Bluevine was exactly the kind of place that Phaine despised. A village small enough that everyone knew each other meant that strangers like him drew attention. The people loved to talk, they were never satisfied with terse answers, and they took umbrage at his habitual silence. On top of that, the weather stayed warm and bright. He vastly preferred the shadowy alleys, darkened skies, and comfortable anonymity of Khorvaire’s large cities.
The flip side, though, was that even a secret meeting like the one Haldren had held in Bluevine could hardly be kept secret in such a small town. The fugitive had admitted only a few people inside the room during the feast and had sworn them to silence, which of course meant that everyone in the village knew some version of what had happened inside. Getting information wasn’t difficult; just sorting out the truth from the wild speculation and rumors was problematic.
Almost everyone he interviewed claimed to know someone who knew someone who had been in the room, but few could name the source of their information, and those that were named denied that they’d been present. Several times, between interviews, he told Leina he wished he could just find a throat to slit and be done with Bluevine for good.
Through all the gossip and exaggeration, some hints of a consistent picture eventually began to emerge. Haldren had clearly stayed in Bluevine for several days. He had been accompanied by another human man, younger, and a warforged. There was no indication that the elf woman or the Lyrandar excoriate had been there. After the first day, other strangers had arrived: seven men and women, some of them clearly of noble birth, though all of them acted like they were entitled to royal treatment.
Beyond those bare facts, Phaine found little agreement, which made sense to him. Many people in the town would have had occasion to interact with these ten outsiders in various ways, so it was natural that a consistent picture of them would emerge. He had yet to find anyone who claimed they had actually been present at their gatherings, though, which would explain why there were so many different stories about what had actually taken place.
Given that all the stories were probably the inventions of various villagers, it amused him that every one attributed some sinister purpose to the gathering. He figured that adequately summarized the village’s attitude toward outsiders. If a group of strangers came to town and met in secret, it was almost certainly for a cultic ritual, a political conspiracy, a depraved orgy, or an arcane summoning. At least, those made for better stories, more likely to get repeated. Phaine supposed that if it had been a casual gathering of old military friends sharing war stories over glasses of Bluevine’s famous vintage, that story would hardly have captured much interest.
Finally, Leina pointed him to a promising lead—a dour old farmer who acknowledged, after some badgering, that his grandson had been pressed into service pouring wine for the strangers. He refused to come into the village center, so Phaine followed Leina out to his farmstead. He knocked at the door and waited, knocked louder and waited more, and finally saw the farmer for himself as the door swung open. The man’s face was leathery and deeply lined, and one big hand was clutched around the handle of a scythe.
“What do you want?” the farmer demanded.
“Good afternoon,” Phaine said, forcing a smile. “My associate tells me that your family has some information about the strangers who visited your charming village a few weeks ago.”
The man’s hand clenched his scythe harder. “I told her we don’t want to talk about it.”
“Perhaps Leina neglected to mention that some of these people are fugitives. One of them escaped from Dreadhold.”
“She told me. I’m not surprised.”
“It is very important that I learn everything I can about these people and what they were doing here. If your grandson has information that might help find them, it’s imperative that I speak to him.”
The farmer’s knuckles whitened on this handle of his scythe. “Listen. My boy was there, and maybe he heard things that would help you. But we’ll never know, see? The bastards cut out his tongue.”
* * * * *
Under normal circumstances, Senya did not sleep. She was an elf, and four hours spent in quiet meditation rested her body and mind like a full night’s sleep. During this trance, her mind would run through a series of mental exercises of memory and reflection that she had practiced tens of thousands of times. Humans would call them dreams.
But circumstances were not normal. She had been badly injured, and her body needed a great deal of rest. She entered her trance in the late morning, and her mind wandered strange paths of fevered dreams. She surfaced from her trance in a panic and stared wildly around the room, trying to remember where she was. Darkness surrounded her, and something held her down where she lay. “Gaven?” she whispered, but then she remembered seeing him, spread-eagled on a great stone slab, covered in blood. Was that memory, or fevered imagining?
