I told them everything, or almost everything. I started from the beginning, from the very roots of my memory. The only subjects I voluntarily skipped were the dreams and the Seïd, because I had understood that I was dealing with superstitious people, and I didn't know to which tales or beliefs the mention of these elements could refer them. So I decided to leave some doubt rather than say too much, for example about the peregrine. Above, the fragmented luminosity of the specular stone increased until it became blinding. I made my story progress with simple sentences, prisoner of a cascade of green rays which cast unreal tints on the faces of my interlocutors. The old augur Thelis quickly dozed off. That was, I believe, a relief for the others, who didn't need to take turns anymore to translate my words to him.

The slow pace I had set for the story allowed me to study my audience as I spoke. Breanna was the easiest of the three to read. I knew I had hooked her from the very beginning of Tom Minnow's case. Her eyes twinkled at the slightest mention of Brindy. I hadn't seen any women among the cera warriors, and I figured that the lufes must treat their wives and daughters like their brownian or carmian neighbors, so Breanna must not have gone out much. I wondered what her life might be like on this isolated peak. In a sense, the world was as forbidden to her as it had been to me because of the chains. As her casual demeanor cracked as I spoke, revealing involuntary smiles and dreamy eyes, my initial impression faded. I ended up feeling a kind of sad sympathy for this pale lady, whose only horizon was this role that had been invented for her.

Narche Chara was a different matter. She looked at me as one would look at a scorpion, her wrinkled face sometimes twitched, her eyes squinted and venomous. Nevertheless, sometimes she would let go, forget who was talking, and then her pinched face would relax, and it would suddenly become easy to imagine that she had been very beautiful. Like mine, her existence had been crippled by the course of the world and she had not recovered. I was reminded of some words Ulrick had spoken to me shortly before I tamed my rage. "To be brave, you have to be free," he had said, and I thought it was true. I imagined this woman trapped in the mountains, with nothing to hold but her hatred, the memory of the massacre and what she had lost. It had twisted her, and made her a little crazy too, it seemed to me. She was an enemy now, her ferocity the image of her extravagance, and I was looking for holds to crush her while talking.

That left Thurl, the one who would finally decide on my fate, and this man had an impassive face. There were a few nods during the more military parts, but that was all. I saw his broken nose and his scars and his bear shoulders and I knew I was looking at someone who had spent his life in battle, a warrior as well as a leader. His gaze was sharp and authoritative, cold as well, but I could sometimes detect flaws in it, a darker glow, something more inhabited or distraught. The lufe reminded me a little of Ulrick in his attitude, in his natural melancholy. His bushy gray beard must have had something to do with it too. I told him straightforwardly about the bounty, the vaïdoerk, my mercenary work with the Brownians, as well as the siege of Ac-Pass, not knowing if I was signing my death warrant or not. As I spoke, I sometimes glanced at the warrior next to me, wondering if he would be entrusted with the task of cutting my head off.

Eventually I came to the night that had sealed my fate. Breanna's hands twisted on her knees as I described my reunion with Brindy, and then she bit her lip as I told of Ulrick's death. I mentioned the way I had held the vaïdogan's hand during the attack on the siege camp, the numbing pain of loss. As I had hoped, narche Chara's gaze became increasingly vacant. I used simple words, but I insisted intentionally, in a voice that trembled on its own, and this was enough to bring back her own grief. Thurl stirred, and scratched his nose. I couldn't tell if my words had touched him, but in any case that wasn't my goal. With him I was trying something else: honesty.

I concluded more summarily about the rest: the mines of Ifos and the wasted years. I explained to them that I was the enemy of no man, and surely not of the Ceras. That I had only one thing on my mind. I wanted to find Brindy and nothing else mattered to me, and that was as true as anything else, perhaps even more so. Nothing else tied me to the world, to my own trajectory. There was Dera, for whom I was sometimes very worried, but she had her family and the clans. Sometimes I thought about Jask and Ringer, Sven and Ereck and the other val-warriors, who could be anywhere and whom I would probably be happy to meet, but I didn't feel anything visceral or deep for them. Brindy was like me. We were from the same place, the same mold, and both of us had no one but ourselves. And also, I had made her a promise.

