The Tyranny of Ghosts: Legacy of Dhakaan - Book 3 (34 page)

Ashi ate—and especially drank—sparingly. Vounn had shown her the art of making it seem like she was keeping up
with those around her, when in fact very little was passing her lips. She didn’t feel a particular need to gorge herself on Tariic’s bounty. For one thing, she had, as Oraan had confirmed, already eaten well and wasn’t hungry. For another, she was watching for a particular dish to make it to the table.

It was good that she was watching, too, because when the dish appeared, the clan chief’s eyes lit up, and he reached for the bowl. “Black
noon
with mushrooms and
braak
greens! Lhesh Tariic feeds us well.”

Ashi beat him to the bowl. “Allow me,” she said and scooped a generous helping of
noon
balls threaded with black mold, pale straw mushrooms, and limp, dark green leaves onto his plate before taking some for herself. It looked unpleasant at best, but she had to admit that it did smell very appetizing. She offered the bowl to the Cannith apprentice, who looked at it dubiously but relented when Ashi insisted it was a Darguul delicacy.

The goblin scout declined to partake, but the two warlords finished off most of the bowl before it made its way farther down the table. Ashi glanced at Oraan. If he noticed her, he gave no sign of it. Bracing herself, Ashi picked up her spoon and dug into the mess.

It didn’t take long before the Cannith apprentice started looking distinctly pale. Ashi felt it too—a nauseating roiling in her belly accompanied by an uncomfortable swollen sensation. A belch forced its way up her throat and escaped from her mouth to leave a foul taste on her tongue and a pungent odor in the air. A light sweat shone on the face of the clan chief. He pushed his plate away and started to rise.
“Miin eshoora,”
he said in Goblin, excusing himself from the table.

It was someone else from farther down the table, one of the last to eat the black
noon
, who vomited first, however. A goblin in merchant’s robes turned suddenly away from the table and, without even rising, was noisily sick on the floor. The clan chief made a noise halfway between a burp and a gurgle, and fled. It was too much for the Cannith apprentice. She jumped up from
the table and ran for the wall, huddling down to try and conceal her shame. Ashi might have grinned at the way Oraan leaped to get out of her way if she hadn’t been concentrating on not throwing up herself.

Heads all over the throne room were turning to look at their table as feasters cleared away from those being sick. Another feaster down the table fled for the door, though he didn’t make it quite so far as the clan chief had. The two warlords looked at each other in alarm. Both of them were starting to sweat. Ashi clamped down on her teeth, trying hard to keep her stomach from rising as servants raced in with empty buckets.

The goblin scout pulled the Cannith apprentice’s plate over and inspected what was left of her meal. He sniffed at it, then pushed it back. “The black
noon
is off,” he said calmly.

Across the throne room, plates scraped as feasters shoved them away. A servant reached Ashi with an empty bucket that smelled like it had recently held mop water. She ignored the smell and buried her head in it.

When she looked up, Tariic’s eyes were on her. She nodded at him politely. One of the seats at the high table was empty. Tariic’s lackey Daavn was down on the throne room floor talking to the viceroy of House Medani. The half-elf rose and came over to her table. He held out his hand, and the dragonmark that patterned the back of it seemed to flash brighter for a moment. He swept his hand across the table, pausing over the Cannith apprentice’s plate.

“There’s no poison,” he said. “The
noon
in this dish was simply spoiled.”

The goblin scout muttered something under his breath as the Medani walked away. Tariic gave Ashi another long look, then made a dismissive gesture. Razu came trotting over to the table. “Those who are ill may leave the feast.”

Ashi cleared her mouth and spit into the reeking bucket once more, then handed it back to the servant. She rose, nodded again to Tariic, and, along with the others who’d eaten the tainted dish,
walked out of the throne room with all the dignity she could manage. The noise of the feast returned, and the last she saw of Tariic, he had turned back to his conversation.

As soon as they were alone on the stairs leading back to the upper floors of Khaar Mbar’ost, Oraan slipped a vial into her hand. Ashi pulled the cork from it and swallowed the liquid inside in a single gulp.

Her queasiness vanished instantly. Her stomach settled, and even the bad taste in her mouth vanished, replaced with a sweet flavor vaguely reminiscent of cherries.
“Rond betch,”
she said. “That was unpleasant.”

“But necessary,” said Oraan. “If you’d been the only one to claim illness—”

“I know.” Tariic would have been suspicious. He might not have allowed her to leave the feast at all. And while no one who hadn’t eaten from the dish at her table would actually fall ill, the remains of a lone vat of spoiled black
noon
in the fortress kitchens would back up events. A cook might be beaten for carelessly preparing the tainted dish, but Ashi suspected that he or she had, along with the servant who’d brought it to the table, been very well compensated for their trouble.

They reached the floor where Ashi’s chambers were located and turned onto it, but didn’t stop. At the end of the corridor, a smaller servant’s staircase gave more discreet access to the levels of Khaar Mbar’ost. They climbed again until they reached the floor with Tariic’s quarters.

“Will there be guards?” Ashi asked.

Aruget—Oraan had changed faces again as they climbed—shook his head. “Not tonight. Tariic generously sent word for the guards on duty to relax and join in the celebration, so long as they’re back before he returns from the feast.”

“Did he really?”

The changeling snorted. “Of course not.”

“Won’t he find out what happened?”

“You think Tariic actually talks to his guards?”

The corridor before the lhesh’s quarters was empty. His door, predictably, was locked, but Aruget produced a pair of lockpicks and had it open in moments. The hinges swung in near silence. They slipped through, and he closed the door behind them.

