anything. Once the door was closed and Dagii was ushering her along the corridor, she said, “Senen suspects something.”
Dagii gave her a grim smile. “This is a time for suspicion.”
The halls of Khaar Mbar’ost were quiet. In the moments after Haruuc’s death, they had been chaotic, but Ekhaas guessed that as the shock of the assassination had ebbed, people had stumbled back to their rooms or out into the city, seeking reflection or mindless violence, as they preferred. She glanced at Dagii. The aged metal of his ancestral armor carried shiny, fresh scrapes and dents. In attempting to drive off Chetiin, he had come within reach of the grieving tree Haruuc had erected in his throne room. The lhesh’s final words had stilled the tree and forced it to release Dagii. His face bore the beginnings of bruises and the limp in his walk-the result of a broken ankle healed in a rush by her magic during the quest for the Rod of Kings-was even more pronounced than usual.
“Did the tree hurt you?” she asked.
“No. It wasn’t able to get past my armor. Falling out of it hurt more.” His face tightened. “Keraal is worse off.”
Ekhaas’s ears rose. In the madness of Haruuc’s death, she had forgotten the rebel lord. The command that had released Dagii had also released Keraal. “He’s alive?”
“For now.”
There was noise ahead, noise that grew louder as they approached the antechamber outside of the throne room. It seemed that not everyone had retreated to grieve. A final turn in the passage revealed the antechamber- and Geth, along with two old hobgoblins, under siege by a small mob of shouting warlords. The two old hobgoblins looked to be in their element.
One, a thin woman, met the shouts of the warlords with calm, firm answers. “It is tradition! Would you do it differently in your clan hold? The period of mourning is dedicated to the dead-there will be no discussion of succession until Haruuc is in his tomb. Ten days of mourning Haruuc’s death, five days of games to celebrate his life, and then an heir will be selected. Until then the shava holds Haruuc’s power.”
The other, a vastly old, rotund, yet vigorous man who wore the ceremonial armor of a warlord himself, replied to shouts as if he were on the battlefield. “The assembly will meet, Garaad! Tomorrow. Maabet, decide for yourself, Iizan! Honor him as you choose.”
The thin woman was Razu, who had been Haruuc’s mistress of rituals. The fat old warlord was Munta the Gray, Haruuc’s closest ally for more than thirty years. Between them, shielded by them, stood Geth. The shifter gripped the Rod of Kings with one hand and the hilt of Wrath, the Sword of Heroes, with the other. Wrath was still sheathed but Geth looked ready to draw it. Ekhaas knew that animal instincts ran strong in Geth’s veins. His large eyes were wide and fever-bright, and his thick, coarse hair was almost standing on end. He looked like a wild thing backed into a corner.
His expression brightened slightly when he saw Ekhaas and Dagii. He nodded toward a door across the antechamber, then turned to face the warlords. “Enough!” he said, his voice a snarl that cut through the clamor. He spoke the human language but many of the warlords in the antechamber had fought in the mercenary armies of House Deneith during the Last War and understood the tongue. They fell silent. Geth glared at them all. “Leave. You heard Razu. I’m not going to talk about the succession.”
“Maybe not about the succession.” Ekhaas recognized the warlord who spoke-Aguus of Traakuum. “But what about the war?”
“The war?” asked Geth.
Aguus grunted. “It is as Haruuc said. We should turn our blades against the Valenar. If we must wait ten days or more before we make a decision, the Valenar will have an advantage over us.”
“There is no war. How can there be a war when the man who spoke of it was cut down moments later?” Geth swept his gaze across the silent warlords. “Think about that during the period of mourning.”
Aguus wasn’t finished. “Haruuc would have wanted it!”
Geth froze for a moment, then growled, “You’re wrong.” He turned away from them, gesturing with the rod. “Leave now. A shava needs to mourn, too.”
He pushed away from them without waiting for a response. Munta followed for a few moments, exchanging words with him, then turned back to block any of the more aggressive warlords from following. Geth came to join Ekhaas and Dagii at the door.
“How are you?” Ekhaas asked him.
“How do you think I am?” He opened the door and led them through into a short corridor.
