Shadows Return

not to sound too pleased.
    Ilar scowled and shook his head. “It’s nothing.”
    “You’re in pain. What happened?”
    Ilar gingerly raised the hem of his robe to show Seregil a dozen or so angry red welts across the backs of his calves.
    Seregil stifled a grin; they were clearly the marks of a whip. Putting on a mask of concern, he touched a finger to one of the wounds, making Ilar hiss in pain and jerk away. “Did Master Yhakobin do this to you?”
    “It’s your whore’s fault!” he snarled, shoving Seregil away. “His blood is so tainted by Tirfaie filth that the rhekaro is not right. The first was useless, and the second is an enigma.”
    “Maybe your master is not doing it right?” Seregil asked without thinking.
    Ilar cuffed him on the ear. “You forget yourself, Haba. I’m already in a foul mood. See this?” He held out the arm with the slave mark. “That should be branded over by now. I should have earned my freedman’s mark the day that boy was delivered. It’s not my fault he’s a half-breed! Ilban knew it when he made me his promise. But still I wait and bear the brunt of his frustration. How many of the wretched things does he get to make before he holds up his end of the bargain, eh?”
    Seregil bowed his head. “Forgive me, Master Ilar. I’m sorry to add to your cares.” He nodded at the stripes. “That must have hurt a lot.”
    “Oh don’t pretend to care! Just make yourself useful. Here.” He took a small pot of salve and some linen wrappings from his pocket and tossed them to Seregil.
    So Seregil tended the wounds. The alchemist had probably wounded Ilar’s pride more than his body, he thought, disgusted at such a fuss over so small a matter. The skin was hardly broken. Ilar had hurt him far worse and not given it a second thought. Lips pressed tightly together to hold back any snide observations, he dabbed the salve carefully over each welt as if they were war wounds, then set about wrapping the linen.
    “You have a deft touch, Haba,” Ilar murmured, watching him with rapt attention. “But I suppose you must have needed it in your former line of work?” For once he wasn’t sneering. He sounded tired and discouraged.
    “I did. But I wonder how you know about all that, Master?” Seregil replied softly, still concentrating on his bandaging. This was new ground.
    “You know of a necromancer named Vargûl Ashnazai?”
    The name was like a hot poker pressed to Seregil’s heart, linked as it was to memories of blood-streaked walls and severed heads chattering on his mantelpiece, and a hank of Alec’s hair knotted around a dagger, left for him to find. “He was a very memorable man,” he managed at last.
    Ilar chuckled at that. “His uncle, Duke Tronin Ashnazai, is a good friend of my master. It was from him that I heard of your adventures against Duke Mardus and his cabal. Duke Tronin had the story from a nobleman who was with Mardus’s entourage. Seems he’d witnessed you killing Mardus, and that Orëska wizard—what was his name, Haba? Ander? Nander, or something like it?”
    “Yes,” Seregil whispered. “Something like that.”
    “It was most perplexing news, too, as I’d understood that the man was your patron in Rhíminee. Tell me, Haba, do you kill all your friends in the end?”
    Seregil sat back and kept his clenched hands pressed to his thighs, biting the inside of his cheek as he forced himself not to lash out. “No, not all of them. And I didn’t kill that necromancer, though I’d have been happy to do the deed. Alec had that honor.”
    “Ah. Well perhaps we’d better keep that between us, eh? Oh, and this as well.” He reached into a pocket and took out several long black slivers of what appeared to be broken horn. “Your protégé is a very clever boy in some ways, even if he is quite gullible. I left a spoon within reach and he did exactly as I’d expected, making a lock-picking tool. Earlier he even picked a padlock with a file. You must have been a very good teacher. Not that you’ll need such skills here. But you are neat-handed—a fact I mean to make use of.” He reached into another pocket and passed Seregil a clay oil vial, then propped one foot in Seregil’s lap.
    Swallowing another morsel of his pride, Seregil obediently warmed some of the rose-scented oil between his palms and began to massage the offered foot. It was something else he was good at, and though Ilar never took his eyes off Seregil, he relaxed noticeably.
    “I