The Tyranny of Ghosts_ Legacy of Dhakaan - Don Bassingthwaite [102]
Ekhaas met Chetiin’s gaze and knew that he’d felt the same thing she had. Why didn’t Geth? Why hadn’t Tenquis? Maybe because they weren’t dar. Maybe because they didn’t live with muut as the Dhakaani had. She raised the shaari’mal, the ancient symbol of Dhakaan that Taruuzh had chosen to represent the collective muut of the empire’s nobles, and opened herself up to it. Chetiin did the same.
The shadows shrouding Midian flickered—and vanished. The gnome stiffened, the knife in his hand stopping just above Tooth’s throat. For a heartbeat there was silence.
Then Midian started screaming.
Geth and Tenquis stared between him, her, and Chetiin. “What just happened?” Geth demanded.
Ekhaas lowered her fragment of Muut. The shaari’mal was cold again, but she could feel its power lurking under the rune-carved surface of the byeshk. Her heart was racing in her chest.
“We’ve found our shield,” she said, “and our weapon against Tariic.” She looked up at Geth. “It’s time to go back to Rhukaan Draal.”
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
19 Vult
Ashi looked at herself in the polished surface of a shield. For the first time since Senen’s exile, she was wearing her formal outfit of trim trousers and cropped jacket. Her boots were freshly polished, her hair was pulled back, and her eyes were once again highlighted with Vounn’s cosmetics. The clothes and cosmetics were her tools. Her weapons.
And she needed all the weapons she had. She forced a smile onto her face. Her reflection smiled back at her.
“Are you ready?” asked Oraan quietly.
She answered without looking over her shoulder at him—although it was tempting, because he’d dressed formally as well, in light armor with a red sash around his waist. “I’m ready.”
“Did you eat well today?”
Her smile became less forced. “Very well.”
“Good.”
They turned into the antechamber outside Tariic’s throne room—and were engulfed in a crowd of junior warriors, minor functionaries, and merchants of little consequence. Oraan stepped around her and walked ahead, clearing a path with his shoulders and elbows. Ashi followed close behind, hand on her sword, the subject of a few disdainful glances but of many more jealous glares. Anyone in the antechamber was there because they hadn’t been invited into the throne room.
And with the entire throne room turned into a feast hall, if those in the antechamber hadn’t been invited, they really were unimportant.
Near the top of the stairs, a line of guards held back the uninvited. Razu, the mistress of rituals, waved Ashi to the top of the steps. She gave Oraan a disparaging look, but Ashi’s invitation to the feast had specified that she be accompanied by one of her guards. The old hobgoblin stepped into the doorway of the throne room, rapped her staff of office on the floor, and announced, “Special Envoy of House Deneith, Ashi d’Deneith, shares the celebration of Darguun’s birth!”
Ashi strode up the last few stairs and down into the seething chaos of the feast.
The mood here was different than it had been at the ill-fated feast in the hall of honor, not least because it was simply larger. That feast had been in honor of the arrival of Riila and Taak of the Kech Shaarat. This, as Razu announced with every new arrival to the hall, celebrated Darguun’s birth. Or at least what Tariic claimed to be Darguun’s birth. Vounn had taught her that Haruuc had declared Darguun’s independence from Cyre after a summer campaign in 969 YK.
No one seemed to mind the contradiction. True or not, it was a reason for Tariic to hold a feast big enough to reward the warlords who’d been most supportive of him, to show the dragonmarked houses that he still had the wealth to pay them, and to reassure the ambassadors of the Five Nations that he had interests beyond preparing his nation for conflict with the Valenar.
A feast big enough, fortunately, to provide Ashi and Oraan the opportunity they needed to find proof of tariic’s true plans to attack Breland.
Munta had started them along the path to the truth. The