It was a glance that acknowledged that Esten undoubtedly already knew.
How easy it is to be overlooked in broad daylight, the man observed, standing in an alleyway shadow. He was watching the beggars of the city taking refuge from the heat of another blistering summer’s noon, supplicating for water or coin from passersby in the central streets of the capital city. The townspeople, oblivious of them, walked on without a break in their conversations, or even a glance of notice.
As if they were invisible.
He looked up at the high towers of Jierna Tal beyond the massive Scales, rising proudly to the sky above, thankfully free of any desiccating bodies or other grisly ornamentation. One had to admit that it was a beautiful palace, a place of visionary architecture that elevated the city beyond the dull little collection of animal markets, street booths, linen weavers, and dingy buildings in which the populace found shelter. One could even describe it as magnificent.
One day, he mused, all of Sorbold will be described thus.
One day soon.
His gaze fell on the Scales, their golden plates gleaming brightly in the light overhead; he closed his eyes, remembering with relish the feel of their approval, the rush of air as he was lifted up, held aloft in their approbation.
A few more days, he thought, fingering the violet scale in his pocket, relishing its warmth, its humming vibration. I await the moon.
He stepped off the portico step and over the beggar lying before it, then strolled into the light of the marketplace without a flicker of notice.
The crowd passed around him as if he were not there.
The seneschal held the candle aloft in the fallowing darkness, taking pains not to allow the wax to drip onto the child or his makeshift pool of gleaming green water deep in the ship’s hold.
The ship lurched suddenly as it hit a cross-swell; the current from the Northern Sea made approaching the harbor of this province of the Wyrmlands difficult, occasionally treacherous. The hold shuddered; Faron squealed tonelessly as the water around him stormed in tiny breakers.
“There, Faron, there, there,” the seneschal crooned comfortingly, trying to quell his impatience and that of the demon. “Don’t be frightened; read the scales and tell me if we can put into port here. Is anything lying in wait for us? Or do we have clear passage to the harbor?”
The creature struggled to maintain its balance, its soft bones and flaccid muscles no match for the pitching of the ship. With trembling, gnarled hands, Faron held a jade-green scale up to the nickering candlelight. The large, liquid eyes blinked rapidly in the intermittent dark and light. Finally the creature shook its head.
“No?” the seneschal demanded angrily. “No? Why in the name of Void not? Do you see any danger to us, any resistance, hidden in the waves? Is someone coming?”
The child stared at him in terror, then nodded vigorously.
“Are you certain?”
Faron groaned and nodded again, then disappeared beneath the meniscus of the green water.
The seneschal doused the light and groped his way to the ladder. He climbed up on deck and, spying the captain, shouted into the wind.
“Change course! Veer now; sail further north, along the coast, until we reach the reef of Gwynwood.” He brushed the wind out of his light blue eyes, squinting in the heat of the sun’s glare.
The captain stared at him as if he were mad.
“Your Honor, there’s nowhere to weigh anchor there! Avonderre is a sheltered harbor, with a guardian light to spare us from the shoals. We can’t wind the ship now.” He raised a hand to his brow and stared east toward shore. “That aside, we’re about to be boarded.”
The seneschal stumbled to the rail and followed the captain’s stare.
A small cutter in the harbormaster’s fleet was giving chase, flying the flag of approach.
As acid splashed the back of his throat, the seneschal cursed silently in the profane words known only to F’dor and unutterable in the language of men. He had feared this happening; the Basquela did not have valid docking papers in Avonderre, or any other Orlandan port, nor did it have clearance to dock in the other ports of the Cymrian Alliance. The potential of challenge by the authorities in the port had been weighed at the time of departure against the need for speed; Quinn had warned him of this when he hired the Basquela, rather than waiting for the Corona.
And now it seemed they were about to be confronted by the harbormaster’s crew, just outside Avonderian waters.
“Drop anchor,” the captain ordered the crew.
The seneschal turned to Caius, who was, as always, cleaning and refitting his crossbow.
“Pass word to Quinn, quietly, and tell him and the others to make ready,” he said to the crossbowman, while his brother and the seneschal’s reeve listened nearby. “I sense an unfortunate maritime accident may be about to occur.”
The leaping flames of the enormous hearth all but obscured Dranth’s approach.
The guild scion was used to entering into the guildmistress’s presence with no fear; as her most trusted officer, he had come to believe that she valued his candor, even when it angered her, although she had been so irrational since the devastation three years ago, and even more so of late, that he didn’t take anything for granted where she was concerned.
Especially now, when she was as angry as she was; none of her spies had yet been able to broach the Firbolg guard line. The drilling was continuing, contrary to her wishes. Even the uproar that had erupted when a half-eaten body of a child had been tossed into the desert near the Bolg camp had failed to stop the excavation; a few hours of rioting had been quickly quenched, and the Bolg exonerated, causing the human sheep of Yarim Paar to return to their gawking outside the drilling tents, preventing her assassins from bringing the work to a halt.
It was frustrating her more than he had ever seen.
Being near Esten in a state of frustration was similar to playing carelessly with the volatile acids used in the foundry. It was not a matter of whether one would be burned, merely of when and how badly.
He cleared his throat softly.
Esten didn’t seem to hear him. She was staring into the roaring fire, her chin resting on her curled fist, deep in thought. Her long black hair, freshly washed and still damp, hung to her knees, gleaming in the dancing light. It was a dark and lovely image; Dranth could almost see the woman there in the fireshadows for a moment. Then reason returned, and he remembered where he was.
And who she was.
And what she was.
He would never forget his first sight of her, a ratty urchin, the child of a Yarimese craftsman and a dark Lirinan mother, long gone. She was eviscerating a soldier four times her body mass in a back alley of the Inner Market, a tiny, crude blade jutting from the hollow of his throat, another moving like captured light in her hand. The look she had shot Dranth had been so deadly that he had merely stepped back and marveled as she coolly completed her grim task, her blade flashing with a speed born of a precocious talent, an inbred agility, and an utterly ruthless lack of fear. Dranth was no stranger to masters of the knife, but that day, in the dark backstreets, he knew without question that he was witnessing the most skilled artisan of murder he had ever seen.
She was eight years old.
He cursed himself; the momentarily human impression of sensuous womanhood, incorrect and dangerous as it was, left him feeling light-headed, weak, as if he had been walking carelessly along an abyss, thinking it merely an irrigation channel, not seeing it for what it really was in the darkness.