Word of Traitors_ Legacy of Dhakaan - Don Bassingthwaite [61]
Ashi was a far better tracker than he was, but Geth knew he wasn’t completely useless. He scanned the floor as he went, searching the thin carpet that covered it for signs of ash that might have been scattered when Chetiin emerged from the fireplace. He found nothing. His gut twisted more than he would have expected. No sign—no escape. Chetiin had been lying.
“No,” he whispered to himself. It didn’t mean that he had been lying. Chetiin was as wily as anyone Geth had ever met. He would have taken care to leave no trail behind.
Geth squatted in front of the fireplace and stared at the cold ashes of the last fire to burn there. The charred remains of logs had been tumbled about, the poker that had been used to stir them still protruding from the ashy heap. Someone searching the room might have stirred the dead fire, but it seemed to Geth that the fire had been stirred too well. Ash lay in a soft gray blanket, as evenly turned as the soil in a kitchen garden.
He rose and squeezed into the fireplace, trying not to step right in the ash. Fortunately, flat stones a double handspan wide ran along the sides and back of the firebox, making a space to set pots or kettles or big feet. Geth had to crouch a bit to avoid the sloping upper surface that fed into the chimney, but by straddling the firebox and twisting his neck, he could peer up into the dark shaft.
The shadows were so thick and blended so closely with the soot-covered walls that even shifter eyes had trouble seeing through them. He waited, letting his vision adjust. After a long moment, he saw a stray wisp of gray, like a cloud scudding across a moonless sky. Smoke from a neighboring fireplace. With that wisp as reference, other vague details made sense—the flat planes of shadow that were the walls of the chimney, the smoky darkness that was the rising central flue. There was something not quite right about the junction of shadow and smoke, though. Geth twisted his head around the other way. There was another plane in the dark.
He grimaced and shifted one foot right into the middle of the ireplace, digging down into the ash until there was solid stone beneath his sole, then stretched an arm up into the chimney.
His questing ingers caught the lip of a ledge. The stone was warm and dry, heated by air rising from unseen ires. Geth moved his hand back and forth. He couldn’t reach far enough too feel how deep the ledge was, but it was wide. Wide enough to accommodate the body of a goblin.
The twist in his belly unraveled. “Wolf and Tiger,” he murmured. A ledge in the chimney, just as Chetiin had said.
Then the twist came back. Chetiin had been telling the truth, but that meant Midian Mit Davandi had brought about Haruuc’s death.
Geth brought his arm down and stepped out of the ireplace. A bit of discarded clothing made a rag to brush the ash from his foot and wipe the soot from his hands. He stirred the remains of the ire again, then stuffed the sooty rag among the remains of the bed. With the door broken in, there was no hiding that someone had been in the room, but he could at least disguise what he had done here. He backed out of the room and closed the door behind him, brushing away splinters of wood and securing the ruined latch as best he could. Gut aching with a mixture of relief and anger, he headed back through the corridors of Khaar Mbar’ost to his chamber.
He was nearly there when he turned a corner and found himself facing Midian.
“Geth!” The gnome’s face curved into a smile. “I was looking for you. When you weren’t in your chamber, I thought I might have to go ind you at the arena.”
Geth forced himself to smile back. Not too much of a smile. Not too little. He couldn’t give away what he knew. “I haven’t been yet today. I was looking in on Dagii. I’m just on my way back to my chamber now.”
“I’ll walk with you.” Midian turned and fell into step at his side. “I spoke to Razu.”
“What about?”
Midian lowered his voice as a hobgoblin came along the corridor toward them.