Murtagh

A face across the street caught Murtagh’s attention. A flash of pale cheek, the line of a jaw, the distinctive silhouette of a nose…Murtagh stiffened as he eyed the profile of a youngish man walking amid a knot of five guards.

It can’t be. Lyreth? The oldest son of Lord Thaven, who had served as commander of Galbatorix’s navy? Lyreth was four years older than Murtagh. He’d always been larger and stronger while growing up and hadn’t been shy about using that to his advantage.

Now that Murtagh thought about it, he hadn’t seen Lyreth in Urû’baen during his last stay in the capital. Thaven’s son had been smart enough to avoid appearing at court while Murtagh was there as a Rider.

What’s he doing here now? Lyreth turned his head to look at something on the other side of the street, and Murtagh sank farther back into the alley. Lyreth, of all people, would have no difficulty recognizing him. I shouldn’t have shaved.

But no reaction altered Lyreth’s expression, and he continued on his way at the same brisk pace.

Murtagh let out his breath and retreated to the corner of the building. Lyreth probably had even more cause to avoid being recognized in public. All of the noble families who had served under Galbatorix—families who had accumulated enormous wealth and power during his century-long tenure on the throne—had lost their positions, and many of them had been executed or exiled. But loyalties ran deep, and wealth bought protection. As with Yarek, Murtagh knew that some not-inconsiderable number of Galbatorix’s followers were living in gilded secrecy.

He didn’t envy Nasuada having to deal with their undermining influence.

***

Murtagh wasn’t sure how long he stood on the street corner, watching. By the sun, he guessed it was near an hour. He felt a faint tingle in the center of his right palm—as if his hand had fallen partially asleep—and he scratched it without thinking.

He froze. His right palm was where his gedwëy ignasia lay: the silvery, scar-like blotch that marked where he’d first touched Thorn as a hatchling. And it often itched or tingled when there was danger nearby.

The feeling wasn’t infallible, but it had saved his skin more than once.

Again alert, he glanced around. There. Soldiers slipping out of the fortress entrance and gathering by the corner of a house. He’d been too distracted; he’d missed the first few.

And with the soldiers…a man in a black, purple-trimmed robe, hood thrown back to reveal a head of hair so pale it was nearly white. On the breast of his robe was embroidered a golden symbol, a heraldic standard: in the top half, a crown with rays spreading from the points. A fess, then, dividing the standard in half, and below it, a cockatrice statant, with an iron band around each scaled ankle.

Murtagh knew it well. The coat of arms of Du Vrangr Gata, the guild of magicians who served Nasuada, and who enforced her laws prohibiting unauthorized and unaffiliated magic throughout not just her realm but also the southern kingdom of Surda. Every human spellcaster was required to join the guild, or else submit to drugs and spells that would prevent them from using magic without permission.

Murtagh had yet to agree to either provision, and he never would.

Which meant the blond-haired man was a threat. Given the opportunity, he would seek to chain Murtagh in one manner or another, and even a weak magician could prove to be a formidable opponent in one-on-one combat, for fights between magicians were rarely resolved with spells alone. Mental prowess mattered, and if you could gain control of your foe’s mind, they would be at your mercy, no matter their skill, strength, or wards.

“Curse you,” he muttered, meaning the page. It wasn’t the betrayal itself that bothered him—Murtagh was well acquainted with betrayal—it was the inconsistency. Pages weren’t supposed to rat out those who came to them in confidence! How could a court function otherwise?

A feather-light touch brushed Murtagh’s mind.

He recoiled, retreating deep within himself and armoring his mind with a wall of iron determination. “You shall not have me,” he muttered again and again, using the words to focus his thoughts. The emptier his mind, the less there would be for the magician to find.

The robed man frowned and said something to the soldiers. He pointed down the street.

Murtagh moved. Time to leave before the soldiers cornered him.

He’d just reached the other end of the alley when a thickset man in a sleeveless jerkin stepped in front of him. The man’s bare arms were as heavily muscled as a smith’s, and he carried a cudgel in one hand.

Murtagh nearly struck the stranger, but the man backed off, arms spread wide, and in a low, gruff voice said, “Are you Tornac?”

“Who asks?” He had made no mention of Tornac to the page, although he had used the name on the note for Ilenna. Was the man her servant? If not…