The Doom of Kings_ Legacy of Dhakaan - Don Bassingthwaite [20]
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