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He swept the Rod of Kings across the platform and his voice almost trembled with eagerness. “Seize them, Darguuls! Seize the assassins!”

Within the arc that the rod described, every dar head—hobgoblin, bugbear, and goblin—turned to Ashi, Geth, and Chetiin. Those few envoys and ambassadors who hadn’t already retreated looked around in confusion. Vounn, still standing in front of Ashi, opened her mouth as if to speak, but anything she might have said was lost as more than a dozen of the most powerful and important warlords in Darguun surged forward.

“Run!” shouted Geth.

Ashi hesitated for an instant, as if she could seize Vounn and drag her free, then she spun and followed him and Chetiin in a desperate leap from the platform.

Too slow. Arms wrapped around her in a tackle that sent her sword flying from her hand and brought her crashing down.

“Maabet!” cursed Aruget.

Midian froze in the act of climbing down from his shoulder. Ekhaas felt a sudden nausea sweep through her.

The changeling who’d impersonated Geth. The false rod. Tariic had anticipated an attempt to recapture the true rod. He’d prepared for it.

And they’d failed.

“Seize them!” Tariic shouted. “Seize the assassins!”

The command spread from the platform, sweeping over the crowd. Out to the limits of Tariic’s voice, it gripped minds and souls. The crowd that had been scattering in panic turned and rushed back like the turning tide.

The line of Aruget’s jaw tightened, and he shook Midian off his back. “Ideas?” he said.

“One,” said Midian—and Ekhaas heard his crossbow clatter to the stones under their feet. She turned, but the gnome was already sprinting past her and racing into the crowd, darting among a forest of legs. Chaos marked his plunge, but he was fast, using his small size to evade the hands that grabbed for him.

Aruget looked at Ekhaas and his ears flicked. “We tried,” he said.

Then he was diving into the crowd, too. Even as he moved, though, Ekhaas saw his face and body shift and start to change. Adult hobgoblin became youthful bugbear. A few hands grabbed for him, there was a flurry of activity, but then nothing. His disappearance was even more complete than Midian’s—and it left an even greater hole in Ekhaas’s gut. She dragged her sword from its sheath and swung it in a wide circle, forcing the advancing crowd back for a moment, but where the blade passed, the crowd pressed in—

—until the roar of a tiger brought them and Ekhaas around. Above the heads of the crowd, Dagii appeared, his tiger mount leaping through the mob as if through grass. In his wake, led by Keraal, came the soldiers of the Iron Fox Company. Joy and anger warred in Ekhaas. Anger that Dagii had involved himself, opened himself up to Tariic’s retribution. Joy that he’d come to her rescue. The last ranks of the crowd scattered as the tiger came to a snarling stop before her. Ekhaas looked up at Dagii, her heart racing.

He stared at her with gray eyes as hard as the half-visor of his helmet and as cold as the Rod of Kings. “Ekhaas of Kech Volaar, assassin and traitor,” he said, “by command of Lhesh Tariic, you are my prisoner.”

The hole in Ekhaas’s gut swallowed her.

The day in the dungeon, the day he had spared Ko from the arena, came back to Geth. Tariic’s disapproval of his mercy. His own promise to the dungeon keeper—“I’ll be back to talk to him when I can.” But he’d never made it back and his mercy had returned to damn him.

There was no room in his fury—at Tariic, but especially at himself—even for cursing. He’d thought he was a hero. He was a fool.

His feet hit the stones of the plaza and he sank into a crouch, Wrath ready, his gauntlet up. Chetiin landed beside him. They were in the clear for the moment, but the crowd, summoned back by Tariic’s command, was swarming in fast.

“Geth!”

Ashi. He twisted to face the platform. Ashi lay near the edge of it, struggling desperately but held by half a dozen pairs of hands that tried to drag her back. Two of those pairs belonged to