Panic welled in her chest, and she started thrashing to escape whatever held her. To her surprise, the bonds came away easily, and she realized that she was lying in a soft bed, swathed in linen sheets and warm blankets. Other memories returned to her—their flight from the dwarves in Vathirond, the wind that carried her when she couldn’t run any more, the healers who tended her and loaded her into their wagon. And the knowledge that Gaven had abandoned her.
At least he’s not dead, she thought—but the thought gave her little comfort.
She fumbled her way out of the sheets and sat up in the bed. She wore something soft and loose, a nightgown or something very different than the leather she’d been wearing last. She swung her feet down to the bare wooden floor and slid along the bed until her outstretched hand touched the wall. Then she got to her feet and slowly shuffled along the edge of the room, keeping her right hand on the wall and her left stretched out low in front of her. She felt ridiculous, but the darkness was so complete that she still couldn’t make out the room’s dimensions or features.
Her left hand brushed something she quickly decided was a nightstand, and she worked her way around it. She’d no sooner reached the other side of it than she found another wall, then heavy curtains. She fumbled at the windows, and her eyes finally came alive as dim starlight filtered through thick glass into the room. She was about to turn back to survey the room, but something in the sky caught her attention.
It was Nymm, the largest of the twelve moons. It hung high in the sky, right near the top of her view out the window. At first she thought it was just in a crescent phase, nearly new or just beginning to wax again. But its shape was strange—its color, too—and she realized that a shadow blocked its light, an eclipse. Words danced at the edge of her memory, something about the great moon, something her ancestor had said in Shae Mordai. But it eluded her, and she returned her attention to her immediate surroundings.
The room was small and simply appointed, but cozy in its way. She’d already discovered the bed and the nightstand. One chair stood near the other side of the bed. There was one door, opposite the window. Her coat and her sword hung from a hook on the back of the door.
A good start, she thought. Now where are the rest of my clothes?
Her eyes fell on the nightstand again, and she noticed the two drawers it held. She stepped to it and opened the top drawer. Sure enough, her clothes were there. She pulled them out and set them on the bed.
My boots, my pack—where are they?
A few steps took her to the other side of the bed, and there they were. Her pack was neatly arranged beside the bed, with the elegant, impractical boots standing perfectly next to it. She breathed a sigh of relief and sat down on the bed.
“Well now, Senya,” she whispered to herself, “what are you doing?” She ran her fingers through her hair. It felt clean, silky. “They’re taking care of you here. Are you going to bolt out in the middle of the night?”
Her thoughts ran back over her conversation with the halfling who had tended her, the way he avoided her gaze as he asked about Gaven. She thought about their ride on House Orien’s lightning rail, the House Medani inquisitives they’d avoided at the station in Korranberg, and the Sentinel Marshals of House Deneith who had captured her when the rail stopped in Starilaskur. Was it unreasonable to fear that House Jorasco’s healers might turn her over to the Sentinel Marshals or some other house?
The more she considered the possibility, the more she convinced herself that the halflings would almost certainly hand her over as soon as they saw that she was recovered. She took off the nightshirt the healers had put on her, stuffed it into her pack, and put on her own clothes. She was lacing her boots when she heard a creak outside her door. She froze and listened, but the sound did not recur. Was there a guard posted outside her room? Had he heard her moving around?
Taking care that her boots made no sound on the wooden floor, she crept to the door and lifted her sword belt and coat off the hook. She pressed her ear to the door, cringing as it jiggled in its frame. She heard nothing but the pounding of her blood in her ears.
She started to inch away from the door again, but another creak from outside stopped her. She tried to bring her breath and her racing pulse under control and listen. She heard voices whispering outside. With agonizing slowness, she stepped back from the door and tugged at the hilt of her sword. It didn’t come free of its sheath, and she almost swore out loud. A glance confirmed her suspicion—the halflings had peace-bonded it, attached it to its scabbard with leather straps designed to make it impossible to draw in anger. It would take too damned long to undo the knots holding it in place. She reversed her grip on it and readied herself to swing the weighted hilt as a club, if the need arose.
