“Go get cleaned up. I’ve been assigned the suite for visiting officers on the third floor; use that. I have to take care of your reinstatement papers with Greigur, so you needn’t worry about anyone disturbing you.” When she opened her mouth to argue, he cut her off with a sigh. “It’s an order, Marshal.”
Without bothering to wait for a reply, he turned and walked away, grabbing his half-full snifter off the table as he left the room.
And though Elix hadn’t so much as raised his voice, as the door closed behind him, Sabira couldn’t help but feel that she had just been quite thoroughly chastised.
The suite for visiting officers was a grandiose name for an oversized storage closet with a small fireplace, a scratched desk and mismatched chair, a sagging cot, and an attached privy. The so-called suite’s one boast to luxury was a large wooden tub that had, either by some clever artificer’s trick or else by some extremely fast coordination on Elix’s part, been filled with steaming water by the time she’d finished her own snifter of Onatar’s Blood and made her way up from the sitting room. A plate of still-warm vedbread and a bowl of brine sausage stew sat on a small side table near the tub, earning a grudging smile for the absent captain. He’d remembered her childhood favorites from Karrnath, though where he’d found either commodity in Stormreach was a mystery. Perhaps he’d brought his own private stock along. If so, she hoped it was because they were his favorites, too, and not some sort of subtle bribery.
For a moment she was paralyzed with indecision. Hot food or a hot bath? She needed both equally, but she found she wanted to be clean more than she wanted to assuage her grumbling stomach. Something about being forced to go back to Vulyar when she’d sworn never to return there left her feeling dirty, almost violated. She hoped a bath would wash the sensation away, but she had her doubts.
She didn’t have the time it would take to soak today’s events from her bones, so she settled for a vigorous scouring that left her skin pink and shiny. Then she climbed out of the tub and wrapped herself in one of the plush towels hanging on a nearby hook—Brelish, by the look, and expensive. Good to see there were at least some perks to being a captain.
A set of clean clothing to accompany the towels was apparently too much to hope for, and she didn’t exactly relish putting her own clothes back on, muddy as they were and still smelling vaguely of the sewers, so she set about scrubbing them in the still-warm bath water. She thought ruefully of the change of clothes sitting in the small pack she’d left with Borlan back at the Bogwater, but she’d actually paid to have those laundered and she was saving them for a special occasion. Like appearing before the Iron Council to defend an Aurum member from the accusations of other Aurum members.
Sabira could only shake her head at the thought. Marshals acting as counsel for criminals. That had to be the fulfillment of some minor part of the Draconic Prophecy, or something equally portentous and dire. Olladra’s luck that she’d be part of it.
After cleaning the clothes as best she could, she laid them out before the fire. She was effectively trapped here until they dried, so she took the opportunity to poke through Elix’s things and try to understand just when and how he had changed so much.
A small trunk of Karrnathi make sat at the foot of the cot. Sabira lifted it onto the cot frame and opened the lid. Two sets of tailored clothes in Deneith colors were folded neatly on top. They were wellmade but worn, and not the sort a man of means with a woman in his life would be allowed to wear, Sabira noted with unwonted satisfaction, a reaction she didn’t want to examine too closely.
As she set the clothing aside, she briefly considered appropriating one of Elix’s shirts to wear while her own dried, but decided against it. Standing naked save for her Marshal’s brooch and a towel in the room where Elix slept was uncomfortable enough; wearing his clothing would be asserting a level of intimacy she no longer had any claim to.
If she ever had.
Shrugging that thought off, Sabira continued her clandestine search, looking for more clues about Elix’s life and the years she’d so carelessly let pass between them. There were two books, their spines creased with use: The Complete Annotated History of Karrn the Conqueror by Plini and The Collected Verses of Theodon Dorn. Verses had a silk ribbon marking his spot, and Sabira flipped it open, curious to see what he’d been reading.
It was “The Marshal and the Maiden.” She’d always preferred the second in the series, “The Marshal and the Mistress,” in which the Marshal appeared to be having an illicit love affair with a nameless woman until the very last stanza, wherein Dorn gleefully revealed that the Marshal’s lady love was, in fact, his sword.
“The Maiden” was the more popular of the two, though, and like every Karrn ever born, Sabira knew it well.
Pursing her lips thoughtfully, Sabira closed the book and placed it with its companion on top of Elix’s clothes. If asked, she wouldn’t have pegged Elix for a devotee of epic romances, but the revelation didn’t really surprise her. For many in her House, love and duty were so intertwined that the concepts were almost synonymous. No wonder, then, that all the best tales of unrequited love involved a Deneith hero. Or heroine.
Sabira lifted the last item out of the trunk, a sheathed scimitar. The blade’s presence puzzled her; Elix’s weapon of choice had always been the broadsword. Drawing the curved sword, she realized that part of its hilt had been broken off in an odd way. It took her a moment to realize what was so strange about the damage, and why the sheath didn’t quite seem to fit.
This was no ordinary scimitar, but part of a much rarer and more lethal weapon—a Valenar double scimitar. Used to deadly effect by the elven cavalry of Valenar, it was unusual to see one north of the Blade Desert or south of Kraken Bay. When you did, it was invariably a war trophy.
Sabira wondered if this had been the weapon that killed Tabeth and what the other Marshal had meant to him that he would keep it. She pushed the thought away quickly. More likely, it had belonged to one of the elves Elix had himself killed while trying to escape with the Lyrandar heir. Either way, it had to serve as a constant—and deliberate—memory of what he’d lost in the desert.
She reached out to run her fingertips lightly along the blade’s edge. This change, at least, she understood.
The door opened suddenly, and she spun around too fast, slicing two of her fingers nearly to the bone on the still-sharp blade in her haste.
Elix paused in the doorway to take in the sight of her standing in front of his bed, clad only in a towel, startled eyes framed by a mess of coppery hair still in damp ringlets, and blood dripping from her hand onto the floor.
Without comment, he closed the door and crossed over to the desk, dumping the pile of papers he was holding and rummaging about in a drawer. When he straightened, he held a small vial made of cut blue glass. He tucked it into his shirt pocket, then came around the desk and walked to her side. There, he very gently took her injured hand in his and used the corner of the towel to absorb most of the welling blood. Then, still holding her hand, he fished in his pocket for the vial, pulled the stopper out with his teeth and poured it over the cuts before the bleeding could resume.