“No!”
Even Torlan was startled by Tiadanna’s outburst. He dropped his arm from her shoulders and took her uninjured hand, stepping back so he could see her face more clearly.
“Tia, you really shouldn’t—” he began, but she cut him off.
“No, Torlan, you can’t!” she cried, pulling away. “You have no proof that this so-called accomplice even exists! It’s just a ploy to give them more time to come up with a way to get that accursed Tordannon scum out of this. That orc-spawn killed Mikos! You can’t let him get away with it!”
“And you killed Dorro!”
Sabira had been too focused on trying to convince the Council of the accomplice’s existence or she would have noticed Jhuddona making her way from the dead perceptor’s side to the knot of people around the Mroranons. As it was, she was as surprised as anybody when the priestess darted forward to tap Tiadanna on the forehead, muttering some words Sabira couldn’t quite hear.
Tiadanna’s eyes widened, first in shock, and then in panic. She looked like she was trying to say something, but her mouth wouldn’t work. Nothing would: Jhuddona had paralyzed her. Then the priestess snatched up the hand pinned to the crossbow and jerked the Narathun’s knife out, twisting the blade as she did so and ripping open the clots that had begun forming at the edges of the wound. The crossbow tumbled to the floor and blood gushed anew from the gaping, ragged hole. Unable to move or make a sound, Tiadanna’s eyes still managed to convey her agony as her pupils constricted and tears fell from lids that could not blink to stop them. If she hadn’t been under the priestess’s spell, she would be screaming.
But Jhuddona wasn’t done. She drew the knife back and then lunged at Tiadanna, her intent clear.
Sabira and Torlan reached her at the same time, the dwarf tackling her about the waist and Sabira grabbing her weapon arm, trying to wrest the blade away. The three of them went down in a heap amid the renewed shouts of Council members and guards.
Sabira wound up on top of the priestess and face-to-face with Torlan, whose hands were trapped beneath both her and Jhuddona. He couldn’t move until she got up. Sabira decided to take advantage of the situation.
“I need you to delay the trial until I can go to Frostmantle and track down Nightshard’s accomplice,” she said, shaking strands of his beard out of her face.
“So you’ve said,” he replied shortly. “I’m not convinced. And now’s not the time—”
“Actually, now’s the perfect time. Or I’ll suggest to our little floormat here that she call in the Sentinel Marshals to arrest your wife for the murder of one of her junior priestesses. Since service to the Sovereigns knows no boundaries, it wouldn’t be hard to argue that protection of those servants falls under our jurisdiction. And we would make sure Tiadanna got a fair trial, not one whose outcome is decided on curried Mroranon favor.” She smiled brightly at him, and their faces were so close that she saw the hatred scurry across his features before he was able to hide it. “Do you really want to risk that?”
“Fine. You have two weeks. But Tordannon remains here, in custody.”
“Works for me,” Sabira said as she rolled off the priestess’s body. She quickly cleaned the knife off on Jhuddona’s already-bloodied robes and scrambled to her feet before tossing the weapon back to the startled Narathun who was still dogging Aggar’s steps. Torlan extricated himself and then climbed to his own feet, motioning for the guards to take the priestess into custody. Jhuddona stiffened her body and refused to rise, so, after stuffing a bit of cloth in her mouth to gag her, three of the guards hoisted her into the air as respectfully as possible and carted her off through the same door Hrun had used earlier.
Torlan returned to his wife’s side just as the effects of Jhuddona’s spell began to wear off. He helped her over to the nearest bench while directing another of the guards to fetch a healer. Then he used Tiadanna’s discarded veils to bandage her hand.
Sabira was somewhat confounded by the arbiter’s behavior toward his wife, given the fact that she’d just tried to attack the person she thought had murdered her lover. She must come from a powerful family Torlan couldn’t risk alienating by punishing her for her infidelity. Either that, or his was one of the rare dwarven marriages that had begun as a contract but had blossomed into love—even if it was decidedly one-sided.
As she watched him gently wind the diaphanous black silk around Tiadanna’s wound, Sabira decided it was probably the latter, and felt a sudden pang of empathy.
To offset it, she casually remarked, “You know, you might want to rethink allowing weapons in here.”
Torlan’s look would have burned the hair off a gnoll.
“Your two weeks have already started, Shard Axe. I’d suggest you leave. Now.”
Sabira flashed a grin.
“Best idea I’ve heard all day.”
Sabira walked with Aggar, Gunnett, and Rockfist back to where the Tordannon heir had left his clothing, his faithful Narathun shadow not far behind. Before getting dressed, Aggar took his cloak and walked over to the perceptor’s body, lying forgotten on the eye of Aureon. He stooped low and spread the rich orange cloth over her corpse, pausing to reverently close her eyes before covering her face. Then he stood and addressed his guard.
“She was one of yours, wasn’t she? Why don’t you see about getting someone to take care of her, since the Council seems … otherwise occupied at the moment.” He looked sidelong at the clustered Council members, who had fallen back into arguing over whether or not Tiadanna should be arrested. Then he looked back at the Narathun. “Don’t worry. I won’t be going anywhere.”
The blond-bearded guard hesitated for a moment, his eyes straying to the orange shroud. Then he nodded his agreement and headed for the wide double doors, presumably to get one of his counterparts there to summon someone from the Temple of Aureon across town.
As Aggar buttoned his shirt and Rockfist stood by, waiting to return his client’s Gold Concordian rings to him, Sabira and Gunnett moved a little bit apart.
“You didn’t have a lot to say back there.”
Gunnett raised a black brow at her. “Everything had already been said; I had nothing pertinent to add,” she said with a shrug. “And I did tell you I wasn’t sure what good my presence here would do.”
“You also didn’t seem all that surprised to hear Nightshard had an accomplice.” Indeed, the black-haired woman had barely reacted to the news, seeming more interested in how the Council members responded. Sabira wondered if the dwarf had somehow managed to read Elix’s letter on the way over from Vulyar.
“I’m not.”
“Why is that? Because it fits into your theory that evil is just a point of view? If Nightshard had an accomplice, then that means there’s at least one other person out there to whom he wasn’t the villain of the story but the hero, right?”
“Essentially. But—”
“Wrong,” Sabira said heatedly, speaking over the other woman in her indignation. “Nightshard was no hero. He was nothing but a cowardly, murdering, evil bastard, and that’s all his accomplice is—just another criminal. And he’s going to be brought to justice, just like Nightshard was.”
“If you call that justice.”
“Excuse me?”
The two women left off their glaring to turn at the interruption. Anneka Soldorak had left the other Council members and crossed the room to speak with Sabira.