Free Path of the Sun: A Novel of Dhulyn and Parno by Violette Malan Page B

stable yard and a tiny bedroom, with just the bed, hooks for clothing, and a narrow cupboard.
    “There was only the one table when we came,” Mar was saying, as she pulled the room’s two chairs around for her guests. “But the innkeeper helped us throw together this worktable when we told him what we needed.” Two sawhorses had been set up along the wall under the window, and what was obviously an old door had been placed on it as a tabletop. Stacked neatly and clearly arranged in some order were bound books, scrolls, pens, drawing chalks and charcoal, inks in three colors, and clean, unused parchments and sheets of paper.
    “We might be more private in a public room,” Dhulyn pointed out, her hand on the back of the chair Mar had offered her, “where we can easily see who is close to us.”
    Gun raised his eyebrows. “Are you trying to tell me you couldn’t tell whether there was someone close enough to hear us, even through these walls? It may be a long time since we last met, but not so long that I’d forget what Mercenaries can do.” He looked from one to the other. “Well? Is there anyone in the rooms around us? Anyone in the stable yard close enough to hear?”
    Dhulyn signaled to him, and Parno shut his eyes, the better to concentrate on the Hunter’s Shora . No one in the hallway on this side of the stairs, no one in the room next to them. He went into the bedroom, where, he noticed, the bed was tidy. No one in the room on the far side. He came back into the sitting room and went to the window. The innkeeper’s son had finished brushing his pony and was nowhere to be seen.
    “It would be fairly simple to climb up this wall,” Parno remarked.
    “Oh, certainly,” Gun agreed. “For a Mercenary Brother. I don’t think we need to worry about anyone else.”
    “Come now.” Dhulyn sat down. “What is it you have to tell us that we must be so careful no one overhears? Evidently not merely what brings you to Uraklios?”
    The two looked at each other, and when some signal had passed, Mar spoke.
    “No, though I will have to tell you something of that, to explain how we learned what . . . what’s troubling us now.” She placed her hands on the edge of the makeshift table and hoisted herself up. Gun leaned on the table next to her, and she put her hand on his shoulder.
    Parno looked at Dhulyn and lifted his right eyebrow. She blinked twice. There was no one outside of the Brotherhood itself—no land-based people in any case, he amended, that he and Dhulyn would trust more than Gundaron of Valdomar and Mar-eMar Tenebro. And he would have thought that they felt the same. What, then, was making them so hesitant to speak?
    “We first came almost seven moons ago,” Mar began. Perhaps, after all, she had only been ordering her thoughts. “There’s no Library here in Menoin,” she said, referring to the strongholds of the Scholars. “But there are Scholars, and one of them came across a reference in one of the ancient books belonging to the Tarkinate that seemed to indicate that the Caid ruins just north of Uraklios, on the other side of those hills,” she gestured out the window, “were once a major city. Valdomar petitioned for the right to investigate and, if possible, excavate the site.”
    “The elders at Valdomar have been sending me on this type of investigation,” Gun said. “Ever since I revealed my Mark, they’ve found it useful.” He grimaced. “No pun intended.”
    “So I take it you Found this Caid city?” Dhulyn said.
    “Here, let me show you.” Gun unrolled a map and laid it out on the table, which it covered like a cloth. “Here, you see? That’s the pass through the hills. Here’s the site of the old city.” He looked up. “At one time it was probably the main city, and the ancient equivalent of Uraklios was merely its harbor.”
    “What’s this,” Parno said, laying his finger on an odd design on the map. “It looks like a maze.”
    Gun nodded. “A part of one,