“No one of our number,” Dasai said, “is naïve enough to think that anything we are given will come without consequence. I urge you all to accept no gifts, and make no oaths or promises. Breaking such things is a grave crime here. If there is a situation you find confusing, please refer whoever is speaking to you to me.”

“We heard this four times on the boat,” Roh said.

“And you will hear it forty more times if need be,” Dasai said. “Accept no gifts, Rohinmey.”

Roh opened his mouth but closed it again at a look from Chali. Roh had argued with everyone but Aramey the entire trip.

A few hours after dark, a man dressed in a long purple robe and short black coat appeared at the door of the sitting room. He knocked politely, even though they had left the outer door open. Behind him was a small bald man, dark but with the features of a Dorinah, whose forehead looked unnaturally flat.

He introduced himself as Ko and invited Dasai to supper with the Patron.

“This novice will act as my assistant during supper,” Dasai said to the Saiduan, waving a gnarled hand in Roh’s direction. “Is this acceptable to your Patron?”

Ko bowed. “Of course. I will escort your scholars to the shared dining hall for their supper with our local scholars.”

Roh and Dasai followed after Ko through wide-ribbed corridors, some of them lined in mirrors. The halls of Kuonrada bore none of the sinuous lines and circles of Oma’s Temple. Dasai shuffled slowly beside him.

There were no frescos, no tapestries. The stones making up the halls were nearly as tall as Roh, set with the close seams of the outer walls, and when not covered in mirrors, the stones were carved into scenes of violent, frenzied battles. Roh walked past a carving of a vicious wolf a head taller than him goring the life from an armored body.

“Beautiful, aren’t they?” Dasai said.

“Who are all these battles with?” Roh asked.

“The Dhai,” Dasai said, “and the Talamynii, before us.”

Roh gazed at the carvings again. The brown, green-eyed Talamynii, the “children of the white wolf,” had tamed the wolves of the continent, wolves half again as big as dogs, their more docile counterparts. But even they had not been able to stand up to the Dhai armies, four thousand years before.

Ko took them through a number of passageways, down a hall lined in black-clad sanisi – more than Roh had ever seen – and halted outside a cavernous room without windows. A tall, lean man stood speaking to two other men a pace between the table and the far wall. Two sanisi stood at either end of the table. A massive table of polished dark wood stood at the center of the room. There were four place settings of crystal. The dozen chairs ringing the table were carved in fearsome faces and padded in deep green velvet.