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“Tariic knows Aruget was a changeling and a Dark Lantern of Breland. Someone like that would have fled back to his masters. That’s what Tariic will expect. Will he think of looking for another changeling under his nose? I’ve never met Aruget. I had nothing to do with him.”

The first time they left Khaar Mbar’ost, they were followed. “Don’t look,” Oraan had said as they walked down one of Rhukaan Draal’s busy, twisting streets. “Midian’s on our trail.”

Ashi had made no effort to evade him or even to pick him out of the crowd. The whole day’s expedition was only a show anyway. She wandered the streets, strolled through Rhukaan Draal’s infamous Bloody Market. The city had changed in the short time since Tariic had taken the throne of Darguun. Under Haruuc, all manner of races had walked shoulder to shoulder with dar in the streets. They were still there—elves, halflings, humans, dwarves, even an occasional warforged or eladrin—but they walked with caution while the goblins, hobgoblins, and bugbears carried themselves with a pride that bordered on arrogance.

“Tariic doesn’t need to use the Rod of Kings for it to have an influence,” she’d remarked softly. She glanced sideways at Oraan. “Don’t you feel it?”

“I feel it,” he said, almost without moving his lips. “But unless he gives me a direct order, I can resist it.”

“I could protect you from it.”

“No. Better that my reactions are genuine. If Tariic suspects anything, he’ll act. He has to believe he’s cut you off from allies and has you in his power. Head down to the river and look across it. Let Midian see you pining for escape.”

The next time Ashi saw Midian and Tariic together, they both seemed triumphantly jovial. The next time she and Oraan left Khaar Mbar’ost, they were trailed again, but not by Midian. The third time they went out into the city, they weren’t trailed at all.

A thin fog had risen from the river overnight and settled over the city. From her window, Ashi could see Rhukaan Draal only as a ghost of itself, gray and damp under a weak sun that struggled to break through the clouds. She would have enjoyed going out anyway, but when Oraan entered her chambers to begin his turn as her guard, his eyes flicked meaningfully to her boots.

She straightened. “I will go walking today.”

The distaste that wrinkled his face and curled his ears seemed startling genuine. “I obey the lhesh’s command,” he said sullenly.

They weren’t followed. Ashi’s trips out of Khaar Mbar’ost had apparently become innocuous in Tariic’s eyes. Still, Ashi waited until the red fortress had become an indistinct shape in the mist before she asked Oraan, “Where are we going?”

“To inspect potential mercenaries.”

She let the mysterious answer pass. Guided by signals from Oraan—who still checked the thin crowds behind them for signs of pursuit—they followed a winding route through the streets. Ashi would have been entirely lost except for the smell of the river growing slowly stronger as they walked. The buildings around her were unfamiliar. This wasn’t an area of the city she had visited before. She heard a sound she recognized, though—the clash of weapons, of warriors training.

It came from the other side of a high, featureless wooden palisade that Oraan followed. Whatever the structure was, they seemed to be on the back side of it. Then a narrow door emerged from the fog and with it the figure of a hobgoblin warrior. A warrior she recognized, though she had never met him in person.

Keraal, warlord of the rebellious Gan’duur clan until Dagii had defeated him and who came to serve the young lord of Mur Talaan, glanced at her without surprise, then moved out of her way. The chain that he had adopted as his personal weapon and that he carried wrapped around his torso clanked softly, but he said nothing.

“Enter,” said a familiar voice from behind her. Ashi looked over her shoulder to find Aruget wearing Oraan’s armor. The changeling had changed his face as they walked. He flicked his ears at her. “We’re expected.”

The door opened onto a short hall with several