“I don’t care that Gamnon is dead,” Tallis murmured, and Lenrik knew he was lying, “but …”
Tallis let his words trail off, his back against the wall in the spare room. After a long pause, he looked back at the elf. “Listen, Lenrik. Thanks.”
The priest nodded with a sad smile. The adult Tallis had always conveyed to him a sense of courage and competency, but it was impossible for Lenrik to look upon his friend without seeing the boy he once knew. He saw him that way now, frightened beyond real comforting.
Very little could faze Tallis. Not the walking dead, not the thunderous charge of Thrane cavalry, not even death at the hands of the Seeker priests in Atur who’d put a modest bounty on his head, but guilt obviously wracked Tallis’s soul more than anything else could.
“I still mean what I said,” Tallis said. “I’m not bringing you into this. I’ll be staying at my own flat. They’re really looking for me now, but my place is still secure.”
Lenrik shrugged. “I brought myself into this the day I asked Aureon to show me the larger course for your life.”
As he’d relayed the full events of the previous night to Lenrik, Tallis felt some measure of the horror melt away. With a mug of his preferred Nightwood Pale in hand and a thick woolen blanket around him, the mere company of his oldest friend made him feel grounded again. He’d been a fool to try and keep it all in. He could still picture the assassin’s preternatural grace and dispassionate killing, but the helpless feeling was slowly replaced with mounting rage. Tallis would find the killer again. Haedrun was his only lead.
“The Market’s not for another two nights. I can’t contact Haedrun any other way. It’s the only place we meet now, and that’s if she hasn’t hopped the rail already-”
“I need to tell you something,” Lenrik said. His tone had changed. It sounded resigned. “I have met with Haedrun myself on several occasions.”
Tallis looked at his friend. Lenrik seldom kept anything important from him, yet in the last few years-since the war’s end-he felt that they had been growing apart. Their shared military experiences had established this friendship, but their current lifestyles couldn’t be more different. Tallis had his own agenda, did what he thought was right, and subverted the law to do it. He even made a good living of it. But after his many years in the service of Karrnath, Lenrik had retired here in Korth. Now he practiced his faith in a temple, not the field of battle, serving the beleaguered people who had lost so much in the Last War.
“Will you tell me?” Tallis asked.
Lenrik nodded. “Three months ago, she started to attend my sermons. Quietly at first, always sitting in the back. Eventually she found the courage to approach me. When she finally introduced herself, I suspected she was the same Haedrun of whom you sometimes spoke.”
Tallis opened his mouth, but Lenrik held up a hand. “No need to ask. She doesn’t know of our connection.”
He remembered Lenrik’s words the last time they talked about their secret friendship. “No one knows,” the elf had said, “except perhaps the Sovereign Host, and so far they’ve kept our secret.”
“Haedrun suffers, as do many in this land.”
As do we all, Tallis thought. For the sacrifices we are forced to make, for those who are taken from us. For those who are turned against us.
“She seeks atonement for the things she has done. I offered to counsel her. I think she was drawn to Aureon specifically because he represents stability. Order. In her grief, she could only handle one god. The Nine together can seem imposing and faceless to outsiders.”
Tallis thought of the older woman, Mova, whom he knew Lenrik had met with several times before. The priest counseled many desperate people, day after day. He spent more time talking to them individually than he did preaching the tenets of the faith.
Tallis didn’t expect Haedrun to be among those desperate people. He envisioned the stern woman as he knew her. Lovely, dark-eyed Haedrun, who had lost her children to the claws of the undead, who had gained from her pain the courage of a soldier twice her size. It seemed unthinkable that she would turn to the gods for salvation. Haedrun was the sort of woman who had saved herself. How well did Tallis really know Haedrun, after all? She was a remarkable, tragic woman, but he had difficulty counting treachery among her assets. How could she set him up for the Ebonspire crime? Or was someone else forcing her cooperation?
Lenrik continued. “She never mentioned the Red Watchers, though I could sense that she wanted to. She is trying to protect them-and me.”
“A familiar pattern,” Tallis said with a smile. “Would you know how to find her?”
The priest shook his head. “It is not appropriate for a priest to intrude in the personal lives of a Vassal unless invited to. I don’t know where she stays in this city.” His voice took on a scolding tone. “Now, if I’d known that the Red Watchers were giving you work again, I might have asked her anyway.”
Tallis clucked his tongue. “It’s enough that you let me confide in you like this.”
“The assassin concerns me most,” Lenrik said, rising. “I will consult the Archives of Aureon. I wonder if it was some manner of spell she was using, not a quality of the assassin herself. Spells that can make a person incorporeal are beyond the province of most magewrights and novice magicians. It sounds like you’re dealing with a wizard, and a well-studied one at that.”
Tallis let out a sigh. “Why not? Everything I ever knew seems to be changing.”
When she’d finally coaxed a fire in the hearth of her room, Soneste dropped heavily into a chair. She longed for the familiar comforts of her own apartment in Ivy Towers, but she resigned herself to the austere accommodations of the Seventh Watch. They were suitably spacious, certainly, with an adjoining closet and washroom, but the wintry chill of Karrnath in Sypheros seeped through the very walls of her second floor room.
Wrapped in a heavy wool blanket, Soneste examined the small book she’d found hidden at the ambassador’s dwelling. It was Gamnon’s travel itinerary, which she confirmed by comparing the handwriting against his letters of credit. The last two weeks’ entries revealed that he’d been on holiday, touring the major cities of Khorvaire with his family. Setting out from Wroat by lightning rail, he’d visited Starilaskur, Passage, Fairhaven, and Thaliost before crossing Scions Sound by ship. In Rekkenmark, he’d resumed the rail line to Korth. Krona Peak, the capital of the Mror Holds, had been his planned final destination.
But fate had chosen Korth.
Gamnon had spent two days within each city. Notations listed meetings he’d arranged with various men, most of whom sounded like merchant lords. Aside from their political work, the noble ir’Daresh family had always had a hand in Breland’s metal industry. So the question remained, was trade a mere side project or was the ambassador’s family business in the fore? According to the information Thuranne had provided her, Gamnon and his immediate family were the last of his line. There were no surviving heirs of his estate. Who, then, would benefit from the end of the ir’Daresh family? Surely what holdings remained would be taken by the Brelish crown. The assassin would receive no vast revenue from this murder.
Unless one of the men in ir’Daresh’s business itinerary knew more. Any one of them could be connected to the murder. Of special note were the two names listed for Gamnon’s Korth visit: Vorik ir’Alanso and Lord Charoth Arkenen.
Chapter SEVEN
Mol, the 9th of Sypheros, 998 YK
After a night of restless sleep, Soneste woke early and forced herself into a meditative state. Veshtalan had taught her an exercise to focus the mind and quiet the world. To make use of the “gifts of the Great Light,” as he’d called her powers, her mind needed to be rested and well-ordered. Both were hard to come by this morning, especially with the cough Karrnath’s damnable climate had given her.