Shadows Return

blood and let it fall into the cup.”
    Seregil handed Alec his poniard. Alec pulled the rhekaro into his lap and took one of its hands between his. “Don’t worry. It’s just a little poke. Just one. Hold out your hand.”
    And it did, gaze fixed on Alec’s hand. Alec carefully pricked the tip of one small finger. What oozed out was not blood, but something pale and viscous, like the jelly around frog’s eggs in the spring. When it fell into the water, a flash of soft light spread, reminding Seregil of a firefly’s glow. It quickly faded, and something dark formed and floated to the surface.
    It was a flower, and looked for all the world like a tiny river lotus, except for the color. It was dark blue, almost black, and gave off a sweet, heavy fragrance.
    “This is it?” Seregil asked, eyeing it closely.
    “It’s supposed to be white, according to the texts, but this rhekaro makes nothing but these blue ones. They’re worthless,” Ilar told him.
    “I saw some of these in the workshop!” Alec exclaimed, reaching for it.
    Seregil grabbed his wrist. “Be careful.”
    “He said it didn’t work.” But Alec used the tip of his knife to lift the blossom from the cup. Holding it out to the rhekaro, he said, “Sebrahn, can you show me?”
    The rhekaro took it carefully in its cupped hands and looked around at the three of them for a moment. Then it moved toward Ilar, holding the flower up as if it wanted him to smell it. The man scrambled backward, face drawn with fear.
    “So you’re certain it doesn’t work?” Seregil snatched the flower from the rhekaro’s hand and leaped on Ilar, holding him down and mashing it against his lips.
    Ilar clawed at his wrists and they grappled, rolling across the dirty floor. Alec jumped on Ilar’s legs and helped wrestle him down. When Seregil looked for the flower, it was nowhere to be found.
    “Where the hell—? Did you eat it?”
    “Let me go! I had your word!” Ilar cried, still struggling weakly.
    “We never gave you that, actually.” Seregil grabbed Ilar’s face and inspected his mouth closely. “Well, now, that’s interesting. Let him up, Alec.”
    Ilar staggered up to his feet, outraged and panting. “You lied to me!”
    “How does it feel?” Alec sneered.
    “Better yet, how does your lip feel?” asked Seregil.
    “My lip?” Ilar raised a trembling hand to his mouth. “What do you mean? Oh!”
    The split was gone, the lip whole and pink under a smear of blood as if nothing had happened.
    “No wonder Yhakobin didn’t figure it out,” Seregil murmured, grabbing Ilar again and holding him still while he ran a thumb over the healed place. “It does do something, just not what he wanted, apparently. Let’s hear it for your ‘mongrel’ blood, talí.”
    He grinned at Alec, and for an instant something came to him along the talimenios bond: Alec was as surprised as he was, but there was something more, something Alec wasn’t telling him.
    Alec caught the look and made a discreet canting gesture in Ilar’s direction:
Not in front of him.
    At the end of his patience, Seregil pulled Alec to his feet. “Come on. We need to talk. Ilar, you stay here.”
    As expected, Alec took the rhekaro by the hand and brought it along with them. Seregil led them outside.
    “Well?”
    Alec rested his hands on the rhekaro’s shoulders. “The oracle at Sarikali said I’d father a child of no woman, right? And Illior knows, Sebrahn doesn’t have a mother.”
    Seregil clenched his fists in frustration. “It’s
not
a child!”
    “He is to me, and he’s mine.”
    For a moment Seregil was speechless. Then everything fell into place. “You think—? This—Alec, you’re not serious?”
    “I am, too! What else could it mean? Look at him!”
    There was no mistaking the resemblance between them. Abhorrent as the thought was, Alec might actually be right.
    “Tell me again how he was made. All of it.”
    Alec told him about the purifications in detail, and then, more haltingly, of the various bodily fluids that had been collected and how. When he got to the semen, he was blushing miserably.
    “They drugged you for that, eh? Well, at least you dreamt of me,” Seregil told him, ruffling his hair. “I’m surprised Yhakobin didn’t order Ilar to get that from you…” The look on Alec’s face told him he’d hit a mark. “That bastard!”
    “Like I said, he tried, but I wouldn’t.”
    Seregil gently clasped him by the back of the neck and rested his