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—and came to a halt so abrupt he almost fell over. A hobgoblin guard wearing the red corded armband of Khaar Mbar’ost sprawled across the stairs. Blood ran in the thin streams down the stone steps.

Geth sucked air between his teeth and moved closer, quick but cautious. The guard was dead, no doubt about it. The blood poured from a slit throat and, strangely, slashed legs. He’d been hamstrung, his legs rendered useless. He would have been kneeling or fallen when his throat was slashed.

There were no smears or handprints or any other signs to indicate that anyone else had already seen the corpse. He was the first. Stepping around the dripping blood, Geth touched his fingers to the body. It was still almost as warm as life. Death had come recently. The hair on his arms and the back of his neck rose. Who would have done this? And why?

There was a yelp and a crash as one of his pursuers missed a step. Geth’s head snapped around and a growl forced its way out of him. Every moment he spent standing still was a moment in which pursuit grew closer. He glanced once more at the nameless guard, and bounded past.

He moved more slowly, and where the central corridor of his floor opened off of the stairs, he stopped and peered around the corner before moving on. Whoever had killed the guard might have gone anywhere in Khaar Mbar’ost, up the stairs or down. But so close to his floor? That couldn’t be a coincidence.

Geth glanced at each door along the corridor as he came to it. Closed tight—except for his. He put his back to the wall. The hard breathing of his race up the stairs became cold and shallow.

The door to his chamber stood ajar. The guards who had stood outside his door since Haruuc’s death were gone—with the Rod of Kings passing to Tariic’s possession, at least in theory, there had been no reason for them to remain. If they had still been on duty, Geth suspected he would have found them on the floor with their throats cut.

From the stairwell, sounds of pursuit became sounds of surprise and anger. His pursuers had found the dead body. With their cries as his cover, Geth moved, leaping in front of the door and kicking it wide.

Chetiin froze in the middle of the room. There was a thick tube of stiff leather slung across his back. The chest that contained—had contained—the Rod of Kings lay open, all locks and magical protections defeated, a pair of blacksmith’s tongs and a bloody dagger with a wicked curved blade abandoned beside it.

And Geth froze as well, caught in the doorway as the black-clad goblin’s treachery crashed down on him.

No, he tried to remind himself, it had been another of the shaarat’khesh who’d killed Haruuc. If another goblin had taken Chetiin’s place before, why not again?

His mind told him that. His heart fell back on the betrayal he’d felt after Haruuc’s assassination. Then Chetiin spoke and Geth knew his heart was right.

“Give my regards to Tenquis.”

Only four other people knew that name. Three of them Geth would have trusted with his life. The fourth was Chetiin.

“No,” Geth choked.

The proof of innocence that Chetiin had offered in his story of a second assassin and an attempt on his own life, of blame laid on Midian, shattered like glass on stone. A lie. It had all been an enormous lie, right down to his promise to watch over Ekhaas and Dagii. The shaarat’khesh elder had waited for the one moment that all eyes had been elsewhere to make his final move on the true rod.

Chetiin gave him a smile that seemed almost pitying—then he moved. In one jump, he went from the floor to a chair, and in another from the chair to the windowsill. A thin rope had been secured to a shutter in the same place Geth had secured the blanket he had used to signal the goblin. Chetiin grabbed it and whipped it around his body in a smooth motion. Then, with a last look to Geth, he pushed himself back into space.

“No, you bastard!” screamed Geth. He ran to the window. Chetiin was already halfway down the wall, gliding in long arcs