Alara Unbroken - Doug Beyer [81]
“It wasn’t me, I swear,” said Hazid. “I—I had nothing against Giltspire. I’m a merchant. Why would I want to do something like that? It wasn’t me. It wasn’t my idea.”
The monk nodded at Elspeth.
“I believe you, Hazid,” said Elspeth. “I do. It doesn’t make any sense, does it? You’re a rich, powerful merchant. You’ve always skirted the law before. Why do something so blatantly destructive? It flies in the face of reason.”
“Yes! Thank you. I couldn’t be responsible. It flies in the face of reason! It must have been a fluke. Wrong place at the wrong time, that kind of thing. Just a big misunderstanding.”
Elspeth put her hand on the arm of the rhox monk. “Hollin, thank you for your guidance today. I’d like you to step out now.”
The rhox was taken aback. Astonishment was never easy to read in a rhox’s expression, but Elspeth could see traces of it in the monk’s stony face.
“It’s all right, Hollin,” she said. “I’ll be fine.”
“It’s not that. Elspeth, child, you can’t ask him any questions without a Sighted here,” the monk said. “You could … You could endanger the conviction!”
Hazid looked back and forth between the two of them. His lips formed the trace of a smirk.
Elspeth was firm. “Thank you. But I’ll apprise you of any questions I ask Mr. Hazid at a later time. Please go.”
The rhox registered one last complaint into Elspeth’s gaze, but disengaged. He shot a look at Hazid, who knew enough to look away, and walked out, shutting the door behind him.
“Wanted some one-on-one time, did you?” said Hazid, amused.
“Yes I did,” said Elspeth.
Hazid grinned and leaned toward her. “That’s good. I work best this way. Head to head. Trader to trader.”
“Sit back, Mr. Hazid. I’m going to ask you some strange-sounding questions. I require your honesty here. Your answers could be of grave importance not just to your own situation, but to all of Bant.”
Hazid’s grin melted. “Why? What do you mean?”
“Have you recently been in contact with anyone … strange? Anyone who you thought might be from a foreign land?”
Hazid scoffed. “No lands are foreign to me. I’ve been all over Bant.”
Elspeth blinked. “You haven’t heard, have you?”
“Heard what? They tell me nothing in that stupid cell.”
“Never mind. You’re well-traveled, as you say, so you’re in a position to know. Who have you talked to?. The plan with the demolition spell. Did someone put you up to that?”
“I—” Hazid stopped himself. His eyes moved all around the room, resting briefly on everything but Elspeth.
“Who was it?”
“I can’t tell you,” said Hazid. “It sounds crazy.”
“Try me. Many others wouldn’t understand, which is why I dismissed Hollin. But I’ll believe you.”
“I can’t. He … He promised I would die if I told anyone.”
“I can protect you.”
Hazid chuckled. It wasn’t a happy sound. “Not from him.”
“Hazid,” said Elspeth. “Do you know anything about the tremors we’ve felt lately? And the storms?”
“I know nothing.” His eyes were round. “But I suspect.”
“What do you suspect?”
“I know it’s him. He’s coming for me. He promised me such power—but he tricked me and made me ruin the castle. There’s only doom for me now. He said he would come for me, to take me away from the consequences. Now I know he won’t save me. He’s used me.”
“Who?”
“The dragon.”
BANT
Mubin studied the passages in the prayer book. Manually copied in a neat hand, the ink seemed to march across and down the page. The language of prophecy wasn’t fluid and poetic, but rather quite particular, creating the impression that the author had stared directly at the future, and struggled to reproduce it with faithful precision. Surprisingly, for being called the Prayer of Asha, the prophecy mentioned Asha almost as an afterthought, attributing to her the role of savior after war had already broken out.
Most of all, the prayer urged unity. Mubin would normally have found the ideal pleasant; Bant’s road of history had been paved with regular battles of territory and trade. But the unity was couched in language of war. It was the unity of a military force assembled to strike down a vague