Graegor could see the students waiting to reach the registrar’s office. Those with the least seniority always expected to be here all morning and into the afternoon on registration day, and the atmosphere was social even in the cold, since there was plenty of time to talk in the slow-moving line. It stretched around the administration building and then all the way down the freestanding colonnade opposite the spellcasting hall. Graegor also saw groups of students, likely finished with their course registration, occupying tables set up near a row of food stalls nearby. As he followed Contare toward a table where Karl and Richard sat hunched over coffee mugs, Graegor looked left, toward the plaza, and he saw the fountain and the two men in wool caps sitting there.
He wondered if they were carrying chains. All of Brandeis’s heretics were supposed to do that. A length of iron chain with a broken manacle symbolized their hope that Brandeis would be set free. The heretics who had burned the Orest ferry had used them as weapons. If the two men here had them, they were small enough to fit in their pockets, and in fact neither of these men seemed to be armed at all. But Graegor had not forgotten that they had both drawn swords on him back in Farre.
He tapped his link with Contare. “Should I just walk up to them and see if they’ll talk to me?”
“Yes. Keep it simple.” Contare sat down at the table with Karl and Richard. No one around them was showing any interest in them. “I have eight magi watching from different vantages, so we should be able to tell if these two are alone or part of a group.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And remember that I’ll be here to coach you if you need it.”
“Yes, sir.” Graegor tapped his link with Jeffrei. “We’re here.”
“What do you need me to do?”
“For now, nothing.”
“Fortunately, I’m very good at that.”
“You can tell Logan and Patrick and Marcus that I’m here. But you should all pretend that I’m not.”
“Will do. I can’t guarantee that other people won’t recognize you, though. If they do, you’ll be mobbed. Everyone’s talking about the duel.”
“I’m sort of in disguise.” He paused. “What are they saying about the duel?”
“Just a lot of wondering about it.” But now Jeffrei was the one to pause. “And taking sides. There’ve been some … unfriendly exchanges.”
He didn’t ask if Jeffrei had been involved in any of them. “It was a draw, in case that fact matters.”
“I don’t think that’s what Ferogin told his magi.”
I should have killed that jackass. Graegor stopped, horrified at the thought, but then pushed it aside. He didn’t have time for this right now. “Let’s talk about it when I’m done. Contare wants me to be the one to ask the heretics why they’re here.”
“Right. Let me know if I can help.”
“I will.”
“Luck.”
Graegor glanced back at Contare. His master sent a wordless sense of encouragement, so he stepped out from the row of food stalls and into the plaza.
He approached the heretics from their left, crossing the plaza without dawdling or rushing. When he was still ten paces away, the younger man casually turned his head and marked him, but turned away as if unconcerned. Graegor continued to walk straight toward them, and the younger man looked up again, studying him without recognition. Then, suddenly, the man’s eyes widened. He smacked the back of his hand against the older man’s arm, still staring at Graegor, and Graegor could not help smiling at the reaction. The older man turned, and he, too, did not recognize Graegor at first, but then his eyes bulged and his mouth moved in a whisper. Graegor didn’t break stride, and he sat down on the lip of the fountain, a bit out of the reach of the older man. He noticed the younger man slowly closing the leather folder where it rested between him and the older man, obviously hoping Graegor wouldn’t notice it.
“I never thought I’d see either of you again,” Graegor said. It was easier to show confidence than he’d thought. Contare was right—he was the one in control this time.
The two of them glanced at each other, and the younger man looked back and said, in heavily accented Mazespaak, “In Telgardian, please?”
Embarrassed that he hadn’t even thought about what language to use, Graegor bit the inside of his lip to keep from reflexively apologizing. So much for confidence. “I never thought I’d see either of you again,” he repeated in Telgardian. “Remind me of your names.”
The two men glanced at each other. The younger hesitated, but then made a slight gesture of deference, and they both turned back to Graegor. The older man kept blinking—he seemed unable to control it—but he spoke carefully. “My name’s Ahren, my lord.” He gestured to the younger man. “This is Rond.”
