Sianim 02 - Wolfsbane

touched the railing to the right of the stairway.
    She darted up the stairs, blessing the stone under her feet for its silence—it was far more difficult to sneak up a wooden stairway. If she had been in a hall, she would have found a dark corner to hide in, but the stairway was too narrow for that. The best that she could hope for was to meet them at the top of the stairs.
    She told herself that there was no reason to feel nervous about meeting someone walking the halls here, but she had been a spy for too long. Her instincts kept her on edge.
    As she rounded the last stair, she came face-to-face with Gerem. He couldn’t have heard her, but he gave no evidence of surprise.
    “Gerem?” she asked.
    He frowned at her, but vaguely, as if he were concentrating on something else. “What are you doing here?” he asked, but without real interest.
    “I was just going to ask you that.” There was something wrong with him, she thought. His words were soft and slurred as if he’d been drinking, though she smelled no alcohol when she leaned closer to him.
    “Death walks here tonight,” he said, not at all dramatically, rather as if he were talking about grooming his horse.
    An ice-cold chill swept up her spine, as much from his tone as from what he said. “Gerem, why don’t I take you to your room. Wouldn’t you like to go back to sleep?”
    He nodded slowly. “I have to sleep.”
    He took a step forward, forcing Aralorn down a step from the landing, giving him as much of an advantage in height as Falhart had over her.
    Gently she took his arm and tried to turn him, stepping up as she did so. It was a move she often used on stubborn pack animals that refused to go where she wanted them; turning worked much better than pushing or pulling. “Your room is this way, brother mine. You can sleep there.”
    He shook his head earnestly. “You don’t understand. I have to go to the stables.”
    “The stables? What’s in the stables?”
    He stopped tugging against her hold and bent down until his face was level with hers. “I killed Father,” he whispered.
    “Stuff and nonsense, Gerem. Father is not dead.” She looked around for the nearest source of help. This wasn’t near anyone’s sleeping chambers—those were a floor above them. No one would hear her . . . But then she remembered that Irrenna had given Kisrah the Lyon’s library to sleep in.
    “Kisrah!” she shouted, hoping her voice would penetrate the thick oak door.
    “Let me go. I don’t want to hurt you.”
    “No more do I,” she muttered.
    Gerem pulled a knife with a slow and awkward movement. Once he had it out, he held it as if he didn’t know what to do with it now that it was in his hand.
    Misled by that and by his earlier claim of clumsiness, Aralorn tried a simple grab to relieve him of the weapon. She should have realized that the Lyon wouldn’t let any of his sons go without training. As smoothly as he must have done it a hundred times in practice, he caught her hand in his free one and used leverage to twist her around until her back was against him, her arms caught firmly by his off hand, and the cool edge of his knife laid against her throat.
    Without the knife, she’d have gotten out of it easily enough—a former thief of the Trader Clans had taught her a number of interesting tricks—but the knife made any movement on her part highly stupid. Half-grown though he was, he was still stronger and bigger than she was—and better trained than she’d thought. She didn’t want him to grow to adulthood knowing that he’d killed his sister, so she remained very still.
    “What are you going to do in the stables, Gerem?” she asked as unaggressively as possible. Give him some time to break the hold the dreamwalker has woven, she thought. Keep him talking.
    “Sleep.” His arms relaxed a shade but not enough.
    “Why do you need to sleep in the stables?” She kept her voice in big-sister-to-little-brother tones, not frightened-victim-with-knife-at-throat. If you reminded someone you were at their mercy too often, they just might decide to kill you and get it over with.
    He tightened his grip. “I killed Father. Don’t you understand?”
    Abruptly, he twisted, thrusting her at someone who’d been approaching from behind. She knocked the man flat and heard Gerem running down the stairs.
    She swore like any guttersnipe and leapt to her feet, noting only peripherally that it was Kisrah she’d landed on.
    Though instincts would have