Traitor's Moon

skill with charm making and weaving.”
    â€œI thought it was just a trinket! I should have made her a better gift.”
    Seregil grinned. “You saw her face. She’ll be showing that bakshi stone to her great-grandchildren, a gift from a sword-carrying Tírfaie woman with hair the color of—let’s see, what would the proper poetic simile be? Ah, yes, bloody copper!”
    Beka grimaced comically. “I hope she comes up with something better than that.”
    Just then a young woman touched Alec on the sleeve and performed a similar trick, producing a bracelet with three red beads worked into it. He thanked her, asked some questions, then laughed and pointed to Seregil.
    â€œWhat was that all about?” asked Beka.
    â€œIt’s a love charm,” Seregil explained. “He told her that he doesn’t really need one of those.”
    The girl gave some teasing answer, arching a brow coyly in Seregil’s direction, then passed the bracelet through her hand again. The beads disappeared, replaced by a dangling wooden bird carved from pale wood.
    â€œThat’s more like it,” Alec said. “This one warns if someone’s having evil thoughts about me.”
    â€œPerhaps I should get one of those before I face the Iia’sidra again,” Seregil murmured.
    â€œWhat’s this?” Beka asked, noticing what appeared to be a polished cherry pit hanging from a beaded thread in Seregil’s hair.
    â€œIt’s supposed to keep lies from my dreams.”
    Alec exchanged an odd look with his friend, and Beka felt a twinge of envy. There were secrets between these two she knew she’d never share, just as there were between Seregil and her father. Not for the first time, she wished regretfully that Nysander had lived long enough to induct her as a Watcher, too.
    Meanwhile, her riders had gotten into the spirit of things. WithNyal’s help, gifts and questions were still being exchanged and everyone was sporting a charm or two. Nikides was flirting with several women at once, and Braknil was playing grandfather to a circle of children, shaking his beard and pulling coppers from their ears.
    â€œIt won’t all be this easy, will it?” Beka said, watching one of the village elders present Klia with a necklace.
    Seregil sighed. “No, it won’t.”

10
T HE H EART OF THE J EWEL
    L ady Amali seems to have taken quite a liking to Klia,” Alec observed, watching the two women laughing over some shared exchange as they set out again the next morning.
    â€œI’ve noticed that,” Seregil replied quietly. He glanced around quickly, no doubt making certain that Nyal was safely out of earshot. “They’re of an age to be friends. She’s much younger than her husband. She’s his third wife, according to our Ra’basi friend.”
    â€œSo you find him useful after all?”
    â€œI find everyone useful,” Seregil said with a sly grin. “That doesn’t mean I trust them. I haven’t seen him sneak off with her again, though. Have you?”
    â€œNo, and I’ve been watching. She’s civil to him, but they seldom speak.”
    â€œWe’ll have to keep an eye on them in Sarikali, see if they seek each other out. The young wife of an aging husband, and Nyal such a handsome, entertaining fellow—it could be interesting.”
    Reaching a broad, swift river, they followed it south through ever deepening forest for the rest of the day. Villages grew scarcer, and game more plentiful—and at times peculiar.Herds of black deer no bigger than dogs were common in marshy bends of the river, where they grazed on mallow shoots and water lilies torn from the mud.
    There were bears as well, the first Alec had seen since leaving his mountain homeland. But these were brown rather than black, and bore the white crescent of Aura across their breasts. Strangest and most pleasing of all, however, were the little grey tree-dwellers called
pories
. The first of them appeared just after midday, but soon they seemed to be everywhere, common as squirrels.
    About the size of a newborn child, the pories had flat, catlike faces large, mobile ears, and long, black-ringed tails that gyrated wildly behind them as they leapt among the branches with clever, grasping paws.
    A few miles later, the pories disappeared as abruptly as they’d come. Midafternoon shadows were weaving themselves beneath the trees when the