Her stomach growled audibly and Sabira decided she was done pandering to convention. She grabbed a slice of vedbread, no longer warm and gooey, but still fragrant and, more importantly, filling. The men watched her devour it in silence, Aggar lowering his head a bit to hide a smile.
When she was finished, she washed it down with a glass of fruity Orla-un wine. She’d have preferred the tang of Frostmantle Fire, but Wilhelm had all but banned it from his house after the last time she’d drunk her fill of the potent dwarven whiskey. From what she remembered of that night, it had been a wise choice on his part.
Only after she’d drained the goblet did she address the room again. It was telling that none of them had spoken into the silence-they knew as well as she did why Breven was here.
“Well, let’s jump past the games and the posturing, shall we? I’m sure everyone else is just as hungry as I am, if a bit more polite.” She looked at the man she’d once considered a surrogate father after Khellin had been imprisoned, but there was no filial feeling left in her hard gaze, and he knew it. “You want the treasure and you need another daughter of ‘Stone and Sentinel’ to fetch it for you. That about sum it up?”
Aggar’s head was almost on his plate and the beads in his beard tinkled softly with his suppressed laughter. Breven wasn’t quite so amused.
“While your adoption into the Tordannon clan does, perhaps, qualify you as a ‘daughter of stone,’ that’s not why I’m here.”
Sabira’s eyebrows shot up at that. He didn’t really expect any of them to believe that, did he? The appellation applied to her just as surely as it did to Tilde-maybe better, since no one could claim Sabira wasn’t a Deneith.
“The simple fact of the matter is that I need someone-a Marshal-who knows Stormreach and Xen’drik, who knows the deeps, and whose loyalty to the House is not entirely in question.”
Ah. So Breven didn’t trust Greigur, the captain of the Sentinel Marshals’ Stormreach outpost. Having dealt with the over-reaching soldier many times herself, Sabira couldn’t say that she blamed the Baron. If this treasure was worth losing another thirty lives over, it was something that could easily split the House, turning them into another three-headed gorgon, like Cannith. Or worse, another Phiarlan, whose Thuranni line had split off in 972 YK after exterminating a third family line, the Paelions, for an alleged assassination plot against Karrnath’s king, Kaius III.
A plot some whispered her own father may have had a hand in.
“There are other Marshals who fit that description,” Elix said, and Sabira knew him well enough to know how hard it was for him to keep the challenge from his voice. “Why not ask one of them?”
Sabira waited, wondering if the Baron would keep trying to pretend this had ever been about saving Tilde.
“None of them are avail-” he began after a moment, but Wilhelm interrupted him.
“Stop. Just stop,” he said, his voice ragged. He’d been looking down at his plate, but now he raised pained eyes up to meet Breven’s. Pained, but strong. Resolved. “Sabira’s right. This isn’t about my niece, it’s about the House. You don’t have to try and pretty it up for my sake, my lord. This family has sacrificed for the glory of Deneith many times, and will no doubt do so many more. Of course your primary concern is retrieving the artifact, as well it should be. Rescuing Tilde is a… a secondary consideration.”
Breven couldn’t quite hide a triumphant smile, though he quickly smoothed it over with a conciliatory look.
“You’re a very wise and reasonable man, Count; I’ve always said as much. Your loyalty to the House has never been in doubt.”
Sabira couldn’t be sure, but she thought the Baron placed a slight emphasis on “your.”
Then he turned his gaze on her and she lifted her chin in response.
“Well, Sabira. Will you take this mission for the honor and protection of your House?”
She didn’t miss a beat.
“No.”
Even Aggar’s jaw dropped at that, but Sabira ignored him, and Elix, and the long velvet box sitting between them on the table. Her eyes were on Wilhelm, who wore the same stoically anguished expression as he had on the night when she’d had to tell him that Ned had died, and that it was her fault. When she spoke again, it wasn’t to Breven.
“No, I won’t do it for the House. But I will do it for Ned.”
CHAPTER TWO
Zol, Lharvion 24, 998 YK
Vulyar, Karrnath.
You don’t have to go.”
They’d argued about it most of the night, until the sky turned violet in the hours before dawn and Sabira reminded him that there were better ways to spend what little time they had left together.
“You know I do, Elix.”
They were sitting around the table in the smaller family dining room, enjoying a light breakfast of fruit, ved cheese and bread: her, Elix and Aggar. Breven had departed shortly after he’d gotten what he wanted, giving her the name of her contact in Sharn as well as a letter of credit drawn on his personal account before he left. Khellin’s reprieve from his prison cell was long over; he’d never returned to the manor, and Sabira hadn’t cared enough to find out if that’d been the Baron’s doing, or the Kundaraks’. Wilhelm hadn’t come down this morning; his steward sent word that the Count was feeling ill.
“Then at least wait a few days, so Aggar and I can accompany you-”
“Every day I wait is another day Tilde is left to Host knows what horrors. Whatever our differences in the past, I can’t leave her to that. I can’t watch your father go through that again, regardless what he thinks of me.” Maybe because of what he thought of her. “Can you?”
Elix’s hazel eyes glistened. They both knew the grief the Count had felt over Ned’s loss; it had paled in comparison to their own.
Sabira reached out a hand to caress his cheek, the one not marred by the Mark of Sentinel.
“Especially not if he’s going to be my father too.” Well, some day.
Elix caught her hand in one of his, turning his head and pressing her palm tightly against his lips for a long moment. Then he kissed her wrist lightly, right where a betrothal bracelet would lay, before relinquishing his hold.
“You knew?” he asked, his lips quirking into a rueful half-smile.
“Having my father here kind of gave it away.”
Aggar mumbled something from around a mouthful of bread and silverfruit jam. It sounded like, “Told you so.” Both Elix and Sabira ignored him.
“I know it’s a silly tradition, but I wanted to honor it-and you.”
Sabira smiled softly at that.
“So what did he say?”
“I said, ‘Have you taken leave of your senses?’ when he asked me,” Aggar answered, wiping cider from his beard with the back of his hand. “I offered to get a Jorasco to come take a look at him, maybe do a cleansing ritual.”
“Quiet, you,” Sabira warned, throwing the dwarf a stern look she couldn’t quite hold.
Elix’s own smile faltered a bit.
“Does it matter? I realize now it was a mistake securing his release.”
Sabira quirked an eyebrow.
“That bad, hmm? Well, it can’t be any worse than what I’d have called him.”
Like assassin, traitor, excoriate, steaming pile of carver dung-and those were the nice things.
“He said you were always more Breven’s daughter than you were his, and if Elix wanted to marry you, he was asking the wrong man for permission.”
The three of them turned to see Count Wilhelm standing in the open doorway, still in the clothes he’d worn the night before. From the dark circles around his red-rimmed eyes, it was clear that he hadn’t slept.