The Queen of Death

9

As Kandler reached the gangplank, Esprë burst from the inn, calling his name. He glanced below, looking for the killer. Seeing no trace of the assassin, he stumbled down to the deck and took his stepdaughter in his good arm.

“You’re hurt!” Esprë said, staring at his injured arm.

Kandler nodded as Sallah came up behind Esprë, relief and concern warring on her face. She took the justicar’s wounded limb and held it up to inspect it. As she did, Burch emerged from the inn with Duro right behind him. Krangel poked his aged nose out of the door after them, and the other dwarves in the inn peered through the open windows, each of them jostling for the best positions near the sills.

“That all of them?” Burch asked, nodding at the two cooling bodies lying on the airship’s deck. He cocked his crossbow as he spoke.

“One of them dove into the gap,” Kandler said, pointing to where he’d last seen the suicidal killer.

Kandler could see the shifter was steaming from having been caught unaware by these assassins. He stalked the dock as if he might decide to stomp down through the boards to relieve his temper.

“I can help with that,” Sallah said, taking Kandler’s arm more tenderly in her hands, “but we’ll have to remove the knife first.”

Kandler nodded and gritted his teeth, ready for the worst. He focused on the woman’s lidded eyes as she gripped the handle of the blade and prepared to pull it free. As he did, he heard Krangel shouting orders to the other dwarves in the inn, and they leaped into action, their feet now padding along the dock.

Sallah yanked the dagger free in one swift move. Kandler hissed through his teeth, and Esprë reached up to hold his free hand to comfort him. As the blood poured from the wound, Sallah wrapped her hands around the injured area, forming a ring with her palms and fingers.

While Kandler’s blood seeped through her fingers, Sallah closed her eyes and said a solemn prayer to the Silver Flame. As she spoke, her hands began to glow with a silvery light. The glow spread out from her hands and enveloped Kandler’s arm, which seared with heat.

Just before the warmth became painful, Sallah released Kandler’s limb. He held the arm out and flexed his fingers. Although his blood still covered it, he felt not a twinge of pain.

Kandler reached with his healed arm around Sallah’s waist and pulled her to him for a gentle kiss. “Thanks,” he whispered.

Sallah started to say something, but before she could complete even a syllable, Burch called out, “Ha!” Then he loosed his crossbow straight into the deck.

The bolt stuck there, half buried in the wood. From below, a horrible scream sounded and then faded away.

“There’s your suicide,” Burch said. “With just a bit of help.”

Kandler glanced up at the roof that overhung the front of the inn. Whoever Burch had hit with his first bolt no longer stood there. The assassin had probably fled after the shifter had wounded him.

For a moment, Kandler considered hunting the would-be killer down, then he thought better of it. If this was to be a war between his friends and those who would take or kill Esprë, then it was time to begin sending their foes a message. For that, they’d need a courier, and a wounded witness to how they’d massacred these assassins sounded like a fine start.

Kandler heard Esprë gasp. He turned as she dashed past him toward the airship. There stood Xalt at the end of the gangplank, the tip of an arrow jutting out through his shoulder.

“Monja?” the warforged said, his voice unsteady. “What happened to Monja?”

Monja had thought about pushing Te’oma over the edge of the rocky shelf. Hurt as she was, the changeling likely would never have awakened before she slammed into whatever awaited in the depths of the Goradra Gap.

Monja didn’t care for the changeling at all. Anyone who would kidnap children—even lethally dangerous children like Esprë—came low on her list of people she wished to help. To now have to pray on Te’oma’s behalf galled her.

True, the changeling had risked her life to save the halfling from certain death—and succeeded. Monja owed Te’oma for that, but the shaman could save Esprë, Burch, and the others a great deal of grief, she thought, by removing the changeling from their lives.

Despite Te’oma’s insistence that she bore no love for the Lich Queen, Monja suspected that the changeling would turn on the others in an instant if it served her needs. However, even if Te’oma was an amoral beast who could not be trusted, Monja knew the same wasn’t true of herself.

She placed her hands on the changeling’s head and prayed. She felt the crack in Te’oma’s skull knit closed, and warmth returned to the changeling’s paler-than-parchment skin.

When Te’oma’s eyes fluttered open, Monja smiled down at her. “Welcome back,” she said, “and thanks.”

“Thank you,” Te’oma said as she sat up and took in their surroundings. She craned her neck all the way back and stared up at the strip of blue sky above. It seemed forever away.

“For saving my life, I mean,” said Monja. “My thanks. Now, though, I think we are even.”

A set of pale eyebrows appeared on Te’oma’s face, and she arched one at the halfling. “I suppose so,” she said, her mouth twisted in a wry grin, “although you only had the chance to save my life because I nearly died saving yours.”

“The spirits balance the scales in strange ways,” Monja said with a shrug. She grasped the changeling’s shoulder. “Can you still contact Esprë?”

Te’oma nodded. “Doesn’t that mean I’ll be saving your life again?”

Monja smirked. “Don’t fool yourself. You’re saving your own skin this time. I’m just along for the ride.”

“They’re alive!” Esprë said.

Kandler let out a sigh of relief. The girl had been walking around on knives, hoping for some kind of contact from Te’oma. She’d paced the length of the ship countless times, nearly in tears. Only when she’d frozen in her tracks had Kandler held out any hope.

The justicar’s cynical side told him that Monja was dead and that Te’oma had probably run off at the first sign of the assassins—assuming she hadn’t brought them here in the first place. If that had been the case, maybe she’d just hovered overhead until she saw the killers get slaughtered and then flown away.

Not a small part of him wished the changeling gone forever. True, she’d helped them track down Esprë and even to defeat the dragon, but she’d also stolen the girl from his home in the first place and just about destroyed Mardakine—a village he’d helped found—in the process. He didn’t think he could ever forgive her for that, much less forget.

“Both of them?” Burch asked, rushing up the gangplank. After dispatching the hidden assassin, he’d made a point of sweeping the area for any others who might be hiding, and he’d pressed Krangel and his fellow dwarves into that service.

The white-haired host of the inn had apologized a dozen times over for the failure of his lookouts. When word had come back that those dwarves were missing from their posts, though, no one had any doubt what had happened to them. A few of the dwarves had wailed at the loss, and more than that number had shot murderous looks at their guests, blaming them no doubt for their friends’ misfortune.

Esprë nodded at the shifter. “They’re on a shelf way down the wall.”

“Is it stable?” Kandler asked. “Can they hold on for a while? ”

Esprë’s eyes unfocused for a moment, then she nodded again. “They’re well, although they want us to come for them as soon as we can.

Kandler wrapped an arm around his stepdaughter and gave her a hug. “Just as soon as we’re ready,” he said. He shouted for Krangel.

The dwarf poked his head out of the inn’s front door and scowled at Kandler. “What?”

“How fast can you get us loaded up?”

The dwarf’s face split in a tight grin.