White Road

still teased him about using magic, but it was only in jest.
    The night found them at Akaien’s forge in the village, where Seregil painstakingly set about making two sets of lock picks and other small instruments they needed for nightrunning.
    Stripped to their trousers under leather aprons, Seregil and his uncle heated thin steel rods while Alec or Micum pumped the bellows. The lean muscles in Seregil’s bare arms stood out as he brought the small hammer down on the anvil, sparks spraying off the red-hot steel, shaping it to his needs. Some of the picks were straight; others had angled tips for more complex locks. Some were slender and supple as a branch tip—just the thing for a Rhíminee triple crow lock; a few were half as thick as an arrow shaft for the large locks that secured prisons, the gates of fine villas, the grate locks in the Rhíminee sewers, and other interesting places.
    Akaien looked on with interest, taking a break from his own work. “So this is what all my training with you came to? Little hairpins?” But he laughed as he said it, and Alec saw the pride in the man’s eyes.
    Alec, meanwhile, tried his hand at carving the special ones out of long goat leg bones. These they used on the tiny locks of jewel cases and locked books. The bone was strong enough to turn the lock, but less likely to leave telltale scratches.
    It took four nights to make everything they needed. On the third, Alec found himself alone with Akaien, waiting for the others. Alec liked the man a great deal—there was something of Seregil about him.
    Perhaps that was what prompted him to ask a few questions. “From the way Seregil speaks of his father, you two must not have been much alike.”
    Akaien was quiet for a moment. “Well, Korit was the elder son, and more serious by nature. That’s probably why heended up being khirnari. He was a good one, too. He had real vision and a way with people.”
    “Except with his son?”
    “Perhaps if Korit had lived, and Seregil had grown up with him, they might have come to understand each other.”
    “Seregil told me you’re like a father to him.”
    Akaien smiled at that. “Things might have gone differently for him if he had been mine. Korit was the serious, responsible one; I took after our father, and liked my fun too well. It was our mother Korit took after. She groomed him for khirnari, and he was elected when he was still a young man. But you were asking about Seregil. His mother, Illia, was the light of my brother’s life. She was a lovely woman, with a laugh that made everyone who heard it join in. Seregil took after her in more than looks. If he hadn’t had the life he has, I think he’d be more like her.”
    “It’s sad, losing his mother before he even knew her,” Alec murmured.
Another thing we have in common
.
    “The time for childbearing is short for Aurënfaie women compared with their long lives,” Akaien explained. “She was too old when she carried Seregil, and died giving birth to the son they both wanted so badly, after having four girls already. Korit never forgave himself.”
    “But if that’s true, why didn’t he love Seregil for being like her?”
    “Seregil thinks his father blamed him for his mother’s death. Korit didn’t, but that didn’t bring her back, and his heart never really healed. Seregil would be no different if he lost you. I could see that the minute I laid eyes on you two.”
    Just then they heard Seregil’s voice, and Micum laughing at whatever he’d said.
    “Thank you, Uncle,” Alec said, emboldened by the confidences Akaien had shared, “I love Seregil more than I can say. I promise you, I’ll always take care of him.”
    Akaien gave him a grin much like Seregil’s. “I know that.”
    When the tools were finished, Seregil turned tailor, sewing the canvas rolls with thin pockets to carry the tools in a small, compact bundle.
    Alone in their room, Seregil rolled and tied one set and tossed it to Alec. “Now we’re ready for anything.”
    The following afternoon Mydri sent word that she wanted to speak with Alec—alone.
    She had a small house of her own on the south side of the clan compound. With Sebrahn at his side, Alec knocked softly at her door.
    She apparently had no use for servants, for she opened it herself. “Don’t stand there gawking on the mat. Come in,” she ordered brusquely, although she was smiling.
    The front room was given over to cots for the sick, bundles of herbs, and other