The doom of Kings

CHAPTER THREE

The passages of Sentinel Tower were generally bustling at any hour, but as Ashi stalked from the living quarters of the great tower into the more public areas, it seemed to her that even more people than usual were rushing about. Most were talking about the Darguuls, about Tariic and the evening’s feast, about Baerer and his performance of the sword dance. Ashi did her best to avoid the thickest knots of gossip-a goal made easier once people got a look at the fury on her face and quickly moved out of her way. She’d never been good at concealing her emotions, and while Vounn had managed to teach her some control, the last thing Ashi felt like doing was following Vounn’s lessons.

No, she realized as she turned a corner and stopped sharply, following Vounn’s lessons was the second to last thing she felt like doing.

Around the corner, as startled and frozen as she, was Baerer. Her one-time instructor was dressed in fine clothes, clearly ready for dinner. His face still glowed with the joy of his dance, though that glow vanished even as she watched, replaced by a kind of haunted shame. “Ashi-”

“Lord Baerer,” she said formally, some vestige of eight months of Vounn’s training fighting to the surface. By ancient tradition, any bearer of a dragonmark could claim the title of lord or lady, no matter what their actual station. Even after eight months, Ashi still found the tradition ridiculous and fortunately the members of the houses seldom used the titles among themselves in casual conversation or with friends. There were times, however, when even she had to admit they were useful. Baerer winced at the harshness in her voice.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Vounn took me aside just before the reception and said there’d been a change in plans. She offered me the chance to dance for the Darguuls. Who could say no to that?”

“Not you, I see. I thought you were my friend, not just my teacher, Baerer.” Hot anger scorched away formality. “You know how hard I worked. Did you think I would just give up?”

“Vounn didn’t tell me anything about why you weren’t dancing.”

Ashi scowled. “Because she didn’t think I was good enough. She thought my dance was too raw.”

“Raw?” Baerer looked her in the eyes for the first time. “I would have said that was the most attractive thing about your dancing.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry I took your place, Ashi. I think you would have been good. Vounn should have let you dance.”

“Tell her that,” said Ashi. “You’re probably going to be sitting beside her at dinner.”

Confusion crossed Baerer’s face, but she’d had enough of talking and she wasn’t in the mood to explain herself. She pushed past him and strode on down the passage.

“Ashi, wait-” He caught her arm.

She turned on reflex, twisting her arm around his and swinging him around. The dancing master kept his balance and turned with her, but still ended up thrust face-first against the nearest wall.

“Leave me alone, Baerer,” she said in his ear, then let him loose.

He looked back at her with alarm and a little fright on his face. “I just wanted to warn you,” he said. He twitched his head down the hall. “If you’re going that way and through the Venture Court, you’re going to run into the Darguuls. Tariic’s honor guard is camped out in the court. The atmosphere is… uneasy.”

Ashi smiled, baring her teeth. “Good.” She turned again and continued on her way.

Sentinel Tower had been built upon and expanded many times during its centuries of existence. In many ways, it had become more of a sprawling complex than a tower. Its inner reaches were forbidden to all but the members of House Deneith while the outer areas were filled with workshops and supply yards, all as busy as any market. A middle ring was where business with major clients took place and where important guests like Tariic were lodged. The entire tower was riddled with ancient passages that no longer went anywhere, abandoned chambers waiting for a new use, and old courtyards that had once been open to the sky but were now closed in by more recent construction.

The Venture Court was one such courtyard. It hadn’t yet been covered over entirely, but the rooms above it had been built progressively out into open space, leaving only a small gap to the open air. Ashi had always thought the court resembled nothing so much as one of the long houses built by the orc tribes of the Shadow Marches, complete with a smoke hole in the roof.

That night, the gap to the sky really was a smoke hole. Ashi paused at the edge of the court and stared in spite of her anger.

Baerer hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d described the Darguuls as “camped out” in the court. A big fire built in a great copper bowl cast a flickering light that reflected in streaks and sparks from the weapons and armor of Tariic’s musicians, banner-bearers, and guards. While some of the goblins dozed near the fire, others stood in a watchful perimeter as if they expected an attack at any time-defensive measures more suited to soldiers on the move than guests at Sentinel Tower. And the goblin races, she knew, didn’t need the fire. They could see perfectly well in the dark. The fire was there so that others could see them and be intimidated into keeping their distance. It set the warrior in Ashi on edge.

