any one of the guards had fallen out of rhythm with the others, he would have been skewered.
Ashi saw Tariic’s ears rise in interest and his head nod in appreciation. She drew a deep breath. Now. The guards moved into the last pattern of their drill. Ashi stepped forward.
Vounn put out an arm, blocking her way. Ashi froze, her carefully rehearsed timing broken. “Vounn?” she whispered.
Vounn’s mouth pursed, and her eyes narrowed. Her head twitched in a nearly imperceptible shake as the guards split for the final time to form two lines on each side of the hall and the butts of their spears hit the ground in unison.
The cadence of the drill was replaced by a rippling cry as a figure wearing a robe much like Ashi’s leaped from the other side of the dais. One of the tigers growled and crouched at the sudden movement. Many of the Darguuls flinched, instinctively going on guard.
The figure shrugged as it landed and the enveloping robe fell away. A somewhat older man, a sword in his hand and his chest bare beneath a close-fitting vest, stood revealed. High on his right shoulder, a small pattern of blue and green lines stood out against gleaming, oiled skin. It resembled a tattoo, but no tattoo could have been so bright and alive, and no artist had etched the pattern on the man’s skin. It was a dragonmark, the Mark of Sentinel, a sign of the power that the man carried in his blood as a true-born scion of House Deneith.
Ashi’s gut dropped. Baerer. Her instructor. She twisted and glared at Vounn. “What’s going on?” she asked, her voice low. “What’s Baerer doing out there?”
Vounn’s face tightened. “Keep your place, Ashi. We’ll discuss this after the reception.”
“But-”
“Keep your place!” Vounn pushed her back and turned away.
Around them, the other members of House Deneith who stood on the dais shifted in silent witness of the exchange. Ashi clenched her teeth and stepped back. The Darguuls noticed nothing-all their attention was on Baerer as he swept into the sword dance.
Blade up, body rigid as the fine metal. Somewhere in the back of the hall, a bow scraped unseen against the strings of a viol in a long pure note. On the draw of the bow, the blade dropped and Baerer made a slow, stalking circle around the lowered point. There was a soft intake of breath from those on the dais. The point of the sword, suspended in the air, had wavered no more than if it had been fixed in a pivot. A difficult movement, but Baerer had pulled it off.
Anger seethed in Ashi.
The pulse of the music quickened, the viol joined by the soft percussion of a drum. Baerer stepped forward, slashing right and left in time with the music, then stepped again-and again, crossing the empty floor between Deneith and Darguuls. His footsteps were as light and precise as the movements of his blade. He paused, then dove into a series of acrobatic thrusts and lunges as the music blazed up. Thrusts and lunges became a whirl of motion. Even the Darguuls were caught up in the dance now. Tariic followed Baerer’s movement with undisguised fascination, but even a few of the honor guard were watching, their heads turned as much as discipline allowed.
Ashi’s body twitched with every spin, every thrust. She knew the movements. It should have been her dancing for Lhesh Haruuc’s emissary. Breathe, she told herself. Be calm. Lose yourself in the dance. Baerer had taught her that. The bastard. She pressed her lips tight together. The two rings that pierced her lower lip-rings that had once been bone but had been replaced by gold at Vounn’s insistence-made two spots of pain against her upper lip.
The music slowed. The second part of the dance began. Baerer’s strikes became wide and sweeping, as slow as the music but with a deliberate intensity. He began to use his body more. The dance remained focused on the sword, but now Baerer also incorporated sharp jabs from his empty hand, elbow strikes, and elegant yet powerful kicks. He might just have been working sword forms on a training floor, but the grace of his movements elevated them beyond mechanical posing. Many of the Darguuls stared openly. On the dais, most of the gathered lords and functionaries of Deneith were murmuring to each other and twisting for a better view.
Vounn didn’t move, though satisfaction radiated from her. Ashi glared at the back of her head and, underneath her robe, gripped her sword, imagining it stuck through Vounn’s gray-streaked hair.
