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‘A talisman,’ Mykkael answered. ‘You’ll wear it next to your skin night and day, do you hear? Ignore what I’ve said at your peril.’
Taskin looked up, his eyes like forged steel. ‘Where did you get such a thing? Whose hand made it?’
‘That’s the vizier Perincar’s working.’ Mykkael swallowed. As though the words burned him to undying bitterness, he answered as he had promised. ‘The artefact came from the wars with Rathtet.’
Taskin raised startled eyebrows. ‘But I thought no survivors—’ His breathing hitched through a disastrous pause, as the most likely bent of plausibility ran a grue of dread straight through him.
‘No!’ Mykkael shook his head, looking anguished. ‘I never fought for Rathtet! No mercenaries did.’ Again, he closed his eyes; not to blunt hair-trigger reflexes, this time, but visibly wrestling an unutterable weariness. As though the forced explanation seared him to inward pain, he met Taskin’s bidding and qualified. ‘Eighteen of us lived. I fought at the side of Prince Al-Syn-Efandi. He died with his head in my lap.’
Merciless, the commander snatched the opening to interrogate. ‘If that’s the truth, then what were his last words?’
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