“Welcome to Maze Island.”
“You’ve changed since Farre, my lord.”
Graegor rubbed his beard, though he knew full well that this wasn’t the change Ahren meant. Something touched his leg, and he looked down to see a striped cat pushing her orange head against his boot. He scratched the cat’s ears and heard her purr.
“It likes you,” Ahren said, his tone still very careful. Rond’s eyes were narrowed.
“Most animals do.” Still petting the cat, he nodded toward the space between them where the folder rested. “May I see that?”
Rond put his hand firmly on top of the folder. But he wasn’t prepared for Graegor’s sharp telekinetic tug, and the folder squirted free of Rond’s hand and landed on the ground. The cat dashed away as both men lunged for the folder, but Graegor pulled it the short distance into his own hands, and as a page drifted free, he grabbed that with his mind too and held it up.
It was Daxod. The pencil sketch was as finely detailed as all the others he had seen, and the only differences between it and the Tolander sorcerer were the smile on his face and the hair on his head; Graegor had never seen Daxod with either. His hair was shown as white or blonde, instead of the usual black of his race, and his clothing was distinctly western instead of southern.
“Interesting,” Contare sent. “And the others?”
Graegor looked at Ahren and Rond, but they only stared back unhappily as the tiered fountain splashed behind them. He opened the leather folder to find the drawing of Jeffrei that Magus Darren had seen. Beneath it were three more pages tucked into the folder’s right-hand pocket, and the topmost of these was a drawing of his friend Patrick.
“Don’t react,” Contare reminded him, but it was too late. Both of the men had been watching closely, and now Ahren eagerly asked, “Do you know him?”
“I recognize him,” Graegor said truthfully, still studying the drawing. Patrick’s hair looked different, combed back into a horse-tail instead of hanging free, and he was wearing a heavy coat and scarf. His expression was unusually solemn.
“Is he a magus here?” Ahren pressed.
Graegor didn’t answer that, instead bracing himself against any reaction to the next picture. Fortunately, it was of a Khenroxan girl he didn’t know. She had a narrow, noble face and was dressed as a holy sister. “Do you know her?” he asked Contare.
“I might—or, rather, Josselin might. Let me see the last one.”
Graegor gathered the other four sheets into the folder’s left-hand pocket and pulled out the final drawing. Again, Ahren and Rond saw his eyes widen, and in his mind, he could feel Contare’s shock. This sketch was of Darc.
“The crown prince,” Rond murmured. “You do know him, of course.”
Of course he did. Since the day they had met in Chrenste, Graegor had counted Darc and his brother Adlai among his best friends. They exchanged letters nearly every week. Darc’s expression in this drawing, like Patrick’s, was more serious than usual. There was no laughter in his eyes, and he looked a few years older, with a few days’ growth of beard. “What does this mean?”
“I have no idea.” Contare seemed grim. “Ask them why they’re here.”
Graegor looked Ahren in the eye and
said, “Why are you here?”
Ahren’s chin twitched. “We are here because those people are important to the One,” he said, resuming the slow, careful way he had spoken before.
“Brandeis sent you to look for them?”
“Yes. Lord Brandeis believes … that they may be in danger.”
Graegor wished the man would stop that incessant blinking. “Why did he think they were here on Maze Island?”
Ahren hesitated, and Rond spoke. “That was a guess. He thought they could be found near you.” He nodded toward the line of magi students wrapped around the plaza. “Since they’re young, we thought they may be here, at the Academy. Today seemed a good day to try to find them all.”
“Except this one.” Graegor tapped Darc’s picture.
They didn’t answer. Contare prompted, “Ask them if they have shown that one to the king.”
When Graegor did, Ahren bit his lip and Rond gave him a polite smile. “We didn’t think his Majesty would agree to see us.”
“And you didn’t think Lord Contare would agree to see you either?” Graegor asked at Contare’s further prompt. “If the people in these pictures are in danger, shouldn’t you have come to him directly? Immediately?”