Tariic’s chambers were luxurious. Thick Riedran carpets muffled their steps. The furniture was carved with fine details of vines and flowers—Ashi recognized work from the Eldeen Reaches—and tables and shelves displayed objects of art from across Khorvaire. Light came from everbright lanterns, their harsh illumination filtered through screens of milky glass. Ashi had always known that Tariic had a taste for what the world beyond Darguun had to offer, but she hadn’t realized he’d managed to accumulate so much of it.

And yet there was something in the way it was all displayed that made her think uncomfortably of the trophies of battle, as if the rooms were a monument to conquest to come.

“Where do we look?” she asked softly.

Aruget scanned the room they stood in, then nodded toward a doorway. The room beyond was somewhat more functional than the first, with a broad table and shelves of books. A richly illuminated map of Khorvaire hung on one wall, innocent in itself—Baron Breven d’Deneith owned one very similar, Ashi knew—but again, she found the sight of it vaguely chilling. A chair had been positioned, its back to the room’s window, so that someone sitting in it could gaze upon the map. She could imagine Tariic sitting there with all of Khorvaire laid out before him.

“Here.” Aruget stood before a tall cabinet. Unlike the furniture in the other room, it wasn’t Eldeen work. The heavy doors were carved with mountain scenes while thick bands of bronze supported an elaborate latch and lock. Aruget wrinkled his nose. “House Kundarak made this. I wish we had Tenquis here. An artificer would be helpful.”

“You can’t unlock it?”

“I can unlock it—but locks probably aren’t the only thing protecting it.” Aruget dipped into the sash around his waist and produced a small silk packet from the folds. He unwrapped it, and glittering dust spilled into his palm. Blowing lightly, he sent the dust wafting over the cabinet.

It settled into gently glowing lines, a web of magic centered around the lock. “A ward,” said Aruget. He studied the lines, then drew out a twist of fine silver wire that he bent carefully into a wide hexagram. He warmed a small bit of wax between his fingers, pinched it in two and stuck it to the back of the wire. “Stand back,” he warned Ashi. She stepped away, and he gently set the bent wire around the cabinet’s lock, pressing the wax against the bronze so the hexagram would stay in place.

The glowing lines shimmered and faded.

“Good.” Moving quickly, Aruget set to work with his lockpicks again. It took longer to open the cabinet than it had to open the door of Tariic’s chambers, but when he was done, Aruget let out a hissing sigh of relief. He picked the silver wire away from the cabinet, flipped the latch, and pulled open the doors.

The interior of the cabinet was a series of drawers, large and small. Aruget went straight for the largest drawer, opening it to reveal rolled and folded papers. His fingers hovered over them for a moment, then he plucked out a roll about the length of his forearm, dirty and ragged edged. Ashi glanced into the drawer skeptically. There were other papers that were larger, brighter, and seemed more likely to be important.

Aruget caught her look. “If you’re looking for important information, look for what your mark handles most often. Chances are it’s something near and dear to them.” He held the paper up to the light and unrolled it. “Ah,” he said.

Ashi moved around him. The paper was a map of Darguun. The writing on it was in Goblin—and there was a lot of writing. Notes and scribbles, arrows and lines. The map had been used
and reused many times, but Ashi recognized the essence of it quickly. Troop movements from Rhukaan Draal to the border of the Mournland, then back to Skullreave. Then across into Breland.

Just as Munta had suggested. She breathed a curse.

“It’s not enough,” said Aruget. “We need more.” He rolled the map up again and set it on the table. “Be careful with these. We need to put them back as close as possible to the way we found them, or Tariic will know someone has been here.”

“Won’t he know that when he finds out the magic on the door is gone?”

“It should reweave itself once the doors are closed again. I know what I’m doing.” He took more papers from the drawer, scanning each one, then discarding it on the table. Ashi caught glimpses of more maps, of lists, of ledgers. Aruget’s ears flicked, and his mouth grew tighter as he glanced at them. “Here,” he said finally. He put another map down on the table, then slipped a piece of folded paper, a miniature pot of ink, and a stubby pen out of his sash. “Copy that as best you can. No need to worry much about the details inside Darguun. Focus on the border with Breland.”

Ashi studied the map and drew a slow, hissing breath. The plan sketched out in rough on the first, dirty map had been refined. Two broad arrows struck across the Brelish border from Skullreave. One went almost directly north to a place named Kennrun. Ashi recognized the name as a Brelish fortress that guarded a stretch of Orien trade road running parallel to the border. The other arrow curved northwest around the end of the Seawall Mountains until it met the trade road west of Kennrun. With the fortress and its soldiers bottled up by one of the armies from Skullreave, the second force would have an easy march along the trade road—straight to the town of New Cyre.

Ashi knew that name too. New Cyre was the settlement that Breland’s king had granted to Cyran refugees who had been away from their home nation on the day it had been transformed
into the Mournland. It was a growing town, the heart of the region—and founded in the aftermath of the Last War, only lightly defended. If Tariic could take it, and maybe Kennrun as well, he would effectively extend Darguun’s territory across the mountains and establish a new base for further expansion.

She dipped Aruget’s pen into the ink pot and started sketching. There were names beside the two arrows, companies and units to be included in the attack, presumably. Some she recognized as clan names. The Kech Shaarat stood at the head of the companies attacking Kennrun. She scribbled them all down. “Aruget, see if you can find troop numbers. I have company names. Black Tongue. Devil Hand. Red Moon. Iron—” Her tongue stumbled as she read the first name on the list of companies attacking New Cyre. Iron Fox.

“I have them,” said Aruget. His voice sounded grim. She turned to look at him.

He had a ledger book in his hand, maybe showing the troop numbers. Open across the pages of the book, however, was a letter. He flipped it around and handed it to her.

It was in her handwriting.