She pulled her hands away from his, feeling her anger start to build. Wanting it to, so it would drown out the grief.
“So, that’s it? I have no say in this?”
“Saba,” Leoned said, his expression hardening. “I don’t need your permission. You’re my partner, not my wife. I—”
“Yes, I’m your partner,” Sabira answered fiercely. “The same partner who took a barbed bolt to the gut for you down in Irontown, and nearly drowned trying to fish you out of Lake Dark. The same partner who took the blame for you when you let that jewel thief trick you into letting her go. The same partner who’s been there for you in ways no wife ever could be—or would be willing to be—for four long years. Four years, Ned. I thought that meant something to you. I thought I meant something to you.”
“Saba, I—”
“Apparently, I was wrong.” She jumped up from the bench. “I’m going to go patrol the grounds.”
She turned away from him and began to jog down the long path to the river, afraid that he might call her back—and even more afraid that she would go back to him if he did. But Leoned said nothing, and the only sounds that broke the silence of the late autumn night were the distant bleating of sheep, the crunch of her footsteps on gravel, and what might have been a long, regretful sigh but was probably just the wind.
A breeze as cold as the lump in her throat greeted her as she reached the banks of the Mirror River. That wasn’t its actual name, of course—the only watercourse in the Mror Holds, and one that cut the dwarven homeland almost in half, to them it was just The River. But as trade expanded and the dwarves began allowing other races into the Holds, that appellation would not suffice, and so they’d taken to calling it the Mirror, after the lake of the same name that filled the valley between the Ironroots and the Hoarfrost Mountains.
Sheep huddled together in small bunches, dotting the thinning grass like misshapen boulders. One of them caught Sabira’s eye as she was about to step out onto the small dock and check the skiff tied there.
The sheep was limping through the grass toward her, bleating softly. As it neared, she saw deep claw marks scored across its flank, the blood on its wool black and still glistening in the moonlight.
Sabira was on her guard instantly. She drew her bastard sword and scanned the area for predators.
Nothing moved save the sheep, the horizontal slits of its pupils wide as it looked up at her helplessly.
She knelt down to check its wounds. They were most likely the work of a marauding wolf that had been frightened off from the kill by her approach, but she needed to be sure there wasn’t something more dangerous lurking this close to the cottage.
Up close, she could see that the injury on the sheep’s flank was the least of its wounds. Something with three claws had nearly gutted the creature, slicing its underbelly like paper. Loops of intestine hung loose from the open wound, still dripping blood and ichor.
“Poor thing,” Sabira murmured, patting its head and knowing she was going to have to put it out of its misery. “Someone tried to rip your heart out, eh? Seems to be a lot of that going around tonight.”
The sheep just looked at her, its eyes glazed over and unblinking.
“Khyber!” Sabira breathed, “You should be dead.…”
Even as the realization struck her that the sheep was dead, a sickening crack sounded from behind its eyes, and before Sabira could do more than blink, its skull shattered, showering her with warm blood, bits of pulpy flesh, and fragments of thick ovine bone.
Sabira fell back as something leaped out at her from the ruins of the sheep’s head. The size of a small dog, it resembled nothing more than a moist, pulsing brain on four legs, each of which ended in three long claws.
Though she’d never met such a loathsome creature before, she recognized it from part of the training she’d gone through as a member of the Blademarks. An intellect devourer—or body thief, as it was more commonly known—was an evil aberration that preferred sentient prey, consuming its victim’s brain and then animating the dead body. The body thief would then masquerade as its host in order to stalk more prey or even to spy for some more powerful master.
Nightshard.
Did the assassin think to have his pet inhabit her body to get past the cottage wards? How could he have known she’d even be here by the river? Unless the killer had been spying on her and Leoned from afar, and was using their argument and subsequent separation—her doing—to get to Aggar.
Which meant Leoned was also in danger, and it was her fault.
The body thief landed lightly on all fours and immediately charged, swiping at her with its powerful claws. Sabira twisted out of the way, feeling the preternaturally quick creature’s blow gouge deeply into her leather armor as it rushed past, just missing the skin beneath.
Sabira used her momentum to bring her sword down, the blade catching the body thief across one of its back legs, drawing blood. The thing had no mouth, but Sabira nevertheless heard a piercing shriek in her mind, so high it made her wince in pain.
Then the creature was facing her again, a few paces off, shuffling back and forth on its legs as if studying her, though it had no eyes with which to do so.
