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I did not know it at the tirowing harder for as long as I could re and more pleasant In the year before he is to become a journeyman, a senior apprentice does little but supervise the work of his juniors His food and even his dress iin to treat hi burden of responsibility and the pleasure of issuing and enforcing orders

When his elevation comes, he is an adult He does no work but that for which he has been trained; and he is free to leave the Citadel when his duties are over, for which recreation he is supplied with liberal funds Should he eventually rise to mastership (an honor that requires the affir nments as uild itself

But youof, the year in which I saved the life of Vodalus, I was unconscious of all that Winter (I was told) had ended the caht the Autarch and his chief officers and advisors back to the seats of justice "And so," as Roche explained, "we have all these new clients And ht have to reopen the fourth level" He waved a freckled hand to show that he at least was ready to do whatever ht be necessary

"Is he here?" I asked "The Autarch? Here in the Citadel? In the Great Keep?"

"Of course not If he ever came, you'd know it, wouldn't you? There'd be parades and inspections and all kinds of goings-on There's a suite for him there but the door hasn't been opened in a hundred years He'll be in the hidden palace - the House Absolute - north of the city someplace"

"Don't you knohere?"

Roche grew defensive "You can't say where it is because there's nothing there except the House Absolute itself It's where it is To the north, on the other bank"

"Beyond the Wall?"

He snorance "Far past it Weeks, if you walked Naturally the Autarch could get here by flier in an instant if he wanted to The Flag Tower - that's where the flier would land"

But our new clients did not come in fliers The less important arrived in coffles of ten to twenty men and wouarded by dimarchi, hard-bitten troopers in armor that looked as if it had been made for use and used Each client carried a copper cylinder supposedly containing his or her papers and thus his or her fate All of them had broken the seals and read those papers, of course; and soed them for another's Those who arrived without papers would be held until so their disposition was received - probably for the reed papers with soed fates; they would be held or released, tortured or executed, in another's stead

The es The steel sides and barred s of these vehicles were not intended to prevent escape so much as to thwart rescue, and no sooner had the first of them thundered around the east side of the Witches' Tower and entered the Old Yard than the whole guild was filled with ru raids contemplated or attempted by Vodalus For all my fellow apprentices and most of the journeymen believed that many of these clients were his henchmen, confederates, and allies I would not have released theuild, which for all my attachment to him and his movement I was unready to do, and would have been impossible anyway But I hoped to provide those I considered my comrades-in-arms with such small comforts as lay withinclients and occasionally a bit ofday I was given the opportunity to learn who they were I was scrubbing the floor in Master Gurloes's study when he was called away on so his table stacked with newly arrived dossiers I hurried over as soon as the door had clanged behind him, and was able to skiain Not one - not one - of the prisoners whose papers I had read had been an adherent of Vodalus There were merchants who had tried to make rich profits on supplies needed by the army, ca of sordid civil cri else

When I carried my bucket out to empty in the stone sink in the Old Yard, I saw one of the ar and stauards in their fur-trioblets of ht the name Vodalus in the air; but at that moment it seemed I was the only one who heard it, and suddenly I felt Vodalus had been only an eidolon created by , and only the man I had slain with his own ax real The dossiers I had fuainst my face

It was in this instant of confusion that I realized for the first tiued that it was theof my life I had lied often to Master Gurloes and Master Palaemon, to Master Malrubius while he still lived, to Drotte because he was captain, to Roche because he was older and stronger than I, and to Eata and the other smaller apprentices because I hoped to er be suretooncould not be certain those memories were more than my own dreams I recalled the moonlit face of Vodalus; but then, I had wanted to see it I recalled his voice as he spoke to me, but I had desired to hear it, and the woht, I crept back to the ain The worn, serene, androgynous face on its obverse was not the face of Vodalus

Chapter 4