Dethor laughed, a sight which would, no doubt, have astonished his pupils. Weaponsmasters, of course, never laughed. They also, according to popular repute, never ate, never slept, and were possessed of the ability to know instantly whenever one of their pupils had done something he shouldn’t, because he was always punished for it with an extra-hard lesson the next day. It obviously never occurred to boys that their guilty expressions always gave them away…

“Don’t get coy with me, my lad,” Dethor replied. “You know very well how remarkable it was.”

Alberich gave the servant a sidelong glance; the man took the hint, picked up the carrier, and took himself off. Dethor sat down beside the fireplace and motioned to Alberich to take his own seat.

“I—I feel—unsettled,” Alberich said at last. “I am treated as if I belong—yet I do not. I should not. So how comes it, that it is as if I do? And how comes it, that it feels to me as if I should?”

“I wish I could tell you, lad,” Dethor sighed, and stared out the window at the darkening trees. “If I could, well, I suspect we’d not be at odds with your land. You’re not the first Karsite to come over the Border, as you know—though I suspect you didn’t until you found it out here. You’re not even the first Karsite to be Chosen, though all of the rest were tiny children when they escaped, and were basically Valdemaran when they became Trainees. But you are the first adult Karsite ever Chosen, and I have to think that it’s something in you that makes you different from your fellows.”

Well, that answered one question—why Vkandis, if indeed His Hand was behind all of this, hadn’t arranged for one or another of the former Karsite children to be Chosen. Clearly, he had. And clearly, whatever He wanted from such an arrangement hadn’t happened. Alberich stared at the fire in the fireplace. “But it is to Karse—to the Sunlord—that I belong,” he said softly. He knew that; it was at the core of him. Nothing about that part of him had changed. If that part had changed, he would no longer be himself.