So Marcus firmly clubbed down the instinctive apprehension the unseen speaker had awakened in him, nodded calmly to Nasaug, and stepped into the cabin, shutting the door behind him. In the darkened cabin, he became acutely aware of how thin his tunic and trousers were, and for the first time since the ships had left port, more than a month ago, he missed the constant burden of his armor. He did not put his hand to his sword—the gesture was too obvious. The knives he had concealed on his person would doubtless be of more use in any fight in such blackness, in any case. It would all happen in terrible proximity.

“You are no huntmaster,” said the unseen Cane after a moment. It let out a chuckling snarl. “No, no warrior.”

“I am a centurion of the First Aleran Legion,” he responded. “My name is Valiar Marcus.”

“Unlikely,” replied the voice. “It is more likely that you are called Valiar Marcus, I should judge.”

Marcus felt the tension sliding into his shoulders.

“We have been watching your spies, you know. They are largely untrained. But we had no idea that you were one of them until only yesterday—and even that was the result of an accident. The wind parted a curtain, and you were seen reading one of Varg’s scrolls when he was out of the cabin.”

A second voice, this one to the right and higher up, spoke. “Only chance revealed you.”

A third voice, low and to his left, added, “The mark of an adept of the craft.”

Marcus narrowed his eyes in thought. “Varg didn’t bring in that pigheaded brat to use me to teach him a lesson,” he said. “He did it to delay my departure until the storm stranded me here.”

“At our request,” confirmed the first speaker.

Marcus grunted. But Varg had played the entire situation out as if it had been his usual planning intersecting with chance, all the way through. It meant that for whatever reason, Varg wanted to keep this conversation concealed, even from his own people. It implied dissension in the ranks—always useful information.

It also meant that his current hosts could only be one thing. “You’re Hunters,” he said quietly. “Like the ones who tried to assassinate the Princeps.”

There was the sound of soft motion in the dark, and then one of the Canim drew a heavy cloth away from a bowl filled with a liquid that cast off a glowing red light. Marcus could see the three Canim, lean, grey-furred members of the breed, with somewhat larger, more foxlike ears than most of the warriors he had seen. They were dressed in the loose robes patterned in grey and black that they had been described as wearing whenever they had been seen back in the Amaranth Vale.