Gaborn stood a minute in the dim light, studying the moldy skeletons, many of them still in armor, bearing weapons on their chests. Though the room was small, only forty feet long and twenty wide, five tiers of stone shelves were cut into the walls. Some guards had been entombed here for over twenty years. Bones from knuckles and toes littered the floor, borne there by rats.

Gaborn looked as if he would ask a question.

“You may speak freely here,” Iome told him, still kneeling beside her mother’s casket. “These pallbearers are all deaf or mute, sworn to the service of House Sylvarresta. No one here will betray you.”

“You bury your dead with their weapons here in House Sylvarresta?” Gaborn asked.

Iome nodded.

He seemed delighted, looked as if he would rob a corpse. “In Mystarria, we bequeath fine weapons and armor to the living, so it can be put to good use.”

“Mystarria does not have so many smiths to keep employed,” Iome said dryly.

Gaborn asked, “Then no one will mind if I borrow a weapon? Mine was destroyed.”

“Who can say what offends the dead?”

Gaborn did not immediately take a weapon. Instead, he paced nervously. “So,” he breathed at last, “she is in the Dedicates’ Keep?”

Iome hesitated to answer. Gaborn had not said who “she” was. Apparently he was distraught. “The Princess came to the keep this morning, and washed her father and fed him. Raj Ahten’s guard put her there for safekeeping during the attack. But she may leave at any time. I think she still occupies her room in the King’s Keep, with servants to attend her.”

Gaborn bit his lip, quickened his step, thinking furiously. “Can you get a message to her for me?”

“It should not be hard,” Iome answered.

“Tell her that House Orden is sworn to protect her. Tell her that I will kill Raj Ahten, that she will look upon my face again someday, no longer a Dedicate.”

“Don’t . . . please don’t try,” Iome said, choking back a sob. Her voice cracked, and she feared Gaborn would hear it, see through her disguise.

“Try what?” Gaborn asked.

“To kill Raj Ahten,” she said deeply. “Queen Sylvarresta clawed him with poisoned fingernails, yet he withstood the venom. It is said that the wound of a sword thrust through his heart heals before the blade is withdrawn.”

“There must be a way to kill him,” Gaborn said.

“You will be forced to kill House Sylvarresta, for both the King and his daughter are Dedicates to Raj Ahten. Lord Sylvarresta himself received eighty endowments of wit last night, all in Raj Ahten’s behalf.”

Gaborn turned at this news, went to the door of the tomb, staring out up into the sunlight, considering.

“I will not kill my friends,” Gaborn said, “or their Dedicates. If they gave endowments, they did not do so willingly. They are not my enemy.”