“He can’t talk at all,” Bodhar said. “Needs a way to send a letter or something, he says. Like maybe a talking animal—oh wait, no, that didn’t work either.”
“Could you stop talking over my head like I’m Wilmot?” Dahl cried.
“Put it on a ship,” Thost suggested. “Like Ma sent yours.”
“Where is she anyway?” Bodhar asked.
Dahl hesitated. “Djerad Thymar. Way down south. Not a common passage, New Velar to Tymanther.”
“How did you get yourself into such a stupid spot,” Sessaca demanded. “Falling for a girl on the arse-end of the continent, with some crazy barrier on her?”
“Stlarn it!” Dahl shouted. “Enough! It’s not your business, and—” He bit off the words he was going to say. “Anyway, Bodhar’s right. I can’t talk to her, so it’s out of my hands and like as not you’ll wind up getting your way. Happy?”
No one spoke, and in the silence, Dahl felt once more the border between his Harran life and his life in the world beyond rise up as palpable as a wooden palisade. On one side him, on the other side Farideh. A dark surge of melancholy rose up in his soul. You can’t win.
Sessaca stood without a word and left the little cabin. Dahl cursed and followed her. “Granny, look, I’m sorry. Granny!” he called as she marched across the deck toward where Xulfaril and the halfling stood deep in conversation. Mira sat to the side, a ledger spread out on the deck before her. She caught Dahl’s eye as he sprinted after his grandmother.
“A word,” Sessaca said as she reached the wizard and the halfling.
Xulfaril didn’t look up. “Yes, Swordcaptain?”
Sessaca ignored the sneering tone, addressing the halfling. “You. What’s your name?”
The halfling looked at Xulfaril, but the wizard gave no signal. “Volibar,” he said.
“Volibar, well met. Give me the snake.”
“I don’t take orders from you.”
“Fine.” Sessaca turned to Xulfaril. “My grandson wants to send a message to his monster lover. So get the snake out and make it happen.” The wizard looked up then, her single eye considering Sessaca, then Dahl, in turn.
“Give her the snake,” Xulfaril said.
“Thank you,” Sessaca said. To Dahl, “There. Stop moping.”
Dahl bit back a curse. “If someone’s sending messages by flying snake, it ought to be Thost and Bodhar,” he whispered. “They’re not used to this, and neither are Meri and Dellora and Ma.”
“Haslam can’t go back to New Velar,” Volibar piped up. “So wipe that off your slate.”
“It’s trained to go to particular people,” Sessaca said. “Folks it knows, or folks who’re playing a signal whistle to attract it. There’s no one in New Velar for it to find anymore.”
“Exactly,” said Volibar, sounding not a little pleased that someone understood him. “Which means I can’t promise you a shitting thing. Where is this … person?”
“Djerad Thymar,” Dahl said.
Volibar cursed. “Stlarning Brume, then. Fine. We can do it.” Dahl bit his tongue and filed that away for another time—the Harpers wouldn’t be happy to know there were Zhentarim in Tymanther, of all places. “It’s a big city, where’s he going to find her?”
Dahl wracked his brain. He had no idea. “She’s visiting her father’s clan. She’s adopted,” he added, when Sessaca sniffed. “The clan … it’s something with a … Vertha? Verthisathix?”
Farideh lying against his shoulder, tracing a finger over his knuckles. “But Nala Who-Would-Be-Verthisathurgiesh was as clever as a blue wyrm and wise as the mountains.”
“And dealing with dragons who are incredibly stupid,” Dahl had teased.
“Shush or you’re going back upstairs.”
He’d closed his hand around hers. “Keep going.”
On the deck of the Zhentarim ship, Dahl shut his eyes. “Verthisathurgiesh. That’s the clan. Her name’s Farideh.”
Volibar grumbled, and patted his pockets, drawing out a roll of parchment no wider than the end of Dahl’s thumb. “That’s all you get,” Volibar told him. “Leave the back side blank—that’s for me.” He clicked his tongue, and the snake poked its dark, triangular head out of his collar. “Good boy,” he murmured. To Dahl, he added, “You’ve got until we secure a river boat, so do it now. Choose your words carefully.”
