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The gnome’s face twisted. “Give those to me, Tenquis.”

“Go and get them.” He flung the disks away—to Geth and Chetiin. For an instant, all Ekhaas felt was a sense of relief, even if she already knew in the back of her mind that Tenquis’s defiance had doomed Tooth.

Then Chetiin’s hand closed on the flying shaari’mal.

—and the tickle at the edge of Midian’s mind tore wide open. Hard-edged clarity rose up from inside him and shattered into a hundred jagged, conflicting emotions.

Tariic was his master.

Tariic had stood over him with the Rod of Kings and commanded him to rip open his own belly.

He’d do anything to please Tariic.

Tariic wanted him dead.

He served his lhesh and Darguun.

His soul belonged to Zilargo. He’d killed for his country. He’d killed one king for Zilargo and tried to kill another.

Hurled stones found him as he tried to flee. An agent of the Trust, brought down by a mob. When he returned to consciousness, it was already too late for him. Tariic raised the rod. “Sit still and be quiet.” He had no choice. The power that had once belonged to the emperors of Dhakaan gripped like a wolf’s jaws. He sat still and was quiet.

Later, in the privacy of his chambers with only Pradoor to watch and cackle and Ashi d’Deneith to stare in horror, Tariic tore Midian’s mind to pieces—and put it back together again in a way that pleased him.

Midian screamed until his new master commanded him to stop.

He screamed again and fell back away from Tooth as the work of the Rod of Kings unraveled. Every memory of that tortured night came rushing back over him. Irresistible. Undeniable.

The warmth and power that Ekhaas felt in her shaari’mal exploded the moment that Chetiin took hold of his. The sense of purpose became an unwavering certainty—not of the shaari’mal telling her what to do, but of it telling her to do what she knew she had to.

Telling her to follow her muut.

Understanding came between one blink and the next.

Geth had said that the Sword of Heroes showed him memories of those who’d wielded it before, guiding him along their path. The quality of heroes was wrath. Aram. The Rod of Kings, Ekhaas knew, taught its holder to rule with the uncompromising power of the emperors of Dhakaan. The quality of kings was strength. Guulen.

Heroes inspired. Kings commanded. And nobles … served. They did their duty. Their muut.

But muut had two sides, didn’t it? Tuura Dhakaan had said she had muut to the Kech Volaar, that she led them and protected them “as it had been since the Age of Dhakaan.” And what had Senen Dhakaan once said of the Shield of Nobles when she’d told the tale of the three artifacts? That the ancient daashor Taruuzh had given it into the care of the lords and ladies of Dhakaan, that it represented both the fealty that the nobles owed to the emperor and the protection that was their responsibility to the people.

Muut wasn’t something that could rest in the hands of just one person.

There’d never been an actual Shield of Nobles in the way there was a Sword of Heroes and a Rod of Kings, Ekhaas realized abruptly. There had never been fragments for them to find. The shield, the protection that the nobles owed to the people of Dhakaan, had shattered because the nobles had failed in their duty. But muut couldn’t truly be destroyed—though it could be forgotten, just as stories could be confused and misinterpreted.

Like stories of what Taruuzh had created for the nobles of Dhakaan and what they had lost to Tasaam Draet. The Dhakaani had known at least some of the truth. Giis Puulta had carved three shaari’mal into his Reward Stela. Maybe later emperors had deliberately let memories of the Shield of Nobles, of Muut, fade, just as they let Suud Anshaar lie abandoned. Maybe as the empire slid toward the Desperate Times, the emperors didn’t like the idea of a shield standing between their power and the people.

A shield between their power and the people.

The disk in her hands shifted at that thought, and a feeling of clarity flooded through her. She