"Do you prefer Priestess, Lady Mavere? Or Guildmistress?"
"Just Salia will do, Baron."
Jassion barked out a single incredulous ha! "There's nothing just about any of you damn Guildmasters. Or anything you've done."
Salia managed, with some small effort, to keep her smile plastered to her face, to show no reaction to the baron's childish outburst. Her companion, however, rolled his eyes dramatically enough for the both of them.
"I'm glad," she bulled on, determined to remain polite, "that you were able to see us without notice like this, my lord. I hope it's not too much of an inconvenience."
Jassion shook his head and took a seat, very deliberately not asking his guests to do the same. "I could hardly have been elsewhere, could I, Salia? Your soldiers have been squatting on every road out of here for three years."
"You're not a prisoner, my lord. They're simply meant to ensure your safety, and to accompany you should you need to travel."
Their eyes met in jousting glares, neither under any illusions about Jassion's internal exile. "And do all Imphallion's nobles warrant such protection?" he asked.
"Only those who seem liable to attract trouble."
Salia's driver shook his head and slumped into a nearby chair. In response to Jassion's furious glower, he merely offered a friendly wave.
"Why don't you take a seat?" Jassion offered between clenched teeth. Scarcely had Salia done so, placing the box she carried at her feet, than he continued. "Shall we cut the shit, Salia? We both know damn well that I've had nothing to say to the Guilds since you dethroned the regent and sent me on this wonderful sojourn back home. You want something from me, and since you know that I'd sooner sit on a hot poker and then mount a horse than spit on you if you were on fire, I'm honestly at a loss as to what it might be."
"How colorful," the Guildmistress muttered. Then, "First, my lord Jassion, I regret to inform you that I have bad news."
"Oh, there's a surprise."
"I fear Vantares has welcomed several of your fellow noblemen into the underworld, Jassion."
That brought him up short. "Who?" he asked in a startled whisper. "Among quite a few others, Duke Halmon-"
"The regent's dead?"
Salia let that pass, even though both of them knew he'd not held that title for some time. "And Duke Edmund."
Jassion sagged back in his chair, one hand plucking at the cushioned armrest. "I knew Edmund well," he murmured. "We fought together during the Serpent's War."
"I know." And then, her tone suggesting that she might actually have meant it, "I'm sorry."
"Cephira?" he demanded. "I've heard rumors…"
"Some of which are true, I'm sure. They've taken several of our border towns, and if we're not formally at war already, I imagine we will be by the time I get back to Mecepheum. But no, they've shown little interest in our territories beyond the borderlands so far, and anyway, this was no Cephiran assassin."
"Then who?"
Salia glanced once at her companion, who shrugged casually, seemingly more interested in picking at something under his nails than involving himself in the conversation.
"There were several survivors among the guards," she said hesitantly, "so most of what we know comes from them. The most helpful of them was a fellow by the name of…"
Marlo stood tall, back stiff as a spear, and tried to ignore the chafing of the hauberk across his shoulders, the sting of smoke in his eyes and chest. Many of the others were amusing themselves trying to stare down the other soldiers, but Marlo was new to the ranks of the Cartographers' Guild's men-at-arms, and sufficiently inexperienced- puffed up might have been a better term-that he took himself far too seriously for such games. The fact that he'd been chosen to stand guard over a secret summit between select Guildmasters and nobles of the realm wasn't doing his ego any disfavors, either.
Perhaps it was his disdain for the antics of his fellow soldiers, or maybe it was just blind luck, that caused him to look away-to watch aimlessly, so far as the clinging smoke and flickering shadows would permit-down the hall from which they'd all initially arrived. And thus it was Marlo who saw him first.
The young soldier was convinced that he was imagining phantoms in the dark, for how could anyone have followed them down here? Yet the figure refused to dissipate into the shadows; in fact, it was growing quite obviously solid, remarkably fast.
Marlo was reaching for his blade, drawing in a lungful of sooty air to shout warning or challenge, when the new arrival raised a hand. Marlo swore he saw a flash of bloody crimson from the vicinity of the man's chest.
Behind Marlo, half a dozen soldiers screamed, hands flying to their heads as though to hold their skulls atop their necks. Bone shattered, spraying blood and brains from within useless helms, and six men collapsed without ever knowing what had killed them. One of the bodies rocked back on its heels and slid to the floor, spasming muscles holding its hands aloft beside a head that simply wasn't there anymore.
Even as his brain gibbered and his limbs trembled, Marlo was moving, for he alone had seen the danger coming. Broadsword in hand, shouting something he could never later recall, he charged the invader. What part of his mind still functioned, and had not already been overwhelmed with horror, nearly shut down when he recognized the black-and-bone armor, realized who-what-he was facing. But even through a rising tide of terror, brave Marlo knew his duty.
His blade arced downward in a blow that should have cleaved flesh, or at least broken bone, even through that terrible, infamous armor. Should have, but did not, for the warlord parried with a violent backhand that sent the sword scraping harmlessly along the black vambrace.
Marlo felt himself lifted into the air by a hand he never even saw moving. From below that gaping skull came that same red glow, gleaming from an amulet partially concealed by the armor's cuirass. And then Marlo was soaring, briefly, until the passageway's nearest wall ended his flight. He heard his hauberk rattle, heard more than felt the cracking of ribs. He struggled to catch his wind as he slumped to the floor, to breathe around the blood welling up behind his tongue.
Crawling forward on his belly, hand reaching for his fallen sword, Marlo watched in horror as a score of men were torn apart. A vicious axe hung at the armored warrior's side, but the fiend hadn't bothered even to draw it. Fists landed like catapult shot, snapping bones. Flames roared from his open palm, and men crumbled to ash before they could scream. One of the guards slid inside the invader's reach, delivered what should have been a crippling blow to the armor's chest. Instead the dark warrior simply batted the weapon aside, lifted the soldier in a wrestler's hold, and slammed him down upon one of his own armored shoulders. Marlo couldn't tell from where he lay if it had been the spines on that armor, or the brutal impact, that killed the man.
More flames, more blood, and Marlo rose on shaking legs. Struggling through the agony in his chest, sword clapped in both hands to keep it from falling, he moved to strike…
The warlord spun, empty sockets gazing into Marlo's terrified face. A black-gauntleted fist rose, and the world went black. "MARLO WAS ONE OF ONLY THREE SURVIVORS," Salia explained, concluding her recounting. "And the other two accounts pretty well match his. None of the soldiers actually saw what occurred within the meeting chamber itself, but between their stories and the state of the bodies, I think we can draw some firm conclusions. We-"
With an inchoate roar, Jassion was out of his chair and lunging across the room, fingers outstretched for Salia's throat. All semblance of propriety had melted away like so much candle wax, and the veins in his reddened face bulged appallingly.
But Salia Mavere was both Guildmistress of blacksmiths and priestess of their god, her muscles shaped by a lifetime of labor at the forge. A thunderous uppercut snapped Jassion back as though he'd reached the end of a tether. His pupils visibly dilated, and his neck and chin mottled instantly with blood beneath the skin.