“You’re welcome, lambkin,” Sessaca said as she walked back to the cabin.
Dahl closed his hand around the parchment, running through Lorcan’s threats. He couldn’t talk to Farideh … but nothing about writing. Nothing about letters. Unless he was missing something. It felt as if he was always missing something lately. He went and sat down beside Mira.
“Can I borrow a stylus and ink?”
“Of course, lambkin.” He scowled at her, and a smile danced on her thin mouth. “I cannot conceive of a pet name that suits you less.”
He sighed. “I’m twelve years behind Bodhar. What they call a ‘late lambkin,’ in Harrowdale. She’s the only one that still calls me that, because she’s godsbedamned terrifying and I’m not about to tell her to stop. Stylus and ink?”
She handed them over. “So,” Mira said. “Farideh. That’s surprising. In several ways.”
“Yes. Well.” He rolled the stylus between his fingers, smiled to himself. “Things change.”
“Clearly. What happened to her devil?”
He’s not hers anymore, Dahl wanted to retort. But it felt so close to teasing Beshaba. “He’s around.”
“Ah. The urgency becomes clear.” She shut the ledger. “Sounds like Sessaca’s not happy about it. What about your brothers?”
“Sessaca thinks she’s a dragonborn. My brothers think she’s from Hillsfar.”
“You haven’t told them she’s a tiefling?”
Dahl exhaled, as if he could stretch the tension from his chest. “I suspect it’s not a whole lot better than a Hillfarian dragonborn. And … I’m not really in the mood to hear all the ways she’s wrong for me, because they’re not true and if she were here, they’d see that.”
“I’ll hold my tongue,” Mira said. “Explains a little why you were so cagey. And spares my feelings.”
“Don’t,” Dahl said. “Don’t start that. You haven’t had anything remotely like feelings for me since Proskur, and don’t pretend otherwise.”
Mira shrugged. “I could have changed my mind.”
“Why?” Dahl asked dryly. “Is your father annoying you again?”
“A hit,” she allowed, with a cryptic little smile. “It would have been better to let them think I had you wrapped around my finger. You could have been a little interested.”
“Well I’m not,” Dahl said. “But I am interested in what in all the broken planes is going on here. What are they after?”
“Not portal magic,” Mira said. “But I guarantee they’re going to pretend it’s about that until they can’t anymore. It’s definitely about the library. They wouldn’t have brought me in if there weren’t a site involved. And they don’t want to destroy it—whatever Grathson’s doing here.”
“What else is in the Master’s Library?”
“Everything?” Mira shook her head. “Nothing? No one knows anymore. Sessaca’s the last person to see inside. Thank the gods she’s still kicking.”
Dahl leaned back. The Master’s Library had stood for ages, the pinnacle of knowledge, the site of Deneirrath pilgrimages. Chained to other libraries, other temples by portal spells, no one had accessed it since the Wailing Years, since the Deneirrath had given up on their god returning.
“What’s Grathson do?” Dahl asked.
“Clears ruins mostly. Brings back treasure. He’s the one you call when there are monsters in the way.” She folded her arms. “Suggests some things.”
“Xulfaril does research with you?”
Mira shook her head. “She runs a trade network of magic items, no questions asked, shipping all over. This is the first I’ve ever encountered her.”
She chewed her upper lip a moment. “It worries me that she’s so … accommodating of your grandmother.”
“Granny makes people act like that,” Dahl said. “What might be in the Master’s Library that needs Xulfaril and Grathson?”
“Ask your granny,” Mira said.
“Do they have any idea about us?” Dahl asked. “About who I might be?”
“Not a bit,” Mira said. “They think I know you from Cormanthyran artifact hunting. They think you’re a backwater Oghmanyte who’s maybe a little sweet on me. Or they did.” She stood and dusted off her breeches. “I’d be ready for a recruitment attempt or two. Probably from Xulfaril, Grathson’s too peeved at your granny to admit he hasn’t got everything he ever needed.” She nodded at the little scroll. “Don’t use all my ink on bad poetry, Dahl. Stuff’s expensive.”
