Don Bassingthwaite - The Killing Song

She nodded. “I’ve seen something similar. It’s a little bit like the long step, but used as a weapon-under the psion’s touch, tiny portions of matter or flesh are displaced in space. It’s a weak power, but it can do a lot of damage.”

“It hurt a lot,” Singe complained. He wiped at the red marks with a towel, but the rain had washed away all but a tint of blood. There wasn’t even an open wound. Singe cursed again. “Why would a scribe have a power like that?”

Dandra frowned. “I didn’t know he did. When Tetkashtai knew him, he was more interested in his work than in developing the power of his mind.”

“I’ll bet he wasn’t insane and attacking people in the street, either,” said Natrac. “What do you think was wrong with him, and why was Nevchaned covering it up?” He looked up. “Do you think it could have something to do with Dah’mir?”

No one said anything for a long moment. Dandra suspected that she knew what they were all thinking, even if no one wanted to be the first to say it. Erimelk was clearly mad. Dah’mir wanted to drive kalashtar mad. It was too much of a coincidence to be dismissed, but it also meant that the dragon had already started his move against the community.

On the one hand, that might make it easier to present their belated warning to the kalashtar elders. On the other, maybe there was a reason the elders were trying to keep Erimelk’s madness quiet. Dah’mir intended his mad kalashtar as servants for the Master of Silence. He wouldn’t want them roaming free. If that was the case, maybe Nevchaned-and the other elders-were working with Dah’mir. The idea chilled her.

“I think,” she said, “we need to know more about what’s happening here before we approach the elders with our warning, so we know we’re talking to the right people.”

Singe, scratching his whiskers in thought, nodded agreement, but Ashi frowned. “How do we do that?” she asked.

An idea took form in Dandra’s head. An idea that didn’t particularly please her. “We don’t,” she said. “I do.” Singe’s hand paused on his chin, and he looked at her sharply, but she shook her head and continued. “Natrac was right. Kalashtar will say things around another kalashtar they won’t say around strangers. Especially if they think it’s a kalashtar they already know.” She touched a hand to her chest. “Like Tetkashtai.”

Singe’s fingers fell, but he didn’t dismiss the idea. Dandra could see him turning it in his mind, and when he spoke, she noticed it wasn’t the plan that he questioned. “Can you do it?” he asked. “You’ll be facing your people on your own.”

She drew herself up. “I thought we’d decided that the people who matter are here.”

He smiled at that. “When will you do it?”

“Tonight. There’s a place-a kind of meeting hall. The kalashtar will be expecting me to visit after a journey anyway. I’ll be able to find answers to rumors there.” She gestured around the apartment. “You can stay here if you want.”

“I think I’d go crazy just sitting and waiting for you,” Singe said. “I’ve got a better idea. There’s a small House Deneith enclave across the city in Deathsgate district I want to visit. It’s a Blademarks recruiting hall. I told Geth to send a message there when he got to Zarash’ak. We took long enough getting here ourselves that one might be waiting now.” He looked to Ashi. “Do you think you’d like to go? You’d get to see more of the city, and there shouldn’t actually be any members of Deneith proper on duty this late-you could get a little more exposure to Deneith without any risk of discovery.”

Ashi’s grin was so wide the two small bone hoops that pierced her lower lip turned sideways. “Try and keep me from coming!”

“That’s why I asked you.”

Dandra turned to Natrac. “Are you going to go too, or stay here?”

The half-orc paused in the act of drying himself, then continued. “Neither,” he said.

Singe narrowed his eyes. “What are you up to?”

Natrac gave a sigh, stopped, and glanced up. “Let’s just say that Dandra’s not the only one with places she has to go to alone,” he said. “I used to have contacts under street. They might still be around. If they are, they may have heard something. But I can’t be sure that they’re still around or that they’ll be inclined to help us.” He looked at them all. “I know you can all handle yourselves in a fight, but the best thing to do in the places I need to go is not to start a fight in the first place.”

Dandra exchanged a glance with Singe and nodded. “If you think that’s what’s best. Can you at least tell us where in the city you’re-?”

“No,” he said, stopping her. “And don’t try telling me that whatever I’m hiding, it doesn’t matter to you. This is a part of my life I don’t want back. Give me a chance to rest and dry out-I’ll go and be back before dawn.”

She frowned at him. “Can I wish you good luck?”

Natrac grunted. “I’ll take that.”

They all changed into dry clothes and lay down to rest, but when they rose, Natrac had already slipped out. There was an extra key to the door hidden inside a crock. Dandra brought it out and gave it to Singe. He embraced her without a word, then he and Ashi departed. Dandra took a brief look around the apartment and left as well.

The rain had stopped, but the streets of Fan Adar were still empty. Dandra walked from the light of one everbright lantern to the next without seeing anyone-or, thankfully, any sign of another one of Dah’mir’s herons. The need to watch for them reminded her of the time after her first escape from the Bonetree mound, when she and Tetkashtai had fled across the Shadow Marches, trying to evade the herons, Bonetree hunters, and dolgrims Dah’mir had sent in pursuit.

It was, in fact, too much like her nights on the run. Unease stirred in her. Had the streets always been this quiet, or did they just seem that way because she was-possibly for the first time ever-utterly alone? Singe wasn’t there to support her. Tetkashtai, her constant counterpart since the moment she had awakened to consciousness, was only a memory. There was no one.

She wasn’t sure that she liked it.

Sound came as she crossed a walkway and descended a broad ramp to a sunken courtyard. The courtyard itself was empty except for a statue of a kalashtar woman, her crystal eyes raised to the skies, but on its far side, a short flight of stairs rose again to the porch of a low building-the community hall called the Gathering Light. Warm light and noise escaped from the building-the light making golden lines around edges of the building’s doors, the noise drifting on the air in a haze of half-heard music and speech.

Dandra crossed the courtyard, put a foot on the lowest stair, hesitated for a moment, then pressed her lips together. You can do this, she told herself. What is it compared to what you’ve already done? She raised her chin, continued up to the porch, and pulled open one of the doors.

In her heart, she’d half-expected all activity in the hall to pause as she walked through the doorway and those gathered within turned to stare at the stranger in their midst. Her entry, however, attracted no more than idle curiosity. A few people looked up to see who had arrived. Even fewer gave her a second look. A very few, friends of Tetkashtai-or of Medalashana or Virikhad-waved in greeting. Dandra waved back but stayed near the door, trying to look as if she were searching the hall for someone while she took stock of the environment and tried to decide what to do next.

The main chamber of the Gathering Light was long and, for a structure in Sharn, relatively low. Doors to the side opened onto stairs that led up or down to storerooms and private meeting rooms. During the day, the community hall served a variety of purposes, from cultural education to physical training to quiet political and philosophical discussions. With night’s fall, however, the hall had come alive in its main purpose as a social hub of the community. Kalashtar and Adaran humans-far more of the latter than the former-mingled through the chamber, falling into clusters to share conversation, glasses of pale tea, and bits of hot food plucked from pots wrapped in braided straw. Around the outside of the room, they stood. Closer to the middle, they sat. In the very center of the long hall, a low circular stage had been set up. Four musicians sat on it, playing the wind and string instruments of Adar, and anyone who felt like it had joined in with their song. Music and speech clashed and broke over the crowd like waves on a beach.