“Mazo.” Aruget’s eyes stayed on Midian but he turned his face toward Ashi. “I told you he’d be able to care of himself, didn’t I?”
Ashi ground her teeth. “Apologize to-”
The door of the torture chamber opened. Ekhaas emerged first. Her red-brown face was drawn and her amber eyes haunted.
Geth and Tenquis followed, the tiefling leaning so heavily on the shifter that Geth might as well have been carrying him. Blood spattered Geth, matting the patchy, half-burned hair of his bare chest. Tenquis shook with every step as if his legs might give out under him. His dark face was ash-pale and carried a sheen of sweat. His golden eyes were dull and seemed to stare off into some private nightmare. Breath came in shudders. His clothes-shirt, leather pants, labyrinth-patterned vest-hung awkwardly on his body, as if someone else had dressed him. They were mostly clean, though. No blood soaked through to betray an injury. His face was bruised and scraped as if a coarse gag had been bound into his mouth, but that was all. Geth seemed to have suffered more. For a moment, Ashi wondered what had been done to him or if Ekhaas’s magic had somehow healed him of any wound.
Then she realized that where the tiefling’s long, sinuous tail should have been was only a thick, bandaged stump.
Geth’s mouth was set in a hard line. His gaze fell on Aruget. “He knows everything,” Ashi said quickly, but Geth didn’t seem to hear her. His eyes settled on Midian. He shifted Tenquis’s weight onto Ekhaas and went to the gnome, dropping to his knees in front of him. Midian had two vials of pale blue liquid ready in his hands-the healing potions he had mentioned, Ashi guessed-but Geth ignored them.
“I have to tell you something,” he said hoarsely. “And I’m sorry about it. On the night that Ekhaas, Dagii, and I went to see Tenquis, Chetiin found us.”
Ashi stiffened. “You’ve seen Chetiin?” She looked to Ekhaas, but the duur’kala was watching Geth and Midian, her ears flicking rapidly. Aruget’s hand grasped her arm, urging her to silence. Geth’s attention was entirely on Midian, whose eyes, in turn, were darting rapidly between each of them.
Geth continued without even a pause, as if he was determined to speak his piece before they left the dungeon. “He convinced us that you were actually the one behind Haruuc’s assassination”-Ashi couldn’t hold back a gasp, but Geth still didn’t stop-“and that it was a shaarat’khesh assassin you hired who pretended to be Chetiin. I thought I found evidence that confirmed it, but I was wrong.” He half-turned his head to speak over his shoulder. “Ekhaas, Chetiin lied to us. He was supposed to go with you and Dagii to fight the Valenar, but he stayed in Rhukaan Draal.” The shifter stood. He turned to look at all of them, fury twisting his face. “On the day of Tariic’s coronation, when I rushed up to my chambers, I caught him in the middle of stealing the true Rod of Kings. He betrayed us again!”
Midian’s eyes opened wide. Aruget stood frozen. Ashi’s stomach felt like it had turned over inside her. “So Chetiin has the Rod of Kings now?”
Geth bared his teeth and nodded. He might have added something, but Ekhaas spoke first. Her ears went back and she said, “Geth, Chetiin did fight with us.”
“He stole the rod! I saw him!”
“He was with us!” Ekhaas insisted. “He’s with me now-he’s standing guard outside the dungeon!”
“He’s here,” said the shaarat’khesh elder’s strained voice. All of them turned to follow it. Chetiin crouched at the foot of the stairs, a dagger in his hand, and his black eyes glittering. Ashi’s stomach flipped again.
“You!” Geth roared-and charged at the goblin.
Chetiin slid aside, flattening himself against the wall. Geth sprawled past him, twisted around, and came back up. The terrible, savage growl was back. Chetiin kept his back to a wall, dagger ready. “I did what you asked,” he said tightly. “I went with Ekhaas and Dagii. I kept them safe.”
“Liar,” Geth snarled. “Traitor!”
“He was with us,” Ekhaas said again. “He couldn’t have stolen the rod!”
Geth paced forward, stalking Chetiin. The old goblin held his ground. “Then maybe he did what he accused Midian of doing,” said Geth. “Maybe he hired another of the shaarat’khesh to do the job while he went with you as a cover!”
“Or maybe,” said Aruget, “Chetiin was right the first time he approached you.”
His heavy accent had vanished again, but Ashi wasn’t certain anyone else noticed it. All eyes went to Aruget, then followed his to Midian.
The gnome looked shocked, then his expression drew together in anger. “That’s impossible! I wouldn’t do something like that-and even if I did, where’s this shaarat’khesh I’m supposed to have hired?”
“Dead,” said Chetiin. “Silenced so he couldn’t give you away and the assassination would be laid solely on me.”
“And I just hired another to steal the rod.” Midian pointed at Chetiin. “He’s trying to turn you against me again! Would the shaarat’khesh agree to work with me a second time if I’d already turned on one of them?”
“There was no shaarat’khesh,” Aruget said calmly
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
3 Aryth
Pain and fury seethed in Geth. Pain from the burns inflicted on him. Fury at what had been done to Tenquis. Fury and pain both for Chetiin’s treachery, as fresh and hot as if the rod had just been stolen or if Haruuc were newly struck down. The goblin torturer was dead, though, and with every breath, Geth promised himself that soon Chetiin would be, too.
But Aruget’s words broke through the rush of blood that roared in his ears. “There was no shaarat’khesh.”
If there was no shaarat’khesh involved in Midian’s scheme, that meant…
He looked at Midian again.
On the night they had first gone to see Tenquis, Ekhaas had used magic to disguise Geth as a hobgoblin woman. Midian’s pack and pouches were filled with strange and useful magical devices-one of them might easily have been capable of disguising a gnome as a goblin. The two races were about the same size and Midian was an excellent mimic. He fought well too. Surprisingly well for a scholar, even an adventurous one.
Geth thought back to the day he had investigated Chetiin’s room and confirmed that there was a ledge above the fireplace, just as the goblin had said. He’d encountered Midian in the hall afterward. He’d thought then that Midian hadn’t noticed the soot smudge on his face, but what if he had? The gnome could have investigated Chetiin’s room and discovered that the supposedly dead shaarat’khesh elder was no longer where he’d been left. Midian would have realized that at least part of his plot had been uncovered. He would have had to act. But no…
“It’s not possible,” he said. “Midian wasn’t in Rhukaan Draal when Haruuc was assassinated.”
“Whose word do you have for that?” asked Aruget.
“The coin he brought back to Ekhaas from Bloodrun-”
“-could have come from anywhere,” Ekhaas said, her voice low. “The messenger we sent to Bloodrun to fetch him supposedly died of dust fever, didn’t he? What if he didn’t?”
The gnome made no reaction to the accusations. His face was expressionless.
Ashi spoke up. “I saw you at the beginning of the coronation ceremony,” she said to Midian, “but not later. Afterward when I talked to you about what happened there, you said you didn’t see anything because your view was blocked. But you didn’t stay, did you? You made sure I saw you, then you left to disguise yourself again and steal the rod.”
Midian’s silence was hard to ignore. He damned himself with it. He kept very still, back against a wall. There was a tension in him Geth hadn’t seen before, like a blade ground so keen the touch of a whetstone would break it.
“Why?” Geth asked him.
A cold smile split Midian’s face-and he sprang into sudden motion. One hand hurled the potion vials at Chetiin and Geth. The other whipped a knife, the blade stained black, from his belt as he leaped at Aruget.
A bad feeling about those vials gripped Geth. He stuck out his hands and dived for them, snatching them out