Telling her to follow her muut.
Understanding came between one blink and the next.
Geth had said that the Sword of Heroes showed him memories of those who’d wielded it before, guiding him along their path. The quality of heroes was wrath. Aram. The Rod of Kings, Ekhaas knew, taught its holder to rule with the uncompromising power of the emperors of Dhakaan. The quality of kings was strength. Guulen.
Heroes inspired. Kings commanded. And nobles… served. They did their duty. Their muut.
But muut had two sides, didn’t it? Tuura Dhakaan had said she had muut to the Kech Volaar, that she led them and protected them “as it had been since the Age of Dhakaan.” And what had Senen Dhakaan once said of the Shield of Nobles when she’d told the tale of the three artifacts? That the ancient daashor Taruuzh had given it into the care of the lords and ladies of Dhakaan, that it represented both the fealty that the nobles owed to the emperor and the protection that was their responsibility to the people.
Muut wasn’t something that could rest in the hands of just one person.
There’d never been an actual Shield of Nobles in the way there was a Sword of Heroes and a Rod of Kings, Ekhaas realized abruptly. There had never been fragments for them to find. The shield, the protection that the nobles owed to the people of Dhakaan, had shattered because the nobles had failed in their duty. But muut couldn’t truly be destroyed-though it could be forgotten, just as stories could be confused and misinterpreted.
Like stories of what Taruuzh had created for the nobles of Dhakaan and what they had lost to Tasaam Draet. The Dhakaani had known at least some of the truth. Giis Puulta had carved three shaari’mal into his Reward Stela. Maybe later emperors had deliberately let memories of the Shield of Nobles, of Muut, fade, just as they let Suud Anshaar lie abandoned. Maybe as the empire slid toward the Desperate Times, the emperors didn’t like the idea of a shield standing between their power and the people.
A shield between their power and the people.
The disk in her hands shifted at that thought, and a feeling of clarity flooded through her. She remembered the sense of Tariic’s eyes staring out from behind Midian’s.
Ekhaas met Chetiin’s gaze and knew that he’d felt the same thing she had. Why didn’t Geth? Why hadn’t Tenquis? Maybe because they weren’t dar. Maybe because they didn’t live with muut as the Dhakaani had. She raised the shaari’mal, the ancient symbol of Dhakaan that Taruuzh had chosen to represent the collective muut of the empire’s nobles, and opened herself up to it. Chetiin did the same.
The shadows shrouding Midian flickered-and vanished. The gnome stiffened, the knife in his hand stopping just above Tooth’s throat. For a heartbeat there was silence.
Then Midian started screaming.
Geth and Tenquis stared between him, her, and Chetiin. “What just happened?” Geth demanded.
Ekhaas lowered her fragment of Muut. The shaari’mal was cold again, but she could feel its power lurking under the rune-carved surface of the byeshk. Her heart was racing in her chest.
“We’ve found our shield,” she said, “and our weapon against Tariic.” She looked up at Geth. “It’s time to go back to Rhukaan Draal.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
19 Vult
Ashi looked at herself in the polished surface of a shield. For the first time since Senen’s exile, she was wearing her formal outfit of trim trousers and cropped jacket. Her boots were freshly polished, her hair was pulled back, and her eyes were once again highlighted with Vounn’s cosmetics. The clothes and cosmetics were her tools. Her weapons.
And she needed all the weapons she had. She forced a smile onto her face. Her reflection smiled back at her.
“Are you ready?” asked Oraan quietly.
She answered without looking over her shoulder at him-although it was tempting, because he’d dressed formally as well, in light armor with a red sash around his waist. “I’m ready.”
“Did you eat well today?”
Her smile became less forced. “Very well.”
“Good.”
They turned into the antechamber outside Tariic’s throne room-and were engulfed in a crowd of junior warriors, minor functionaries, and merchants of little consequence. Oraan stepped around her and walked ahead, clearing a path with his shoulders and elbows. Ashi followed close behind, hand on her sword, the subject of a few disdainful glances but of many more jealous glares. Anyone in the antechamber was there because they hadn’t been invited into the throne room.
And with the entire throne room turned into a feast hall, if those in the antechamber hadn’t been invited, they really were unimportant.
Near the top of the stairs, a line of guards held back the uninvited. Razu, the mistress of rituals, waved Ashi to the top of the steps. She gave Oraan a disparaging look, but Ashi’s invitation to the feast had specified that she be accompanied by one of her guards. The old hobgoblin stepped into the doorway of the throne room, rapped her staff of office on the floor, and announced, “Special Envoy of House Deneith, Ashi d’Deneith, shares the celebration of Darguun’s birth!”
Ashi strode up the last few stairs and down into the seething chaos of the feast.
The mood here was different than it had been at the ill-fated feast in the hall of honor, not least because it was simply larger. That feast had been in honor of the arrival of Riila and Taak of the Kech Shaarat. This, as Razu announced with every new arrival to the hall, celebrated Darguun’s birth. Or at least what Tariic claimed to be Darguun’s birth. Vounn had taught her that Haruuc had declared Darguun’s independence from Cyre after a summer campaign in 969 YK.
No one seemed to mind the contradiction. True or not, it was a reason for Tariic to hold a feast big enough to reward the warlords who’d been most supportive of him, to show the dragonmarked houses that he still had the wealth to pay them, and to reassure the ambassadors of the Five Nations that he had interests beyond preparing his nation for conflict with the Valenar.
A feast big enough, fortunately, to provide Ashi and Oraan the opportunity they needed to find proof of tariic’s true plans to attack Breland.
Munta had started them along the path to the truth. The difficulty was in getting anyone to listen. Wearing the face of a dwarf merchant, Oraan had approached Laren Roole, the ambassador of Breland to the court of Darguun-and returned shaken.
“I didn’t even try to mention it to him,” he reported. “I could see his eyes fade as soon as I started discussing the buildup of forces. Tariic has gotten to him. He probably has Laren reporting back to King Boranel that everything is just fine in Darguun.”
The results were the same, no matter whom they tried talking to. Tariic had subverted every ambassador from beyond Darguun’s borders, along with their diplomatic staffs, just as he’d subverted the dragonmarked envoys. Some, like Laren Roole, were deeper in thrall to the lhesh than others, but none of them seemed interested in any danger that might befall Breland. At worst, they simply declared anything Oraan told them a hoax.
“Tariic can’t have used the Rod of Kings directly on everyone, but its power is insidious,” he said, returning from another failed attempt. “Anyone who has heard him speak adores him.”
“You said that other nations have spies in Rhukaan Draal,” Ashi said. “What about them?”
“They’d have the same trouble getting a message out.”
“What about smuggling a message to someone you know outside of Darguun? A coded letter sent by Orien post.”
Oraan grunted. “The problem is proof. We don’t have details. Even if I get a message out and it reaches the right people in time, what do we tell them? All we’ve got is the suggestion that Tariic’s plans for fighting the Valenar are suspiciously similar to a decades-old plan for an invasion of Breland.” He sat down in a chair and looked at her. “Ashi, maybe we should wait. If we give him time, Tariic may braid enough rope to hang himself. The Brelish
