Skein of Shadows Read online

  But not as much as the sight of the man standing beside him. Though she hadn’t seen him in almost two decades, Sabira would recognize that stubborn set of jaw and the hard glint in those gray eyes anywhere—she saw them every time she looked in the mirror. The tension that had just begun to ooze away returned in full measure and her hand reached instinctively for an axe-haft that wasn’t there.

  Khellin Lyet, lately of Dreadhold.

  Her father.

  “Saba,” he said, the smile twisting his thin lips not quite making it to his eyes. “So good to see you again.”

  Sabira highly doubted that. That last time she’d seen him, he was being led out of a courtroom in Karrlakton after having been convicted for the attempted assassination of Baron Breven. Considering it was her testimony that had sent him away, she imagined she was the last person in all of Eberron he ever wanted to lay eyes on again.

  He was certainly on her list of least favorite faces, which begged a question.

  “What in the name of the Dark Six is he doing here?”

  Khellin’s smile widened, and even though her question hadn’t been directed at him, he replied with more than a hint of smugness.

  “Why, I was invited, of course.”

  Sabira turned her gaze to Elix, whose own smile disappeared at the look on her face.

  “Why?”

  How? was another good question, considering Khellin had been sentenced to life, and no one got out of Dreadhold, Eberron’s most secure prison, on good behavior. Though she saw now that the older man still wore magewrought shackles on his wrists, so it was only a temporary furlough. Which also explained the presence of the Kundaraks. The dwarves were in charge of the prisoners at Dreadhold, and it was clear they felt their duty extended beyond the walls of that massive island fortress.

  “I asked him here, Saba,” Elix answered, holding out a pleading hand to her. “Come, sit, and I’ll explain everything.” When she hesitated, his gaze softened. “Please.”

  That was when she noticed the black velvet box sitting on the place setting next to his. Long and thin, and marked with the symbol of Boldrei, the Sovereign Goddess of Hall and Hearth, it was just the size to hold a necklace.

  Or a bracelet.

  Her knees went weak as she realized suddenly why Elix had arranged for her father to be released from prison, however temporarily. Why he’d asked Aggar, her hearthbrother, to come. Even why his own father was here.

  This wasn’t a Badge Day celebration.

  It was a betrothal party.

  “Elix, I—”

  She wasn’t sure what she’d been going to say. They’d only just admitted their feelings for each other a few months ago, having banished Ned’s ghost once and for all. And even though she loved having him to come home to—or having a home at all, for that matter—that little black box and everything it represented frankly terrified her, and she wasn’t entirely sure why.

  Was it because, on some level, it would mean giving up a measure of freedom? But freedom to do what? Sleep with any man she wanted? There was only Elix. Freedom to remain a Marshal? Elix was a Deneith—he’d never ask her to give that up. Freedom to come and go as she pleased, traipsing over miserable ground to track down dangerous criminals for ungrateful clients and not nearly enough pay? Was that really a freedom she wanted to keep?

  Was it because she still harbored some feelings for Ned, because deep down, she’d wanted him to be the one to give her such a bracelet, and not Elix? But, no. Leoned had been her partner, closer than even a spouse, and that hadn’t stopped her from caring for Elix, then or now.

  Or was it because, in her heart, she knew that as much as she loved him, she wasn’t good enough for him, and never would be?

  She was saved from having to answer by the big double doors at the other end of the dining room crashing open and a harried-looking steward rushing in, followed almost immediately by Baron Breven himself, the dragonmark on his cheek standing out in sharp contrast against the lividity of his face.

  “Wilhelm! What is the meaning of this underling refusing me entrance? Since when—”

  Then the bald, stern-faced patriarch of House Deneith caught sight of Khellin.

  “What in the name of the Dark Six—?”

  Sabira bit back a vindicated smirk as the head of her House was reduced to the exact same epithet she’d used at the sight of her father.

  Then Breven saw her, and understanding dawned. He looked over at Elix pityingly.

  “You’re asking her now?”

