They had taken his memories. Even so, there were things that he knew, as if the events he couldn’t remember had left a visceral residue on his body. He’d been violated, not physically raped but something that was a near kin.

He sat up straight and held his head like a wolf scenting a hare. He remembered that, remembered someone telling him… remembered Telleridge telling him that he would not know what had happened.

Owls had very good memories.

Tier’s lips drew back in a snarl. Hatred was a foreign emotion to him. He’d fought for years against an enemy he was told to hate, but he’d never found anything in his heart but agrim determination to persevere. The Fahlarn were not wicked, just wrongly ambitious. He had seen people do terrible things because of stupidity, ignorance, anger, but he’d never met evil before.

Now he was befouled by it.

Staggering to his feet, he looked for his clothing. When he was clothed he could feel less vulnerable. They’d taken his memories and his magic, but surely they would leave him clothes.

A cursory search of the room turned up a tunic and pants, though not his own. They were looser in fit than he was used to and darker colored: Traveler clothes for their pet Traveler. Nevertheless, he pulled them on quickly.

Instinctively he looked for something he could use to clean himself, and noticed there was no water in the room. Even as he regretted the lack, he knew that it wouldn’t have mattered if they’d left him in the bathing room—the filth that coated him could not be cleaned that way.

His gaze fell upon the lute.

No matter how fine the instrument, a lute always needed tuning. He sat down beside it and cradled it to him.

There were eight courses on this instrument, two strings per course except for the highest note, and this lute hadn’t been properly tuned in a while. As he settled into the familiar chore, the shaky, frightened feeling in his stomach began to settle.

He tightened pegs by slight movements, because there were no extra strings sitting around if he broke one. As the lute started to come up to tune, he noticed that the man who’d set the fretting had had an ear as good as his own—perhaps he’d been a Bard, too.

He tried a simple refrain and knew in a rush of relief that this was what he’d needed. For a long time he just played bits of this and that, letting the music salve the hurt that had been done to him.

At last his fingers hit upon a tune that his ears enjoyed, a piece his grandfather had written to welcome the coming of spring. He closed his eyes and let the music fill him until everything else was distant, where it could no longer harm him. He took a deep breath that filled his lungs with the scent of lilacs.

Magic.

He opened his eyes, stilled his hands, and took another breath. The scent had faded, but he could still smell the sweet flowers until his sinuses closed. His eyes watered and he sneezed twice; Lilacs always made him sneeze.

Perhaps, he thought, they don’t know as much about Traveler magic as they think they do.

There was a scuffle outside his door, as if someone fumbled with a key.

“Drat,” said a young man’s voice. “Drat, drat. This key is supposed to open any door in the palace. Wait, ah. A turnkey box.” There was some more rustling and a jangle of keys rattling together. The door of his cell creaked open.

“Er, hallo?” A rather pudgy young face peered around the edge of the door.

“Hello,” Tier said mildly, though his body was tense and ready to act.

“Look, I hope I didn’t wake you or… your light was still on so I thought…” The young man stumbled to a halt.

“Come in,” invited Tier genially. Keys, he thought, lowering his eyelids. This boy would be no—

He rolled to his feet abruptly. “What in the name of the seven flaming hells is that?”

The boy looked over his shoulder at the dark, nebulous shape behind him for a moment.

“You can see it?” he asked, sounding unhappy. “Most people can’t. It’s… ah… it calls itself a Memory—as if that’s a name. I haven’t figured it out exactly myself. It doesn’t usually linger like this.”

As the thing moved into the room, Tier took a step back from the overwhelming presence it carried with it. He sat back on his bed and tried to look peaceful.

“I’m sorry,” the boy apologized.

Tier turned his attention back to him with an effort, and noticed for the first time the quality of the clothes he was wearing. Velvet embroidered in heavy metal threads that looked as if they were really gold.

“Look,” said the boy again. “I don’t know why you’re here. These aren’t the regular holding cells. But for some reason”—he gave an odd, short laugh—“I think you might help me with a problem I’ve been looking into.”

And the boy took a piece of parchment he’d been holding and thrust it at Tier. He sat beside him on the bed, started to point at something and then stopped.

“Do you read?” he asked. “Not to be offensive, you understand, but you’re dressed like—”

“I can read Common,” said Tier. He’d learned under the Sept of Gerant, making him one of the double handful of people who could read in Redern.

Since the Memory, whatever that was, had decided to stay on the far side of the cell, Tier allowed himself to look more closely at the writing on the parchment.

“Look here,” said the boy, sounding more authoritative. “This is nominally just a simple award for a job well done. Except that usually properties that belong to one Sept aren’t gifted to another—certainly not with a vague ‘for services to the Empire.’ See?”

Tier looked at what he held with disbelief. It appeared to be a law document of some sort.

First Tier had thought that the boy might be one of Telleridge’s wizards, especially with the thing that had followed him in. Then he’d been almost certain that he was one of the Passerines Myrceria had told him about. Now…

He cleared his throat. “Are you a member of the Secret Path?”

“If I’m not, does that mean you can’t tell me the answer?”

The disingenuous answer made Tier laugh in spite of his generally lousy mood. The young man gave him a pleased smile.

“Actually, I’ve never heard of the Secret Path. Though, if you put any three nobles together, they’ll start four secret societies of something.”

Tier nodded his head slowly. “I’d been given the impression that the Path members had taken over this bit of the palace and made it their own. If you’re not one, how did you find your way here?”

The boy shrugged. “The palace has enough rooms to house the whole city and then some. The first fifteen Emperors Phoran spent all their time building the place and the next ten tried to figure out what to do with all the rooms—mostly close them up. At least two of them, the eighth and the fourteenth—or the seventh and the thirteenth if you’d rather not give a number to the first Phoran—were fascinated by secret rooms and passages. By happy chance I stumbled upon the plans of Eight and actively sought Fourteen’s. Once I had them, I hid them myself. At any rate, they give me ready access to most of the palace. Not that there’s usually much to see.”

“I see,” said Tier, rather dazzled by all the eights who might have been sevens—there was a song in that somewhere. He hadn’t really thought about how the Path had managed to secret off such a big chunk of building. He had a hard time wrapping his mind around a building so large that the Path could use a section for generations and not have it discovered.

“I’m not a lawyer,” Tier said finally. “Nor do I know anything about the Septs. I don’t see how I can help you.”

The boy frowned. “I asked if there was someone who could help me find out more about the piece of land in question. Is there any reason that you would know something about the Sept of Gerant’s lands?