Shadows Return

silver neck chain, several scarves bearing Zengati clan designs, and a bone button.
    “That’s all?” Thero asked, disappointed.
    “There were more arrows, but they were all the same.”
    “And the bodies?”
    “Buried, of course. They’d already begun to bloat when we found them.”
    “Of course,” Micum murmured, examining each item closely. Seregil was the best of them at reading a corpse. Thank the Flame his or Alec’s hadn’t been among the dead.
    Distracted by such thoughts, he very nearly missed a detail. He picked up the button again and looked more closely at it. “This isn’t Zengati work. See how it’s drilled with four holes rather than two, and the way the edges are rubbed smooth? It’s from Plenimar, or Skala.”
    “Any Zengati could have eastern clothing, either from trade or slave taking,” Thero pointed out.
    “Perhaps, but it’s too soon to rule out anyone yet,” Micum replied. “If the Zengat could make such a raid, anyone could have been with them.”
    Yhali gave him a perplexed look. “Why would a Skalan mean them any harm?”
    Micum exchanged a quick glance with Thero. It wouldn’t be politic to admit that the person they most suspected was the Skalan queen.

CHAPTER 31
    A Change in the Wind

    SOMETHING WAS WRONG.
    Yhakobin was as polite as always when Alec came upstairs each day, as long as Alec was docile and cooperative, but there was a tension in the air that hadn’t been there before. He had no doubt it had something to do with the new rhekaro and the cries that still occasionally came down from the workshop.
    Yet unpleasant as the circumstances now were, Alec was glad to get upstairs for any time at all, if only to break up the boredom of the day. It was good to see if the sun was shining or the rain was falling, good to smell the wintry breeze through an open window and hear the sounds of Yhakobin’s children playing outside in the gardens.
    Over a week had passed since the making of the new rhekaro. Each day Alec was brought up to feed it, and each day he was sent back to his little cell immediately afterward, with nothing but new books to amuse himself. Yhakobin had little time for him anymore, which in itself seemed a blessing. The smaller furnaces around the room were cold now. Only the athanor was stoked and it burned continuously, heating some greenish-brown mess in the large retort atop it.
    While the rhekaro fed each day, Alec looked it over carefully, hoping the alchemist would not notice. At first there were only the bodkin pricks on its pale fingertips, but as the days went by, bandages slowly appeared on both its arms and legs. The memory of the bucket by the door, with that bit of hair hanging out, made his heart race and his guts roil.
    Whatever this creature was, Alec could not deny the fact that he was connected to it by blood. Even if it was a monster, no creature deserved to be cut up alive, as the first one had been.
    Or deserved to be kept naked in an iron cage, either. It reminded him too much of that nightmarish journey his first time in Plenimar, creaking along in that filthy bear cage.
    There was no waste bucket in there, or any water. Did it need such things, he wondered? With its strange eyes and skin, and stranger blood, it simply wasn’t a real child.
Except for the way it looks at me.
Those silvery eyes locked on his face each day as it sucked hard at his fingertip, and he was almost certain now that he saw some sign of intelligence there. And though it was hard to tell with it huddled over all the time, he thought it looked larger than it had at first, too. Could it be growing, on nothing more than a few drops of blood a day? Its hair was certainly longer. The long, silvery tresses pooled about it like a shimmering cloak.
    It’s not a child!
he reminded himself time and again, but each day he wondered more and more what it really was.
             
    Alec hadn’t seen Khenir in all that time, but one afternoon as he sat reading on his bed, the door opened and there he was. Alec regarded him with a new coldness, convinced that he’d taken the horn picks. But his heart ached a little, too, torn between conviction and regret.
    Khenir noticed the change in his demeanor at once, of course. With a sigh, he sat down on the bed beside him. “You’re angry with me?”
    “I think you know why.”
    Khenir nodded slowly. “That day I saw that the spoon was missing and realized my mistake in leaving it behind. If Ilban had found