  Wilhelm moved out from behind the table quickly, hurrying over to the Baron and casting a dark look at his son as he passed.

  “My lord, please accept my apologies! If you’ll just join me in my study—”

  Breven interrupted him brusquely.

  “No time for that.” He held up a necklace from which dangled a golden semicircle depicting half of the Deneith chimera. Sabira and Elix exchanged shocked looks of recognition as Breven continued. “Tilde’s gone missing.”

  “… the drow—Xujil, I think his name was—made it back to the surface with the bat and gave the medallion to ir’Kethras, who had it couriered to me in Karrlakton.” They sat around the dining room table, the spread of Karrnathi delicacies untouched and long-cold before them. Khellin had been removed from the room under armed escort and was being held on Baron Breven’s private airship, which was docked at the nearby tower. Considering that the crew of the Barony was fiercely loyal to Breven, down to the Lyrandar who piloted it, Sabira wasn’t entirely sure he’d be making it back, Kundarak guards or no.

  When no one else responded, none of the Deneiths willing to state the obvious in front of Wilhelm, whose face was white with grief, Aggar finally spoke up.

  “It’s been almost two weeks, then. What reason is there to believe she’s even still alive?”

  Breven cast a glance at the Count, and Sabira thought she caught a glimpse of something suspiciously like sympathy there. He carefully avoided looking at her.

  “After Leoned died and we were unable to recover his remains from that cave-in, Tilde created a sort of reverse summoning spell to return her body to my study in Sentinel Tower in the event of her death. She didn’t want Wilhelm to have to suffer that same uncertainty twice.”

  Elix’s hand closed over Sabira’s beneath the table. She didn’t dare look at him for fear of releasing the tears that burned suddenly behind her eyes, but she returned his grasp with a grateful squeeze.

  “So you want to send in another party to do what, exactly?” she asked when she could be sure her voice wouldn’t break. “Rescue her? Or put her out of her misery?”

  Wilhelm blanched at her words and even Elix looked appalled, but Breven didn’t blink.

  “As your hearthbrother said, it’s been almost two weeks.”

  Twelve days, and at least twice that to get another group back down to the city of the so-called Spinner of Shadows. If Tilde wasn’t dead by then, she’d no doubt wish she were.

  Which didn’t explain why Breven wanted to send someone after her in the first place. Tilde was a powerful sorceress and a family friend, but neither of those was reason enough for Breven to risk another thirty men, regardless of what torture she might be enduring. She hadn’t had access to any great House secrets; she wasn’t technically part of the House at all.

  “Two weeks in which your precious artifact has been sitting there for anyone to take, now that Tilde’s opened at least one of its locks, you mean.” Breven’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly, and Sabira knew that she was right. This wasn’t about Tilde at all.

  But then why was he here? He hadn’t needed to play messenger boy with Tilde’s medallion—any of his lackeys from Sentinel Tower could have brought Wilhelm the news of her loss.

  No, the House patriarch wanted something specific from someone in this room, and Sabira had a sinking feeling it was her.

  Elix had come to the same conclusion.

  “You mentioned that you became aware of thi
s artifact because of some snippet of the Prophecy the Wayfinder Foundation had recovered,” he said. “What exactly did that snippet say?”

  The draconic Prophecy was an ages-old pattern of portents and omens written in the skies, in the earth, and on the very flesh of the races of Eberron, in the form of the dragonmarks borne by the great Houses. The dragons of distant Argonnessen purported to study these signs to determine the future and understand the past, but Sabira put little stock in such things. Prophecy of any sort was so subject to interpretation that it could mean anything to anyone, and so became little more than an excuse for people to do what they wanted under the aegis of divine or mystical guidance. As far as she was concerned, the draconic Prophecy was no different, save for the fact that dragons were more able than most to ensure that their interpretations were accepted and adhered to.

  Breven regarded Elix for a moment, considering.

  “It’s not even a snippet, really. Just a few incomplete couplets found on a tattered parchment, most of which had either rotted or been burned away.”

  Elix and the others looked at him expectantly.