Along the corridor was another door and a hobgoblin warrior wearing the red corded armband that signified service to Khaar Mbar’ost standing outside it. Aruget, one of the loyal warriors assigned by Haruuc to act as a personal guard to Vounn and Ashi d’Deneith. No one would interrupt them as long as he stood guard.
The chamber beyond was the same luxurious waiting room for dignitaries where they-she, Dagii, Geth, Ashi, the gnome scholar Midian Mit Davandi, and Chetiin-had been deposited on their return to Khaar Mbar’ost bearing the Rod of Kings. Ashi was waiting for them, pacing the room like a cat. Her dark gold hair had been drawn back, revealing the intricate lines of the powerful dragonmark, a rare Siberys Mark, that patterned her neck-and her shoulders, back, arms, her entire body save the palms of her hands and a narrow strip between her cheeks and her brow. Two small gold rings that pierced her lower lip were the only sign that less than a year ago, Ashi had been a savage hunter of the Shadow Marches before discovering her heritage in House Deneith, and before the manifestation of the mark that allowed her to shield minds and block powerful divinations.
At the opening of the door, she looked up, her mouth framing a greeting. Geth didn’t give any of them time to speak. With a snarl of frustration, the shifter twisted his torso and hurled the Rod of Kings into a large, ornately framed mirror that hung above a sideboard.
The glass exploded out in a shower of sharp fragments. The rod bounced off the thin wooden backing, hit the sideboard hard enough to gouge it, and fell to the floor with the heavy clang of solid metal. Ashi’s words turned into a yell of surprise and the door slammed open as Aruget charged in.
Geth turned on him. “Out!”
The guard stepped back and closed the door without a word. Ekhaas went over and looked down at the rod. The rune-carved shaft was unmarked. She would have picked it up, but Geth stopped her.
“Don’t touch it,” he said. “Don’t anybody touch it.” Feet crunching on the broken mirror, he retrieved the rod, handling it as if it were a snake. Geth grimaced and dropped back into one of the room’s chairs. His voice was a growl. “Chetiin said something to me after he killed Haruuc, just before he escaped. He said, ‘We swore we would do what we had to.’”
“He thought Haruuc had discovered the power of the rod,” said Ekhaas. Memory of the rod’s hold over her mind brought her ears low. There had been as much hope of resisting it as of holding back a flood with a leaking bucket.
“He should have talked to the rest of us.” Dagii’s face was grim.
“I wish he had,” said Geth. “Because if that’s what he was thinking, he was wrong.” He turned the rod in his hands, and for a moment Ekhaas thought he might throw it again, but then he stood and drew Wrath. Forged from the same twilight-purple byeshk as the rod, the sword was massive and heavy, sharp on one edge and deeply notched on the other, a dar design that hadn’t changed much in thousands of years. “Wrath… talks to me. In a way. Sometimes it gives me a nudge, pushing me to act the way a hero would. Occasionally it puts heroic words in my mouth. It’s not just the Sword of Heroes. It’s a sword that makes heroes.”
In the other hand, he hefted the Rod of Kings. “The rod is the same. Just before Keraal’s punishment, Haruuc and I had an argument. All the time that we were carrying the rod back to Rhukaan Draal, I was the only one to touch it. Wrath doesn’t just protect me from the rod’s power of command-it shields me from all of the rod’s power. When Haruuc took up the rod, he didn’t have that protection. A hero inspires. A king rules.” He bared his teeth. “From the moment he first held the rod, it fed him the memories of the Dhakaani emperors.”
Dagii’s ears rose. “Maabet. The rod has been pushing Haruuc to act like a king?”
“Not a king. An emperor.” Geth lowered both sword and rod. “Haruuc said the rod responds to the touch of anyone with the will to rule. I think he was strong enough to hold its influence off for a time, but when Vanii was killed in battle against the Gan’duur, it was too much.”
“He gave in,” said Ashi. “What he did to Keraal and the Gan’duur, his talk of war…”
“The rod,” Geth agreed.
“But not his talk of war with Valenar,” Ekhaas said. She remembered the look of desperate cunning on
