Wolves at the Gate

When he spoke, he sounded like someone was strangling him. "This Fate... what did he look like?"

  The question seemed to settle Rel's nerves. Voice back to its usual disciplined clarity, he said, "He was tall, with dark hair down to his collar. His eyes were yellow, and he seemed to have an aura of a similar colour. His face reminded me a little of your brother, but his accent was northern. He wore white. You've met him before?"

  Chag let out a tiny squeak, struggling to get words out. "Looked like Rissad?" He bit at his lip, swallowed noisily. "Yeah, that might have been it."

  "Where do you know him from?" Rel's tone made the question a demand.

  "He... uh... he helped me out of a tight spot, a while back." Chag squirmed, meeting no-one's eyes.

  "You were the human who raided the Wards of Gifting last Autumn." Something about the tone of Quilo's voice sent shivers wriggling up and down Pevan's back. There was nothing human in the harsh sound of the words.

  The ring of Guards around Chag shifted into mist and then into constricting bands of solid colour, binding his chest, arms and legs. The little man made no move. He didn't need to. Now that she knew, she could see the guilt written into every twitch he'd made since the first mention of Fate.

  Quietly, without meaning to and to no-one in particular, she said, "What happened?"

  Quilo delivered his answer like a hammer driving nails into a coffin lid. "Fate and Chag Van Raighan somehow infiltrated the Wards of Gifting without our notice. We have not been able to ascertain why. They were spotted while fleeing, and four Guards and a junior Gift-Giver were killed in the effort to stop their escape."

  Pevan just stared at Chag, her mind a void too still even to echo. Tightly held by what remained of his Guards, the little man didn't turn to face her. Rel said, "The Wards of Gifting... Would that be where Gifts of Clearseeing come from?"

  "It is where you received your Gift." Quilo spoke stiffly, carefully, picking his way around the problem. As if he was trying to work out whether his secret was still secret without giving it away.

  Rel picked up on the implicit question. "I... we... Forgive my saying so, Quilo, but you will need to brace yourself for a shock. I would have reported this to you sooner, but I only learned the significance of the fact today, just before we were alerted to the Separatist threat." He made a strangled noise, as if trying to swallow and finding his throat too tight. "There is a Clearseer among the Separatists. A Wilder."

  The Gift-Giver's face flickered blank, just a flesh-coloured blur. For that matter, so did the faces of many of the on-lookers, still arrayed in their silent dozens around the front of the hall. Quilo's features returned, his face a pinched mask of rage, well before any of the others. When his gaze fell on Chag, the little man finally showed some sign of life, straining back against his bonds. They didn't give an inch, solid as stone.

  "Did you steal a Gift of Clearsight?" Air rippled around Quilo's voice, and for a moment a cold fist squeezed Pevan's heart. The ripple stopped short of Chag's face, but not by a very long way. It was not supposed to be possible for anyone to get angry enough to shake the Realmspace of the Court. Just how much had Quilo's emotions escaped his grasp?

  "Fate gave it to me to carry." Though it started steady, Chag's voice broke as he went on, "I didn't know what was going on. It was the first thing I did for the Separatists, and it wasn't what they sent me here for. They told me you were preventing them talking to us. What-"

  "Enough!" This time, the Court really did shake at Quilo's word. Memories from Vessit surged back, and for a moment Pevan was seized by visions of a Realmquake shaking the Great Hall, smashing its roofless walls against each other, slabs of stonework hundreds of feet across toppling inward to crush them all... But the shaking died away quickly, leaving a weak, sick feeling in her knees. From the looks on their faces, Rel and Atla felt the same way.

  Chag hung limp in his bonds. It was hard to tell whether he was even still conscious. Equally, there was no sign of pain on his face, as there surely would have been if Quilo's shout had struck him. Outside the word-safe, stable Realmspace of the Court, getting hit by careless, angry words would kill every time. Here, that wasn't supposed to happen at all, but Pevan wasn't going to take it for granted anymore.

  "Do you have any idea what you've done?" Quilo had himself back under control. His voice was silky smooth, angry but still genuinely curious.

  From somewhere, Chag found the nerve to look up, to meet the Gift-Giver's eyes. That simple act of courage surprised Pevan, though she could tell it was all the little man could manage. She'd seen people in logic burnout who had more wits about them.