“No,” Rond said steadily. “He is no friend to us.”
Graegor looked back at the drawings. Pretending to study them gave him the time he needed to consult Contare. “Brandeis was lighting a fire,” he said eventually, still peering at the picture of the girl he didn’t recognize. “Lord Contare had to stamp it out.”
“The One—” Ahren started.
But Contare had given Graegor more to say. “I meant that literally. You burned the Orest ferry. A magus in Lord Contare’s service was there.” He didn’t add that Magus Hugh had been escorting a packet boat downriver, a boat that had been laden with gifts and goods from Graegor’s home village, all of which had been lost. Ahren and Rond didn’t need to know his personal stake in this. Besides, they were the ones who needed to be talking. “You said that Brandeis thinks these people are in danger. From whom?”
Ahren and Rond glanced at each other again. Then Ahren rushed to say, “From the rogue magi.”
Rond stood up abruptly, as if ready to leave. Ahren looked up at the younger man with a strange mixture of pleading and defiance. Contare sent, “Let him go. I’ll have someone follow him. Ahren may be more forthcoming without him there.”
But perhaps the same thought occurred to Rond, because after a long pause, he took a breath and sat back down. He rested his elbows on his knees and laced his fingers together, his eyes fixed to the paving stones. Ahren murmured something to him, but he just shook his head.
Ahren turned back to Graegor. “It was after the … arrests. A magus came to us. To Rond. The magus asked if we wanted to ally with the rogue magi.”
“Ally?”
Ahren bit his lip again. “Ally against you,” he confessed. “Rond brought the magus to Lord Brandeis.”
Graegor looked at Rond, who continued to stare at the ground. After a moment, as if feeling the weight of Graegor’s stare, Rond said softly, “It wasn’t unreasonable.”
“Lord Brandeis refused,” Ahren said hurriedly. “He is not yet convinced that you are not the One. We serve the One. We can’t ally with those who wish you dead.”
The weight of Ahren’s assertions made Graegor distinctly uncomfortable. Crackpots, he told himself. They’re all deluding themselves. “I’m not the One. Wouldn’t something have happened on Waiting Day if I were?”
Ahren paused, blinking, then said, “Maybe not. Men chose that day. Maybe we should have been observing it on the day you relit the Eternal Flame.”
“Change the subject,” Contare advised. “Ask them if it was after the meeting with the rogue magi that Brandeis drew these new pictures.”
“I don’t know when he drew them,” Ahren said when Graegor asked. “He gave them to me after the rogue magus was gone. He summoned me, and he said …” He glanced at Rond, who didn’t look up. “He said he understood why Rond was angry at Lord Contare, but that it was misguided. That it …” He paused, and when he spoke again, he was obviously quoting. “‘It doesn’t matter what happens to any of us, as long as whatever does happen furthers the service of the One.’”
“How,” Rond said, his voice tightly controlled, “can a purge of his most loyal followers serve the One?”
“We can’t see all possibilities!” Ahren admonished him. “Not even he can see all possibilities. He said so. We don’t know.”
Rond did not reply. Ahren seemed to realize that he had raised his voice, and he clamped his mouth and eyes shut for a moment before he blinked and looked at Graegor again. His voice was imploring. “Lord Brandeis told me to try to find these people. He said he was worried about them. He needs to know who they are and why they’re important. Many of the sorcerers were in his earlier visions, so he’s afraid that the rogue magi’s obsession with killing the sorcerers threatens the One. We can’t have that. We can’t.”
Graegor nodded, waiting for Contare to tell him what to say next, and Ahren’s expression suddenly grew pained. “You don’t believe. You won’t believe, even when it’s right in front of you. Why?”
Because I’m not a zealot like you. Graegor shook his head. “I’m sorry, but it’s not right in front of me.”
“But you’ve seen the pictures. You must know every single person in them.”
“I don’t, actually.”
“But the prince! The crown prince!” Ahren gestured toward the folder in Graegor’s hands. “The cause of the One will be embraced by the royal family!”