Viol and drum rose once more. The murmuring on the dais fell silent as everyone watched Baerer. In spite of herself, Ashi glanced away from Vounn and down at the swordsman-and couldn’t look away.
It was the third part of the dance, the climax. Baerer’s movements became tighter, closer, as if being pressed on all sides. The fight had turned against the warrior. What had been sweeping blows became desperate parries, though no less graceful for it. If anything, Ashi knew, there was even more art in the third part of the sword dance. It was far easier to simulate a believable blow than a believable block. But Baerer did it, and did it well. In her imagination, Ashi could almost see the enemies that surrounded him, unleashing a rain of lethal blows. Faced with the unrelenting assault, Baerer retreated, every step as light as his first passage across the floor, yet at the same time slow and weary.
When he reached the spot where he had begun, Baerer stopped as if unable to retreat any farther. His parries became even more rapid, even tighter and closer to his body. Enemies were all around him, close enough for their hot breath to stir his hair. The drum fell silent and only the viol played on. A long note-the same note that had begun the dance-soared on the air. Baerer’s movements became tighter. Tighter. His sword rose before his stiff, quivering body-
And the note faded away, leaving man and sword once more in silent rigidity. Baerer held the pose for a moment longer, then lowered his sword and bowed low before Tariic.
Vounn spoke into the silence that gripped the hall. “Tariic of Rhukaan Taash, emissary of Lhesh Haruuc Shaarat’kor, in the name of Baron Breven d’Deneith, patriarch of this House, be welcome in the halls of Sentinel Tower.”
Tariic pulled his eyes away from Baerer. “Lady Seneschal d’Deneith,” he said, “Lhesh Haruuc Shaarat’kor sends his greetings.” His voice was deep and rough but pleasant and assured, with no trace of a Goblin accent. He nodded back at Baerer. “Deneith honors us with a performance like nothing I have seen before.” He stood straight and shouted, “Paatcha!”
The goblins, hobgoblins, and bugbears of Tariic’s guard burst out in a deafening roar of admiration, made even more deafening by the slapping of gauntleted fists on armored chests and by the screams of one unnerved tiger. Vounn, wearing a barely concealed expression of triumph, turned and made a small gesture to the members of Deneith gathered on the dais. Released from the bonds of ceremony, they added their applause to the din. Baerer bowed and bowed again, his face restrained but his eyes bright with pleasure.
Ashi focused on breathing and not killing anyone before she could get out of the hall.
The chambers she had been assigned were down the hall from Vounn’s suite. Even in private, she couldn’t be away from the lady seneschal. Ashi thrust open the door to the chambers, then slammed it behind herself. Dust that had probably been lodged in the frame for decades or more drifted down over the old wood. Ashi passed through the sitting room and into the bed chamber, tearing off the dancing garments as she went. The veil fell, crumpled, across a chair in the sitting room. The enveloping robe dropped to the floor of the bed chamber. The sword, a light piece of metal intended mostly for show, clattered alongside it. Ashi started to rip at the fitted shirt-a seamstress had all but sewn her into it that morning-then stopped.
There was a gown laid out on her bed. It was deep crimson silk, with full Fairhaven sleeves and a stiff collar of fine gnomish lace. Something inside her stirred and she knew that the cut and color of the dress had been chosen to flatter her height and features-
With a wordless cry of fury, she snatched up the sword and plunged it through the gown, stabbing deep into the mattress beneath. The blade pierced silk, bed-clothes, ticking, and stuffing to jam hard into the wood frame beneath. Ashi released the hilt and staggered away, her lips drawn back. “It’s not supposed to be like this!” she snarled through her teeth.
A year ago she hadn’t known about the cut of gowns or the origins of lace. She’d barely known anything of the world outside of the Shadow Marches. She’d been content as a hunter of the savage Bonetree, one of the most feared of the Marcher clans. She’d dimly been aware of the thirteen dragonmarked houses, knowing them only as distant clans rumored to carry magic in their blood.
Then she’d discovered that she carried that magic, too.
She raised her arms in front of her. Bright blue-green lines traced her skin from the backs of her hands to her