It was so awful to look at. Sabira had to resist the impulse to avert her eyes. How could she fight such a thing by herself? She’d barely scratched it with her blade, despite putting all her strength behind the blow. She wasn’t a skilled enough warrior to defeat the body thief on her own; she needed Leoned. He’d known all along, of course, that she wasn’t good enough. That’s why he was choosing Rhania over her.
No! Sabira thought sharply, biting her lip hard enough to draw blood. The pain helped her to focus, to realize that this self-doubt was not her own. It was one of the intellect devourer’s tricks, to make her hesitate and make a mistake.
That wasn’t going to happen.
She’d already made one error tonight—leaving her partner alone. She wasn’t about to make another.
Keeping her teeth clamped down on her lip, she advanced on the body thief, sword in a two-handed grip. The thing’s brain-like body seemed to pulse faster as she approached, and she found the rhythm almost hypnotic. Before she knew it, her pace had slowed to a stop and she was lowering her blade.
What was she doing here? Why had she drawn her weapon?
An anxious bleat caught her attention. A small lamb was sniffing at the nearly headless body of another sheep—probably its mother.
Sabira’s eyes narrowed. This was her true enemy, a creature of unspeakable depravity posing as an innocent suckling to lure her close enough to attack. But she would not be fooled!
Sabira raised her sword once more and rushed at the terrified animal, who ran away from its mother’s corpse on wobbly legs. She caught up with it in only a few strides and was bringing her blade down on the lamb’s unprotected spine when something hit her full in the back, sending her flying forward almost on top of the bleating sheep and trapping her sword beneath her.
As the lamb scampered away, three lines of fire carved themselves across Sabira’s left shoulder and down her back, slicing into her flesh as if her armor were made of water. With a howl, Sabira rolled hard to her right, away from the pain, throwing the thing that had attacked her off her back in the process.
She scrambled to regain her feet, snatching up her sword just as the creature charged her again. The body thief, she remembered belatedly, the agony in her shoulder erasing the last vestiges of the confusion it had cast over her.
With her muscles screaming in pain, it was all she could do to hold her blade out and up like a spear, its hilt lodged beneath her ribs. As the body thief rushed at her, she dropped to her knees at the last possible moment and braced herself. The aberration was moving too fast; it ran headlong onto her weapon, impaling itself with another of its soundless screams, its wet body sliding up the length of her blade until it she could see the blood-coated tip protruding from between its hind legs. The impact forced the hilt deep into
her gut, and she vomited hot bile all over the thing’s still-quivering corpse.
Wiping gall from her bloody mouth, Sabira climbed unsteadily to her feet. Planting her foot where the body thief’s right front leg met its overlarge brain, she pulled her sword out of the carcass with a sucking squelch. Then she turned and ran for the cottage as fast as she could.
It was too late; she knew it even before she got there.
Leoned was gone. Blood spattered the bench where he’d been sitting and dry leaves littered the ground in front of it, crushed by the dance of two pairs of feet. And there, poking out from under the bench, something flashed in Olarune’s orange light.
Sabira bent to pick it up.
Ned’s sword, its blade mockingly clean.
Nightshard had been here. And he’d taken Leoned.
The door cracked open and Aggar’s face appeared, strikingly pale against the darkness of his beard.
“I’m so sorry, Saba! Nightshard found us. He wanted the password to get past the wards, but Leoned wouldn’t give it to him, so Nightshard attacked him. I wanted to help, but Ned ordered me to stay inside, so all I could do was watch from the window. I saw him stab Leoned with a black blade. Then he said, if he couldn’t have me, he’d take my Defender, and they both disappeared.” Grief rang in his every word like a death knell. “It’s all my fault, Saba! I should have done something!”
Sabira just shook her head, but she couldn’t answer the broken-hearted young dwarf. She was too busy fighting off a black wave of despair that threatened to crush the life from her at any moment.
She’d lost Leoned. And she had no one to blame but herself.
CHAPTER TEN
Sul, Nymm 15, 998 YK
Vulyar, Karrnath.
Sabira shook the memories away, looking vainly about the room for something stronger than her willpower to drown them out, but this was Elix’s office, and he’d always been better at facing his feelings than she was at facing hers. Her eyes alighted again on the Conqueror board, and she moved to sit before the checkered board with determination. It wasn’t as good as a cold drink, but no true Karrn could help but find the national game of strategy a soothing balm for whatever troubled the soul.
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 y
our 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.”
“And yet you’ve clearly got an issue with my having it.”
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