With his eyes all but closed, Elgart regarded them. One of them was wrapped in a robe as white as new silk. The other wore a brown cloak over leather riding breeches. Something in his past made his heart beat faster.

Makh’s voice held a note of turbulence as he answered. “The world you do not know is wide. It is full of strange sorceries. One of them allows the Great God Rile to store his thoughts and desires in an object like my cross. To store and express them. While I hold it, its contents are mine. When it is taken from me, they are gone. I cannot speak of them.

“If you will allow me to gaze at my cross, I can guess at its secrets. If you will allow me to hold it, I can answer you with assurance. Whatever you wish to know, I can tell you as if the Great God himself were speaking.”

Instinctively, Elgart thought, No. Do not. Do not. He is too strong.

He will torture me again.

“Very well,” said the woman in white. “We will permit you to look at it.”

Her companion seemed to question her. The harsher woman shook her head. While the brown-clad woman retreated to a saddlebag and opened it, the woman wearing white told Makh severely, “Do not imagine that we will put it in your hands. We suspect you of too much harm. We have no wish to hear your Great God speak. We will be content with your guesses.”

“So be it,” rumbled Makh. “I will attempt to satisfy you.”

He sounded content.

Elgart knew what was coming. As he had done so often, he jumped to conclusions, and acted on them. Using every scrap of mind and determination that remained to him, he forced himself to stay still: a man too deeply asleep to move. But within his clothes, he began to tense his muscles and relax them, tense and relax them—one arm, the other, his chest, his abdomen—urging them to remember movement.

To remember specific movements.

The truest thing he knew about Makh was the way the old man rubbed at his chest as if he needed that touch to help him think. Or as if he needed to touch whatever his robe kept hidden.

From the saddlebag, the softer woman took out a wrapped bundle. Her manner betrayed her uncertainty as she handed it to her companion. In contrast, the woman in white did not hesitate. Discarding the wrapping, she held up the object it had concealed.

As she raised her arm, Elgart glimpsed a sheath strapped to her forearm. A throwing dagger.