Don Bassinghtwaite - The Binding Stone

"How does he do that?" she asked. "How can he do that?"

"He's been able to sleep whenever he wants for as long as I've known him. No matter what's been happening, give Geth a moment of quiet and he can go to sleep." Singe shook his head in awe. "It's a valuable gift when you're a mercenary."

The wizard turned away, moving to the room's window and throwing back the shutters. The window faced away from the street and out over the low rooftops of Zarash'ak's ramshackle sprawl. A cool breeze drifted in from the distant sea, pushing back some of the pungent marsh smell that clung to the city. After a moment, Dandra slipped across the room to join him.

"You haven't said much about the time that you and Geth served together in the Blademarks," she said.

Singe looked down at her, then away. "No, I haven't," he said.

"Being an inanimate crystal gives you a lot of time to watch what's going on around you. The only time I've seen people with the depth of anger you two have is when they were friends before they became enemies."

Singe's face twisted. For a moment, Dandra wondered if maybe she'd pressed too hard, but then his eyes closed and he let out a long sigh.

"Not too long after I joined the Frostbrand-our Blademarks company-the commander of the company, Robrand d'Deneith, took a few of us on a recruiting mission," he said in a low voice. "Folk from the Eldeen Reaches generally make good scouts and the Frostbrand had developed a specialty in taking winter assignments, so we headed into the northern Eldeen. Not quite so isolated as Bull Hollow, but still more wild than civilized. In a little place that was hardly more than a crossroads, Robrand started his recruiting speech." Singe's expression grew nostalgic. "Twelve moons, the old man could talk! Recruiting was a hard sell in that region-the Eldeen Reaches had seceded from Aundair only a generation or so before and most Reachers didn't want to have anything to do with the world outside their forests. But there was one eager young shifter who came forward with a hunger for adventure in his eye and signed up on the spot."

"Geth," said Dandra and Singe nodded.

"There's a tendency in every Blademarks company for new recruits to band together. Eight of us joined the Frostbrand within a couple of months of each other. I was the first, Geth was the last. The bunch of us were practically inseparable for the next five years." He reached up and ran a finger along his cheekbone, high under his left eye. Dandra looked closely and saw a thin scar. "Geth gave me that during a tavern brawl in Metrol. He was aiming for the Cyran soldier who was holding me from behind and missed."

"That can't be what broke you up though."

"That was nothing. We laughed about it."

"Then what happened?" Dandra hesitated, then said, "Tonight when Vennet mentioned 'Narath'… you've said that name to Geth before and he doesn't like to hear it either."

The wizard gave no response.

"Singe," Dandra said, "what happened at Narath?"

"Go to sleep, Dandra," said Singe. His voice was cold and empty. "Take the bed next to Geth if you want. I'll sleep on the floor."

Dandra glanced at the bed. There was plenty of room for three people to lie side by side. She looked back to Singe. He was still staring out of the window, his face a harsh mask. Dandra held her tongue and turned away, leaving him to whatever dark memories were running through his head.

The sound of the room's door closing woke her. Dandra sat upright, her mind snapping alert and the drone of whitefire throbbing on the air. On the floor under the window, Singe came to his feet with his rapier in his hand.

Geth stood inside the door, a big bundle of rags and three broad conical straw hats in his arms. He looked at both of them critically. "I walk out of here and you don't stir, but I come in and you're both ready to strike me down?" He walked over to the bed and dropped the bundle. "Here. I've been to market."

The rags were clothes, simple and well worn-by fisherfolk previously if the smell that rolled off them was anything to judge by. Dandra wrinkled her nose. Singe stared. "Did you actually pay for those?" he demanded.

"More or less." Geth tossed a muddy brown shirt to the wizard. "We can't just walk up to Lightning on Water. We need something to disguise ourselves."

"No one will recognize us by smell at least," Dandra pointed out with a grin. Singe gave her a dim glower.

It was the middle of the morning by the time they left the inn and stepped back onto the street. Zarash'ak was alive around them. The air was humid and close, but the people of the City of Stilts moved around in a hurry, as if eager to get their errands finished before day grew any hotter. Dandra found herself staring around as she, Geth, and Singe wandered back toward the docks, unexpectedly aware of what she had missed of Zarash'ak when she had passed through as a crystal around Tetkashtai's neck. The city had sounds, sights, and smells she hadn't really appreciated before. Musicians on a street corner made strange music that mixed a chirping stringed instrument with a deep, thrumming pipe. On streetside grills, vendors cooked long strips of meat brushed with a thin sauce that smelled both spicy and sour. Other vendors made thick rounds of dark gold bread, flapping a pale yellow dough back and forth between their palms before slapping it onto hot iron griddles. People seemed to buy the yellow bread at one stall, then wander on to another to buy meat or blackened roast vegetables to stuff inside.

"What is that?" she asked as they passed one grill stall.

"Snake," said Geth. He pointed at the bread. "That's made out of a flour pounded from a kind of marsh reed called ashi."

"When it's cooked, it's the same color as Ashi's hair."

Geth grunted at the observation. "Let's buy some and ask her about it, shall we?"

They followed a different route to the docks than the one that they had taken the night before and approached Lightning on Water from a distance. Singe had suggested they would find Vennet's crew busy unloading the ship-the half-elf might be a treacherous serpent, but he was also a Lyrandar captain and clearly took his business seriously. To Dandra's surprise though, they could see as they approached that activity on the ship was subdued. Most of the crew seemed to be hanging over the side, watching as crowds surged around on the dock below. Geth held both her and Singe back while he scanned the dock and the ship thoroughly for any sign of Vennet or Ashi. Finally, he shook his head.

"I don't see either of them," he reported.

"What do you think's happening on the dock?" asked Dandra.

"Let's find out."

Dandra tilted her hat slightly toward the ship as they passed, trying to conceal her distinctively dark skin from the sailors above. Although it didn't seem likely that any of the crew shared their captain's vile faith, even a casual greeting could give them away. Once they were among the crowd, it was a little easier to hide and she relaxed a bit-at least until she realized that the attention of the shifting, gawking crowd was focused on the narrow alley down which she, Geth, and Singe had made their escape. The three of them pushed their way carefully to the front of the crowd.

A long, thick stain of dried blood painted the wall to one side of the alley mouth. At the top of the stain was a deep ragged hole, as if a spike had driven into the wood. The hole was also bloodstained.

Beside the stain, two words had been scratched into the wood: blue doors.

"Rat!" breathed Geth. He nudged the man who stood next to him. "Do you know what happened here?"

"Dagga. Word is that the ship over there"-the man gestured to Lightning on Water-"was transporting a mad woman. I hear she got loose, kidnapped someone from his cabin, and even tried to set fire to the ship. When that didn't work, she came down here, hacked off her prisoner's hand, pinned it up to the wall, and ran off with the rest of him!"