The metal latch clanked softly as it moved, and a sliver of light spilled into the room from the hallway. The hinges squeaked softly as the shaft of light grew wider. When the light fell on the empty bed, there was a pause, and Senya coiled, ready to strike.
The door flew open, and a man rushed in, holding a longsword in his left hand. Senya stepped up to meet him, swinging the pommel of her sword as hard as she could. The attack had caught him by surprise and might have been deadly if she’d managed to pull the blade free, but instead it glanced off his mailed shoulder. He whirled to face her, but his eyes were clearly still adjusting to the darkness. Pressing that advantage, Senya batted at his sword with the basket hilt of her blade, trying to knock it from his hand for her own use.
He kept his grip on his sword and used that moment of connection to swing Senya around until the light from the hall fell full on her face, reversing her initial advantage. Only then did he wrench his sword free, sending Senya’s sword skittering across the floor.
Blinking into the light, Senya put her hands up in a gesture of surrender as she tried to size up her opponent. He was not a tall man, but his body was strong. He looked to be about Gaven’s age, but he was human, which probably meant he was considerably younger than Gaven’s sixty-odd years—certainly younger than Haldren, though his hair was lightly dusted with gray. His armor was gleaming mail, and he wore the black surcoat of the Sentinel Marshals.
Behind this man, an armored halfling in the gold and green of House Jorasco held an everbright lantern—the source of the light shining into her eyes. His other hand was on the hilt of his sword, still in its sheath.
“Senya,” the Sentinel Marshal said, “I am Sentinel Marshal Arrakas d’Deneith. You are under arrest. Stop trying to fight.”
“Why?” Senya demanded. “So you can give me a quick and painless death?”
“The murder of a Sentinel Marshal is serious business, Senya. But frankly, I’m more interested in finding Gaven and Haldren than in punishing you for your part in it. If you cooperate, I can make sure your sentence is light.”
“Hm. A very considerate offer.” She shifted almost imperceptibly closer to where her sword lay on the floor, but Arrakas raised his sword as he stepped between Senya and the blade.
He jerked his head toward the halfling in the doorway, without taking his eyes off Senya. “Pick up the lady’s sword, will you?”
The halfling scurried into the room and snatched Senya’s sword off the floor, clutching it to his chest as if he were afraid she might leap at him and try to wrest it from his grip.
Senya smiled and started toying with the top of her bodice. She might not have her sword, but she’d found in the past that her body was often a more powerful weapon. “Well, Arrakas,” she said, her voice low and breathy, “it seems you’ve bested me. Now I’m yours.”
She saw the blood rise to his face, and noticed that even the halfling seemed to be having some trouble swallowing. She stepped closer to Arrakas, letting her coat fall to the ground and trail behind her. His eyes locked onto hers, which was not where she wanted them. She reached up to brush her hair back from her face, and slowly trailed her hand down the side of her face to her neck, her bare shoulder, her collarbone. To her satisfaction, his eyes followed her hand downward, and she stepped closer again, close enough to feel the warmth of his body.
She cupped his face in her hand, felt the flush in his cheek. Men were so easy to manipulate. She let her fingers slip softly down his chin, tracing the thin line of his beard, then down his neck, and she smiled slightly as his eyes closed. She ran her fingers along his shoulder, which he probably couldn’t feel through his armor, and squeezed his upper arm to make sure his attention stayed on her hand.
The halfling watched her with undisguised excitement in his eyes, which made her slightly sick, but suited her purposes. She dropped her hand to stroke the back of his, and saw him shiver slightly from the light touch.
This is it, she thought. Last chance.
She stepped forward again, pressing the softness of her body against his armored chest and letting her breath brush his neck. At the same moment, she deftly slipped the sword out of his hand and started bringing it up to strike.
Arrakas’s other hand was behind her, though. Before she could bring the sword to bear, something hard came down on her head, and she crumpled to the floor.