“Tell me about your uncle?” Brand said.

“My uncle?” Seri asked.

“The one you claim is going to tear me to pieces.”

It was night and they were in his private room, playing one of his foreign board games, one she was terrible at. It was easier than having a conversation. They had not spoken—aside from remark on the game play—until out of the blue, this question. Seri felt her stomach twist into knots.

“My uncle is powerful,” she said. “That’s all you need to know.”

“Maternal or paternal uncle?” he asked.

Seri glanced at him. Brand was looking at the board, making a show of contemplating the pieces, as if the game enraptured him. She knew it did not. He could beat her in his sleep; she was pretty sure she was already losing. This conversation was the real game. Seri swallowed and looked back on the board.

“I feel I’m going to lose,” she said. “Though I don’t see how.”

“My trap is sprung. You’ll see it soon enough.” He clinked the pieces. “You know, I had a powerful uncle, too. Several, in fact. All on my mother’s side. And my grandfather was more powerful still. I never knew my uncles, but my mother assured me they could do wonderous enchantments. It didn’t help. They all died, anyway.”

Seri stared at him. His voice was flat. She tried to read the intention in his eyes, but it was so hard, with that strange face.

He was no longer feigning interest the board, but rather watching her reaction very carefully. His face this evening was a man about thirty with a thin brown beard and brown eyes. One of the “handsome men,” she’d thought, but less handsome than most. Yet also, more detailed. One eye drooped slightly and there was a faint scar across his lip, well hidden under his mustache hairs.

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The face looked vaguely familiar. Not that she had seen it before, but that she had seen another close like it. That face he wore when he was angry, the face of the old man with the white hair and dark eyes. There was something sinister and powerful about that old man. But the two faces—the old man and this one—could be related. Father and son.

Or uncle and grandfather.

The revelation hit in a flash of inspiration. Of course. He modeled his illusions after real people. Why not his family? The knots—more like snakes at this point—coiled in Seri’s stomach. Why was he showing her this? Why hint at his true identity?

Brand squinted. “What are you thinking?”

“Nothing.”

“No. Something has changed. You realized something. What?”

His voice had slowed. He wasn’t angry, but he did sound insistent, and if she didn’t answer, he would get angry—and forceful. Brand was stubborn. Not about everything—not about most things. But when he insisted, it was hard to say no.

So Seri answered. “Do you wear the faces of your ancestors? Are they part of your collection?”

Brand blinked and smiled. “Ah. So that’s it. You wondered if I somehow was able to craft a perfect illusion of my dead uncle’s face, despite the fact that I’ve never so much as seen a portrait of the man.” He leaned back haughtily. “Yes.”

“But… wait, if you’ve never seen him… you’re lying,” Seri said uncertainly.

“Am I?”

“You need to be lying about something.”

“I don’t need to lie about anything. I can keep things hidden, which is not quite the same.”

“What are you hiding?”

“I leave that to you to figure out.”

He was trying to confuse her. Make her doubt. Frustrated, Seri went back to the game. Lying, hiding, telling the truth. Trying to figure him out was like seeing through a fog, with every partial reveal creating more mystery.

“At any rate,” Brand said softly, “my family was murdered, my line wiped out—or nearly wiped out. If this powerful uncle of yours took part in the slaughter, I shall be glad for him to come after me. It will give me a chance to have my revenge.”

“If it was him,” Seri asked. “You don’t know?”

“I wasn’t alive when it happened.”

“So you could be seeking revenge on the wrong person.”

“Possibly,” Brand said. “I’d rather punish the right person, but it’s so hard to get anyone to own up to the deed. Who likes to call himself a murderer?” He moved a piece and suddenly, without Seri quite realizing, put her in a trap. “Do you happen to know if this uncle of yours killed my family?”

“No.”

“No, he didn’t do it or no, you don’t know.”

She didn’t answer.

He cleared the board. “I will find the perpetrators sooner or later. Of that, you may be sure.”