She left, and finally alone, Dahl unrolled the parchment, a strip hardly as long as his hand. A hundred words, he thought. Maybe a hundred and thirty, a hundred and fifty, if he could keep his hand tight, avoid making errors. A hundred and fifty words and they had to be the right ones …
He rubbed a hand over his face and cursed. No one would possibly say this was Dahl’s strong suit—in fact he wondered, too often, if he’d only confessed his feelings to Farideh because of Oghma’s intercession. If he would have gone on holding his tongue forever without that divine fire loosening his words, making him ramble like an overeager student.
But she loved you anyway, he thought. And you won’t get another chance.
He hesitated. Setting aside Mira’s black ink, Dahl fished a small bottle, green as moss, from his pocket, where it had ridden for months, a sentimental talisman. He cracked the seal and unstoppered it, the unsubtle, resiny scent of rosemary wafting off if it. He dipped the pen and began to write.
MEHEN’S PLANS TO get information from Shestandeliath began to fray the moment he stepped outside Verthisathurgiesh’s doors. The two young women on doorguard duty jumped when they saw him, nearly dropping their falchions. They bobbed their heads sheepishly as he passed.
“Pandjed’s son,” he heard one whisper. “The outcast one.”
“The one who …?” Mehen shut his eyes. Even without looking, he could sense the girl nodding.
You will be no son of mine.
Do you promise?
You say that to me, toe to toe, let’s see what comes of it.
Mehen looked back over his shoulder and the guards straightened. “What have you heard?”
“Nothing,” the farther one said, a tall woman with the brassy scales that suggested Vandeth’s line. “Apologies.”
“They say you defied Patriarch Pandjed,” the other—reddish scales, broad-shouldered—said over the top of her comrade. “That you dared him to declare you clanless. That you …” She looked to her friend, abashed. “I mean … Well they say it.”
“Is it true you were a god-worshiper?” the first asked.
Mehen cursed under his breath. The last thing he needed was people spitting gossip about his exile. “What in the Hells happened to this city if hatchlings have only thirty-year-old tales to tell? Get back to your posts.”
He’d hoped that would be the end of it, but Anala’s words haunted his every step to the Shestandeliath enclave: You won’t want to hear it, but it must be said: You look exactly like your father. More whispers, more stares, more jumpy hatchlings dogged him. There was no hiding from his past, it seemed. If they did not know the story of Pandjed’s rebellious scion, they knew enough to spot the old bastard’s features in this clanless wanderer.
When he finally arrived, Shestandeliath did not take well to Mehen’s intrusions. For the better part of an hour, he only sat in a small chamber—drinking cold tea and staring at the mosaic on the floor, worrying about his daughters and Djerad Thymar—until finally a woman about his own age, Shestandeliath Narhanna, arrived to tell him that the patriarch would not be seeing him today, so sorry to have wasted his time.
“Not at all,” Mehen said. “You can answer questions as well as he can.”
Narhanna had a pinched look about her face, and his question made it still more pinched. “I see your reputation does in fact precede you.”
“I only want justice,” Mehen said. He hesitated, trying to recall the proper, formal ways to go about this. “I only want to be sure no more of us are lost. Shestandeliath and Verthisathurgiesh are old friends,” he reminded her. “Holders of the Breath of Petron and the Eye of Blazing Rorn, and all that.”
“Are you Verthisathurgiesh now? Only I’d heard Pandjed had exiled you quite explicitly.”
Mehen fought the urge to bare his teeth. “Whatever we are, the clans have this in common: Verthisathurgiesh Baruz and Shestandeliath Parvida were both killed by something in the catacombs. Why?”
“The foolishness of youth?” Narhanna’s dry tone left no doubt she was referring to other, thirty-year-old tales.
“Mouthing off to your elders and calling forth a horror aren’t the same things.” Narhanna didn’t respond. “Matriarch Anala tells me that Baruz was acting strange lately. She thought Baruz was up to something. Parvida?”
Narhanna blinked, hesitated a moment too long. Parvida was up to something too.
“Who did Parvida confide in?” Mehen asked. “Who else did she spend time with?”
“I can’t say I keep track of every hatchling in the clan.” Narhanna clucked her tongue. “So many lost heirs. Does the Verthisathurgiesh know you’re here?”
