the hilt to avoid being dragged along.
Two more minotaurs clambered onto the top of the ridge, and he wheeled to face them with the single blade he had left. Then genasi warriors swarmed up the other side.
Riding bareback, some clung to the backs of the gray lizards that seemed to climb almost as well as their smallest cousins. Bald, green-skinned watersouls somehow dashed up the steep slope with equal ease. Silver- skinned windsouls simply flew.
However they reached the top of the ridge, the Akanulans started killing minotaurs the instant they arrived. Spears stabbed and scimitars slashed. Little flames rippling along the pattern of lines crisscrossing his bronze- colored skin, a firesoul snapped his fingers and set a bull-man’s hide tunic ablaze. A burly earthsoul with skin the color of mud stood on the far side of the ridge and stamped his foot. Shocks ran through the slope below, presumably jolting any minotaurs who were still trying to climb up and join the fight. Aoth hoped that some reeled off the trail and fell, although, from his angle, he couldn’t actually tell.
But it didn’t really matter. Eider slashed with her talons and disemboweled the last living minotaur on the ridge, and she, Gaedynn, and the genasi all visibly relaxed. Obviously the surviving barbarians were fleeing.
Jhesrhi found Shala sitting at a desk heaped high with stacks of parchment. Quills in hand, half a dozen clerks scratched away at smaller desks while several adolescent boys whispered, fidgeted, or dozed in chairs along the wall. The latter were messengers, waiting to run a note or document to wherever it needed to go.
“My lady,” Shala said, frowning. “What can I do for you?”
“You can respond when I ask for something,” Jhesrhi said. “I sent you lists of the improvements required to make the wizards’ quarter livable and petitions detailing the reparations due arcanists wronged by the courts and the watch.”
“You only sent them yesterday,” Shala said. “And as you can see, with the army preparing to march on Tymanther, I have many matters to attend to.”
“I also sent you a letter that pertains to the coming campaign,” Jhesrhi said. “I explained how you should integrate mages into His Majesty’s forces and the ranks they ought to hold.”
“I’ll get to that too. If you let me go back to work, I’ll get to it that much faster.”
Jhesrhi took a firmer grip on her staff. “It appears,” she said, “that you don’t think the needs of Chessenta’s arcanists are important.”
Shala’s mouth tightened. “You’re a soldier of a sort. Surely you agree that they aren’t the most important concern on the eve of war.”
“I suppose it’s to be expected that you think that way, considering that the arcanists suffered persecution through all the years you held the throne.”
“Lady, I’ll justify the decisions I made to Tchazzar if he requires it, not to you.”
“Of course,” Jhesrhi said, “because you’re simply too busy to talk to me about anything, aren’t you? But perhaps I can lift the burden from your back.”
With a thought, she made the head of her staff burn like a torch, and the pseudo-mind inside it crowed. She lowered the flames over the tallest stack of papers, and one of the clerks yelped in dismay.
Shala jumped up out of her chair, and seemingly indifferent to the possibility of burning herself, swatted the staff aside. “Are you crazy?” she snarled.
“No,” Jhesrhi said. “I merely wanted your full attention. If I finally have it, maybe we should continue this talk in private.”
Shala raked her assistants with her glare. “Go!” she said, and they all scurried out.
When the door closed, Jhesrhi ordered the staff to stop burning, and it sulked at being denied a conflagration. “I apologize for that,” she said to Shala. “Although I hope it was convincing.”
Shala blinked. “That was all a sham?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I’m no courtier, High Lady. But since I joined the Brotherhood, I’ve wandered through enough royal and noble courts to know that Tchazzar probably has a spy among your aides. I didn’t want him to slither off and report that we’re plotting in secret. And since I swaggered in here like Queen Bitch, I don’t think he will. He’ll believe we’re having a bitter row.”
“Possibly,” Shala said, “but what makes you think I’d conspire with you?” She smiled crookedly. “After all, you’re a wizard, and as you pointed out, I cruelly mistreated your poor, innocent kind.”
Jhesrhi shrugged. “You simply enforced laws that existed before you ever came to the throne, laws the temples told you were just and good. And then, when the murders began, you still let Lord Nicos bring the Brotherhood to Luthcheq so the people wouldn’t slaughter all the arcanists.”
“So I was only half a tyrant?”
“After that,” Jhesrhi persisted, “you rode to war with Oraxes, Meralaine, and me. Maybe you saw something there, something to persuade you that wizards are just people, not the devil-spawn that the priests have always made us out to be.”
“Let’s say I did.” Shala sat back down in her chair and waved Jhesrhi to another. “In my life I haven’t found normal people to be all that trustworthy either. If Tchazzar doubts my loyalty, maybe he asked you to trick me into saying something treasonous. And why wouldn’t you be eager to oblige when you’ve risen so high in his favor?”
“If he decides he wants to get rid of you, do you honestly think he’ll require incontrovertible evidence of wrongdoing before ordering your arrest?”
Shala snorted. “There is that. Still, it doesn’t explain what you’re doing here.”
“You know Halonya arrested Khouryn Skulldark.”
“And you couldn’t convince Tchazzar to let him go. The madwoman won that round.”
Jhesrhi scowled and a line of flame oozed up the staff. “The point is that if Tchazzar won’t free him, I have to. And I need help.”
“You’d risk everything the dragon’s given you-and your own freedom and your own life-to accomplish this?”
“I only have a handful of friends, High Lady. Khouryn’s one of them.”
“He’s also a dwarf, and Chessentans don’t like them any better than sorcerers. So why should I risk everything that I have left to help him?”
“Because you know he’s being punished just for following your orders. Because it will do you good to give Halonya a poke in the eye. And because you know that, even leaving the question of justification aside, it’s rash and stupid for Chessenta to invade Tymanther right after fighting a war in the north.”
“And freeing your friend will keep that from happening?”
“It might help,” Jhesrhi said, then explained how.
Shala grunted. “It sounds like a feeble hope to me.”
“It may be. But also consider that you won’t be running all that much of a risk. I’ll be the one taking the big chances.”
“I’m not a coward!” Shala snapped.
“I know that, High Lady. But you are the one who keeps asking why she should help me. I’m giving all the reasons I can think of.”
“What exactly do you want from me?”
“Halonya dangled Khouryn in front of me as bait,” Jhesrhi said. “She wants me to go after him so she can kill or capture me and then convince Tchazzar I’m a traitor.”
Shala fingered the scar on her square jaw. “That sounds about right.”
“Still, I have to rescue Khouryn and do it without using my most potent magic because if I invoked the wizardry of the four elements to do the job, it would be like signing my name.”
“I suppose so.”
“If I’m going to manage anyway, I need to know about the dungeons under the War College. Where exactly is Halonya keeping Khouryn? Are there mechanical or magical snares along the way, and if so, how do I bypass them?
