darkened blade_ A fallen blade novel - Kelly McCullough Page 0,45

bag packed, as Master Jax has taught us. Maryam saw me with you, she will have Jaeris fetch mine. Anything else I can do without. Here is another sandwich, with a bit more in it than just sausage.” She had not been idle while the rest of us talked.

I took the sandwich as we continued on. “Thank you, I do need this.”

“Never ride out on an empty stomach,” she said, in the manner of one quoting a proverb.

Behind me I heard Jax speaking quietly but firmly with Garis. “I will not take the damned crown, and it should not fall into the hands of the invaders. Take it over the mountains to Ar in the Magelands. I’m going to give you an address. My cousin Jafsica is there—she runs our intelligence service in country. She will make a better queen than I ever could have. Don’t look at me like that. Get moving!”

9

The line between fault and responsibility is a razor that cuts deep. Jax might claim that the ruin of Dalridia was not my fault. She might even be right. But when I had become First Blade again, all that remained of the order and all that we did had become my responsibility. That now included the destruction of an entire kingdom to strike at us, and the weight of it lay heavy on my shoulders as I tried to sort out what happened next.

Not counting Kelos and Faran—each of whose status was ambiguous for different reasons—we had three master Blades, nine journeymen, and nine apprentices. That was all that was left of the legacy of Justice, barely a score of survivors where once there had been four hundred masters and trainees. My original plan had called for taking three or four journeymen on to the temple and leaving the rest in Jax’s care until we sorted out the matter of the swords. Now?

Well, that was the question.

“How did the Son of Heaven know you were here?” asked Roric.

“What?” I looked up from the table.

“I mean, this attack had to have been at least a couple of weeks in the planning. I’m not foolish enough to believe it’s a coincidence. The Son must have known you were coming here almost as soon as you did.”

I sighed. That question had occurred to me as well, and there was only one answer that made any sense. “I imagine that Lieutenant Chomarr told him.”

“What?” demanded Triss.

“I said that Chomarr probably told the Son of Heaven where we were going and what we were planning.”

Triss began to swear venomously in the hissing tongue of the Shades, as he realized that I was almost certainly right.

“How long have you known?” asked Roric, and I could see that he stood on that line between placid and killing rage.

“Known?” I replied. “I don’t know even now, though I can’t imagine any other answer that’s half so likely.”

Roric leaped up from his chair. “I’ll kill him!”

“I hope so,” I said. “But do sit down. We have a castle to evacuate and Chomarr’s been gone for what, two days now? Kelos?”

The big man shrugged. “Could be nearly three. I haven’t seen him since we discussed the outer wall wards for the temple precinct the afternoon before yesterday.”

I nodded. “The timing’s about right. That night would have been when the Kvani attacked the fort at the base of the pass. That’s the latest he could have stayed without at least tripling his risks. He’s clearly a calculating man and a risk taker, but that’s the point when hanging on would have shifted from acceptably dangerous to foolhardy.”

It’s a damn good thing we never told him about Signet Nea’s finger and ring, sent Triss. Or about Siri’s powers over smoke.

It is that. Siri had kept her own secret, and Kelos and I hadn’t even discussed the finger between ourselves. I’d thought about it, but the castle was full of young Blades with eager ears, and there was no need to share that bit of intelligence before its proper time. Not that I have much hope in it being useful anymore. If I were the Son of Heaven and I’d gone as paranoid about mages as he seems to have, I’d have had all those wards rekeyed first thing.

You’re probably right. Triss sighed mentally.

Roric, who had been looking back and forth between Kelos and I for several seconds, finally asked, “How can you be so cold about it?” He still looked angry, but he had deflated somehow. “Aren’t you even going