My last words clattered on the cold rock of the well of light, like all those which had preceded. Then I waited, my throat dry and my arms crossed. The silence weighed overhead, floating like a cleaver, while at hand the flare radiated and crackled mutedly. The embers had heated my stinking clothes until they were painful to touch, and some of the cracks on my palms had reopened. Breanna coughed to clear her throat, but in the end she said nothing. The augur stirred in his sleep, and opened a toothless mouth to exhale loudly.

For his part, the lufe smoothed his beard, his gaze unfocused. He had not interrupted me in my story, not once, which I didn't really understand. If this was indeed an interrogation, why had there been no questioning? Somewhere outside my field of vision, I heard the heavy warrior's mails rattling. I quickly wondered what I could do if the lord broke his silence to sentence me to death. I concluded that my best chance - which didn't mean much - was definitely to do something right here: maneuver to take one of the two women hostage, the lufe's daughter if possible, and with my bare hands if necessary. There was also that long dagger hanging from Thurl's belt. I judged that my chances of getting it from him were slim, but if I had to die, it would not be by complying with the elaborate performance they had orchestrated thus far.

"This Brindy could be in Spinel, with the wizard who took her?" asked the lufe at last, in a somewhat loud voice. He looked at me strangely, as if he had guessed what desperate calculations were going on in my mind. I was relieved that there were more words, not just a gesture and then the hiss of a blade. "I believe so," I said simply. "At least that's what the wizard told me". Thurl nodded. "We caught a brownian iron trader and his two sons in the spring of last year," he told me. "They told us what was going on in their home, before I offered their heads to narche Chara. There were big fires in the forest of Vaw, and a bloody war too. We saw the smoke from here, and it was still there during last winter, like a dark stain in the sky. If this woman you're looking for was taken to Spinel, I hope for her sake that she's no longer there."

I ran a nervous hand through my hair as I heard the news. Rumors of the vawan civil war had spread as far as the camp in Ifos, but the brownian slaves who arrived were few in number, and they were usually assigned to the crews in the tunnels. After I had been assigned to logging, I had not been able to keep up to date. As the politics of the primacies didn't interest anyone among the majority of the carmians or foreign slaves, I had to be satisfied with the brief and undeveloped gossips that I could hear around the barracks, or in the waiting line of the refectories. The supervisors whipped those who spoke too much inside the enclosure, to avoid rebellions no doubt, and the loose tongues were not numerous. The confirmation of a violent conflict in Spinel was an expected piece of information, but it still felt strange to hear it in person. To protect myself from anxiety, I conjured up the memory I had of the peregrine. I hadn't forgotten how he had disappeared over the falls of Long-Vein, nor how he had exposed Franlake's assassin. If there was one man who could get away with all that - and with Brindy - it was him. I licked my chapped lips. Thurl, seeing that he had piqued my interest, continued:

"These mountains belong to the Ceras, except for a few passes, but we never go too far west. For a very long time, forever, it seems to me. There's a place that the Brownians call "The Brambles", a large wooded area that's difficult to access. Evil spirits live there. The merchant said that they were the ones who made war against the Brownians, and I was pleased to hear that. The merchant said Ktoï, just as you did."

The cera lord paused. "And that's what I don't understand about your story," he said slowly. "Why was this wizard, this ktoï spirit, after you? What was he trying to accomplish, dragging you to Spinel?" I shrugged. "Who can know the will of the spirits, lufe?" I said as obsequiously as possible. Thurl furrowed his bushy eyebrows, and stared at me again before shaking his head. "You haven't told me everything," he said at last. My heart was pounding, and I was struggling to keep my composure. "You haven't told me everything, and yet you haven't lied to me," continued the lord. "Your story doesn't spare you. You fought for the Brownians, and you didn't hide it, knowing that I could punish you for it." I swallowed. Thurl's calloused fingers tapped intermittently on the edge of his stool, a dry, ominous cadence. He was missing the first phalanx on the index and ring fingers of his left hand. Bathed in reflections of light, the wilted face of the lord appeared to me puffed up and deformed. I waited, staring, without trying to defend myself more.

