Marsheila Rockwell - Skein of Shadows

“Hey, Jester. You still have that spyglass handy?”

The warforged nodded and produced the instrument from a pouch tied to a metal loop built into his hip plate, handing it over to Greddark.

“What, you like the sand so much, you want to see it close up?” Sabira asked skeptically as the dwarf extended the telescoping glass to its full length and placed it up against his eye. “Don’t worry-even moving as fast as we are, I have a feeling it’s going to catch up with us sooner rather than later.”

Greddark ignored her.

“The clarity with this glass is amazing-where did you get it? I used to have one-got broken in a tussle with some shifters back in Thrane-but it didn’t have near the distance this one does. Some truly fine craftsmanship went into this.”

Oh, for the love of Olladra’s weighted dice! Was the dwarf really waxing poetic about a spyglass, of all things?

“I… acquired it in the Cannith enclave, from an artificer there,” the warforged admitted, not sounding particularly sheepish about it.

“Well, next time you’re there, maybe you could acquire his schematics for it too,” Greddark commented as he pulled the glass away from his eye so he could examine its exterior appreciatively. “I’d be willing to pay handsomely for them.”

Sabira stared at the dwarf for a moment, not quite sure she’d heard him right, but figuring she probably had.

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t just try to solicit a burglary in front of a Sentinel Marshal,” she said.

“Good idea,” Greddark replied, bringing the spyglass up to his eye and peering through it at the approaching dust cloud. “Since you don’t technically have any jurisdiction here in the desert and you can’t arrest me for a crime that I haven’t actually committed yet, anyway.”

Sabira narrowed her eyes. Greddark, looking through the glass, couldn’t see her expression, but the others in the back of the wagon could, and they all moved surreptitiously away from the dwarf.

“Actually,” she said, casually unharnessing her urgrosh and laying it across her lap, Siberys spear tip pointed at the dwarf, “my jurisdiction is wherever my shard axe and I say it is. Something a confessed thief who is also wanted by House Medani might want to keep in mind before he starts planning additional crime sprees in my presence. Especially since Medani bounties are notoriously generous-even better than Marshal fees, sometimes. Don’t make me curious to find out how much better, hmm?”

She liked Greddark well enough, and she had no real interest in either arresting him for petty theft or turning him over to the Medanis, but he’d challenged her authority in front of men she was supposed to lead, and there was only ever one appropriate response to that. Slapping him down-hard-before anyone else had any similar ideas.

Greddark moved the glass away from his eye and glanced down at her shard axe, one eyebrow arching upward at what he saw. She’d positioned the weapon in such a way that a quick forward thrust would ensure that there would be no more Forgemaidens in his near future, if ever. They were awfully far from a House Jorasco healing center, and there were some wounds you didn’t really want to trust to a potion.

He inclined his head to her with a grudging grin.

“So noted. All future crime sprees will be planned out of your hearing, to give you plausible deniability. Satisfied?”

“Hardly ever,” she replied with a smirk of her own, pulling the urgrosh back a bit as the others in the wagon visibly relaxed. “But it’ll do. Now, why don’t you tell me what’s so interesting about that dust cloud?”

Greddark didn’t answer immediately. Instead he held the glass back up to his eye with one hand while he fumbled inside his shirt with the other. He pulled out a stylus and began scribbling numbers and equations on the side of a nearby crate, muttering under his breath as he did so.

He finally returned the spyglass to Jester-somewhat reluctantly, Sabira couldn’t help but notice-and spent a few more moments scribbling on the crate. Then he circled a number several times, nodding in satisfaction.

“That’s what I thought.”

“ What’s what you thought?” Sabira asked impatiently.

When Greddark turned so he could address everyone in the back of the wagon, Sabira knew they’d have to endure a lecture before getting an answer. She repressed an annoyed sigh. She’d been through enough training talks as she’d worked her way up the ranks in House Deneith to know that any sign of apathy would only make the lecturer go on that much longer. She’d become passably good at feigning interest over the years, but it was a skill she still hadn’t fully mastered. She wondered briefly if the trick with the shard axe would work a second time, to encourage the dwarf to get to the point faster, but she decided against it. If he was anything like the other tinkerers she’d known, she’d wind up having to actually impale him to get him to stop talking. It wasn’t worth wasting a healing potion over.

“I don’t know how familiar you all are with prevailing wind patterns…”

Sabira nearly groaned. Maybe it was worth it, after all.

“… winds in this part of Xen’drik should be from east to west, so any storm powered by those winds would also follow that route. We are traveling southwest at the moment, so the wind should be coming at us predominantly from behind, on the left. And, indeed, if you look outside, you’ll see that the various ropes, tails, and robes are being blown to the right.”

“So… what’s so noteworthy about that?”

“Well, my dear Marshal, if you look at the dust cloud, you’ll notice that it is not approaching us from the left, but from the right. In other words, it’s moving against the prevailing wind. And making headway.”

Sabira looked. The dwarf was right.

“It’s not a natural dust storm.” It wasn’t a question.

“No,” Greddark replied. “I’m not sure it’s a storm at all.”

“Well, what else could it be?”

The answer came from the back of the caravan, a series of metallic cries carried up the line of wagons on the unnatural wind.

“ ’Ware the dragon!”

Mol, Barrakas 9, 998 YK

The Menechtarun Desert, Xen’drik.

Jester dug his spyglass out again and handed it over to Sabira without being asked. She held the instrument up to her eye and was momentarily disoriented as the leading edge of the dust storm zoomed into focus so sharply she would swear she could make out individual grains of sand as they sped through the air. She blinked twice, then began scanning the sky.

“Low and to the left.”

That didn’t bode well. It meant the dragon was smart, creating the storm to distract them while it approached from another direction to avoid detection. Likely not a juvenile, then. So they’d have to deal with spells in addition to the dragon’s breath weapon and other physical attacks. Wonderful.

Sabira ran through a mental list of dragons that would be most comfortable in this hot, dry environment. It was short, but sobering. Copper, brass, red, maybe blue. But any dragon could live anywhere; the Blademarks drove that into the head of every recruit during their long hours of training. You had to be prepared for anything when dealing with one of the magical flying reptiles.

She’d never faced one herself, though she’d been drilled in how best to defeat those most likely to be found on Khorvaire. The closest she’d come had been her battle with those yrthaks over the Thunder Sea just two months ago. A lot of good men had fallen that day. If they had to fight off a true dragon, a lot more would fall on this one.

Sabira finally caught sight of the dragon, skimming low over the dunes as it approached.