Graegor lifted one eyebrow in heavy sarcasm. The ringless ones had caused so much trouble in Chrenste and Volney last summer that King Raimund had declared them expelled from the entire kingdom. “That’s what you think this picture means?”
“What else could it mean?”
Graegor didn’t like how agitated Ahren was becoming, but Contare sent, “We learn more when he isn’t careful with his words. Keep challenging him. Ask him about Daxod.”
Graegor shuffled the papers to find the drawing of Daxod and tilted it toward Ahren. “What about him? Why would a Tolander be important to the One?”
“Because the One arrives to free all of humanity, not just us L’Abbanists.” Ahren thrust his chin toward the drawing. “Lord Brandeis thinks this is the sorcerer from Toland.”
Graegor saw no point in denying it. “Yes.”
“A sorcerer from Toland, after eight sorceresses.” Ahren blinked convulsively. “Is this not a sign?”
In the labyrinth, Daxod had told Graegor that many of his people believed that very thing. “But Malaya is feeding that belief for her own purposes,” Contare reminded him now. “It’s really only the luck of the draw that Toland hasn’t had a sorcerer before now.”
“It may be a sign,” Graegor allowed, “but again, it may not mean what you think it means.”
Ahren drew himself up with an air of injured pride. “I trust Lord Brandeis. As should you.” He blinked and looked at Rond. “As should you. You promised you would trust him and me.”
Rond only sighed, his interlaced fingers tight against each other.
“Brandeis didn’t send him,” Contare realized. “He sent Ahren. I don’t think Rond was supposed to come.”
“Should I ask them?”
“Yes, see if I’m right.”
“Why did you allow him to come with you?” Graegor asked Ahren, nodding toward Rond. “Brandeis sent you, not him.”
That made Rond look up, startled. They exchanged another look, and again Ahren spoke hurriedly, as if afraid Rond would interrupt. “Lord Brandeis didn’t want me to tell anyone about it. He told me not to. Before I left, I told people that I was going to visit my daughter. But Rond didn’t believe me. He followed me out of Orest and asked me why I was headed east instead of north.”
“We’ve worked on many assignments together,” Rond said. He’d recovered his comp
osure and spoke with calm assurance. “I didn’t want him to go to Maze Island without backup.”
Graegor had the uncharitable thought that Rond was a poor excuse for “backup” against the Circle, but he didn’t say it. “Does your daughter know that you’re one of Brandeis’ followers?” he asked Ahren, and at Contare’s suggestion, added, “One of the ‘ringless ones’?”
This took Ahren aback, but he recovered quickly. “She knows I’m one of the white heralds. She fears for me, since she has doubts, like you do. But both of you will understand. Eventually everyone will.”
“How are you so certain? How did you meet Brandeis?”
Now Ahren seemed to relax, and he even smiled. “I was his jailor.”
“You’re serious?”
“Yes. I belonged to the city guard in Orest.”
Graegor raised his eyebrows in surprise. Ahren certainly didn’t have the bearing of a soldier.
“We all did duty shifts at the jail,” Ahren went on. “Lord Brandeis was so young. He still is so young. He’s no older than you, my lord. I felt sorry for him, and I started talking to him. I wanted to know if his visions were real.” He spread his hands. “They are. He is a prophet, a true prophet. I tried to help him escape, but it went wrong, and he gave himself up to save me from being arrested. I have to wear a disguise, now, to visit him. But it’s no trouble. He has given me much responsibility, and—”
“And that’s because of the purge,” Rond interrupted, with a firm tone that said enough. He looked at Graegor steadily. “Don’t ask me for my life story, my lord. All you need to know is that both of us are completely loyal to Lord Brandeis.”
“Obviously,” Graegor said. “I’m not asking you to be otherwise.”
Rond frowned. “Then what are you asking?”
“That you stop burning ferries. That you stop inciting riots.”
“But we can’t stop speaking to people about the One,” Ahren protested.
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