The Doom of Kings_ Legacy of Dhakaan - Don Bassingthwaite [44]
Ashi’s face was split between a fierce anger and a frightened obedience. “Vounn, I want to stay. My friends—”
“Ashi,” Vounn said quietly, “it’s not too late to send you back to Karrlakton—and at this moment I am willing to suffer Haruuc’s displeasure by doing so. Come with me or you’ll be waiting for the next northbound coach.”
The color drained from Ashi’s face. Geth couldn’t have said whether it was because of anger or out of fear at being left behind. With a last longing glance at him and Ekhaas, Ashi went stalking off after Vounn.
“Maabet!” said Tariic under his breath. “That one’s going to be trouble.”
“A dragon like that deserves her own lair,” Chetiin told Geth. “You can sleep in the cart with the Silent Clans during the journey to Sterngate if you prefer.”
Geth blinked. “I haven’t said I’m going.”
“Aren’t you?”
Geth looked at Tariic and Ekhaas, both of them with their eyes now turned to him. He grimaced. “Grandfather Rat,” he said, “this hero thing is ridiculous.” He pointed after Ashi and Vounn. “I’m doing this for Ashi,” he said.
Ekhaas smiled.
Tariic nodded in satisfaction. “I don’t ask why,” he said. “That you’re doing it is enough for me. Go to sleep—we join the southbound coach in the morning.”
Chetiin nudged him toward the cart into which the other shaarat’khesh and taarka’khesh had disappeared. “Settle in,” he said. “Mind the tigers.”
Before they left the next morning, Geth sent a message by House Orien courier from the lightning rail station, directed to Singe and Dandra in Fairhaven and letting them know that he wouldn’t be meeting them as planned but was instead going to Darguun with Ekhaas and Ashi. Ekhaas couldn’t tell him how long Haruuc’s mysterious task might take—not because she wasn’t permitted to tell him but simply because she didn’t know. Geth had written, Will send word—watch for news of riots in Rhukaan Draal.
“That will put a twist in Singe’s britches,” he’d told the duur’kala.
The journey from Sigilstar to Sterngate took only two days, including stops at cities and towns along the way for the transfer of passengers and cargo—two days to whisk them across the remainder of Thrane and along nearly a third of the length of the kingdom of Breland before cutting directly across the country to its southern border. The miracle of the lightning rail never ceased to amaze Geth. Two days to cross half the width of the continent. It barely seemed like enough time for him to catch up with Ekhaas and Ashi, to hear about Ekhaas’s rise within the Kech Volaar and Ashi’s dire experiences under Vounn’s mentoring. For him to tell them about his first encounter with Chetiin and the other shaarat’khesh.
“They came after me down a dark street and backed me up against a wall,” he told the two women as the countryside sped past outside the windows of the cart. “Chetiin pulled out his dagger, and I thought I was in for a hard fight—until he stepped up and laid the dagger on the ground. He looked at me like I was a recruit on muster, then said in Goblin, ‘Ekhaas of the Word Bearers tells me that, with that sword in your hand, you can understand our speech. By her name, will you listen to what I have come to tell you?’”
He managed a passable imitation of Chetiin’s scarred voice that brought a faint smile from Ekhaas.
Ashi sat forward. “What happened?”
“You could have knocked me down with a Sharn sweet roll. But Chetiin didn’t go for his dagger again, and he had mentioned your name, so I said I’d listen. Have you noticed he always gets right to the point? He said Lhesh Haruuc needed the bearer of Wrath and asked me to come to Sigilstar with him and his people to meet Ekhaas and Tariic.”
“And you just went with him?”
Geth glowered at her. “I’m not stupid. He knew details from our time in the Shadow Marches that only Ekhaas could know, and he had a scroll with a message from Haruuc. He got my interest.” The shifter