  Still, he'd responded to the accusation in Quilo's tone with a gesture that could only be interpreted as accepting responsibility. Pevan swallowed. Would that count for anything? Could a Wilder, even one as clever and sophisticated as Quilo, recognise what Chag's pose meant?

  The Gift-Giver pressed his point, curiosity replaced by an odd, flat, deadened tone. "The power of the Realm-Finders lay solely in the Clear-Seers' mastery of the future." Pevan tore her gaze away from Chag, and read fatalism in the grim set of Quilo's face. "If the Separatists have half a year of advantage on us, we are as good as lost."

  It was only when Rel didn't protest that Pevan let the implications hit her. She looked over at her brother, found him looking back. His face was hard, harder even than Quilo's. His eyes flicked briefly to Chag, and then to the Gift-Giver, where they stayed, heavy as a tombstone.

  "Not lost." Chag spoke in a mumble, his fear and his lazy southern accent robbing his words of any clarity, but she could make them out, just about. "Delaventrin couldn't understand what it saw of the First Realm without help. I was able to clarify some of what he Saw, but not much. Without a human Clearseer, we were little better off than without the Gift at all."

  "The successes won thus far seem telling enough." Quilo's tone was... there was a fruit that grew in the southernmost parts of the South, that once, on a message run, Pevan had been tricked - dared - into biting into. Inside the thick, waxy, tangy skin, the flesh had been bitter enough to leave her in tears. Quilo's voice sounded like the juice of that fruit, running along the blade of a knife, promising that the wound to come would bring indescribable pain.

  Again, Chag met the Gift-Giver's eyes, his face white. Rel was still scowling at Quilo. As Pevan watched, through the deadly stillness between Chag and the Gift-Giver, Rel folded his arms and slouched slightly to one side. A muscle rippled in his jaw.

  Impatience. He stood like that when Dora had told him to calm down and wait before rushing into action. When he looked at Pevan, she found herself halfway to telling him to calm down and check things over before she even knew what she was doing. He looked as if he was waiting for her to say something, but she had no idea what.

  Fortunately, his patience wore out without him exploding. Voice dry, he said, "It can hardly be said to have been the most efficient route to what they wanted, Quilo. And they still don't have me, despite six months of planning."

  The storm of tension, felt but not seen, in the air between Chag and the Gift-Giver vanished as Quilo turned to Rel. That put his back to Pevan, but his stance had lost some of its tension. He said, "You are right. Though what it means for my kind in the long run is not something I want to contemplate."

  "It's going to make getting Taslin back difficult, that's for sure." Rel let go his pretense of levity. His face fell, forlorn. Why did he feel so strongly about Taslin? What could she have that he needed? Or had he just plugged the Dora-shaped hole in his life with the Wilder? That was an unsettling thought.

  "What chance do we have of that?" Bitterness, old and mournful, rose in Quilo's voice. "We can hardly expect them to take her to your Realm. We would be walking into a perfect trap."

  "So, what, you're just going to leave her to them?" Rel's eyes narrowed. "If Delaventrin struggles with our logic, he must find us hard to predict as well. Atla, Pevan and I can get her back, with your help. Is there a way to track them
?"

  The air around Quilo seemed to cool, and Pevan took an involuntary step back. Some of the sternness came back to the Gift-Giver's tone. "No. The risk is too great. We must do what we can to counteract the Clearseer. We must prevent the Separatists from gaining the ally they seek from among your kind. Taslin is lost to us."

  "No!" It was Rel's turn to shake the Court. Quilo actually had to raise a hand and sweep the ripple of Rel's shout out of the air, just in front of his face. "I will not give her up too. Don't we need her to recover Dora?"

  Pevan found herself praying, hard enough that her lips moved, that Quilo wouldn't say-

  "Calm down, Rel." The Gift-Giver's affable tone belied what might well have been his first ever mistake. He was about to speak again when Rel turned and stalked off.

  Automatically, Pevan started after him, but Atla grabbed her sleeve. She half-turned, to shake him off, but he said, quietly, "I'll go."

  "What? Why?"

  The boy's eyes fled, leaping around the room, from Quilo to the crowd of still-recovering Gift-Givers to Chag. He swallowed. "I, uh... I'm not going to be any use here. But, well, someone needs to work out what to do about, um, Van Raighan. I'm sure I can stop your brother doing anything too rash."

  "Chag deserves what's coming to him." Pevan put her weight behind the words, then