Traitor's Moon

next half-moon to prove your charges.”
    Klia stirred, raising her good hand toward Korathan.
    He listened, then asked, “What of the vote?”
    â€œThat must wait until these other matters have been settled,” Brythir replied.
    â€œDamnation!” Alec hissed softly.
    The closing invocation was given, and the crowd slowly dispersed. Seregil leaned over to Alec, as if to comfort him, and whispered quickly in his ear. “Ask to stay with me. Make a scene.”
    Alec gave him a startled look. “What? I can’t—”
    â€œJust do it!”
    â€œCome, Seregil,” Adzriel said.
    â€œLet me come, too!” Alec blurted out, grabbing Seregil’s arm. He blushed as Beka and Thero turned to stare but clung doggedly to him.
    Adzriel patted his arm consolingly. “I’m sorry, my dear, but that’s quite impossible.”
    â€œIt’s my own fault, talí,” Seregil said, looking mortified as he forcefully disentangled himself from Alec’s grasp. “Come on now, don’t act this way. You’re bringing shame on both of us.”
    â€œI can’t bear it,” Alec groaned, burying his burning face in his hands. “After all we went through to get back here!”
    â€œControl yourself, boy. You’re making a spectacle of yourself,” Korathan growled in disgust.
    It took all of Seregil’s frayed will to look his sister in the eye and dissemble. “I’m sorry, Adzriel, he’s so young—Perhaps I could have my old room for the night? Then at least we could see each other’s windows.”
    â€œIt’s as good a place as any,” she agreed, clearly shocked by Alec’s behavior.
    â€œThere now,” Seregil murmured, bending to hug Alec. His friend stole a questioning look at him, and Seregil slipped him the signs for “nightrunning tonight.”
    â€œOld secrets,” Seregil murmured, kissing him good-bye.
    â€œLuck in the shadows,” Alec whispered back, and Seregil breathed a sigh of relief.
    As he turned to follow Adzriel, Thero grabbed him in an awkward and totally uncharacteristic embrace. “Good luck to you, my friend,” he whispered, slipping him something in a little wad of cloth. “Remember your nature and depend on it.”
    â€œI will,” Seregil assured him, palming the mysterious gift.

54
T ETH’SAG
    S eregil lay on the musty bed, staring up into the darkness and trying not to dwell on all the lies he’d had to tell to end up here alone in his ruined childhood room. Blinding himself to the pain and worry in the faces of the others, he’d shut himself off from them more thoroughly than he had when he’d left the city a week earlier.
    And could you sit with them, your sisters and friends, blowing that tomorrow you face judgment, and that Adzriel will be the one forced to carry out the sentence?
    Better to lie here alone, conjuring Rhaish í Arlisandin’s face out of the darkness as he mulled the events of the day. Seregil had dealt with Ilars for most of his life and practiced deceit as an art himself. No honest man was ever that calm.
    The Iia’sidra might see through the Akhendi eventually, but how many more Skalans would die for want of what could so easily be given? He’d sacrificed his birthright for this mission, Klia her hand, Torsin his life. What else would be lost while the Iia’sidra paced itself in the cold cycles of the moon?
    He absently fingered the little wax figure Thero had slipped him, recalling the wizard’s parting words.
Remember your nature anddepend on it
. Was Thero speaking in double riddles now, like a rhui’auros, or had Seregil merely imagined the challenge, wanted to hear it?
    He’d understood, of course. The wax figure was filled with Thero’s spell, needing only a key word spoken over it to release it—Nysander had done the same for him many times, since he couldn’t manage magic himself. The “nature” Thero had hinted at referred to the spell of intrinsic nature. A favorite of Seregil’s from his apprentice days, it transformed one into an animal form said to give the seeker insight into his own heart.
    Nysander had cast it on Alec soon after they met, and the boy had, to no one’s real surprise, turned into a magnificent young stag.
    Seregil hadn’t been much older than Alec the first time Nysander had tried it on him. Finding himself in the sleek