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must be all that the Citadel was, once; that it was built up on older, smaller places that had left traces in its walls and doors. They said that the center of its figured stone floor was the exact center of the world; they said that the thousand interlaced pictures that covered the floor, once they were themselves uncovered of centuries of dirt, and explained, would explain all explanations… Two bone-white Gray scholars looked up from the space of floor they were methodically cleaning to watch the spurred men go through.
    “Where will he be?” Younger asked.
    “The King’s chambers.”
    “The King. Has he…”
    “He’ll do nothing. Not yet.”
    “What will you tell him?”
    Redhand tore off his bonnet and shook his thick hair. He pulled off his gloves and slapped them into the bonnet, gave them to Younger.
    The doors of the Painted Chamber were surrounded by loafing guards who stood to some kind of attention when Redhand approached. Ignoring them, he hunched his shoulders as though disposing burdens on his back, left Younger and the redjackets at the door and went in, unannounced.
    Red Senlin was there, and his two sons. The eldest was called simply Red Senlin’s Son; it was he who was intimate with Young Harrah. The other Redhand had not been seen at court; his name was Sennred. At Redhand’s entrance the three moved around the small room as though they were counters in some game.
    The Painted Chamber had been an attempt of the ancients at gentility, no doubt once very fine; but its pictured battles had long since paled to ghostly wars in a mist, where they had not been swallowed up in gray clouds of mildew. And the odd convention of having everyone, even the stricken bleeding pink guts, smile with teeth made it even more weird, remote, ungentle.
    With a short nod to the sons, Redhand extended his hand to his uncle. “Welcome home.”
    The Great Protector Red Senlin was in this year forty-eight years old. A battle in the Outlands, where he had been King’s Lieutenant, had left him one-eyed. A scarf in the Outland fashion covered the dead one; the living was cold gray. His dress was the simplest, stout country leathers long out of fashion and ridiculous on any but the very high.
    Redhand’s father dressed so. Before him, Redhand wore his City finery self-consciously.
    Red Senlin took his hand. “Black Harrah is dead.”
    “Yes.”
    “Shot by the Just.”
    “Yes?”
    Red Senlin withdrew his hand. Redhand knew his tone was provoking, and surely no Protector, even against his greatest enemy, would have a hated Gun used—and no one of Red Senlin’s generation would have a man slain secretly. “By a Gun, nephew,” he said shortly.
    “These are unlovely times.” Behind him, Senlin’s younger son, Sennred, stirred angrily. Redhand paid a smile to the dark, close-faced boy. So different from his tall, handsome older brother, whom nothing seemed to offend—not even the attentions of Black Harrah’s son.
    Red Senlin mounted the single step to the painted chair and sat. “Black Harrah’s estates are vast. Half the Black Downs owes him. His treason forfeits… much of them.”
    “His son…”
    One gray eye turned to the blond boy leaning with seeming disinterest at the mantel. And back to Redhand.
    “Has fled, presumably to join his father’s whore and other traitors. Understand me. The King will be at liberty to dispose of much.”
    It was an old practice, much hated by the lesser landowners and long considered dishonorable: seize the property of one’s fallen enemies to pay the friends who struck them. Redhand, after the battle at Senlinsdown, had come into valuable lands that had been Farin the Black’s. He chose not to visit them; had made a present of them to Farin’s wife and children. But he had kept the title “Great” that the holdings carried. And certain incomes… It angered Redhand now more than anything, more than not being consulted at first, more than his father’s maundering about