“Why would an unmarried dwarf in his prime take the unusual step of designating an heir?”
But Sabira was ready for the dwarf woman. Before Aggar could answer, she stood, purposefully noisy, drawing all eyes to her. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Rockfist’s face go purple as he began scribbling furiously on his papers—no doubt trying to warn her of some sacred barrister’s protocol she was about to break. Sabira ignored him; she knew how to handle Anneka.
“With all due respect, Councilor Soldorak, I must ask that you limit your questioning to matters that directly pertain to the charges at hand. Since Aggar’s choice of an heir has no bearing on this trial, we’ll need to save any speculation we might have as to his reasons for the drawing room.”
Sabira’s intimation that the dwarf woman was a gossip aroused by the prospect of a juicy new rumor was not lost on either her or the rest of the Council, and a titter sounded from the Doldarun end of the dais. Anneka’s broad nose crinkled in response and her lips—never generous to begin with—pursed into a tight moue.
“Speaking of heirs, though,” Sabira said casually, “how are the twins?”
Anneka’s twin daughters were widely thought to have been the next on Nightshard’s list of targets, after Aggar. Sabira’s killing of the assassin had almost certainly spared the girls’ lives, and accordingly, Anneka owed the Marshal more than just her thanks—a fact she had no qualms about reminding the dwarf woman of now.
“They’re fine,” Anneka replied shortly, sitting back in her seat and crossing her arms in front of her, trying not to look petulant and failing miserably. When it was clear she had nothing more to say, Torlan cleared his throat.
“Well, my questions do have a bearing on this case, so, if you’ll allow me …?” the arbiter asked with exaggerated courtesy. Sabira gestured for him to continue and retook her seat.
Torlan stroked his beard for a moment, feigning deep thought, and Sabira wondered if the dwarf had trained at some point to be a bard. He certainly had a talent for acting.
“Now, where were we? Oh, yes. For whatever reason, you’ve designated Orin Mountainheart as your heir. So, if—Kol Korran forbid!—anything were to happen to you, he would inherit the bulk of your holdings,” Torlan mused, tapping his finger against his lips. “And then, if anything were to happen to him, your holdings would transfer to his wife. Whose family is affiliated with the Toldoraths. That would change the balance of power in the south quite a bit, I imagine.”
Sabira was on her feet again in an instant.
“Was there a question in there somewhere?” she asked sharply, though Aggar appeared unruffled. But appearances aside, he had to know how damaging Torlan’s line of questioning was.
The arbiter smiled indulgently at her.
“Patience, Shard Axe. I’m getting to it.”
He turned back to Aggar.
“In fact, I would think you would do anything in your power to prevent that from happening. You’d want to stop the wedding, but you couldn’t risk doing anything that might alienate your designee. So you’d approach the priest who was slated to officiate the wedding and try to convince him not to go through with it. And when he refused, you would … do what? Threaten him? Injure him?” Torlan paused for the briefest moment before bringing the argument home with devastating effect. “Maybe even … kill him?”
Aggar responded before the muttering from the Council could rise to an audible level.
“I might do those things,” he said with a nonchalant shrug, “but I didn’t. Orin and Gunnett were married, and Deepshaft was the celebrant. His death did nothing to stop the wedding from taking place. Killing him after the fact would have been pointless.”
“Revenge often is.”
Before Aggar could answer, several things happened at once. A commotion sounded behind the double doors—Sabira could barely make out any words, but she was certain she heard her name and Aggar’s. At the same time, Dorro stepped forward, her face tense with alarm.
“The woman—” she began, pointing, but it was too late.
The veiled dwarf had risen from her seat, unnoticed, and drawn a handheld crossbow from within her ermine-trimmed robes. As she flung the mourning veils out of her face, Sabira finally got a look at her, and, by the gasps that rang through the chamber, she wasn’t the only one surprised by the woman’s identity.
It was Tiadanna Mroranon, Torlan’s wife.
“Your revenge might have been pointless, Tordannon, but mine won’t be!” she snarled as she took aim at Aggar and pulled back the trigger.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Sabira reacted without thinking. She spun, snatched the long-handled knife off the stunned Narathun’s belt, and threw.
She wasn’t aiming for Tiadanna but rather for the compact crossbow in the dwarf woman’s hand. If she could just knock the weapon from Tiadanna’s grip, the bolt would go wide, shattering harmlessly against the stone wall.
But she wasn’t fast enough. Tiadanna loosed the bolt an instant before the knife sank deep into the back of her hand, passing through flesh and muscle to pin the stock of the crossbow to her palm.
Twin screams reverberated through the chamber then, one Tiadanna’s, and the other Dorro’s.
The perceptor, the only one close enough to reach Aggar, had flung herself at the Tordannon heir, knocking him out of the way of the missile. Unfortunately, the heroic act placed her squarely within the bolt’s path. It struck her in the side of the head, and she was dead before she hit the floor, her echoing scream lingering long after she’d drawn her last breath.
“Dorro!” Jhuddona shouted, rushing to the other priestess’s side, while Torlan leaped from his throne and raced to his wife, followed closely by Kiruk and the two dais guards.
Just then, one of the doors swung open and Gunnett hurried in, trailing water from her gray rain-cloak. She surveyed the room, taking in the chaotic scene: Two women on the floor, the Council members on their feet, and the guards along the walls with their weapons drawn. Then her eyes alighted on Sabira and she strode quickly down the aisle to where the Marshal stood next to Aggar and Rockfist, just outside the circle of Aureon’s sigil. On her way, she sidestepped the gnome—who must be a court recorder and not a chronicler, after all, or else she’d be in the thick of things, scribbling madly instead of cowering behind the dubious cover of a stone bench.
“Sabira,” she said, handing the Marshal a letter sealed with the Deneith chimera. “Your captain asked me to give you this.”
Sabira broke the seal on the letter and scanned it quickly. Written in Elix’s familiar script, the letter was vague and seemingly innocuous, but it still managed to fill her with a pervading dread.
T. says the shard is identical to the one from N.’s ring. N. may not have been working alone, and his accomplice may be closer than you think.
Be careful.
PS—I wasn’t lying.
“What does it say?” Aggar asked when he was done introducing his niece-by-marriage to Rockfist and filling her in with a succinct and carefully edited version of what had just happened.
“Nightshard … had an accomplice,” Sabira whispered, unable for a moment to manage anything louder. “This changes everything.”
She looked up from the note, meeting Aggar’s shocked gaze with one of her own.
“We need to talk to Torlan.”
Getting close to the arbiter was easier said than done, however. Torlan was yelling at Jhuddona to come heal his wife; Kiruk was shouting for the guards to arrest her; and the guards themselves, along with the remaining Council members, milled about uncertainly. Sabira started to elbow her way through the small crowd surrounding the Mroranons, only to be stopped by Rockfist.