She just hoped, when all of this was over, that the good things could still be salvaged.
Gunnett paused at the base of the docking tower.
“I’d like to go with you to Krona Peak,” she said, squeezing the rain out of her hair as she stood in the relative dryness of the tower’s shadow, “but there’s no way I can leave without checking on my husband first, and I know time is of the essence.”
“With Orin unable to attend the trial, it really would be best if you could be there,” Elix replied, frowning.
“How long will it take to get that fin fixed?” Sabira asked. “Maybe she can just follow me when it’s ready? I can’t imagine the trial is going to be over in half a day.” Not unless she turned out to be the world’s worst advocate, which was, unfortunately, a very real possibility.
Elix looked questioningly at Gunnett, who considered for a moment, then nodded.
“I’m not sure what good my presence will do you,” Gunnett said, “but if I can help, I will.”
She held her hand out first to Elix, and then to Sabira.
“I enjoyed our game, Marshal. Perhaps we’ll get another opportunity to play when this is all over,” Gunnett said as Sabira returned her handclasp. “Until tomorrow, then.”
Sabira and Elix watched until the dwarf woman disappeared into the rain and then they turned and entered the tower. Elix didn’t need to flash his chimera brooch; the guards here all recognized and seemed to genuinely like him, greeting him with smiles and sharp salutes. He made a good Marshal, Sabira thought, and a better captain. Host knew, there was no way she’d ever have that kind of heartfelt respect from her fellows, unless they were under the influence of some powerful mind control spell. She supposed she could always pass out helmets embedded with Khyber shards attuned to her will.…
“Elix, wait!”
He was at the top of the docking tower, just about to step back out into the rain.
Sabira rooted around in her pocket for a moment before coming up with the dragonshard that she’d dug out of the yrthak’s head. She handed it to him.
“Can you have Tilde take a look at this? It’s been bothering me ever since we left the Dust Dancer, and I just want to make sure it’s nothing we should be worried about.”
“Tilde?” Elix repeated, unable to keep the surprise out of his voice. Donathilde ir’Thul was the Vulyar office’s resident sorceress, formerly an instructor at Arcanix. She’d retired early when one of her favorite students died in the Maze of Shadowy Terror, a test she personally administered to graduating wizards as part of their final exams. Her protégé—and some said he was more than that—had snuck into the maze on his own the night before the test was scheduled. Whether he’d done it on a dare or was trying to prove himself, no one really knew. There were even rumors that he’d been trying to set up some sort of elaborate class prank, but whatever the reason, the end result was not in debate: He’d fallen prey to one of the magical creatures inside. Tilde had found him too late and had held what was left of him in her arms as he died.
The experience probably should have made her and Sabira fast friends, considering. Except that Tilde also happened to be Leoned’s older sister, and the only surviving ir’Thul sibling. And she hated Sabira with a passion, convinced that Ned would never have died if he’d only had a better partner. An accusation Sabira was sadly unable to refute.
“You think the yrthak attack was deliberate?”
“I’d like to rule out the possibility, for my own peace of mind.”
Elix shrugged and secreted the shard inside his shirt. “I’ll make sure she gets it.”
She followed him out onto the deck of the docking tower, where a Stormglory Bolt ironically named Lightning waited. At the gangplank, he introduced her to the ship’s first mate, then turned to leave with the barest of goodbyes.
Sabira grabbed his arm. She wasn’t sure when—or if—she’d see him again once she boarded the airship to Krona Peak, and she needed to know something.
“Back on the Dancer—”
“That was some nice singing, by the way. Though I’m not so sure about your choice of songs.…”
“Elix, I’m serious. What you said to Thecla. Did you mean that? ‘Men are fools when they’re in love.’ ”
“We both told a lot of lies onboard that ship, Saba,” he replied, his eyes shuttered and his face offering her nothing. “Why start being honest now?”
And with that, he turned and ran for the cover of the stairs as the downpour began in earnest.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Lightning reached Krona Peak just after sunrise the next day. It stormed the entire way, forcing the passengers to remain belowdecks. Sabira had been stuck in steerage, since Elix had only been able to secure her a seat, not a private cabin, which had all been reserved for paying customers. Not by her choice, she was crammed onto a bench in the middle of the cabin between two unsavory passengers. One was a warforged who sported a lute and a grand, feathered hat whose plumes kept getting in her face. And the other was an old man who kept bumping up against her and whom she was certain was either a lecher or was trying to steal her money pouch. By Balinor’s twisted horns, if he did it again, she was going to smack him over the head with the warforged’s lute, and then arrest them both for disturbing her peace.
An appreciative murmur went up from those closest to the portholes as the airship finally descended out of the cloud cover and the city was revealed in all its austere splendor below them.
The first glimpse of the dwarven stronghold never failed to impress, but it was most spectacular in the evening. Great stone ramparts rose up out of the mountainside, their sheer vertical faces reflecting the western sun so brilliantly that they seemed to be made of gold. The surfaces of the walls had been revetted with volcanic glass, quarried and transported from the ancient lava fields surrounding the Fist of Onatar, more than five hundred miles away. The effect was always startling, regardless of the time of day—the walls still shone even in this weak morning light, but like black ice instead of molten ore, and under the shadowless light of the noonday sun, they looked as though rivers of silver had rushed down their sides, only to be frozen in time by some legendary mage.
While many visitors assumed from the mass of the ramparts that they, along with most of the city, had been carved out of the mountain itself, the truth, as with most things dwarven in nature, was actually both simpler and far more complex. The walls had indeed been chiseled from the side of Krona Peak, but they were no longer attached to the mountain, at least not directly. Sabira didn’t pretend to understand the mechanics of it, though Aggar had tried several times to explain it to her. The ramparts had been excavated out of the mountainside to form a sort of bowl in which the city proper rested. If they remained connected to the mountain, in the absence of all the earth that had once been where the city now stood, they would be in danger of sheering off at their bases and collapsing during the area’s not infrequent earthquakes. To neutralize this threat, the dwarves had isolated the bases of each section of the walls, deep below ground level. It seemed entirely counterintuitive to her that the dwarves could keep the huge blocks of stone from moving by allowing their bases to do so, but Aggar had assured her that it worked, muttering something incomprehensible about energy absorbance and transference. And Sabira had no cause to doubt him: During the one temblor she herself had experienced while in Krona Peak, she’d been knocked from her feet and some of the buildings around her had swayed, even deformed. But the ramparts had not seemed to move at all, and not even the tiniest crack could be seen in the glossy black expanse of their seamless veneers. They remained unchanged.