“She’s told me to get to the bottom of this,” Mehen said. “However I need to.”
“Well. It sounds as if she’s chosen the right man for the task.”
“Indeed,” Mehen said. He withdrew the mangled silver chain. “Whose is this?”
Narhanna’s brow ridge shifted, puzzled. “I have no idea. Where did you find it?”
“In the tomb. Among the dead. But Parvida’s chain was intact and Shestandeliath had no other victims. So whose is this?”
Narhanna shrugged, but Mehen could see she was perturbed. “It might only be a piece of jewelry. A broken necklace. You have no evidence it’s anything else.”
“Maybe you’re missing someone still.”
“There are no others missing,” she said firmly. “As I said, Patriarch Geshthax is very busy, particularly with Parvida’s funeral to plan. He will let you know when he has the time and inclination to speak with you, Clanless.”
And with that, Mehen was escorted from the enclave, feeling as if he stood in two worlds again—the one in which he could investigate a killing and the one in which he knew the futility of trying to nose around in another clan’s business, especially when everyone knew his every sin. Shestandeliath would supervise their own and see to their own reputation. No one would be admitting anything until they were sure of what Parvida had contributed.
If Baruz and Parvida had been up to something that their elders didn’t want to speak of, might they have told their friends and clutchmates? He thought back to his own youth, to his years in the Lance Defenders, to Uadjit and Arjhani and the day he realized what he was planning to do. He’d told Arjhani he meant to accept him and exile, and no one else. But that was different, a conspiracy of two.
Of one, he thought, grimly. Arjhani was never brave enough to really run.
He walked through the city, feeling alone even in the crowds of his kin. More than he hoped Farideh and Havilar had found something useful out, he hoped they were back. He wanted his family beside him, and quiet.
But even in the quiet, tensions simmered. His daughters were grown, but they weren’t. Not enough. They broke their hearts on boys who weren’t grown enough either, who didn’t deserve them. Brin, so muddled he could hardly think straight when Havilar needed someone to keep her thinking straight. Dahl, blowing hot and cold and filling Farideh with doubts when she needed an anchor, a shelter. Lorcan …
If Farideh thought for a moment Mehen didn’t have an inkling about Lorcan, she was more foolish than he’d hoped.
At least the cambion stayed away, whatever had happened when they left Farideh behind in Suzail.
Trailed by more stares, more whispers, Mehen made his way back through the enclave’s dragon-skull doors, back into the guest quarters. Instead of his daughters, a dragonborn woman in fine black dragonscale armor sat on the low bench before a tray of tea and sweets. She stood as Mehen froze unmoving in the doorway.
Kepeshkmolik Uadjit did not look as if she’d aged a day. Sleek, gray-green scales lay over the muscles of a skilled swordswoman. Her plumes grew nearly to her waist, all gathered together at the nape of her neck, and the row of pearly moons piercing her brow gleamed beside her dark eyes.
“A fine match,” his father had said when he’d announced the contract. “A better bride than you deserve.”
Once they had been comrades-in-arms, once she might have fancied him—Mehen was never sure with Uadjit. Once there had been admiration and respect between them, at the least.
But pride had a way of washing all of that away, and what remained … Arjhani had more than taken care of that.
“Well met,” Mehen said. “Anala is—”
“It doesn’t matter. I came to talk to you,” she said brusquely. Far more brusquely than he’d remembered her speaking. She folded her arms. “And pardon the lack of ceremony, but what are you doing here? What are your intentions?”
Mehen folded his own arms. “Am I going to embarrass you again? Say what you mean.”
Uadjit didn’t flinch. “Are you?”
“No.”
“You know Jhani took your place?” she said, searching Mehen’s face as if his reaction would prove his promise a lie. “You know I married him? Had eggs with him?”
“How did that turn out?” Mehen said, as mildly as he could manage. Uadjit’s teeth parted, the anxious edges of frost building there, and Mehen had to admit it was an unkind blow. “I didn’t know. When he came to Arush Vayem. He never said a word about you or the eggs.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Uadjit said firmly. “And if you came to woo him away—”
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