Gerrard spun on the minotaur and tried to break free, but Tahngarth's grip was too powerful. "So you want another fight?" Balling his free hand in a fist, Gerrard hurled a roundhouse toward Tahngarth's jaw.
Another hand grasped Gerrard's fist-this time a hand of silver. The pacifist Karn clutched Gerrard's arm implacably. "They're both right, Gerrard. Listen to them."
Gerrard stared at his three crew members, his three friends. He struggled a moment more but glimpsed his red-faced reflection in Karn's silvery chest. His eyes glowed like stoked embers. His brows were twisted demonically in the contours of the metal. His gritted teeth formed an ugly grimace.
Dropping his head, Gerrard gave an exhausted laugh. "I'm sorry. It's just being cooped up like this-not being able to fight our enemies, not knowing what's become of Hanna and the others…"
"All that's bad," Tahngarth said, "but it's none of that. It's Takara and her wine."
Gerrard lifted his eyes. "You don't mean she poisoned it?"
"No," Tahngarth said. "Not the wine. She's poisoning your thoughts. She's turning you into a monster, making you eat yourself away from the inside out. She made you mean, and if you keep listening to her, she'll destroy you."
Breathing heavily, Gerrard looked to his old friend Karn, who only nodded quietly. He stared down next at Squee.
The goblin said, "Let's both straighten up, eh?"
Gerrard smiled and nodded. "Eh." In a final act of violence, his leg lashed out. It struck none of his comrades, but instead a wine bottle that sat on the floor nearby. Glass shattered and wine spattered across the stones. "I'm drinking Takara's wine no longer."
Nodding their approval, Tahngarth and Karn released Gerrard.
Squee smiled and bent down to fetch something from the red mess. The mouth of the wine bottle had broken cleanly away, leaving a smooth ring of green glass. Squee poked the cork out from its center. "Squee like this ring." He slipped the Kyren ring from his finger, letting it fall carelessly to the floor, and reverently slid the green glass over his finger. "Squee wear this ring from now on."
"My father and I demand a private audience with the chief magistrate and his Kyren servants!" Takara shouted imperiously. Her voice filled the vast chamber, echoing among columns and through the rotunda above. Guards and nobles shrank back from the angry woman and the shivering blind man at her side. "Drive out the courtiers! Bar the doors! Pull the curtains!"
On his throne, the magistrate swallowed in dread. The action rippled bags of fat hanging from his chin. "Isn't your father receiving adequate care?"
"He will receive adequate care by the time I'm finished here!" She dragged a sword from her waist. "Now clear the chambers!"
In a move of uncommon athleticism, the magistrate clapped his hands twice. "You heard her. Out! All of you! Quickly. Guards, wait outside. Kyren, bar the doors!"
There was pandemonium in the next moments. Courtiers who had spent whole weeks lying about scampered as guards jabbed tridents at them. They gathered what they could- grapes and wine, cheese and games-and scuttled out into the glaring sun. More than a few wondered why this new giant killer should receive such special attention, but they knew better than to ask.
With a resonant boom, the main doors closed. The room darkened. A pair of goblins lifted a stout bar into its brackets over the doors. The courtiers and guards were gone. Even the gentle breezes that spent their days coiling among banners and veils died away to nothing.
"Better," Takara said, sheathing her sword.
With the departure of his court, the facade of command that veiled the magistrate unraveled. He trembled visibly, his neck shuddering in fearful anticipation. "H-How might I aassure your f-father his d-due?"
Takara smiled wickedly and walked slowly around the blind man, gazing at his pathetic figure. "You needn't trouble yourself. I'll make sure he receives his due." Coming up behind her father, she shoved him. Her boot lashed out, catching Starke in the back of the knee. He crumpled to the floor.
"Takara!" he gasped piteously, clutching his bruised leg and kneeling. "Please, Takara. What are you doing?"
She continued to circle her father, staring hatefully at him. "I preach to Gerrard about his betrayals, but I should be preaching to you. You're the one who betrayed Vuel into the hands of Phyrexia, and Sisay and the rest of the crew too."
Starke's trembling fingers clutched at the bandage around his eyes. He was a broken man, sobbing into a stubbly beard. "I betrayed them for you, Takara. I betrayed them to get you back."
"And now, the traitor himself is betrayed," she said with relish. As she walked about him, a vulture circling a doomed man, she slowly drew a dagger from her belt. "I'm the one who blinded you, Starke, or didn't you know?"
His lips trembled, and he shook his head. "No! Madness! You didn't blind me. Volrath blinded me."
"You betrayed everyone to win back your daughter," Takara said, though her voice was changing, deepening. "And you thought you had won her back, but betrayal is a wager that wins only its own returns."
"Volrath!" hissed Starke in terror.
It was his last utterance. Behind him, Takara grabbed Starke's forehead with one hand and drew her knife in a long, slow, deep line over his throat. It was almost a decapitating wound, so deep was her hatred. There came a wet, red moment, and then the blind man slumped to his face on the mosaic floor. His lifeblood made a bright sunburst around him, what seemed a gleaming and fitting adornment in that patterned place.
Takara stepped back, but she was no longer Takara. Her red hair compressed into a gray mantle of skin, and bone, and brain. It curled up from knife-edged brows, back around pointed ears, and down to fuse along a tapered jaw. Small black horns jutted from the ridge of these folds, and a tail of flesh draped from the back of the knobby skull. Where once there had been fiery eyes, now were white, inhuman orbs. A masculine face replaced the feminine one. The muscled body of a man replaced the wiry litheness of the woman. Clothes became plates of gray armor across a tortured green-black skin. At last, the body matched the voice… matched the seething hate.
Volrath. The shapeshifting lord of Rath-and Mercadia.
Snickering gleefully, Kyren emerged from behind the throne of the magistrate.
The fat man quivered there, staring in dread at the corpse of Starke and the pool of his blood-but not for long. Kyren hands laid hold of the magistrate, set after set, and claws sunk in. Struggling, the crew of goblins hauled hard. With a rubbery motion, the magistrate slipped from his seat and spilled messily to the floor. His finery ended in a pile, and his corpulence lolled out grotesquely beneath the fabric. His hands and face slapped the floor in the pool of blood. Powder makeup was painted in red. Gibbering in dread and tears, the magistrate lifted his head.
Volrath strode slowly through the sanguine pool. His armored feet dripped with each step. Lifting one of those gory boots, he set it gently on the magistrate's head, forcing it down into the blood.
With a contented breath, Volrath said, "It is good to be rid of masks once in a while. It is good, occasionally, for outward things to plainly reflect the things that lie within."
The chief of the Kyren gestured placatingly toward the empty chair of the magistrate. "Does Master Volrath's plan proceed well?"
Treading across the magistrate's head, Volrath slowly ascended the throne. He sat, easing himself into the chair. "Yes. My blood-brother Gerrard is half destroyed. His ship is in my grasp. His friends travel to retrieve the artifact that will repair it. Already, my agents have framed them for the theft of the device. Once it is in my hands, my people will repair the ship, and I will kill Gerrard and fly Weatherlight and the Legacy back to Rath." He smiled with vicious savor. "Yes. Master Volrath's plans proceed well."