But Jarnulf did not know it for a long while, and several years passed before he understood it—years that were the best of his young life.

Then one day the soldiers of the Hamakha came and took his sister Gret away.

•   •   •

“You have been silent a long time,” Nezeru said.

Jarnulf blinked his eyes. He had been staring at the way ahead without really seeing it, the great broad track the giant had made, the snow lifted on either side like a frozen ocean wave. “I was . . . remembering something.”

“That, I guessed.”

She truly was a strange one, this Sacrifice. She had all but told him that she knew he had not tried to kill the Erkynlander soldiers during their escape. He suspected that she had doubts about the arrow he had shot from the hillside as well. But at the same time, she seemed more curious about him than mistrustful. Hikeda’ya as young as she was hardly ever reached the frontier beyond Nakkiga’s inner borders, but the few that he had met were usually full of unshakeable belief, not only in the Queen and the Holy Garden, but in the disgusting, animal lowliness of mortals. What made this one different?

She was part mortal herself, of course, but he had lived with halfbloods in the slave barracks, and if anything they had been more hateful to the other mortals than the pureblood overseers had been. The Hikeda’ya had bred with humans all Jarnulf’s life. It was not as common among the highest noble clans, and was virtually unheard of among the few oldest, Landborn families, but it was not unusual. What was rare was that a halfblood like Nezeru should reach such a position of trust at such a young age. Even mortal youths in mortal lands were seldom so honored.

No, there was a mystery there, but without knowing more about her father and his place in the ranks of the queen’s servitors, Jarnulf could only speculate. And speculation, he had learned, was often the enemy of action.

All that is important is how she may best be used. Because I am sworn to a holy duty, and I will not fail You, my God.

“Do you not sometimes wonder at the tricks fate plays?” he said aloud.

Her face at first seemed to hold only contempt, but he thought there might be a glimmer of something else there as well. Unease?

“There is no fate,” she said. “There are no tricks. I do what the queen bids me to do. That is the only path, and if I stay on the path, there is no confusion—no tricks, as you would call it.”

“I speak of one thing, you speak of another,” he said, then looked to make sure they were still well behind the others before he continued. “I speak of unlikeliness, you call it confusion, as if the world conspired against you. I will try a different path. How likely is it that you should be given such an honor, Sacrifice Nezeru, to serve as a Queen’s Talon, when hundreds upon hundreds of other Sacrifices, older and more experienced, were passed over?”

“You asked this before. I answered you. I earned my place.”

“But if you are so valuable, so rare, why is it that your chieftain has punished you so savagely?”

She darted him a look that was little short of hateful. “You know nothing of me, mortal. Of any of us.”

“I have seen your back, the scars you bear. They are not all completely healed. Do not fear I was spying on you—the sight came by accident. You are very modest for one of your race. Most of your folk treat nakedness as nothing, perhaps because unlike we poor mortals, you feel little cold. But you are different, Sacrifice Nezeru, careful—or perhaps only shy of displaying your wounds. Still, I saw them.”

Her face had gone quite pale. He thought she looked as lifeless as carved marble. “I earned that punishment. I failed my duty.”

“Still. Still. You spoke once of your father as we rode a few days ago. He is always very busy now that the queen is awake, you said. I guess that he is an important noble in high office. Am I right?”

She looked now as though she wished to get away from him. She truly was young, he thought: for all her bland exterior, for all the Hikeda’ya reserve, she had not entirely learned to hide her feelings. Jarnulf had long been a hunter, and Norns had long been his quarry—his prey. He could see her thoughts moving uncomfortably behind her rigid expression.

“Who are you to ask me questions?” she said. “Why do you not go and ask Makho about his father?”

“Because then I would have to fight him, and one of us would die. Either way, it would diminish our chances in the dangerous lands ahead. But you are different than Hand Chieftain Makho. He knows nothing but what he has been taught, and he is content with that. You are not, although such confusion—that was your word, wasn’t it? Confusion?—such confusion frightens you. That is plain. But why?”

“Your questions are pointless and unwanted, mortal. In fact, I think more than ever that you mean some harm to this hand and its mission.”

“Nothing could be further from the truth. I want this mission to succeed.” And Jarnulf did not have to worry about hiding his actual feelings this time, because he was not lying.

Despite the similarity of their faces and shapes to those of mortals, or even to that of the Hikeda’ya themselves, Viyeki could never quite make himself believe that the Pengi, the Tinukeda’ya changelings, were much more than animals. The oldest Builders in his order claimed to recall a time when even the lowest of them could talk, but it was hard to believe that now. And when he looked into the empty, cowlike eyes of the Carry-men currently standing beside the great capstan as they waited for a command from their overseer, Viyeki found the whole idea even more incomprehensible.

“Step into the cart, please, High Magister,” said a voice behind him. “We have a long journey still to go.”

Viyeki turned to the tall soldier in the silvery dragon mask. “Tell me your name again, officer, so that I may know who to blame if this adventure goes wrong.”

The guard inclined his head. “I am Hamakha First Armiger S’yessu. I am commissioned by the queen herself for special service.”

Viyeki looked at the soldier’s surcoat, at the simple maze he wore as an insignia. “But you wear only the Hamakha helm, not the Hamakha crest.”

“That is why I am called an armiger, High Magister.”

“Then who do you serve? Not Queen Utuk’ku.”

“We all serve the queen, High Magister.”

“Just tell me who has sent for me, rousing me from my home in my hour of rest. If it is the palace, why we are not going there?”

The guard’s voice did not change. “I am forbidden to tell more than I have, High Magister. But you will learn all soon enough if you will simply step into the cart.”

Whatever his summoners planned, it was clearly not meant to be secret. Nearly everyone in his household, his wife Khimabu, his secretary, and many of his servants, had seen the soldier and his labyrinth token waiting at the front door, the token that usually symbolized a summons to the Omei’yo Palace. But the messenger had stated in front of all of them that they were bound for somewhere other than the Maze, and that none of High Magister Viyeki’s retinue could attend him. Khimabu had balked at this, of course, insisting her husband wait until more comprehensible orders were sent, but Viyeki had weathered the deadly court politics of Nakkiga for a long time; he was even a bit intrigued by such an unusual summons.

Still, he did not like the wide, steaming vent that now confronted him here, below the city, or the ancient cart and capstan waiting to lower him even farther into the deeps of the great mountain.

“I cannot believe that the queen would wish to meet me in such a place,” he said.

“The queen is not here, High Magister,” the guard said. “That at least I can tell you.”