Greigur looked up as Sabira stepped through the open door. Seeing who it was, he carefully wiped his quill clean of ink and set it aside.
“Close the door behind you, Marshal.”
That wasn’t a good sign.
He gestured to one of two chairs facing his desk, and starting talking even before she was completely seated.
“I thought I told you when I partnered you with Prynn and sent you after Caldamus that I wouldn’t brook brutality on this job. We might have looser rules than in Karrnath, but Marshals here still follow the Code of Galifar.”
“I hit him,” she admitted, seeing no point in denying it. It wasn’t as if the changeling hadn’t deserved it. “He resisted arrest. It happens.”
“Well, when it happens on a job commissioned by the Defender’s Guild on behalf of Queen Aurala herself, we make sure we pour a healing potion or two down the suspect’s throat before we march him across the entire length of the city. Especially when both she and King Boranel will be sitting in on his trial.”
“Trial?” Sabira repeated, sure she had misheard him. And since when had the job been commissioned for Aurala? Prynn hadn’t told her that. “With all due respect, Captain, Caldamus practically admitted his guilt in Goren’s death. He—”
“I don’t care if he gave you a confession signed in his own blood, Marshal. It would have been better for all of us if you’d just brought him in dead, like you usually do. Now we’ve confirmed that he is a member of King Boranel’s Dark Lanterns, and that changes everything.”
The Lanterns. Of course. She’d known he was a suspected spy. She just hadn’t pegged him for one of Breland’s preeminent intelligence gatherers and assassins. No wonder Aurala wanted him unmarked: A bargaining chip was worth more when it wasn’t damaged.
“I didn’t know—” she began, only to be interrupted by Greigur’s fist slamming against his desk, nearly spilling his ink pot.
“Which is exactly why you follow the orders you’re given, Marshal. For the life of me, I don’t know why you haven’t been expelled from the House for your maverick ways, or at the very least demoted. I know what you did back in the Holds, but it in no way justifies—”
It was Sabira’s turn to interrupt, and she did so in a voice as flat and icy as Karrn Bay in the grip of midwinter.
“Again, with all due respect, Captain, you have no idea what I did in the Holds, and it’s not for you to question the Baron’s faith in me or in my work.”
Greigur just smirked.
“It seems he’s questioning it himself these days, Lyet,” he responded, handing her a folded missive that bore the Baron’s own seal. “This arrived yesterday by House Orien courier. Your vacation from Karrnath is over. You’re to report to the Vulyar outpost within one week’s time.”
Sabira couldn’t quite keep the tremor from her hand as she opened the letter, but she told herself it was just the pain from her burns. Not dread. Not anguish.
Even so, as she scanned the brief note, her heart scrabbled up her throat and threatened to burst from her mouth. Or maybe that was the Frostmantle Fire, scalding as much on the return trip as it had on the way down.
To the Sentinel Marshal Sabira Lyet d’Deneith
From the Office of Assignments
Sentinel Tower, Karrlakton, Karrnath
Sabira,
The House has need of your services back in Karrnath.
Report to the Vulyar office on or before the 8th of Nymm, 998 YK. Do not be late.
“Is this—is this a joke?” Sabira asked when she could speak, not caring that her voice shook and almost broke.
It had to be, didn’t it? Breven couldn’t possibly be ordering her back to Vulyar, not when he’d personally sworn to her that she’d never have to return there again. He couldn’t really be breaking his word to her, could he? And forcing her to break her own, since she’d vowed never to venture within a thousand miles of the Holds again.
Greigur frowned, obviously nonplussed by her reaction.
“The Baron’s not one for humor.”
Sabira looked up from the paper, meeting his gray eyes numbly with her own.
“No. He’s not. And neither am I.”
She pulled the leather cord and brooch out from beneath her shirt and stared for a long moment at the three enameled heads that represented everything she had in this world. Everything she was.
With a growl, she yanked the cord so hard it broke with an audible snap. Then she tossed both cord and chimera on Greigur’s desk.
“I quit.”
She spun on her heel, squeezing her eyes shut against the hurt. The betrayal.
“Sabira, wait!”
She turned back to Greigur, who was on his feet now, her discarded brooch in his hand, his shock plain.
“Are you sure—?” He must have seen the answer in her face, for he didn’t finish the question. Instead, he asked another. “You realize that if you do this now, you’ll be forfeiting your half of the fee for bringing Caldamus in?”
The anger was gone from his voice, and he almost sounded fatherly. Of course, Breven had sounded that way, too, back when he was making promises he clearly never intended to keep.
“I don’t care. Prynn can have it. I’m done. With all of it.”
Not waiting for a response, she walked out of his office, turning her back on the only thing that had any meaning in her life since Ned’s death.
And now that was gone, too.
Host, but she needed a drink, and fast! Something stronger than dwarven whiskey this time, and there was only one place in Stormreach to go for that.
The Bogwater.
The Bogwater was the only open-air tavern in Stormreach. And with a waterfall, a pool, a fully equipped stage, three separate common “rooms,” and a multitude of trees, it was one of the jewels of the elven House Phiarlan enclave.
The tavern’s human owner, Borlan Corrigan, was a former client of Sabira’s who owed his life to her several times over. For her, he brought out his own special brew, Bor’s Bog, a spirit distilled from potatoes and beet sugar. The stuff was vile but potent, and it definitely got the job done. Sabira ordered a double.
“Be sleepin’ under my tables tonight, then?”
“Tonight and for the next few days, if I have my way,” Sabira answered, draining the small glass in one gulp and signaling for another. She planned to get good and drunk, in a way that she hadn’t been since the night of Leoned’s memorial. It wasn’t as if she had any reason not to, now.
Borlan nodded.
“I’ll make sure Hawrog knows not to trouble you.”
Sabira was almost disappointed at that. Hawrog Morr was the Bogwater’s ogre bouncer, and going a few rounds with the brute might be just the thing to dispel the building thunderheads of fury that threatened to overwhelm her.
Later, she decided, as Borlan poured out another two ounces. Her toes were already beginning to tingle and a pleasant fuzziness was clouding the edges of her vision. By her third glass, she was floating in a haze of lutesong and bird music and could no longer feel her legs. By the fourth, she slid spinelessly off her stool, cracked her head against the floor, and knew nothing more.