Suddenly there was a deafening clatter. The long staff had slipped from the sleeping ancestor's inert hand and fallen all the way to the weathered stone floor. The augur woke up with a start, his eyes streaming, his lip hanging like that of a sleeping animal. A few moments later, Urixx and Forcas appeared from the invisible tunnel where they had waited until then. The massive stick rolled, rattling heavily, and described a bumpy arc before coming to rest at my feet. Six faces had been carved into the black wood of the thicker end, each carved in the likeness of a different face. Lufe Thurl never took his eyes off me. He now had a sympathetic look on his face that I didn't understand. I picked up the stick, hoping I hadn't made a mistake, and then, handling the object as carefully as if it were made of porcelain, I carefully placed it back in the old man's hands. He smiled tiredly and mumbled a few words of apology or thanks. Behind me, the warrior dressed in mails dismissed Urixx and Forcas, and calm returned. Thurl readjusted the embroidered cloth on which he was sitting, then he growled at me:

"It seems to me, more and more clearly, that you're of those who are marked by the gods. My people have a word for men like you: tespiné. The tales in which they appear are sometimes very short, sometimes very long, but they never end well. I would not like to be in your place, and yet I miss my twenty years old. If you had been born as a Cera, Thelis would probably have made you an augur, and I think you would have made a powerful augur. No, I wouldn't like to be in your place, Fyss who has the blood of a Fyss. Currents carry you and tug at you, and as far as I can see you'll never know joy or rest except in death."

The lufe paused for a breath after his mournful tirade and darkly took a last sip of wine. "I give up on your life, because I don't think it's mine to take," he then said. "But I offer it to narche Chara anyway, if she wants it. I don't want to offend the spirits, but I'm old and stubborn and I have my customs, too. Do you want it, Chara, that head?" Three glances focused on the lady and her blue headdress. Breanna tensed up on her stool. I couldn't tell if she was nervous or delighted by this suspended moment. I noticed the frail white line of her neck. Narche Chara ran a hesitant tongue over her thin lips, then twisted, her mouth pinched and quivering. Her eyelids blinked at a rate close to vibration. Her chest swelled and dropped, her face suddenly engorged with a tumescent color. Inside me, white thunder crackled. Ice poured into my lungs. I waited for the signal that would see me jump out of my seat to seize Breanna's fragile figure and die, no doubt, soon after. Then the woman stood up. Without a word or a glance for anyone, she left the room with a dignified walk, her head held high, her embroidered dress floating behind her. Her footsteps echoed for a while in the carved corridors before fading away entirely. I exhaled slowly.

Thurl slapped a hand on his thigh, which produced only a flat, muffled sound because of the long ring armour he was wearing. "That settles it," he said to me. "You have your life, and I have other questions, but I suggest that we leave it at that for now. Let's worry about the future." I got down on one knee, flooded with unexpected relief. "Thank you, lufe Thurl," I replied, failing to keep the excitement out of my voice. The lord waved his hand to disperse my words, as if they had been annoying mosquitoes. "Since you're going to stay here, you'll have to earn your bread. You're trained as a soldier and I could use another man, but you don't speak the language or know the mountain. I don't think you'd know what to do with a herd, and I won't insult you by sending you to carry water with our children. However, I have an idea. I wanted narche Chara to teach my daughter brownian, because I want her to be able to support her brother when he'll become my successor. Dorl is only interested in expeditions and weapons. You, you speak valsi, rajjan and frank-sabir. You'll teach all this to Breanna, and she'll teach you the language of the Ceras. In exchange, you'll have a bed and you'll never be hungry. Does this suit you?"

I stood up smiling despite the confusion, understanding without difficulty that it wasn't a question. "That's very generous, lufe, I didn't expect so much," were the first words to escape my lips. The lord nodded and pretended to get up, but I wasn't finished. "How many moons do you plan to offer me lodging?" The man grunted in surprise. "I don't think you understood me," he replied. "I told you: you have seen our roads, and you have walked along our paths. We have become a hidden people again. My warriors would die before giving our enemies the direction to their families, and I don't believe that the Brownians would dare come to fight us in our mountains, but I must think of the safety of my people. You should forget about this woman and this wizard. Yes, forget the things of the past, Fyss who has the blood of a Fyss. I can't let you go."

- End of Part 5 -