  The Baron gave a half-shrug and dutifully recited:

  “Far beneath the clawing desert

  In the belly of the She

  Lies a treasure, plainly hidden

  With eight locks but just one key

  When the Anvil next is silent

  The Book is closed, the Warder dreams

  Comes a daughter, Stone and Sent’nel

  Her arrival.…”

  When he trailed off into silence, Sabira finished the rhyme for him.

  “What? ‘… not what it seems?’ Or maybe, ‘… met with screams?’ You sent Tilde into the depths below the Menechtarun where Dol Dorn knows what was waiting for her, based on that?”

  Breven bristled, the dragonmark on the left side of his face stretching taut.

  “She wasn’t coerced, if that’s what you’re implying, Sabira. She interpreted the Prophecy the same way I did—the same way scholars far more versed in the subject than anyone in this room did—and she was more than willing to do whatever she could to serve her House.”

  More like, she was more than willing to do whatever she had to in order to finally be acknowledged by that House—a House that continued to punish her for her mother’s decision to marry outside of it, long after her mother was dead and buried. But Sabira kept that observation to herself. Breven already knew what she thought, and Wilhelm wouldn’t welcome the reminder of his sister’s choice to place love ahead of duty.

  Her stomach growled audibly and Sabira decided she was done pandering to convention. She grabbed a slice of vedbread, no longer warm and gooey, but still fragrant and, more importantly, filling. The men watched her devour it in silence, Aggar lowering his head a bit to hide a smile.

  When she was finished, she washed it down with a glass of fruity Orla-un wine. She’d have preferred the tang of Frostmantle Fire, but Wilhelm had all but banned it from his house after the last time she’d drunk her fill of the potent dwarven whiskey. From what she remembered of that night, it had been a wise choice on his part.

  Only after she’d drained the goblet did she address the room again. It was telling that none of them had spoken into the silence—they knew as well as she did why Breven was here.

  “Well, let’s jump past the games and the posturing, shall we? I’m sure everyone else is just as hungry as I am, if a bit more polite.” She looked at the man she’d once considered a surrogate father after Khellin had been imprisoned, but there was no filial feeling left in her hard gaze, and he knew it. “You want the treasure and you need another daughter of ‘Stone and Sentinel’ to fetch it for you. That about sum it up?”

  Aggar’s head was almost on his plate and the beads in his beard tinkled softly with his suppressed laughter. Breven wasn’t quite so amused.

  “While your adoption into the Tordannon clan does, perhaps, qualify you as a ‘daughter of stone,’ that’s not why I’m here.”

  Sabira’s eyebrows shot up at that. He didn’t really expect any of them to believe that, did he? The appellation applied to her just as surely as it did to Tilde—maybe better, since no one could claim Sabira wasn’t a Deneith.

  “The simple fact of the matter is that I need someone—a Marshal—who knows Stormreach and Xen’drik, who knows the deeps, and whose loyalty to the House is not entirely in question.”

  Ah. So Breven didn’t trust Greigur, the captain of the Sentinel Marshals’ Stormreach outpost. Having dealt with the over-reaching soldier many times herself, Sabira couldn’t say that she blamed the Baron. If this treasure was worth losing another thirty lives over, it was something that could easily split the House, turning them into another three-headed gorgon, like Cannith. Or worse, another Phiarlan, whose Thuranni line had split off in 972 YK after exterminating a third family line, the Paelions, for an alleged assassination plot against Karrnath’s king, Kaius III.

  A plot some whispered her own father may have had a hand in.

  “There are other Marshals who fit that description,” Elix said, and Sabira knew him well enough to know how hard it was for him to keep the challenge from his voice. “Why not ask one of them?”

  Sabira waited, wondering if the Baron would keep trying to pretend this had ever been about saving Tilde.

  “None of them are avail—” he began after a moment, but Wilhelm interrupted him.

