Page 54 of Queen Demon
His tone of voice must have gotten the message across. Dahin left the table and came to stand close to Kai. He took Kai’s arm and said, low-voiced, “I know, I know, but he couldn’t have followed us, so he must have been sent here as he says, and he couldn’t leave her roaming loose. We came here to help these people and find out what’s lurking above Sun-Ar. The two of them being here changes nothing.”
Kai, he’s right,Ziede said through her pearl.
Kai managed to unclench his jaw. He said, “Don’t let her get near you.”
It was an unnecessary warning, but Dahin just squeezed Kai’s arm before he returned to the table and motioned the scholar with the map forward.
The Chancellor watched the interaction with a faint thoughtful frown, but said to Ramad, “Strange how one party comes with nothing but weapons and a prisoner, the other comes with well-known names and a noted scholar, and the support of the Tescai-lin.”
Ramad didn’t allow any frustration to show. The skin under his eyes was bruised, probably from lack of sleep. It was hard enough to sleep on an ascension raft; sleeping on an ascension raft knowing Arnsterath was only paces away had to be nearly impossible.Ramad said, “Chancellor, I am perfectly willing to share this inquiry with Fourth Prince and his family, who are obviously more qualified—”
“And who is that?” It was Arnsterath’s voice, quiet but somehow seizing attention.
Kai didn’t need to glance back. Tenes had come in with Etem. Kai answered, “That’s Sister Tenes, the Witch who broke the Summer Halls again and caused the flood that foiled all your master’s plans.”
Surprisingly, Arnsterath’s left eyelid twitched. “He was not my master.”
The Immortal Blessed Rafiem shifted his staff, not pointing it at her, just a reminder that it was there. It was an Immortal Blessed weapon, though Kai didn’t recognize it. Rafiem said, “You can speak your evidence to the Rising World council, not here.”
Chancellor Domtellan grimaced in distaste. “This is all very disruptive. Vanguarder Ramad, would you take your charge, and your Immortal Blessed, and please go away?”
“No, Chancellor Domtellan, as I said before, I will not.” Ramad was still apparently calm but the strain showed around the set of his mouth. “And Arnsterath is not a prisoner, she is cooperating voluntarily with the Rising World council’s investigation.”
“Cooperating voluntarily,” Kai said, making his voice cold and ironic. “That’s why your Immortal Blessed have a weapon that would fell a wallwalker, let alone a demon.”
Rafiem didn’t react except to press his lips together, but Eleni moved a hand to the covered bag at her side. Kai thought he had recognized the curve of the stock that shaped the light material. It would have been foolish to go after Arnsterath without something stronger than a curse-breaker, and it wasn’t something the Rising World Cohort post would have lying around. And it was an indicator that the Immortal Marshalls had known exactly what they would be dealing with when they set out. There were a number of reasons for that, the most innocuous thatthe Immortal Blessed faction of the conspiracy had unraveled in the Blessed Lands as well, and the Marshalls had been warned about Arnsterath.
Then Dahin said, “Kai, Ziede.”
Kai threw a look back to check that Tahren still stood in a deceptively relaxed stance, aware of every movement in the room and able to reach anyone who attempted violence in a heartbeat. Tenes stood in the doorway beside Etem, wary and alert. Kai went to the worktable Dahin had conscripted, beating Ziede by only a step.
Dahin stared down at a scroll of light wood with a large square of paper pressed into it. On the paper was a drawing. It had been sketched with charcoal and then drawn in with sharper lines of ink. Notes in the scripts used in Belith and Palm had been neatly scratched in the margins. Some were strings of numbers that were probably measurements.
It depicted the low rising mound of an earthwork, the sides covered with patchy grass. Next to that was a sketch of the interior, where lines of tumbled rock marked where walls had stood. Kai realized the shape at the foot of the outside view of the sloping earth wall was a person, drawn there to show the scale. It was probably a fourth the size of the Summer Halls.
An apt comparison, as this was a Hierarch earthwork.
“You recognize it. It’s the same design as the Summer Halls,” someone said in accented Old Imperial. “You weren’t with the Enalin who had gone to look for Sun-Ar, were you?”
“No, he wasn’t,” Dahin answered for Kai. “You know this is more like the sort of earthwork the Hierarchs had their legionaries construct for their forts, than the Summer Halls.”
There were murmurs of assent and someone added, “We have many drawings of the old forts, and the Summer Halls to compare, though none of us have seen it for ourselves—”
“Don’t go there, it’s too dangerous, trust me on that,” Dahin said. “How old is this drawing?”
“Sura brought this back from the expedition site seven days ago. It was done there, not so long before she left. Sura can tell you more.”
Another scholar hurried up, this one a woman in Arike dress, bearing a map case. “Here is the most recent map we have, Scholar Dahin. It was annotated when—”
“Yes, yes, show me!” Dahin leapt on the map and pulled it and the scholar over to a clear table. A few of the others drifted after them.
“How old?” Kai said. His throat was full of bile. The expedition wouldn’t send a messenger back through the Well of Thosaren’s anchor stones for an ancient ruin. That would be an interesting curiosity, not an emergency, not a reason for Belith to alert the Rising World council in Benais-arik, right after the failed Imperial Renewal, with rumors of conspiracy flying… He pointed at the drawing without touching it. “This structure. How old is it?”
A scholar said, “We think it was abandoned no more than ten years ago. The scar was still there where the builders dug out the earth for the walls. The rings in the trees that were felled to make the beams gave us the estimate of the timing. The remaining timber showed signs of a fire, it may have been why it was abandoned.” The speaker hesitated. “You’re really him, aren’t you? The Witch King. And Ziede Daiyahah, Scourge of the—”
“Call him Fourth Prince,” Ziede interrupted automatically. “Call me Sister Ziede. You said ‘us.’ You were there when it was found?”
Kai looked up. Chancellor Domtellan stood beside the table now, with the other scholars gathered around. She said, “Yes, this is Academician Sura, she is the messenger from the expedition.”
