Word of Traitors_ Legacy of Dhakaan - Don Bassingthwaite [118]
Ashi kept her face carefully neutral, even though her heart was now jumping like a child at play. “When did he give you the message?” she asked.
“This morning. I told him I’m no messenger, but he said I was the only one he trusted.” Her thin face flushed with pleasure.
“You did well, Razu.” Ashi hesitated for a moment, then asked, “Has it seemed to you that Geth has been acting strangely lately? Nervous and tense, maybe?”
Razu’s ears flicked and her mouth pursed primly. “Lady, he has held the throne as Lhesh Haruuc’s shava and now he guides Lhesh Tariic. If he seems tense, surely he has reason to be.”
“I see.” Maybe that made sense. Ashi bent her head to Razu. “Ta muut.”
The mistress of rituals bent her head in return and moved off into the hall. Ashi turned to the door where Aruget waited, holding herself to a sedate pace so that it wouldn’t look too much like she was rushing away. The goblet of korluaat, the level of the beverage undiminished since she’d picked it up, she left with a servant near the door. Aruget’s ears rose when he saw her.
“You found something,” he said softly as they walked away.
Ashi led him down the stairs before she whispered the message Razu had passed her. “I know where the duur’kala sang and the sword woke,” she said. “It’s the roof of Khaar Mbar’ost where Ekhaas, Senen, and another duur’kala worked a spell to wake Wrath so Geth could locate the Rod of Kings.”
Aruget’s ears dropped again. “The roof?” he asked.
She could guess what he was thinking. “A good place for a secret meeting, but also a good place for a trap. Maybe too good. If someone was planning an ambush, there are places that would create a lot less suspicion.”
“Maybe,” Aruget said doubtfully. “I’m coming with you.”
She glanced at him. His face was hard. “It is my muut.”‘
Ashi hesitated, then nodded. “We’ll go early. Just in case.”
“It would be safest not to go at all,”
“Safe hasn’t gotten us any answers so far. Let’s find Midian.”
When the time came for sleep, Ashi stretched out fully clothed on her bed, stared out the open window of her bedchamber, and waited. In her own chamber on the other side of the sitting room, Vounn would be pulling on nightclothes, slipping between sheets, and drifting off to sleep.
The night was dark—the gathered lights of Rhukaan Draal cast a thin glow on the underside of low clouds. The wind had dropped as if the clouds had choked it off. There would be rain before dawn. Ashi kept her mind alert with the same games she had played while stalking the Shadow Marches. Naming the constellations hidden by the clouds. Counting the bones in her hands against the ancient rhyme of the broken blade. Reciting her lineage, a task that, when she was part of the Bonetree Clan, she was only able to do one side of. Since coming to Deneith, she’d learned to fill in the other as well, eldest child of eldest child. “Ashi, daughter of Ner,” she murmured to the rafters of her ceiling, “son of Kagan, son of Tyman, son of Joherra, daughter of Wroenna, daughter of Maal …”
Each name was like a charm. In the tradition of the clans of the Shadow Marches, a bit of the power of each ancestor filtered down to her. The bloodline of House Deneith was the same, deeds accumulating in a heritage of honor, the magic of the Mark of Sentinel ebbing and flowing over time. As a girl, sitting and pointlessly sharpening the eternally keen blade of the sword that her father had inherited from his, had she ever dreamed that she would come so far and see so much?
She guessed that it was approaching the changing of the watch. Time to leave. She rose, slipped sword into scabbard by touch, and closed the shutters on the gathering storm. Hand on the door, she paused, gathered her will, and invoked her dragonmark. Warmth flashed through the pattern that covered her skin. She could almost imagine she saw a faint glow in the darkness,