Raj Ahten himself, just outside the gates, was leaving the keep with Lord Sylvarresta and Iome.

Gaborn glanced at the ground in the yard. The forcibles he’d wanted to collect were gone. Taken.

A warrior in the guard pinned Gaborn with his eyes. Gaborn’s heart beat fiercely. He shrank back, tried to remember his training in the House of Understanding.

A wretch. I’m a wretch, he wanted to say with his whole body. Another miserable cripple, in service to Lord Sylvarresta. But the sword he wore told another story.

A mute? A deaf man, one who still hoped to fight?

He shrank back a pace, farther into the shadows, hunched his right shoulder and let his arm hang down, stared at the ground, mouth dropping open stupidly.

“You!” the guard said, spurring his stallion forward. “What is your name?”

Gaborn glanced at the Dedicates around him, as if unsure whether he was being addressed. The Dedicates weren’t armed. He could not hope to blend in.

Gaborn put on an idiot’s grin, let his eyes go unfocused. There was a class of person who could be found in a Dedicates’ Keep that he might play, a servant who had no attributes worth taking, yet who loved his lord and therefore performed what service he could.

Squinting, Gaborn grinned up at the soldier, pointed a finger at his force stallion. “Ah! Nice horse!”

“I said, what is your name?” the soldier demanded. He sported a slight Taifan accent.

“Aleson,” Gaborn answered. “Aleson the Devotee.” He said “devotee” as if it were a lord’s title. In fact, it was a name given to one rejected as a Dedicate, one found worthless. He fumbled at his sword as if trying to draw it. “I . . . I’m going to be a knight.”

Gaborn managed to draw the sword halfway, as if to show it off, then shoved it back into the scabbard. The soldier would recognize fine steel if he saw it.

There, he had his disguise. A mentally deficient boy who wore a sword as an affectation.

At that moment, a heavy wain pulled through the portcullis, an open wagon filled with men in hooded robes—men slack-jawed, with vacant eyes, their wits drained. Men so weak from granting brawn they could not rise, but only lay exhausted, arms hanging over the edge of the wagon. Men so cramped from granting grace that every muscle seemed clenched—backs curved, fingers and toes curled into useless claws.

Raj Ahten was bringing Dedicates of his own to the keep. Four huge draft horses pulled the wain. The honor guards’ own stallions danced and kicked. There was little room for so many beasts here in the square, not with Dedicates standing around, gawking.