All his life he’d heard about the fabled Ancients, but he’d never met any until the previous evening. Somehow he’d not expected them all to look so strange and yet so handsome at the same time. Despite her peculiar eyes and ears, Dallandra struck him as more beautiful than any woman he’d ever seen, certainly more glamorous than Sidro. Delicate yet powerful, he thought, that’s Dalla. And dangerous—the scent of dangerous knowledge hung about her like a perfume, or so he decided to think of it, the best perfume of all. What was that powerful opal, and who was this Nevyn? She’d been hinting about something. That he knew.

Laz walked back to his camp, which had returned to what semblance of order it had, the shabby, rectangular tents set up randomly, the men lounging on the ground or wandering aimlessly through scattered gear and unopened packsaddles. Beyond the camp their ungroomed horses grazed at tether. One of the men, one of Faharn’s recent recruits, lay snoring on his blankets. Laz kicked him awake.

“Ye gods!” Laz snarled. “Where’s Faharn? You lazy pack of dogs, this place looks like a farmyard, not a proper camp.”

“Indeed?” Krask scrambled up to face him. “Who do you think you are, a rakzan?”

Laz raised one hand and summoned blue fire. It gathered around his fingers and blazed, bright even in the sunlight. Krask stepped back fast.

“No,” Laz said. “Not a rakzan. Something much much worse.”

He flung the illusionary flames straight at Krask’s face. With a squall Krask ducked and went running. The other men watching burst out laughing. A few called insults after Krask’s retreating back, but they got to their feet fast enough when Laz turned toward them.

“Get this place in order,” Laz said. “Now!”

They hurried off to follow his command. Grumbling to himself, Laz ducked into the tent he shared with Faharn and which, apparently, his second-in-command had already organized. Their bedrolls were spread out on either side; their spare clothing, saddles, and the like were neatly stacked at the foot of each. Faharn himself, however, was elsewhere. Laz sat down on his own blankets and considered the problem of Sidro in the light of what he now knew about his last life.

She was a half-breed, just as he was, an object of scorn among the pure-blooded Gel da’Thae and their human slaves both, no matter how powerful the half-breed mach-fala and how weak the slave. Had she, too, betrayed her own kind, whichever kind that many have been, back in that other life? We must have been together, he thought. We must have some connection. It occurred to him that Dallandra might know. She might have told me if that lout hadn’t interrupted!