The Inquisitives [4] The Darkwood Mask (17 page)

Why did you leave this behind? she asked silently.

Two levels beneath the Justice Ministry was a cell block where choice suspects were questioned before more permanent incarceration in one of Korth’s prisons. Within, two White Lions escorted Soneste and Jotrem into a chamber bisected by a wall of thick, magewrought iron bars.

Within the cell, a warforged paced with anxious steps that reverberated loudly across the chamber. Upright and active now, he looked even larger and more imposing than he had before, inert on a balcony floor. Soneste cursed softly as she noted that most of the living construct’s damage remained and that blood still crusted his composite plating. The Karrns had only repaired him just enough to awaken him. Despite his obvious agitation, the warforged looked worn down.

“I’m sorry you were not fully restored,” Soneste said as she walked up to the bars. “My name is Soneste Otänsin. I am here on behalf of the King’s Citadel to investigate the crime.” She displayed her papers but the smoldering blue crystal spheres that served as the warforged’s eyes paid them no mind. He advanced to the edge of the cage.

“Why am I a prisoner?” he demanded, confusion evident even through his cavernous voice. “Where is Master ir’Daresh? Vestra and Renet? They are in danger!” The warforged slammed the buckler shield of his arm against the bars in frustration.

The dissonant ringing hurt Soneste’s ears. Jotrem looked bored and unsurprised.

Soneste frowned. Where is Master—?

“Unholy Six!” she cursed, half turning to Jotrem and the White Lions. “He hasn’t even been told?”

The older inquisitive shrugged.

The warforged quieted then, clutching the bars with each hand. “Woman,” he said in a hollow, pleading tone. His body was perfectly still now. “What is there to
be
told? Whose blood is this?” He gestured one three-fingered hand at the brown stains that still crusted his body.

“I …” Soneste looked to the leather folder in her hand, stalling. The report had listed the warforged as a piece of Brelish property, belonging to Gamnon ir’Daresh. To most Karrns, warforged were weapons of war, nothing more. It shouldn’t surprise her that he’d not been informed.

She looked up into the construct’s eyes. Emotion could not be read in the cold metal of its standard, Cannith-issued faceplate, but from his voice she knew there was expectation. Worry. If the warforged was somehow involved in the murder, she would expect him to be calmer or feigning resignation. If this one had been disabled
before
the slaughter took place, there
should
be only confusion.

“What is your name?”

“Aegis,” he answered. “Please, tell me.”

“Aegis, I am sorry that I must be the one to relay such … tragic news.” She imagined the workroom the warforged had probably awakened in an hour or so before, a Cannith artificer poised over him, armed soldiers standing nearby just in case. “Your master has been murdered. I am here to find his killer.”

Aegis said nothing at first. Had he been a man, he might have gripped the bars with white knuckles, screamed with grief and rage. Instead he turned away from her and walked back to the center of the cell with great plodding steps. He’d been the ir’Daresh bodyguard. Protecting them had been his chosen duty, his vocation, and very likely his identity. She’d seen it before—warforged as devoted to their human commanders and comrades
as if they were blood. Respect born from shared experiences, not instilled in them by the forges of House Cannith.

“The children?” Aegis asked. “Lady Maril?”

Soneste shut her eyes. This was
not
part of her job. She was an inquisitive, the one called in to follow the trail of killers, find kidnapped victims, reveal clues and treachery. She was not equipped to console mourners.

Damn them. Damn Tallis or whoever did this.

“I am sorry,” she said, using anger to steel herself. “Aegis, I am here to find justice for the ir’Daresh family. I am here to avenge them, and I need your help, to know what you know.”

The construct turned sharply. “The half-elf intruder! He was masked.”

Tallis was a half-elf? She looked at Jotrem, who nodded.

“Half-elf, was it?” Jotrem repeated, a proud set to his jaw. “The warforged confirms what Sergeant Bratta and I have already told you, Miss Otänsin. Tallis
was
there. He is either the killer or the killer’s accomplice. You cannot doubt that.”

Soneste ignored him, distracted by this new information. She looked to the construct, whose attention was fully upon her. “Yes, I need to know more about him and about your master. I need to know everything you can tell me.”

Aegis advanced again on the bars. “I have failed in my duty!” he said. “Is this why I am caged?”

Soneste looked to the White Lions at the door. “This warforged is to be released from custody. Ask the Civic Minister, if you must, but I will see it done!” She slipped the writ from its folder and held it before them. The two guards looked to Jotrem, uncertain.

“Miss Otänsin,” the older inquisitive said. “The construct remains a suspect. It is not—”

“I will take responsibility for him, and he will bear no weapons.” Soneste narrowed her eyes. “Will you not ‘cut these ministerial webs’ and demonstrate your usefulness?”

Jotrem said nothing, but he nodded to the White Lions.

Soneste turned to face the warforged again, cognizant of the
Karrns watching her. “Aegis, we are in a foreign land, you and I. Not all facts are known to me yet, and the citizens of Karrnath do not see you as your master did, nor as I
do
. If you are released, you must go where I say and do what I ask.”

“I will,” Aegis answered with clear fervor.

“The warforged’s loyalties are uncertain,” Jotrem said coldly. “It is dangerous.”

Aegis tapped his forehead, where a mystic sigil was engraved in the metal. All warforged possessed such symbols, or ghulra. Each one unique, the ghulra were a signature of their creation. “I was made to fight for Breland.” The warforged’s tone was solemn. “But after the war, I
chose
to serve Ambassador Gamnon ir’Daresh and his family. That is my loyalty.”