Apparently she wasn’t the only one to react that way. At every entrance to the court and from the windows overlooking it, House guards stood in silent response to the Darguuls’ presence. One of them stepped into her path to block her from entering the court, then saw the mark on her face and stepped back again.

“Lady Ashi,” he said with a nod. “You might want to go around Venture Court tonight. It may not be safe to cross.”

One irritation after another. Going around the court would just slow her. The nearest gate out of Sentinel Tower was just beyond the court. Going around would all but force her to another gate. “Thank you,” she said, “I’ll be fine.”

She saw the guard’s throat move as he swallowed. “Lady Seneschal Vounn won’t be-” His words faded as he watched her expression darken at Vounn’s name, and he swallowed again. “May we at least escort you across the court, lady?”

Ashi fought the temptation to punch him in his whining mouth. “No,” she said and walked out into the courtyard.

She could feel every gaze inside and around the court, human and goblin, turn to follow her. It only fuelled her anger. Was she some delicate flower in need of protection? Clenching her teeth, she marched straight across the court, heading directly for the passage that would take her to the gate and out of Sentinel Tower.

Straight across the court was also straight through the massed Darguuls. One of them, a hobgoblin, came to meet her as she approached. “I am Aruget,” he said. Unlike Tariic, he had a heavy Goblin accent that drew out the middle of his words and bit off the end. “I serve Tariic, who serves Lhesh Haruuc. Go around our lines.”

Ashi stopped and glared at him. “I am Ashi d’Deneith. I am angry. Get out of my way.”

Aruget’s eyes were deep brown flecked with orange, and he had the ritual scars across his forehead that Ashi had learned were a sign of the Rhukaan Taash clan. He stared at her and she stared back, neither of them blinking. For a very long moment, the only sound and movement in Venture Court came from the jumping, snapping flames in the big fire bowl.

The hobgoblin was the first to look away, his gaze lifting and going over Ashi’s head. “You may pass,” he growled softly and moved out of her way.

“Ta muut,” Ashi said as she passed. It was a Goblin phrase she had learned from Ekhaas. Roughly translated, it meant “you have honor,” but Ekhaas had explained that it was the proper way to say thank you without implying weakness or debt. She didn’t look back to see Aruget’s reaction to being spoken to in his own language. She kept her eyes on the Darguuls ahead, walking without hesitation. Hobgoblins, bugbears, and goblins stepped aside to let her by. As she passed one knot of goblins, she heard a thin murmuring break out in her wake. She looked over her shoulder, her hand hovering near her sword briefly before falling away. One of the goblins was trying to suppress laughter-not at her, but to judge from the nervous glances of those with him, at Aruget. The hobgoblin’s face darkened, and he bore down on the laughing goblin like a storm, snarling rapid words that made the goblin stop snickering very quickly.

It felt good to see someone else on the receiving end of trouble for a change, Ashi decided. It felt good to have her way in an argument, too. A little of her anger lifted from her, and her step was lighter as she passed into the shadows of the passage on the other side of the court.

No one in the outer zone of Sentinel Tower stopped her or even bothered to give her a second glance. The gate she had chosen was a grubby thing, used mostly for the movement of supplies and mercenary troops into and out of the tower. The higher ranking members of House Deneith almost never came this way. She paused for a moment before approaching the gate and covered up her dragonmark as best she could. Gloves hid the backs of her hands, and a carefully folded and tied scarf masked her forehead and the lower part of her face. Within Sentinel Tower, her Siberys Mark gained her respect. Beyond, it just as often aroused suspicion and superstition. It also identified her. Even covered, she felt a knot in her belly as she walked under the stone arch, half-expecting that word from Vounn might have reached the guards ahead of her and that at any moment they would call out for her to stop.

They didn’t. She left Sentinel Tower and walked out into the city of Karrlakton.