  “Stop. Just stop,” he said, his voice ragged. He’d been looking down at his plate, but now he raised pained eyes up to meet Breven’s. Pained, but strong. Resolved. “Sabira’s right. This isn’t about my niece, it’s about the House. You don’t have to try and pretty it up for my sake, my lord. This family has sacrificed for the glory of Deneith many times, and will no doubt do so many more. Of course your primary concern is retrieving the artifact, as well it should be. Rescuing Tilde is a … a secondary consideration.”

  Breven couldn’t quite hide a triumphant smile, though he quickly smoothed it over with a conciliatory look.

  “You’re a very wise and reasonable man, Count; I’ve always said as much. Your loyalty to the House has never been in doubt.”

  Sabira couldn’t be sure, but she thought the Baron placed a slight emphasis on “your.”

  Then he turned his gaze on her and she lifted her chin in response.

  “Well, Sabira. Will you take this mission for the honor and protection of your House?”

  She didn’t miss a beat.

  “No.”

  Even Aggar’s jaw dropped at that, but Sabira ignored him, and Elix, and the long velvet box sitting between them on the table. Her eyes were on Wilhelm, who wore the same stoically anguished expression as he had on the night when she’d had to tell him that Ned had died, and that it was her fault. When she spoke again, it wasn’t to Breven.

  “No, I won’t do it for the House. But I will do it for Ned.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Zol, Lharvion 24, 998 YK

  Vulyar, Karrnath.

  You don’t have to go.”

  They’d argued about it most of the night, until the sky turned violet in the hours before dawn and Sabira reminded him that there were better ways to spend what little time they had left together.

  “You know I do, Elix.”

  They were sitting around the table in the smaller family dining room, enjoying a light breakfast of fruit, ved cheese and bread: her, Elix and Aggar. Breven had departed shortly after he’d gotten what he wanted, giving her the name of her contact in Sharn as well as a letter of credit drawn on his personal account before he left. Khellin’s reprieve from his prison cell was long over; he’d never returned to the manor, and Sabira hadn’t cared enough to find out if that’d been the Baron’s doing, or the Kundaraks’. Wilhelm hadn’t come down this morning; his steward sent word that the Count was feeling ill.

  “Then at least wait a few days, so Aggar and I can accompany you—”

  “Every day I wait is another day Tilde is lef
t to Host knows what horrors. Whatever our differences in the past, I can’t leave her to that. I can’t watch your father go through that again, regardless what he thinks of me.” Maybe because of what he thought of her. “Can you?”

  Elix’s hazel eyes glistened. They both knew the grief the Count had felt over Ned’s loss; it had paled in comparison to their own.

  Sabira reached out a hand to caress his cheek, the one not marred by the Mark of Sentinel.

  “Especially not if he’s going to be my father too.” Well, some day.

  Elix caught her hand in one of his, turning his head and pressing her palm tightly against his lips for a long moment. Then he kissed her wrist lightly, right where a betrothal bracelet would lay, before relinquishing his hold.

  “You knew?” he asked, his lips quirking into a rueful half-smile.

  “Having my father here kind of gave it away.”

  Aggar mumbled something from around a mouthful of bread and silverfruit jam. It sounded like, “Told you so.” Both Elix and Sabira ignored him.

  “I know it’s a silly tradition, but I wanted to honor it—and you.”

  Sabira smiled softly at that.

  “So what did he say?”

  “I said, ‘Have you taken leave of your senses?’ when he asked me,” Aggar answered, wiping cider from his beard with the back of his hand. “I offered to get a Jorasco to come take a look at him, maybe do a cleansing ritual.”

  “Quiet, you,” Sabira warned, throwing the dwarf a stern look she couldn’t quite hold.

  Elix’s own smile faltered a bit.

  “Does it matter? I realize now it was a mistake securing his release.”

  Sabira quirked an eyebrow.

  “That bad, hmm? Well, it can’t be any worse than what I’d have called him.”

  Like assassin, traitor, excoriate, steaming pile of carver dung—and those were the nice things.

  “He said you were always more Breven’s daughter than you were his, and if Elix wanted to marry you, he was asking the wrong man for permission.”