Around noon, when Gene entered Delphinad through the eastern gate, he felt people staring at him. Most looked away when he turned toward them, but a few seemed to be saying something with their eyes. Yet no one actually spoke.
Gene was relatively well known in Delphinad, but chiefly in the back alleys. Ordinary citizens did not all recognize him. In a district controlled by the Hand of Ilmoram, perhaps, but it was strange to find well-dressed, middle-class citizens elsewhere looking at him as though pleased to see him. It might have been his imagination, but a noblewoman in a palanquin had even smiled at him and tossed him a flower. In the crowded thoroughfare, it had soon been lost from sight, but the feeling was deeply unsettling. Gene shrugged and muttered, “I can’t tell whether this is a welcome, a condolence, or mockery.”
“Perhaps it’s a romantic overture?”
When Gene gave him an incredulous look, Jamalik, riding alongside, chuckled.
“Why look at me like that? Surely you don’t think it’s a challenge to a duel?”
“Have you seen who it is before saying that?”
“Ah, of course I took a good look at Councilor Hemairos’s virtuous wife.”
“Right. I’d rather have a duel, wouldn’t you?”
Councilor Hemairos’s wife was famous for her dissolute life and her many young lovers. Jamalik continued, still snickering.
“If I pass on that remark, her young attendants will turn white as sheets and run away as far as the north. Then the lady, left entirely alone…”
When a woman received a challenge to a duel, a man close to her generally fought in her place. Gene frowned and let out a short sigh.
“I think you’re carrying your teasing too far these days. Are these the hysterics of a middle-aged man whose daughter is about to marry?”
“Zamala says she’ll find her own husband. What have I to worry about?”
Jamalik’s eldest daughter, Zamala, had reached marriageable age some time ago. But she had a formidable temper. No one was willing to act as matchmaker, or else she herself refused them. It might have been different in their homeland, but living in a foreign place after following her father there made it still harder to find a husband. Gene felt a little responsible, though Jamalik was so cheerful that he was inclined to leave it to him.
“Oh, is that so? Could you show me some of that generosity too?”
“To my eyes, Adjutant, your situation looks more urgent than Zamala’s.”
“Why mine?”
Instead of replying, Jamalik turned his head and pretended to yawn. Gene did not press him, for he knew why he was being teased. Jamalik, Hanbun, and Gayar were deeply concerned that he had not found a new companion. They had hoped he might change after leaving Epherium, but he showed little interest even in tavern women. Many women had been curious about him because of his reputation as the Shadowhawk, but it made no difference. In truth, it was not because of the dead Thea, but because of Gene’s mother. Yet that remained somewhere neither Jamalik nor his other subordinates could understand, somewhere Gene himself had not clearly recognized.
When they entered the Shipwrights’ District, the number of people turning to look at Gene increased noticeably. Some even crept along behind him. As they neared Sailcloth Fiveways, they stopped trying to hide at all. It was like a trail of children following a troupe of entertainers. Gene felt a strange foreboding. They all seemed to have something to say, while also waiting for the moment he would discover it. When he stopped short to look around, a man suddenly called out.
“It’s all right! It will be all right!”
The others looked flustered, but soon began shouting in succession, as though they had merely been waiting for someone to start.
“You held out very well!”
“The day will come to teach them a lesson! Keep your spirits up!”
“They’re filthy bastards! I spat at them!”
Gene looked at them, frowning. Instead of asking “What?” he turned and began to walk. His steps quickened. Before long, the alley ended, the square opened, and the familiar black stone walls rose before him. He stopped. Jamalik’s voice seemed to come from a very great distance.
“Gods above! What is all that?”
The next instant, Gene ran. Crossing the square, he reached Hawk House and looked through the entrance, where the wreckage had been cleared away, into the devastated first floor. He hesitated, then stepped inside. His face convulsed faintly as he looked around.
Familiar wreckage lay scattered everywhere. Burst sacks of sand, torn-off doors, the blocks of wood that had barred the windows, fragments of stone, sheets stained with blood… Gene knew what these were. Traces of a siege. But such things did not belong here. This was Delphinad, not a frontier fortress exposed to savage foreigners.
Looking up past the broken steps, he saw the second floor was gone. Through the back door, left standing open, he could see a heap of timber. A barricade. He immediately understood the course of the battle. At the same time, he could not stop thinking that this was impossible. Where had all the Brothers of the Hawk gone? Then he heard a movement near the kitchen, and a head suddenly appeared.
“Captain!”
It was Harat. He came running in a fluster, started to speak, then saw Gene’s face and dropped almost crashing to his knees, bowing low.
“I’m sorry. To let you see us in such a state…”
Gene stood looking down at him for a long time. Ordinarily he would have told him to get up at once, but he had forgotten even that. He was not even aware of his own expression.
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