Samantha Henderson - Dawnbringer

NONTHAL, TURMISH

1600 DR-THE YEAR OF UNSEEN ENEMIES

At the entrance to House Beguine, Lakini asked for an audience with Vorsha Beguine. The doorkeeper was very polite, very ingratiating, and said the mistress was busy with the kitchen, or with her husband, or in her private chambers. Could the fairlady come back another time?

Lakini bent close to the doorkeeper’s ear and informed him that if he didn’t tell Sanwar Beguine, immediately, that a deva late of Shadrun was here to tell him of the Key, she would not be responsible for the state of his guts. The man paled and hurried away.

Sanwar received Lakini in the library of House Beguine, with the sun shining through the domed glass overhead. Since she’d seen him at Shadrun a few months ago, he’d gained a little weight and had more white in his hair, but he was still a good-looking man.

He frowned, obviously not expecting her.

She knew she had to act quickly, before his caution overcame his greed.

“You’re not whom I expected,” said Sanwar.

“The other sent me,” she said smoothly, still walking toward him. She was almost to him before his eyes widened and he raised his hand and a smell like lightning on a hot day filled the room. Before he could manifest the spell, she smashed him to the floor.

He groaned and tried to roll away, still gesturing with his fingers. She already had a thin rope in hand. Kicking his hands apart, she seized him by the wrists and bound them together. She reached for his feet and he kicked at her.

“Do that again and I break them,” she growled, and he subsided.

There was a gasp, and Lakini looked up to see a servant in the doorway, mouth open as she looked as her master trussed like poultry on the floor.

“Bring Vorsha Beguine here, now,” Lakini told her.

The woman hesitated, obviously unsure whether to obey or raise the alarm.

“Now!” Lakini growled.

The woman scuttled away.

Something plucked at her throat. She turned to see Sanwar muttering a spell. She kneeled next to him and clamped her hand across his mouth.

“Unless you want to be gagged,” she said, “you won’t try that again.”

“Sanwar-? What are you doing?” said a voice. Vorsha Beguine stood there, looking bewildered. Lakini could see some of Kestrel’s features in her mother’s pretty, now-worried face.

“I’ve come to see you. Your husband can wait there for now,” Lakini said, nudging him with her toe.

Open-mouthed, the woman looked from Sanwar to the deva. “But … you can’t just-”

“But I can, and I did.”

“I’ll fetch the guards.” Vorsha turned to the door.

It opened and Kestrel stood there.

“Kestrel! I thought-! I had heard-”

Vorsha flung herself at her daughter. Hesitantly Kestrel’s arms went around her mother. Lakini saw thin wires vibrating beneath her skin.

“So it’s not true?” said Vorsha.

“I’m sorry, Mother. It is.”

Vorsha drew back and cradled her daughter’s ravaged face with the palm of her hand. “Then Arna?”

“Is dead. And Geb. And Shev. And little Bron.”

With each name Vorsha flinched as if she’d been struck.

“And the worst thing, Mother, is that I killed them.”

Vorsha looked at Kestrel as if she were mad. At her feet, Lakini felt Sanwar stir, and she put a cautionary foot to his throat.

“How is that possible?”

“Like this.”

Kestrel held out her hand. On her palm was a lump of melted glass. With trembling fingers Vorsha took it.

“Look inside,” said Lakini.

The woman blinked at five strands of brown hair that twisted inside the ruined charm. Lakini saw she didn’t have to explain. Three of the hairs fused inside, Vorsha had plucked herself from her daughter’s hairbrush. The other belonged to Sanwar.

Vorsha’s lips pressed together, tight and white, and her eyes were enormous. She turned her unblinking gaze on Sanwar.

“What did you do?” she said, her voice cold.

“He made Kestrel a weapon, against her will and inclination, to strike against the Jadarens from inside,” said Lakini.

Vorsha clutched the ruined charm so tightly that part of the glass cracked apart and sliced her palm. She ignored it.

She kneeled by Sanwar. “It’s not true. Tell me it’s not true.”

“It isn’t true,” said her husband.

But Vorsha saw the truth in his face.

She seized his hair, yanking it back fiercely. A terrible expression distorted her placid face.

“I’m a wicked woman, Sanwar, but I love my children. I never loved Nicol, and I was unfaithful, but I thought if I married you, if I was a better wife to you and a faithful mistress of the House, I might do honor to a good man’s legacy. And now I find that I desired a monster, and opened my legs to the worst kind of traitor.”

She spat in his face. “I would’ve done better to sell myself at the yuan-ti market. Whore’s business is more honest than this.”

She rose and moved away from him. There was a bloody handprint on her silk shirt.

“Kestrel,” she said. “Will you stay? You’ll be safe here.”

Her daughter shook her head. “I killed your grandchildren. I can’t face you, my sister, our friends, our servants. I know you would be kind, Mother. But I can’t.”

“I can take her somewhere,” said Lakini. “Somewhere she can heal.”

Vorsha nodded, tears streaking down her face.

“I came to give him over to the goddess for punishment,” said Lakini. “But perhaps you will say he doesn’t deserve that kind of mercy.”

The small woman prodded Sanwar with the toe of her elaborately embroidered slipper. Casually, she turned and strode over to the row of weapons displayed on the wall. She ignored the greatswords and the thick-hafted spears that would be an effort for a half-orc to wield, passing her hand over the long knives and the daggers. She let her fingers finally touch a blade small enough to slip in one’s sleeve, an assassin’s weapon with a wickedly sharp, thin blade the length of her palm.

She pried it from its mount and turned back to Lakini. Sanwar saw the weapon and grunted at her feet.

Her face was wet with tears, but her back was as straight as a birch tree. She was Vorsha Beguine, mistress of the House now.

“I think you can leave any matter of mercy to me, deva,” she said. It was a dismissal. Lakini only inclined her head in response. It seemed that Ciari Beguine was in some ways very much her mother’s daughter.

Vorsha watched as Lakini and Kestrel left the room.

“Do you want to see your sister?” asked Lakini.

Kestrel shook her head. “No. She would try to be kind, if she knew, but she would still hate me.”

When they reached the dusty street outside the compound, Lakini thought she heard a cry from inside the dwelling. She saw Kestrel’s back stiffen, but neither of them mentioned it.

“Is there really somewhere you can take me?” asked Kestrel.

“More like to someone,” said Lakini.

SANCTUARY OF SHADRUN-OF-THE-SNOWS

1600 DR-THE YEAR OF UNSEEN ENEMIES

Bithesi examined the cut in the dog’s side. The big mongrel cur lay on its side, panting heavily and whimpering slightly when Bithesi’s careful fingers probed the edges of the wound. It kept as still as it could, however, and never snapped at her, even when she dipped a rough rag in a bucket of warm water and washed away the clotted blood.

She muttered an apology, and the dog’s tail thumped lightly in the straw that mounded the floor of the stable. Then its gaze went over her shoulder, and its eyes narrowed. Its body tensed, and it lifted its head. Its lips drew back, exposing impressive white canines, and a liquid growl rumbled up its throat.