Haldren had clearly stayed in Bluevine for several days. He had been accompanied by another human man, younger, and a warforged. There was no indication that the elf woman or the Lyrandar excoriate had been there. After the first day, other strangers had arrived: seven men and women, some of them clearly of noble birth, though all of them acted like they were entitled to royal treatment.
Beyond those bare facts, Phaine found little agreement, which made sense to him. Many people in the town would have had occasion to interact with these ten outsiders in various ways, so it was natural that a consistent picture of them would emerge. He had yet to find anyone who claimed they had actually been present at their gatherings, though, which would explain why there were so many different stories about what had actually taken place.
Given that all the stories were probably the inventions of various villagers, it amused him that every one attributed some sinister purpose to the gathering. He figured that adequately summarized the village’s attitude toward outsiders. If a group of strangers came to town and met in secret, it was almost certainly for a cultic ritual, a political conspiracy, a depraved orgy, or an arcane summoning. At least, those made for better stories, more likely to get repeated. Phaine supposed that if it had been a casual gathering of old military friends sharing war stories over glasses of Bluevine’s famous vintage, that story would hardly have captured much interest.
Finally, Leina pointed him to a promising lead-a dour old farmer who acknowledged, after some badgering, that his grandson had been pressed into service pouring wine for the strangers. He refused to come into the village center, so Phaine followed Leina out to his farmstead. He knocked at the door and waited, knocked louder and waited more, and finally saw the farmer for himself as the door swung open. The man’s face was leathery and deeply lined, and one big hand was clutched around the handle of a scythe.
“What do you want?” the farmer demanded.
“Good afternoon,” Phaine said, forcing a smile. “My associate tells me that your family has some information about the strangers who visited your charming village a few weeks ago.”
The man’s hand clenched his scythe harder. “I told her we don’t want to talk about it.”
“Perhaps Leina neglected to mention that some of these people are fugitives. One of them escaped from Dreadhold.”
“She told me. I’m not surprised.”
“It is very important that I learn everything I can about these people and what they were doing here. If your grandson has information that might help find them, it’s imperative that I speak to him.”
The farmer’s knuckles whitened on this handle of his scythe. “Listen. My boy was there, and maybe he heard things that would help you. But we’ll never know, see? The bastards cut out his tongue.”
Under normal circumstances, Senya did not sleep. She was an elf, and four hours spent in quiet meditation rested her body and mind like a full night’s sleep. During this trance, her mind would run through a series of mental exercises of memory and reflection that she had practiced tens of thousands of times. Humans would call them dreams.
But circumstances were not normal. She had been badly injured, and her body needed a great deal of rest. She entered her trance in the late morning, and her mind wandered strange paths of fevered dreams. She surfaced from her trance in a panic and stared wildly around the room, trying to remember where she was. Darkness surrounded her, and something held her down where she lay. “Gaven?” she whispered, but then she remembered seeing him, spread-eagled on a great stone slab, covered in blood. Was that memory, or fevered imagining?
Panic welled in her chest, and she started thrashing to escape whatever held her. To her surprise, the bonds came away easily, and she realized that she was lying in a soft bed, swathed in linen sheets and warm blankets. Other memories returned to her-their flight from the dwarves in Vathirond, the wind that carried her when she couldn’t run any more, the healers who tended her and loaded her into their wagon. And the knowledge that Gaven had abandoned her.
At least he’s not dead, she thought-but the thought gave her little comfort.
She fumbled her way out of the sheets and sat up in the bed. She wore something soft and loose, a nightgown or something very different than the leather she’d been wearing last. She swung her feet down to the bare wooden floor and slid along the bed until her outstretched hand touched the wall. Then she got to her feet and slowly shuffled along the edge of the room, keeping her right hand on the wall and her left stretched out low in front of her. She felt ridiculous, but the darkness was so complete that she still couldn’t make out the room’s dimensions or features.
Her left hand brushed something she quickly decided was a nightstand, and she worked her way around it. She’d no sooner reached the other side of it than she found another wall, then heavy curtains. She fumbled at the windows, and her eyes finally came alive as dim starlight filtered through thick glass into the room. She was about to turn back to survey the room, but something in the sky caught her attention.
It was Nymm, the largest of the twelve moons. It hung high in the sky, right near the top of her view out the window. At first she thought it was just in a crescent phase, nearly new or just beginning to wax again. But its shape was strange-its color, too-and she realized that a shadow blocked its light, an eclipse. Words danced at the edge of her memory, something about the great moon, something her ancestor had said in Shae Mordai. But it eluded her, and she returned her attention to her immediate surroundings.
The room was small and simply appointed, but cozy in its way. She’d already discovered the bed and the nightstand. One chair stood near the other side of the bed. There was one door, opposite the window. Her coat and her sword hung from a hook on the back of the door.
A good start, she thought. Now where are the rest of my clothes?
Her eyes fell on the nightstand again, and she noticed the two drawers it held. She stepped to it and opened the top drawer. Sure enough, her clothes were there. She pulled them out and set them on the bed.
My boots, my pack-where are they?
A few steps took her to the other side of the bed, and there they were. Her pack was neatly arranged beside the bed, with the elegant, impractical boots standing perfectly next to it. She breathed a sigh of relief and sat down on the bed.
“Well now, Senya,” she whispered to herself, “what are you doing?” She ran her fingers through her hair. It felt clean, silky. “They’re taking care of you here. Are you going to bolt out in the middle of the night?”
Her thoughts ran back over her conversation with the halfling who had tended her, the way he avoided her gaze as he asked about Gaven. She thought about their ride on House Orien’s lightning rail, the House Medani inquisitives they’d avoided at the station in Korranberg, and the Sentinel Marshals of House Deneith who had captured her when the rail stopped in Starilaskur. Was it unreasonable to fear that House Jorasco’s healers might turn her over to the Sentinel Marshals or some other house?
The more she considered the possibility, the more she convinced herself that the halflings would almost certainly hand her over as soon as they saw that she was recovered. She took off the nightshirt the healers had put on her, stuffed it into her pack, and put on her own clothes. She was lacing her boots when she heard a creak outside her door. She froze and listened, but the sound did not recur. Was there a guard posted outside her room? Had he heard her moving around?
Taking care that her boots made no sound on the wooden floor, she crept to the door and lifted her sword belt and coat off the hook. She pressed her ear to the door, cringing as it jiggled in its frame. She heard nothing but the pounding of her blood in her ears.
She started to inch away from the door again, but another creak from outside stopped her. She tried to bring her breath and her racing pulse under control and listen. She heard voices whispering outside. With agonizing slowness, she stepped back from the door and tugged at the hilt of her sword. It didn’t come free of its sheath, and she almost swore out loud. A glance confirmed her suspicion-the halflings had peace-bonded it, attached it to its scabbard with leather straps designed to make it impossible to draw in anger. It would take too damned long to undo the knots holding it in place. She reversed her grip on it and readied herself to swing the weighted hilt as a club, if the need arose.
The metal latch clanked softly as it moved, and a sliver of light spilled into the room from the hallway. The hinges squeaked softly as the shaft of light grew wider. When the light fell on the empty bed, there was a pause, and Senya coiled, ready to strike.
The door flew open, and a man rushed in, holding a longsword in his left hand. Senya stepped up to meet him, swinging the pommel of her sword as hard as she could. The attack had caught him by surprise and might
