The Killing Song: The Dragon Below Book III (8 page)

  
T
he door to the apartment was locked, of course, but Tetkashtai had a trick of unlocking it with a thread of
vayhatana
. Dandra knew the trick too. She concentrated, spun out the invisible force with her mind just so, and the lock responded with a click. The door swung open. Dandra clenched her jaw and stepped across the threshold. Entering the apartment she had only ever seen previously as a psicrystal around Tetkashtai’s neck was even stranger than walking the streets of Sharn. The familiar surroundings seemed smaller, out of proportion. Dim, naturally. She raised the shade of the everbright lantern that was on the table. A musty odor hung in the air and it took her a moment to decide—because there had been no sense of smell as a psicrystal—that it didn’t belong there. She crossed the room and pushed open the windows. Fresh air and the scent of rain blew in.

The others entered behind her, Natrac shaking off his cowl, Ashi sputtering as she stripped off the wet scarf that clung to her face. “I don’t understand,” she said. “What happened out there? Why did it seem like they didn’t want us to know what was wrong with Erimelk?”

Singe was the last one through the door, and he closed it quickly behind himself before Ashi’s voice could carry. “I think it seemed like they didn’t want us to know because they really didn’t want us to know.” Water dripped from his hair and pulled his beard down into a point. “Who is this Nevchaned, Dandra?”
His lips twitched. “Or should I call you Tetkashtai?”

The name made her flinch. “No, you shouldn’t,” she said. “Light of il-Yannah, I knew as soon as the words were out my mouth that it was a bad idea. It just seemed so easy at the time.”

“It was a good idea,” said Natrac. “They know Tetkashtai. If these people are as insular as you say, maybe they’ll say things around her they won’t say around us.”

“So we’re going to start out by lying to people we want to be our allies? Il-Yannah, I lied about Medala and Virikhad too.” Dandra tried to cover her frustration at herself by going to the cupboard where Tetkashtai and the other kalashtar had kept some towels. Like the apartment, they were musty, but at least they were dry. She passed them around.

“Nevchaned is a weaponsmith,” said Dandra. “He made her … my spear.” She touched the weapon strapped across her back. “He’s also one of the kalashtar elders.”

The wizard’s eyes widened slightly. “Ah,” he said. “So maybe not one of the best people to start off lying to.”

“No,” Dandra agreed. She shook her head. “I’ve fought Dah’mir, Tzaryan Rrac, Hruucan, dolgaunts, dolgrims, and Bonetree hunters—why does facing my own people feel more terrifying than any of them?”

Singe gave her wan smile. “Remind me to tell you about my family some day.”

“The idea of facing House Deneith scares me,” said Ashi. Dandra twisted her head to look at the hunter. “I used to be worried that they wouldn’t accept a hunter of Shadow Marches, or that they would find that I had no Deneith blood at all and I would be left without a clan. Now I worry what will happen when the time comes that they find out about this.” Ashi traced a finger down one cheek and along the line of her jaw, following the vibrant pattern of her dragonmark.

“If you don’t like the way Deneith treats you, you’ll always have a place with us,” said Dandra.

Ashi raised an eyebrow. “Then why do you worry what the kalashtar will think of you?” she asked. “You have a place here too. Aren’t we your people?”

Dandra stared at her.
Aren’t we your people?
She had Tetkashtai’s memories of the kalashtar of Sharn, of Medalashana as her best
friend and Virikhad as her lover—but she felt closer by far to the men and women who had stood by her side over the last months than she did to any kalashtar. Her mouth twitched and a smile escaped her. “You’re always surprising me when I least suspect it, Ashi. Thank you.”

“The
broshamas
of the Bonetree held the wisdom of the clan,” Ashi said, answering her smile, “but I would have been huntmaster if I hadn’t turned against Dah’mir, and a huntmaster needs her own wisdom to see what’s in the hearts of the clan.”

Singe stepped back from Dandra and shook his head. “Ashi, I think I’ll almost pity House Deneith if they try to tame you. They aren’t going to know what they’re getting.”

Dandra’s smile turned into a laugh, and she struck out at the wizard with a cry of mock outrage. He caught her blow on his arm, but let out a hiss of very real pain. He twisted his arm, and Dandra winced as she saw the pink of rain-diluted blood on his wet sleeve. “Sorry.”

“It’s where Erimelk grabbed me.” Singe loosened the laces at the cuffs of his shirt and pulled back the sleeve. “Twelve moons! Look at that!”

His skin was marked by two red handprints, the skin bruised and broken in innumerable fine pricks, as if someone had beaten him with a bristles of a stiff brush. Singe looked at her. “Was that some kind of psionic power?”

She nodded. “I’ve seen something similar. It’s a little bit like the long step, but used as a weapon—under the psion’s touch, tiny portions of matter or flesh are displaced in space. It’s a weak power, but it can do a lot of damage.”

“It
hurt
a lot,” Singe complained. He wiped at the red marks with a towel, but the rain had washed away all but a tint of blood. There wasn’t even an open wound. Singe cursed again. “Why would a scribe have a power like that?”

Dandra frowned. “I didn’t know he did. When Tetkashtai knew him, he was more interested in his work than in developing the power of his mind.”

“I’ll bet he wasn’t insane and attacking people in the street, either,” said Natrac. “What do you think was wrong with him, and why was Nevchaned covering it up?” He looked up. “Do you
think it could have something to do with Dah’mir?”

No one said anything for a long moment. Dandra suspected that she knew what they were all thinking, even if no one wanted to be the first to say it. Erimelk was clearly mad. Dah’mir wanted to drive kalashtar mad. It was too much of a coincidence to be dismissed, but it also meant that the dragon had already started his move against the community.

