one wagon is plundered, every wagon thereafter will be. If that happens, the merchants will stop sending anything in. Then everyone will die. We aren’t there yet, but we’re close.”
“So what are you going to do?” Brant asked.
“We’re going to set up a quiet government. Everyone knows me,” Momma K said. “I can hire bashers to guard wagons; I can adjudicate disputes; I can direct the building of shelters.”
“That makes you a target,” Brant said.
“I’m a target no matter what,” Momma K said. “We’ve lost some of the wetboys, and I don’t mean they’re dead. The wetboys swear a magically binding oath of obedience to the Shinga. The Godking has broken that bonding. I’ve learned that Hu Gibbet told the Godking who I was. Garoth doesn’t believe a woman could be the Shinga, so now he’s searching for the real one. But he might change his mind any day, whether I act publicly or whether I stay in the shadows. I can’t control that, so I might as well do what needs to be done.”
Momma K was as calm as any veteran warrior going into battle. She could tell that Brant Agon was astounded.
“Tell me my part,” Brant said.
Jarl said, “You take your pick of my men and make them wytch hunters. After that, I want you to make defenses we can use if the army comes to the Warrens in force. The Khalidorans have wytches, soldiers, and some of our best people on their side. The only reason I’m still alive is that they don’t know who I am. But welcome aboard.”
“My pleasure.” Brant Agon bowed awkwardly because of his injuries and followed a big bodyguard out the door.
When he was gone, Jarl turned to Momma K. “You didn’t tell me you knew each other.”
“I don’t think I do know this Brant Agon,” she said.
“Answer the question.”
A slight smile touched her lips, amused and a little proud that Jarl was taking command. “Thirty years ago Brant fell in love with me. I was naive. I thought I loved him, too, and I ruined him.”
“Did you love him?” Jarl asked, rather than ask what happened. The question was proof to Momma K that she’d chosen the right man to succeed her. Jarl could find cracks. But it was one thing to admire his ability, and another to experience it.
She smiled a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. It wouldn’t fool Jarl for a second, but after all these years, the mask was pure reflex. “I don’t know. I don’t remember. What does it matter?”
12
Gaelan Starfire is said to have thrown the blue ka’kari into the sea, creating the Tlaxini Maelstrom,” Neph said. “If so, it may well be there still, but I have no idea how we would recover it. The white has been lost for six centuries. We once believed it to be at the Chantry, but your grandmother disproved that. The green was taken to Ladesh by Hrothan Steelbender and lost. I verified that Hrothan arrived in Ladesh some two hundred and twenty years ago, but could find nothing more. The silver was lost during the Hundred Years’ War, and could be anywhere from Alitaera to Ceura, unless Garric Shadowbane somehow destroyed it. The red was cast into the heart of AshwindMountain—what is now MountTenji in Ceura—by Ferric Fireheart. The brown is rumored to be at the Makers’ school in Ossein, but I doubt it.”
“Why?” Garoth Ursuul asked.
“I don’t think they could resist using it. With the mastery of earth, those petty Makers would become a hundred times more skilled in a heartbeat. Something they Made would appear sooner or later, and it would be clear that someone was Making at the level they did of old. That hasn’t happened. Either the men of that school are less ambitious than I believe possible, or it isn’t there. The other rumor was that it was bound into Caernarvon’s Blue Giant—the castle. I take that to be nothing more than a semi-educated boast. It’s not a particularly clever place to hide a ka’kari.”
“But we have a solid lead on the red?”
“When Vürdmeister Quintus passed through Ceura, he said that the explosions of MountTenji are at least partly magical. The problem with that, and with the blue, is that—even if we could get at it—there’s some doubt about whether even a ka’kari would be intact after having been exposed to so much elemental power for so long.”
“You don’t give me much, Neph.”
“It’s not exactly collecting seashells.” His voice sounded greasy. He