Soneste nodded. “I will find your master’s killer.”

“Then I will serve
you
now, Mistress. I failed my master, Lady Maril, Rennet. Vestra. I will help you bring them justice in whatever way I can, but I am a warrior, not an investigator. I will guard your life and do as you request.”

“You will have that chance,” Soneste said, “but first I need you to tell me everything that you remember. Tell me about this masked man.”

Aegis pointed one of his thick fingers through bars at the hooked hammer she’d tied to her haversack. “That is the weapon he used against me.”

Soneste didn’t need to look to know Jotrem was smirking.

Crossing Paths
Mol, the 9th of Sypheros, 998 YK

W
ith the pretense of needing something from her room, Soneste returned to the Seventh Watch. She asked Aegis to accompany her while Jotrem waited in the lobby, then went up to her room, Tallis’s weapon in her hands.

“Please bear with me, Aegis,” she said. “I am not merely biding time.”

She calmed her mind, sat upon the floor, and laid her hands over the cold metal of the hooked hammer. The weapon—her one solid lead—had a story to tell, and she would do her utmost to learn it. Veshtalan had once attempted to teach her the ability to read the psychic impressions he claimed all people left on the things they touched. “If someone possessed an object long enough,” the kalashtar had said, “deep imprints would form, strong enough to be analyzed by a properly focused mind. Like yours, Soneste.”

“Give me something that has meaning to you—for a moment only,” Veshtalan had said. As always, the kalashtar’s voice was soft, patient but demanding.

Soneste had complied, slipping off the carved onyx talisman
she wore around her neck. Veshtalan had grasped the smooth, flat stone, tracing the owl-shaped object with delicate fingers then closed his eyes. A soft hum had surrounded them both and the onyx talisman appeared to glisten in his hand. After several long minutes of concentration, the handsome kalashtar had opened his eyes and smiled back at her.

“This stone was given to you by a human—your father?—when he was forty-one, a gift for his adolescent daughter, in apology for an event he’d been unable to attend.”

“Boldrei’s Feast,” Soneste had said quietly.

The kalashtar continued. “He’d purchased it from a shifter woman somewhere on his tour of duty. She was fifty-nine, a mother devoted to her family and willing to part with the semiprecious stone to feed her children in hard times. The shifter, in turn, had found the amulet in the pocket of a dead young human, not yet nineteen winters old. That boy’s father had given it to him only two days before on the day the boy had manifested the Mark of Making …”

Soneste had been impressed by the kalashtar’s abilities, but she was skeptical by nature and knew he might have fabricated most of the information. Her father
had
given her the onyx carving when his duties in the field prevented him coming home for Boldrei’s Feast that year. There was no way Veshtalan could have known that without the use of his powers, but try as she might, she’d been unable to produce the same effect with other objects—though she’d never stopped trying. Her mentor had insisted that doubt, and a lack of desire to succeed, had failed her.

As Soneste sat in perfect silence, she grasped Tallis’s weapon, closed her eyes, and tried her utmost to
see
it with her mind. Several minutes of mental exertion followed, giving her a headache instead of psychic insight. She maintained her focus, willing to learn more about the man who’d carried this very metal in his grasp. She wanted,
needed
, to know more! Just when she could hold her focus no longer, she had a brief moment’s image—not visual, not sensory at all, but somehow it felt more like a memory that wasn’t her own. She could envision the cold metal of the hammer pass from one
pair of hands to another. Small, calloused hands—a gnome’s—passing the weapon over to larger, gnarled hands—a dwarf’s. Then again, a new hand grasping the hammer—long-fingered, delicate but strong. A half-elf’s—

Soneste stopped, her body drenched in sweat from her efforts. She washed up and returned to Jotrem again. Aegis had spoken not a word during this time.

“The Bluefist,” Jotrem had answered when she’d asked him where one might purchase dwarf-made weaponry in the city. “It set up shop immediately after the dwarf-lords of Mror declared their independence. They specialize in advanced arms, but they do not supply in bulk like many of the dwarf merchants. Even the Conqueror’s Host carries Bluefist blades. But hooked hammers are made by gnomes.”

Soneste had shrugged. “Trust me. We need to go there.”

The Bluefist of Mror was little more than a block of stone with residential flats stacked above it. The only ornamentation was its entrance, a threshold stylized to resemble a miniature dwarfgate of the Mror Holds. Above it, an iron plaque displayed a blue fisted gauntlet against a gray mountain. Just beneath, a Cannith seal was carved into a wooden placard and painted black, denoting the smithy as licensed by the dragonmarked house. After Soneste had read the old
Chronicle
articles, House Cannith, an omnipresent fixture of Khorvairian society, seemed more sinister.

They took the steps to the heavy door of the armory, Jotrem leading the way. The older inquisitive carried the hooked hammer. Soneste glanced at it, imagining the invisible impressions locked away like treasures inside it. What else might she learn with that power? It was one worth mastering.

She paused to see if anyone objected to the presence of Aegis, who followed several paces behind her. The people of Korth didn’t seem as hostile to him as some of the outspoken protestors in
Sharn. In Korth, they didn’t seem to care about him one way or the other. The warforged was just a tool.

One dwarf stood behind the counter, while another tended the weapons arrayed on the walls. Soneste saw maces, swords, polearms, and more exotic arms—all gleamed as though polished and newly forged. Some of them possessed a faint shimmer, suggestive of magical properties. There was a single door behind the counter. Soneste could hear the faint ring of the forge beyond.