Traitor's Moon

on Patch, he led them up to the high ground above the meadow.
    Beka found herself studying him again as they rode. “Even with your ’faie blood, I thought you’d be more changed,” she said at last. “Do I look much different to you?”
    â€œYes,” he replied with a hint of the same sadness she’d sensed in her father when they’d met at Two Gulls.
    â€œWhat have you two been doing since I saw you last?”
    Alec shrugged. “Wandered for a while. I thought we’d head for the war, offer our services to the queen, but for a long time he just wanted to get as far from Skala as possible. We found work along the way, singing, spying—” He tipped her a rakish wink. “Thieving a bit when things got thin. We ran into some trouble last summer and ended up back here.”
    â€œWill you ever go back to Rhíminee?” she asked, then wished she hadn’t.
    â€œI’d go,” he said, and she caught a glimpse of that haunted look as he looked away. “But Seregil won’t even talk about it. He still has nightmares about the Cockerel. So do I, but his are worse.”
    Beka hadn’t witnessed the slaughter of the old innkeeper and her family, but she’d heard enough to turn her stomach. Beka had known Thryis since she was a child herself, playing barefoot in the garden with the granddaughter, Cilla. Cilla’s father had taught her how to carve whistles from spring hazel branches.
    These innocents had been among the first victims the night Duke Mardus and his men attacked the Orëska House. The attack at the Cockerel had been unnecessary, a vindictive blow struck by Mardus’s necromancer, Vargûl Ashnazai. He’d killed the family, captured Alec, and left the cruelly mutilated bodies for Seregil to find. In his grief, Seregil had set the place ablaze as a funeral pyre.
    At the top of the ridge Alec reined in and whistled shrilly through his teeth. An answering call came from off to their left, and they followed it to a pond.
    â€œIt reminds me of the one below Watermead,” she said.
    â€œIt does, doesn’t it?” said Alec, smiling again. “We even have otters.”
    None of them saw Seregil until he stood up and waved. He’d been sitting on a log near the water’s edge and his drab tunic and trousers blended with the colors around him.
    â€œMicum? And Beka!” Feathers fluttered in all directions as he strode over to them, still clutching the wild goose he’d been plucking.
    He was thin and weathered, too, but every bit as handsome as Beka remembered—perhaps more so, now that she saw him through a woman’s eyes instead of a girl’s. Though slender and not overly tall, he carried himself with a swordsman’s grace that lent unconscious stature. His fine-featured Aurënfaie face was sun-browned, his large grey eyes warm with the humor she’d known from childhood. For the first time, however, it struck her how old those eyes looked in such a young face.
    â€œHello, Uncle!” she said, plucking a bit of down from his long brown hair.
    He brushed more feathers from his clothes. “You picked a good time to come visiting. There’ve been geese on the pond and I finally managed to hit one.”
    â€œWith an arrow or a rock?” Micum demanded with a laugh. Master swordsman that he was, Seregil had never been much of a hand with a bow.
    Seregil gave him a crooked smirk. “An arrow, thank you very much. Alec’s been paying me back for all the training I’ve put him through. I’m almost as good with a bow as he is with a lock pick.”
    â€œI hope I’m better than that, even out of practice,” Alec muttered, giving Beka a playful nudge in the ribs. “Now will you tell us what brings you and a decuria of riders clear up here?”
    â€œSoldiers?” Seregil raised an eyebrow, as if noticing for the first time that she was in uniform. “And you’ve been promoted, I see.”
    â€œI’m here on the Queen’s business,” she told him. “My riders know nothing of what I’m about to tell you, and I need to keep it that way for now.” She pulled a sealed parchment from her tunic and handed it to him. “Commander Klia needs your help, Seregil. She’s leading a delegation to Aurënen.”
    â€œAurënen?” He stared down at the unopened document. “She knows that’s