gently folded her fingers away from the scars on his cheek. She didn’t resist. She never did.
“I have my people,” he said. “We will look for her as best we can.”