37. FUNERAL ARRANGEMENTS

Tyentso’s story

The imperial bivouac, Khorvesh

Midnight

“Where … where did you send the dragon?” Qoran Milligreest asked as Tyentso finished filling him in on what had happened. He was half-dressed with a robe wrapped around himself, sitting on the edge of the bed in his tent. Tyentso sat in one of his chairs, feet up on its matching twin.

She’d woken him up in the middle of the night, but she didn’t think he’d want to wait until morning to hear the news.

Twenty years on, and Qoran still hated to be out of the loop.

That said, she didn’t fill him in on everything that had happened. Certainly not the part where Kihrin, in the guise of Vol Karoth, had shouted who-knows-what into the dragon’s mind to buy her a distraction. Qoran didn’t need to know.

Let the high general think she was just that amazing.

The corner of Tyentso’s mouth twitched as she sipped her brandy. Part of her wanted coffee, but it was the middle of the night and she really did hope she might be able to get some sleep at some point. “Where else would I send him? The domain capital of Marakor, of course. Dropped him right in Havar D’Aramarin’s lap.”

His mouth fell open.

She snickered. “Honestly. Why even have this job if you can’t be a massively petty bitch about it?”

“Wait. How would that work?” the high general asked. “Havar has wards up all over Marakor. You can’t just open a gate there.”

“At ground level, yes, but Havar didn’t ward half a mile up,” Tyentso said. “Who knows? Perhaps Gorokai flew right over the city and is heading back here, or went south to the Kulma, or any number of places. But I suspect he couldn’t resist playing with all the soldiers, who immediately started shooting things at him.” She turned the yellow diamond over in her hand. It was warm and … sunny. It felt like spending the day outside lying in a field of flowers, napping in the sun. A pleasant catnap sort of a gemstone. Happy.1

But it was a Cornerstone, so she assumed that impression was a massive pile of dragon shit.

“What are you going to do with it?” Milligreest frowned at the Cornerstone as though it had somehow managed to personally insult all the man’s ancestors.

“Not sure,” Tyentso admitted. Ironically, Kihrin hadn’t needed the stone—given what he’d told her, he couldn’t even safely touch the damn thing. He’d just wanted to make sure that Skyfire had stayed out of the hands of Xaltorath, whom Kihrin assured her would use the incredible energy manipulation abilities of the artifact to do very, very bad things.

As long as Tyentso kept it out of Xaltorath’s hands, or Relos Var’s, Kihrin didn’t care what she did with it.

“I’ll figure something out,” she murmured. “But that’s not why I came to see you. I want to ask you about Gadrith.”

Qoran blinked at the unexpected statement. “What about him?”

“What did you do with his body?”

“What?” Qoran frowned. “You mean when Kihrin D’Mon killed—”

She waved a hand. “That wasn’t his body. That was Sandus’s body. No. What did you do with Gadrith’s body? The one that was left behind when Gadrith tricked Sandus into killing him while Gadrith was wearing the Stone of Shackles? That corpse was Gadrith’s original form. What did you do with it?”

“Oh,” Qoran said. He paused for a few seconds, then made a face. “He was still a lord heir.”

Tyentso frowned. “So?”

“So we returned the body to his father for burial.”

Her heart skipped a beat even as she felt a shudder race through her. “You … you gave the body back to Cedric?” The alcohol suddenly tasted like acid. She set down the cup.

“Of course we did. You think we can just dump a lord heir’s body in a shallow grave? We’d never hear the end of it.”

Tyentso leaned back in her chair and fought down the strong desire to break out into hysterical laughter. “No,” she said. “No, I would expect that you would take the body of a man famous for self-resurrecting as one of the walking dead and cut it into sixteen different pieces. And then I would expect you to throw each of those fucking pieces into a different Red Man forge until they were nothing but ashes, and then take those ashes and spread them over the mouths of sixteen different rivers! Except for his head—that I expected you to toss into an active volcano. Most of all, I would expect you to use your damn brain! Are you fucking kidding me?”

The high general shifted on the bed, a scowl on his face. “Now hold on. I did use my damn brain. And I talked to the priests of the Black Gate about it. They said it wouldn’t be a problem; Thaena would make sure Gadrith couldn’t come back to life.”

The laughter did bubble out of her that time. “Thaena would. Right.”

Qoran leaned forward. “You don’t think … you don’t think he’s somehow Returned, do you?”

“Who would stop him?” Tyentso said bitterly.

Qoran looked like he was having difficulty swallowing. “How … how did he come back last time?”

“Grimward,” Tyentso said. “Grimward and precautions he’d taken to make sure his souls didn’t cross the Veil. So he never entered Thaena’s realm at all. But now? I don’t think it matters. Someone else would have to bring him back, but I can think of someone with the motive and skill to do exactly that. Our dear friend, Relos Var.” She stood up, sighing as she put down her cup. She wasn’t getting any sleep, was she? She should have bowed to fate and had the coffee. “Keep the armies from doing anything stupid while I’m gone, would you?”

“Where are you going?”

“I need to talk to some people. If Gadrith’s back, he won’t just be coming after me.”