There was little to reveal at first that she had left the tower, aside from open sky and crooked streets instead of straight passages. The area outside the gate was all but an extension of the area inside, bustling with evening trade. There was a sense of greater freedom out of the tower, though, a more relaxed tone in the voices of traders and carters who dealt with the great house but didn’t serve it. The farther she went from the tower and the more evening slid into night, the lighter the traffic in the streets became. The tension between Ashi’s shoulders eased a bit more.

It was impossible to escape Deneith entirely, however. The House didn’t rule in Karrlakton, but it certainly dominated every aspect of the city. As vast as Sentinel Tower was, Deneith’s activities spilled out of it. Training grounds and barracks, workshops and warehouses, even ordinary houses-every third building that Ashi passed bore the crest of Deneith. The roots of Deneith went even deeper, Ashi knew. Warlords who carried the Mark of Sentinel had ruled the area of what would become Karrlakton before the founding of the ancient kingdom of Karrnath, even before the creation of House Deneith proper. The city had grown under the gaze of the House. Parts of it were as old as parts of Sentinel Tower. For many centuries, Deneith money had built roads, walls, and shrines.

Ashi turned toward one of the oldest sections of the city. The sense of history appealed to her. It was soothing to be among things that had stood for centuries, unchanged and unaffected by the small frustrations of everyday life. When she was gone-when Vounn was gone-they would still be there. As old as Sentinel Tower was, she couldn’t feel the same thing there. Everything was too busy, too imprinted with the ordinary. The oldest areas of the tower were forbidden to all but the most senior members of the House, as if the stones held some dreadful secret. The only peace she had found was in the archives, where books replaced stone, and if they weren’t quite as permanent and unchanging, they had even more fascinating stories to tell as her ability to read grew.

She had found her grandfather in the archives. All she’d known of him before she met Singe was that his name had been Kagan and that the hunters of the Bonetree had found him in the Shadow Marches, badly injured and clutching his fine sword. Too deeply wounded ever to fight again, he had been brought into the clan and had fathered many children for the Bonetree over several years-until he’d gone mad and murdered all of them save one, who had become Ashi’s father, before taking his own life.

In the archives of Sentinel Tower, she’d discovered a different man, a hero of the Sentinel Marshals. He had been awarded an honor blade, the same bright sword that rode her hip, for bringing to justice a pair of notorious murderers. The archive’s record ended with his final assignment: the pursuit of one of the pair after her escape. To the best knowledge of House Deneith, neither he nor his quarry had ever been seen again.

After reading the record of Kagan, Ashi had promised herself that she would become a Sentinel Marshal. She’d mentioned the idea to Vounn. The lady seneschal had answered her with a silence that spoke louder than words. Ashi carried the Siberys Mark of Sentinel. She was too valuable to be allowed to roam far from the reach of the House.

She clenched her teeth as she reached Karrlakton’s old quarter. Anger rose in her again, replacing the calm she should have felt in the shadow of the ancient buildings. She was more than her dragonmark, no matter what people might think, whether they were people like Vounn who expected her to use the mark for the profit of Deneith, or people like the anonymous House guard who saw her only as a scion of the house, or people in the street who reacted to a Siberys Mark with superstitious unease, or people like Aruget and the other Darguuls who-

Ashi paused in midstride, breaking her pace as she broke her silent rant. How had Aruget reacted to her? The Darguuls had to know what dragonmarks were-they were dealing with House Deneith-and they must have known that the larger the mark, the more powerful it was. Aruget had recognized her as a lady of Deneith, but it had been her hard stare that had forced him to back down, not the sight of her mark. Maybe her mark didn’t matter to them. No dragonmarks manifested among the goblin races, a mystery that had always puzzled sages who cared about such things. Maybe to goblin eyes, the mark on her face was no more unusual than the piercings in her lip or the scars across Aruget’s forehead.

“Rond betch!” Ashi muttered, for the first time keenly disappointed that she was missing the opportunity to meet Tariic. If he’d reacted as Aruget had, she would have enjoyed watching Vounn’s dismay. Ashi smiled to herself.

