Shadows Return

Dalnan boy.”
    “I haven’t been a good Dalnan boy since I met you. All the same…” Alec went to the shrine and softly sang some prayer, the picture of piety.
    Seregil left him to it, steeling himself to face Valerius. He and the priest had both been Watchers, and had worked together many times over the years, but Seregil’s gut still tightened as he caught sight of the man striding toward them, his black beard and eyebrows noticeably bristling.
    Valerius had been the high priest of Dalna in Rhíminee for four years now, but it hadn’t smoothed his temper. He went straight for Alec and gave him a sharp cuff on the ear.
    “That’s for lying inside the precinct, you whelp!”
    “Ow! Sorry,” Alec said humbly, clasping the side of his head.
    Valerius knew better than to raise a hand to Seregil, but his expression was enough to make the smaller man take a step back. “All the barking and yelling that just disturbed my morning meditation would be your doing, I take it?”
    “All in a good cause.”
    Valerius snorted and folded his arms across his broad chest. A northerner like Alec, he was half a head taller than either of them and built like a mountain bear.
    And just as ill-tempered,
Seregil reflected sourly.
Considerably more dangerous, too, even in a good mood.
    “Well, I suppose that’s better than what Brother Myus thought he caught you two at.”
    “I wouldn’t!” Alec gasped, going red to the ears. “Not here.”
    Valerius gave him another disapproving look. The truth was he liked Alec and had always blamed Seregil for what he deemed the young man’s fall into bad ways. In the eyes of most of Rhíminee society, Alec was a minor noble of no consequence beyond his somewhat scandalous association with the dissolute and clever Lord Seregil. The fact that he’d first been introduced to society as Seregil’s ward only added to the gossip. But in Rhíminee, of course, that was generally a plus.
    “So you’re still up to your old tricks?” Valerius rumbled as they walked back toward the temple.
    “Not much else to do, these days,” Seregil replied. “With Thero still in Aurënen, there’s been no—” He waved a hand casually, thumb hooked over the top of his third finger: the sign for
Watcher business.
    Valerius paused near the portico and lowered his voice. “And Phoria still hasn’t summoned you? It’s been well over a year now, hasn’t it? After what the two of you accomplished for Skala in Aurënen, I should think she’d want you with her spies.”
    “Then you don’t know Phoria,” Seregil muttered.
    “We hope to see her when she returns from the front,” Alec told him, anxious to change the subject. “Duke Tornus wrote to her on our behalf, offering our services again.”
    “Ah, yes. Will you be sitting with the Royal Kin for the Progress?”
    Seregil gave him a wry look. “We haven’t received our invitation yet.”
    Acolytes were spreading the morning crumbs for the doves in the temple courtyard. A few birds fluttered up at their approach, and one landed on Alec’s shoulder. He offered it a finger and it perched there, preening.
    Seregil grinned at Valerius. “See? Your Maker still loves him, even with me around.”
    “Perhaps,” Valerius muttered.
    Seregil regretted his choice of hiding place. Valerius’s jibes about Alec still struck more deeply than Seregil liked to admit.
    Friend, partner in their precarious secret business, and
talimenios
—there was no proper translation for all that encompassed, or the deep bond of heart and body he and Alec shared. Seregil had taught him guile and all the tricks of the nightrunner trade, but at heart Alec was still the honest woodsman he’d found in that northern cell, and for that Seregil would always be grateful. Loving Alec made him feel almost clean again, himself.
             
    Valerius lent them light cloaks and they set off for the Stag and Otter to change clothes.
    “Well, that could have gone better, but at least we got what we went for. That’s the most fun we’ve had in ages!” Alec flipped the brooch up in the air.
    Seregil snatched it in midair and shoved it into his purse. “Are you trying to drop it again?”
    “I found it, didn’t I?” Alec teased, determined not to let Seregil sink into one of his moods. “Admit it. That was fun!”
    “Fun?”
    “Well, more fun than moping around Wheel Street, or at some noble’s salon.”
    “And when have we been doing that? I’m quite out of fashion