Te’oma opened her mouth to protest but no words came out. She climbed out on the other side of the bed from Sallah and stripped off Brendis’s tabard and armor, leaving herself in nothing more than a pitch-colored shift so black her skin glowed white in contrast. She lay them on the bed before her and then backed off so that Sallah could snatch them away.
“I didn’t kill him,” the changeling said. “Ibrido was just supposed to …” The look on Sallah’s face made her falter.
“I don’t care whose hands held the straps that strangled him,” the lady knight said. “You’re responsible just the same.”
She turned and left before the changeling could respond, before she let her see again how much she hurt.
Kandler met her at the door. “Hold on,” he said, hefting a set of manacles and a collar connected with thick chains.
Sallah waited while the justicar went into the room and put the changeling in irons while Burch stood guard. No one said a word.
Kandler emerged from the room, looking grim.
“Do you think that will hold her?” Sallah asked.
He shrugged. “It’s the best we can do for now.”
With that, he took Brendis’s things from her, except for his sword, which she cradled in her arms like a lost child. She led him down the stairs toward the fresh-dug grave.
One of the Karrnathi soldiers waved to them as they approached. “Just about finished,” he said, leaning on his dirt-crusted shovel. “It’s always slow going at the end. When you get so deep, only one man can work the hole.”
Clods of broken earth arced up out of the grave at a steady rhythm, falling near the first soldier’s feet. The sound and scent comforted Sallah somehow, as part of the ritual to acknowledge the end of a friend’s life. She’d been to too many funerals, she knew, but it didn’t seem like that would end any time soon.
As she and Kandler stood there, Berre strode over from where dozens of skeletons seemed to have redoubled their efforts to get Phoenix ready to fly. Sallah watched as a crew used a giant block and tackle to hoist the airship’s repaired rudder back into place.
“She should be set to go by dawn,” Berre said. “Any idea where you’re taking her?”
“She’s ours to take?” Kandler asked.
The Captain of Bones nodded. “When we found it, Esprë was at the wheel. You’re her next-of-kin, right? It’s yours to return to her.”
Berre sighed. “I’d send some troops with you, but I’m bound to have enough trouble here without wasting resources on what Korth could only see as a wild goose chase.”
“Wouldn’t Kaius want his airship back?”
“It’s gone. Even were Ito commandeer Phoenix to go after her, I wouldn’t know where she’s fled.” She narrowed her eyes and lowered her voice. “So don’t you tell me.”
Kandler lowered his head for a moment. “Thank you.”
The chunks of earth stopped coming, and a shovel followed them, landing atop the mound of fresh dirt. A hand came reaching up after that, and the soldier above helped pull his friend from the hole. As he dusted himself off, the soldier gave Sallah and Kandler a solemn nod.
The soldiers had already laid Brendis’s body out on a tarpaulin nearby, with ropes slid under it so they could lower the corpse into the ground. Sallah knelt down and spread the young knight’s armor over him, then laid his tabard over that. Kandler helped her wrap the body in the canvas sheet.
When only Brendis’s head was left exposed, Sallah leaned over and kissed him on his pale forehead. Then she covered his face and stepped back so the soldiers could put him in his grave.
As Brendis’s body went into its final resting place, Sallah spoke. “By the grace of the Silver Flame, my brother, may you find peace in its warmth and illumination in its eternal presence.”
“Amen,” Kandler murmured, reaching for her. She turned in his strong arms and let him hold her as she wept what she promised herself would be the last tears for her fallen friends—at least until she completed their quest. Tomorrow, there would be no time for grief.
36
Esprë awoke to the sound of someone screaming. It took her a moment before she realized it was her.
She stared around with wide, terrified eyes. She was in a cabin of some sort, a room made entirely of wood stained mahogany-dark and polished to a glistening finish. She sat up on an overstuffed couch of crimson velvet, clutching at its back and arm.
A stiff wind blew in from the windows at the front of the room, which had been smashed through. The back of the couch had shielded her from the night chill. She stared out into the darkness beyond and could see nothing but a black, featureless void.
Several everburning torches lit the cabin, their magical lights guttering in the wind but never going out. A four-poster bed crouched in one corner, a paper-cluttered desk in the other. The wind had strewn the papers all about the room, most of them ending up near the door opposite the windows.
Esprë swung her feet off the couch and on to a carpet the same shade of red as the couch. She felt something wet on her hand as it brushed along the couch. She brought it to her face and saw blood on her fingers.
She inventoried her body, checking for pain or wounds but found nothing. Her head ached a bit, and she remembered the last thing she’d seen before falling asleep had been Te’oma’s face. The changeling had mentally battered her into unconsciousness as a pair of hands held her in place, hands that could only have belonged to Ibrido.
The cabin door opened, and a pair of Karrnathi skeletons stalked into the low-ceilinged room. An elf with dragonish features crept in behind them, keeping them between himself and the young elf. He wore a black cloak with the Karrnathi wolf embroidered on one breast. A triangle of knucklebones hung just below that, white and pure against the cloak’s dark fabric.
“Welcome to Keeper’s Claw,” the dragon-elf said. “Make yourself comfortable. You will be with us for some time.”
“I-Ibrido?” Esprë said. “Is that you?”
The dragon-elf nodded. “The time for masks is over. I have captured you, and no one can stop me from disposing with you as I please.”
At first, Esprë had wanted to scream again. Now, noticing how carefully the dragon-elf treated her, she had to struggle to keep a wry smile from her face. Ibrido knew of her dragonmark, and he feared her. She enjoyed knowing that.
“It’s hard to be comfortable with the wind blowing in like that,” Esprë said, pointing at the windows.
Ibrido grimaced. “I will have a detail assigned to repairing that right away. In the meantime, please keep yourself far from the windows. Come daylight, you’ll find that it’s a long, fatal drop to the ground.”
“Where are we going?” Esprë asked. She surprised herself by how calm she felt. Perhaps the growing power of her dragonmark came with a bit of maturity, or maybe she was just used to getting kidnapped by now.
“To visit an old friend. Someone I’ve not seen in many years but who is very eager to meet you.”
“Kandler will come after me. They all will.”
“How? In that battered airship you crashed to the earth? By the time they get that rowboat in the air, we will be leagues from Fort Bones, and they will have no idea which way we went.”
Esprë steeled herself as she felt her confidence waning. “They found me before. They’ll never give up.”
Ibrido bared his teeth. “If they somehow do manage to catch us, I will knock them from the sky. This is a warship on which we travel, not some enchanted pleasure boat.”
Esprë stood up, and the dragon-elf took one step back. The skeletons closed ranks in front of him, keeping him far from the young elf’s reach.