Marsheila Rockwell - Skein of Shadows

“He does indeed! What do I owe you, Dark, Artificer and Other Things?”

“How about passage to Trent’s Well?” Sabira answered quickly before the dwarf could respond. While Boroman ir’Dayne had written them a letter of introduction to Brannan ir’Kethras, he hadn’t given them any means of actually finding the head of the Tarath Marad excavation. And while she could have bought passage easily enough with Breven’s letter of credit, she wanted to save the bulk of that money for supplies and something resembling decent mercenaries.

“Fair enough,” the Wayfinder replied, holding out his hand. Greddark shook it somewhat sullenly before shooting a glare at Sabira.

The warforged turned to the barkeep, Glaive, to settle up his bill. Sabira took the opportunity to move closer to the dwarf, lowering her voice.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

Greddark harrumphed.

“I was going to tell him he could buy me a cup of tea.”

Wir, Barrakas 4, 998 YK

Stormreach, Xen’drik.

Kupper-Nickel told them they were in luck. He had a desert run planned for today, but he had to leave right at the fourth bell. Gratitude notwithstanding, he had a schedule to keep. If they weren’t at Falconer’s Spire and aboard his red-winged airship by then, he’d have to go on without them and they’d either have to wait another two weeks for him to return or find someone else to take them. But considering the majority of the trips to Xen’drik’s interior were funded one way or another by the Aurum-which meant Arach-that wasn’t really an option. So Sabira’s next order of business was getting a group of men together to accompany her and Greddark across the desert and into the darkness below it. Quickly.

“Why not just go to the captain of the Sentinel Marshal outpost here?” the inquisitive asked as they sat at a table at the Burnished Bull. “Once he knows Breven sent you, surely he’ll give you his best and brightest for the task.”

Sabira laughed at that.

“First, Greigur wouldn’t give me charge of his best men if Dol Dorn himself appeared and commanded it to be so.” The Sovereign God of Strength and Steel, most Marshals revered either him or his sister, Dol Arrah, the Sovereign Goddess of Sun and Sacrifice. Though if Sabira had been pressed to choose, she would have eschewed them both for Olladra. At least the goddess of luck didn’t pretend she was anything other than fickle.

“Second, Breven doesn’t want him to know anything about it. Greigur would be far more likely to send his own men after the artifact than he would be to help the Baron retrieve it, so we’ve got to make sure he doesn’t know anything about it. Which is going to make hiring a handful of Deneith soldiers under his nose a very tricky proposition.”

“Why do they have to be Deneith?”

That gave Sabira pause. Breven hadn’t told her she needed to hire men from the House; in fact, he hadn’t specifically told her she needed to take anyone with her at all, though he must have meant for her to do so when he gave her access to his bank account.

But thirty Blademarks and a powerful sorceress had gone down into Tarath Marad, and the only one who returned was their guide. If Sabira was going to follow in their footsteps, she wanted the best warriors she could find at her back. She’d just assumed they’d be wearing the Deneith chimera on their armor, but Greddark was right. There were other mercenaries in Stormreach, ones whose services could be bought without Greigur’s knowledge, and their steel was just as sharp as that of anyone who wore the green and yellow.

Sabira chuckled self-deprecatingly. As often as she ridiculed others for their blind obedience to the House, her assumption that Deneith warriors were superior to any others simply by virtue of their name was just another side of the same coin. She was suddenly glad she wasn’t traveling with either Aggar or Elix-both of them would have seen her hypocrisy in an instant, and only one of them might have kept quiet about it.

“They don’t, necessarily. But I don’t know who else we can find, hire, and supply before the fourth bell.”

Greddark shrugged. “How about some warforged? A lot of them don’t seem too happy working for Cannith right now; I’d bet they’d jump at the chance to prove they’re more than just two-legged toolboxes.” He looked over at Glaive, who was bringing them two mugs of cider, since the tavern sadly carried neither tea nor dwarven whiskey.

“No offense meant,” he said to the warforged.

“The mere fact that you are concerned I might be offended proves that,” the barkeep replied as he set down their drinks. “How many warriors do you need?”

Sabira chewed her lip thoughtfully. Tilde had gone in with thirty men, but the very size of her party could have led to its demise-the larger the group, the harder it was to pass unnoticed by the things that lurked in the shadows, or to maneuver in tight places when such notice could not be escaped.

She looked over at Greddark inquiringly, but the dwarf shrugged, as if to say, “It’s your show.”

“It’s not a question of how many,” she said after a moment. “It’s a question of how good they are.”

Glaive nodded his approval.

“In that case, you will want to speak to Bardiche. He is a warforged in search of a purpose-better you give it to him than the Lord of Blades.”

“The Lord of Blades?” Sabira repeated in surprise. “I didn’t know his cult extended this far outside the Mournland.”

She didn’t know much about the shadowy figure, and everything she had heard was full of exaggeration and contradiction. By all accounts a powerful and charismatic warforged, the Lord of Blades was rumored to be building an empire for the living constructs out of the bones and ashes of the nation that had once been Cyre-though for what purpose, no one could truly say. She’d heard him variously described as a teacher and a prophet, a warlord and a madman. The truth, of course, was probably somewhere in between those extremes.

What she hadn’t heard was that he had any interest-or sway-in Stormreach. That would certainly explain the unrest among the Cannith warforged. Though the Treaty of Thronehold had given the warforged their freedom at the end of the Last War, there were many people who still regarded the metal men as little more than slaves. Even the most enlightened tended to see the warforged, who had originally been created as weapons of war, as painful reminders of that century-long struggle. Few accepted them as actual people, let alone individuals with abilities and desires that might well have nothing to do with warfare.

If asked, she would have said Stormreach, home of misfits and outcasts, was a perfect haven for warforged-or anyone, really-struggling to find acceptance in the wider world of Eberron. Apparently, she would have been wrong.

“There are many Bladesworn among my brethren now,” Glaive replied. “Some say the Lord of Blades himself has come to Xen’drik, seeking an ancient device that will give him ultimate power.”

“Lot of that going around,” Greddark said, and Sabira kicked him beneath the table.

“So where can I find this Bardiche?” she asked a little too loudly, giving the dwarf a dirty look.

Glaive seemed oblivious to the exchange. More likely, he just didn’t know what to make of the silly fleshlings.

“When last I saw him, he was near the Maker’s Gate with two others, arguing with one of the monitors. If he has not yet been taken into custody for his impertinence, you may still find him there. You will know him by the dramatic flourishes he uses when he speaks. I believe his makers may originally have intended for him to serve House Phiarlan.”