She sat in one of the chairs, leaning her shard axe up against the arm while she positioned the red and black pieces into the familiar opening known as Jaron’s Gambit, followed by Moranna’s Countergambit. From there she went through the complicated middlegame of the Queen’s Attack. In recent years, this series of combinations had come to be called Etrigani’s Assault, after the Aereni wife of King Kaius III. But old-timers still referred to it as Moranna’s Bite, not so subtly signaling who many in Karrnath believed held the true power in Crownhome. She was just moving into the endgame when the office door opened. Assuming it was Elix, she kept her attention on the board, sliding her queen in for the kill.
“Have you tried the Dragonshard Defense?” a female voice asked suddenly. “I understand it’s particularly effective against that last combination.”
Sabira looked up, surprised.
A dwarf woman with black hair and blacker eyes stood a few feet away from the board, regarding her curiously.
“You play?” Though the game seemed perfectly suited for a people who could spend a full day faceting a single diamond, she’d known very few dwarves who’d ever bothered to learn.
“A little. My husband taught me.” She stuck out a hand. “Forgive my rudeness. I’m Gunnett Mountainheart. And you are …?”
Sabira stood, the motion causing her urgrosh to slide forward, threatening to fall to the floor. She reached down to right it with one hand while she accepted Gunnett’s handclasp with the other.
“I’m—”
“The Shard Axe,” Gunnett breathed as she caught sight of the weapon, her eyes going wide. “But … I thought your airship had been destroyed?”
Sabira frowned, a bit put-out by the dwarf woman’s reaction. Not that she really liked the fawning that usually followed someone from the Holds realizing who she was, but it was certainly preferable to them seeming disappointed to find out that she was still alive.
“No, actually that was Orin’s ship,” she replied, wondering where exactly Gunnett was getting her information. “He ran into a little trouble with some yrthaks, but luckily my ship wasn’t far behind and we were able to rescue him before things got too bad.”
“He’s all right, then?” Gunnett’s voice was taut, as though she were afraid of the answer she might receive.
“He’s fine,” Sabira hastened to reassure her. “Ate something that disagreed with him, so we’re having him looked at by some Jorasco healers, but I’m sure he’ll be ready to go back to Krona Peak in a day or so.”
“Well, thank Olladra for that.”
“And the captain and I escaped relatively unscathed as well,” Sabira added pointedly, still a bit miffed by the dwarf’s attitude.
“That did sound rather scurrilous, didn’t it? Let me start again.” Gunnett gave her an apologetic smile. “I’m very glad to hear you and your captain were not harmed in the attack. It’s just that, when Orin contacted me via speaking stone from Stormreach, he told me he’d be following your ship to Sharn, then picking you up and bringing you here. So when reports came in of two airships out of Stormreach running into trouble not far from Three Barrel Cove, and the first one going down, I naturally assumed it was your ship, not his.”
“Wait. Reports from whom? We didn’t stop anywhere in between Stormreach and here, so it couldn’t have come from us, and there was no one else out there.” Or was there? Sabira hadn’t exactly been scanning the skies for spectators.
Gunnett shrugged. “Apparently, there’s some sort of lookout point there on the island where the locals from Three Barrel Cove keep an eye on the shipping routes into and out of Xen’drik, both aerial and marine. I imagine it’s so they can claim salvage rights on any ships that go down; reporting the wrecks to the authorities later is just an afterthought to give their scavenging some semblance of respectability.”
Sabira found herself nodding. The dwarf woman’s assessment sounded on the money to her.
“I’m not sure how the Marshals here—the ones who told me about it—learned of the attack. Perhaps when your captain and my husband were so long overdue, they sent word to the coast for any reports of airship crashes and found out that way. You’ll have to ask your captain for more details, I’m afraid.”
“You haven’t spoken to him?”
“No. When I came in today to see if there’d been any word yet of your arrival, they directed me up here and said he’d be along shortly.” Gunnett motioned toward the seat Sabira had just vacated. “Please, sit. We may be waiting awhile; there’s no reason to stand on formality, if you’ll forgive the phrasing.”
Sabira gave the dwarf woman a sidelong glance as she retook her seat. How in the name of Boldrei, the Sovereign Goddess of Hearth and Hall, had Mountainheart ended up with a wife like her? They seemed about as likely a pair as her and Greigur, and Host knew, it would be a cold day on Fernia before that happened.
“So, you said Orin taught you to play?”
Gunnett settled into the other chair and nodded. “Yes. He said he learned from his uncle … who I assume learned from you?”
Not just from her. Leoned had been a player of no mean skill himself, and they’d whiled away many cold evenings in Frostmantle over an imported board while Aggar had watched every move intently.
“He did.” Sabira said, resetting the pieces. “And since it looks like we have the time, let’s see if he was as good a teacher as he was a student.”
Sabira gave the dwarf woman her choice of colors. Gunnett chose black, giving Sabira the first move. She began by moving out her archer, the opening sally in Thaurum’s Offense.
Gunnett quickly mirrored the move with her own black archer, and then again when Sabira brought out her siege engine.
Sabira hid a smile. Like cards, Conqueror was as much about playing your opponent as it was about playing the pieces. Gunnett’s imitative play indicated someone unsure of her game. A fact Sabira planned to use to her advantage.
Four moves into Thaurum and Sabira could already see her endgame. Either Aggar had forgotten most of what she and Ned had taught him, or Orin hadn’t been paying attention.
As Gunnett lifted one of her footmen, her elbow bumped the table. Sabira had to grab at her tower to keep it from falling, and managed to smack her own elbow into the urgrosh in the process. She ducked down and caught the weapon before it hit the floor, and when she came back up, she noticed Gunnett’s lips drawn into a thin frown, which disappeared almost as soon as she saw it.
Sabira had seen that look before; Gunnett would be far from the first of her kind to think a shard axe did not belong in the hands of a human.
“You disapprove?” Sabira asked, keeping her tone even. Though such contempt rankled, Gunnett would be right to doubt the wisdom of the gift. Sabira had wanted to refuse the offer, but even she knew to do so would have been an unforgiveable insult to the Tordannon clan chiefs who had awarded it to her. But the enchanted urgrosh was too valuable a reward for what had, essentially, been a failed mission, because while she’d saved Aggar, she’d lost Leoned, and it was nowhere near a fair trade.
The dwarf placed her footman without responding.
“I suppose you think no human can wield a shard axe properly,” Sabira prodded, countering with one of her own footmen.
“Not at all,” Gunnett replied at last, studying the board. “By all accounts, you’ve demonstrated you can use the urgrosh quite ably.”