Free The Gathering of the Lost by Helen Lowe Page A

honor that has never been repaid.”
    Jehane Mor concealed her surprise that he knew of that. “We do not regard our service to the Earl of Night five years ago as a debt, if that is what you mean.” She followed his gaze up and down the shadowed street. “What are you looking for? More lurkers?”
    “Or the black-clad friends that accompanied this one here. There were a great many of them,” he said when her head turned sharply toward the Guild House gate, “and they were already leaving when I arrived. I assume they posted the lurker to watch for latecomers, such as yourself.” He frowned at the gate. “They may also have left other watchers inside—and you and your companion only have knives.”
    Jehane Mor’s heart was thudding with tension and fear and she had to struggle to keep her herald’s mask in place. But her tone was calm. “I need to go in,” she said.
    “You had better let me go with you.” Tirorn moved toward the gate. “You’ll need someone to guard your back.”
    She hesitated, aware that Tarathan was inside the house itself now, although he had not signaled any alarm. “I didn’t think Derai involved themselves in the affairs of others?”
    “I involved myself when I shot the lurker.” The look Tirorn shot her was searching. “Are you ready for this?”
    Her answer was to step through the gate. At first she thought the yard was empty, with just the usual mix of moonlight and shadow falling across the cobbles. Then she saw that there were darker, more solid shadows sprawled in corners and fallen across doorways. Silently, she knelt by the first body, gazing down into the blank face and unseeing eyes.
    “A friend?” asked Tirorn, who had remained standing, intent on the darkened apertures of house and stable.
    Jehane Mor shook her head. “Someone I knew slightly, from chance meetings on the road. But a comrade, nonetheless.” She looked around at the other bodies, slumped in death, and was aware of a sense of unreality, as though in a moment the corpses would stir back into life again and sit up, laughing at the success of their festival jest. She and Tarathan had known danger many times on the road, had encountered brigands and murderers and been pursued through wild country by those sworn to vengeance, but this—this was the Guild House in Ij, where heralds had been protected by law for centuries.
    The ivy that grew across the stable’s roof and wall stirred as she rose to her feet. Tirorn’s bow came up, then checked as a small owl emerged. “It’s an eave owl,” Jehane Mor told him. “They’re sacred to Imulun, the Mother Goddess.”
    Slowly, he lowered the bow. “Your patron deity?”
    Again she shook her head. “The Guild serves Seruth, the lightbringer, guardian of journeys.”
    Tirorn nodded, but remained silent. And why, thought Jehane Mor, should the gods of the River mean anything to him, when the Derai had their alien pantheon of Nine? She pushed this thought aside, striving to center herself in the reality of timber and stone and ivy. But the stink of death and blood was everywhere, blunting her senses.
    “Where is your friend?” Tirorn asked finally. “What is he doing?”
    “Hunting,” Jehane Mor said. She walked across the courtyard to the main door of the house, which had been forced open. A knot of bodies lay across the threshold, and this time not all of them wore gray.
    “Here,” said Tirorn, “the attackers lost their element of surprise.”
    Jehane Mor said nothing, for the herald dead still bore no weapons other than their daggers; it was only on journeys outside the River lands that the Guild went armed. She pulled the two black-clad bodies inside the door aside and found Naia’s body beneath them. A knife was buried hilt deep in her chest, and Jehane Mor put a hand over the housekeeper’s eyes, closing them. “I don’t think there’s anyone left alive,” she said, and kept her tone cool as water, giving nothing away.
    “Not that I’ve