If she hadn’t been standing still and her mind hadn’t been, for the moment, clear, she might have missed the quiet, muffled sound of breaking glass. And if she hadn’t immediately and instinctively turned to look for the source of the sound, she would have missed seeing the figure that slipped through a narrow window high on one of the ancient buildings nearby.

A thief. There could be no other explanation for someone climbing up and breaking a window to gain access to a building. Ashi glanced around her. Only a few of the ancient structures that lined the lanes of this area were residences, and all of the windows in them were dark. The only light came from the moons that peered down into the narrow old streets. The folk of the neighborhood were in their beds, dreaming of another day’s work to come. There was no sign of the night watch. Ashi and the thief were the only ones abroad.

Ashi knew the building the thief had entered. She’d visited it during a rare and closely supervised excursion into the city. It was a shrine of sorts, erected by some long ago lord of Deneith in remembrance of a great campaign in the distant south long before even the beginning of the Last War. The importance of battle and lord were almost forgotten, but the memorial remained, seldom visited but maintained by the House, like dozens of others in Karrlakton, out of a sense of duty. A Deneith memorial, a Deneith responsibility.

With no one else, no night watch, around, that made it her responsibility. Ashi felt her blood stir at the idea. A fight. A real fight, not sparring in the training ground, not rehearsed steps on the dance floor, but a real, dangerous fight-that’s what she had been missing for the last eight months. She smiled again, this time out of pure, fierce joy, and ran for the memorial.

Ashi had been one of the most accomplished stalkers and trackers among the Bonetree. Whatever new skills and knowledge Vounn tried to force on her, those old skills remained. Moving like a ghost, she raced from shadow to shadow, staying out of the moonlight in case her prey happened to glance out of one of the memorial’s windows-or in case the thief wasn’t alone.

The moons’ light fell full on the doors of the memorial, revealing heavy locks. There would be no entry that way, but Ashi had anticipated it. Her back against the stone wall, she slid around the building until she stood beneath the window through which the thief had entered. It was on the more shadowed side of the building, but up close, she could see the faint line of the rope that the thief had used to climb. Ashi adjusted and tightened the scarf around her head, took hold of the rope, and scaled the building as silently as she could. Just below the broken window, she stopped and listened. There was no sound from inside. She shimmied a little farther up the rope. The window had been made of small panes of glass held in place with lead strips. The thief had broken some of the panes and ripped back the leading to make a hole big enough to pass through. The hole was easily big enough for Ashi as well-the thief was at least her size. That was big, Ashi thought, for someone doing this kind of thing regularly. She shifted from the rope to the window sill and ducked in through the hole.

The window was well above the nearest level surface. She had to twist around and lower herself down, then drop the last couple of feet. She tried to do it as silently as possible, but she still landed with a soft thump. She froze in a crouch, not even breathing, and listened again. Everything was quiet. Too quiet. Ashi scowled. Her drop had alerted the thief. He was listening now, too. She waited.

Her patience was rewarded. Somewhere in the memorial, not too close, leather creaked as thief moved again. Ashi let out her breath. She hadn’t been discovered. She rose from her crouch, remembering everything she could of the memorial layout from her previous visit.

The interior of the memorial was open, with two galleries rising above the ground floor. She stood on the second gallery. A shrine dedicated to Dol Arrah and Dol Dorn, the martial gods of honor and strength, stood in the very center of the ground floor, the focal point of the memorial. Spread out around the ground floor and lining the walls of both galleries, however, were the real reason the memorial’s few visitors might come: cabinet upon glass-fronted display cabinet of trophies taken during the campaign and of relics commemorating the fallen. Arching over the whole was a vaulted ceiling painted with an age-darkened image of what might have been the greatest battle of the campaign but to Ashi had looked like any other chaotic battlefield.

By night, however, the painted ceiling was completely lost in shadow, along with most of the cabinets. The only light in the memorial came from four candles lit with magical cold fire on the shrine far below, supplemented by dim shafts of silver moonlight penetrating the windows on two walls of the building. Ashi had hunted by night before, however. It was enough light for her. She scanned the gallery for any signs of movement, but there were none. The creak of leather had come from below. Ashi walked to the edge of the gallery and peered down.