yellow. ‘Yes,’ Samlor said, ‘it had been cut off her, not stretched and broken.
Help me find Star, lady.’
The S’danzo nodded. Her eyes had slipped .off into a waking trance already.
Illyra’s gaze stayed empty for seconds that seemed minutes. Her • fingers were
brown and capable and heavy with rings. They worked the surface of the medallion
they held, reporting the sensations not to the woman’s mind but to her soul.
Then, like a castaway flailing herself up from the sea, the S’danzo spluttered
again to conscious alertness. Her thin lips formed a brief rictus, not a smile,
at the memory of things she had just seen. Samlor had let his own breath out in
a rush that reminded him that he had not breathed since Illyra entered her
trance.
‘I wish,’ said the woman softly, ‘that I had better news for you, or at least
more. No -‘ for Samlor’s face had stiffened to the preternatural calmness of a
grave stele’- not dead. And I can’t tell you who, master -‘ the honorific
professional as habit reasserted itself’- or even where. But I think I have seen
why.’
With one hand Illyra returned the medal as carefully as if it were the child
herself. With the fingers of the other hand, she touched her own kerchief-bound
hair. ‘The mark that you call the “star” is the “porta” to some of the Beysib. A
sea-beast with tentacles … a god, to some of them.’
Samlor turned his eyes towards the curtain that hid the execution, as within him
his heart turned to murder. ‘That one?’ Nodding, his voice as neutral as if all
the fury at Lord Tudhaliya were not foaming over his mind as he spoke.