On the one hand, that might make it easier to present their belated warning to the kalashtar elders. On the other, maybe there was a reason the elders were trying to keep Erimelk’s madness quiet. Dah’mir intended his mad kalashtar as servants for the Master of Silence. He wouldn’t want them roaming free. If that was the case, maybe Nevchaned—and the other elders—were working with Dah’mir. The idea chilled her.

“I think,” she said, “we need to know more about what’s happening here before we approach the elders with our warning, so we know we’re talking to the right people.”

Singe, scratching his whiskers in thought, nodded agreement, but Ashi frowned. “How do we do that?” she asked.

An idea took form in Dandra’s head. An idea that didn’t particularly please her.
“We
don’t,” she said. “I do.” Singe’s hand paused on his chin, and he looked at her sharply, but she shook her head and continued. “Natrac was right. Kalashtar will say things around another kalashtar they won’t say around strangers. Especially if they think it’s a kalashtar they already know.” She touched a hand to her chest. “Like Tetkashtai.”

Singe’s fingers fell, but he didn’t dismiss the idea. Dandra could see him turning it in his mind, and when he spoke, she noticed it wasn’t the plan that he questioned. “Can you do it?” he asked. “You’ll be facing your people on your own.”

She drew herself up. “I thought we’d decided that the people who matter are here.”

He smiled at that. “When will you do it?”

“Tonight. There’s a place—a kind of meeting hall. The kalashtar will be expecting me to visit after a journey anyway. I’ll be able to find answers to rumors there.” She gestured around the apartment. “You can stay here if you want.”

“I think I’d go crazy just sitting and waiting for you,” Singe said. “I’ve got a better idea. There’s a small House Deneith
enclave across the city in Deathsgate district I want to visit. It’s a Blademarks recruiting hall. I told Geth to send a message there when he got to Zarash’ak. We took long enough getting here ourselves that one might be waiting now.” He looked to Ashi. “Do you think you’d like to go? You’d get to see more of the city, and there shouldn’t actually be any members of Deneith proper on duty this late—you could get a little more exposure to Deneith without any risk of discovery.”

Ashi’s grin was so wide the two small bone hoops that pierced her lower lip turned sideways. “Try and keep me from coming!”

“That’s why I asked you.”

Dandra turned to Natrac. “Are you going to go too, or stay here?”

The half-orc paused in the act of drying himself, then continued. “Neither,” he said.

Singe narrowed his eyes. “What are you up to?”

Natrac gave a sigh, stopped, and glanced up. “Let’s just say that Dandra’s not the only one with places she has to go to alone,” he said. “I used to have contacts under street. They might still be around. If they are, they may have heard something. But I can’t be sure that they’re still around or that they’ll be inclined to help us.” He looked at them all. “I know you can all handle yourselves in a fight, but the best thing to do in the places I need to go is not to start a fight in the first place.”

Dandra exchanged a glance with Singe and nodded. “If you think that’s what’s best. Can you at least tell us where in the city you’re—?”

“No,” he said, stopping her. “And don’t try telling me that whatever I’m hiding, it doesn’t matter to you. This is a part of my life I don’t want back. Give me a chance to rest and dry out—I’ll go and be back before dawn.”

She frowned at him. “Can I wish you good luck?”

Natrac grunted. “I’ll take that.”

They all changed into dry clothes and lay down to rest, but when they rose, Natrac had already slipped out. There was an extra key to the door hidden inside a crock. Dandra brought
it out and gave it to Singe. He embraced her without a word, then he and Ashi departed. Dandra took a brief look around the apartment and left as well.

The rain had stopped, but the streets of Fan Adar were still empty. Dandra walked from the light of one everbright lantern to the next without seeing anyone—or, thankfully, any sign of another one of Dah’mir’s herons. The need to watch for them reminded her of the time after her first escape from the Bonetree mound, when she and Tetkashtai had fled across the Shadow Marches, trying to evade the herons, Bonetree hunters, and dolgrims Dah’mir had sent in pursuit.

It was, in fact, too much like her nights on the run. Unease stirred in her. Had the streets always been this quiet, or did they just seem that way because she was—possibly for the first time ever—utterly alone? Singe wasn’t there to support her. Tetkashtai, her constant counterpart since the moment she had awakened to consciousness, was only a memory. There was no one.

She wasn’t sure that she liked it.

Sound came as she crossed a walkway and descended a broad ramp to a sunken courtyard. The courtyard itself was empty except for a statue of a kalashtar woman, her crystal eyes raised to the skies, but on its far side, a short flight of stairs rose again to the porch of a low building—the community hall called the Gathering Light. Warm light and noise escaped from the building—the light making golden lines around edges of the building’s doors, the noise drifting on the air in a haze of half-heard music and speech.

Dandra crossed the courtyard, put a foot on the lowest stair, hesitated for a moment, then pressed her lips together. You can do this, she told herself. What is it compared to what you’ve already done? She raised her chin, continued up to the porch, and pulled open one of the doors.

In her heart, she’d half-expected all activity in the hall to pause as she walked through the doorway and those gathered within turned to stare at the stranger in their midst. Her entry, however, attracted no more than idle curiosity. A few people looked up to see who had arrived. Even fewer gave her a second look. A very few, friends of Tetkashtai—or of Medalashana or
Virikhad—waved in greeting. Dandra waved back but stayed near the door, trying to look as if she were searching the hall for someone while she took stock of the environment and tried to decide what to do next.