Free Blood's Pride (Shattered Kingdoms) by Evie Manieri

he unbuckled the sheath of his dagger from around his leg and dropped it down onto the desk. ‘I want you to take this.’
    ‘My Lord, I can’t!’ Daryan glanced behind him towards the closed curtain. ‘You know what will happen to me if I’m caught with a knife—’
    ‘Take it,’ his master insisted, pushing it closer to him. ‘I may have to go away tonight, and I might be gone some time, so keep it with you. Just in case.’
    ‘My Lord – did you see something about
me
?’
    ‘I’m not sure. Maybe, but it was hard to tell,’ said Eofar. ‘Please take it.’
    The sheathed dagger lay on the desk in front of them; it wasn’t going to go away on its own. ‘Are you ordering me, my Lord?’ asked Daryan.
    ‘Accept it as a gift – from a friend.’
    Finally he picked it up, and a little shiver of danger raced through him. It was too big to put in his pocket so he slid it underneath his robe and then tied his sash tighter to hold it in place. Satisfied, Eofar picked up the quill and dipped it in the ink.
    Just as he touched the point to the paper he said, ‘I have been waiting for a message from someone.’ He spoke very slowly, as if finding the right words took some effort. ‘The message should have come a long time ago – I was worried that this person might be in danger, or—’ He left the thought unfinished, but his meaning was plain enough. ‘The elixir was the only way to find out.’
    Daryan drew close enough to feel the Dead One’s chill eddying around him. ‘What person, my Lord?’
    Eofar’s quill scratched across the paper. ‘I saw things – bad things – and a place I must find. This place.’
    Daryan watched the lines forming under his hand and felt an unexpected flush of panic. He looked again at the curtain. He really shouldn’t be part of this.
    ‘Do you know this sign?’ Eofar asked, lifting his hand away.
    ‘I don’t know – I don’t know what that is,’ he stammered, turning his head away from the paper, just as the Shadari at the funeral had turned away from the sand-written prayer. But despite himself he had already seen the character, a curving line with three small vertical lines beneath it: the Shadari character for ‘truth’. A character that Eofar couldn’t possibly know.
    His hand ached with the desire to snatch up and rend that forbidden figure, to tear away the disaster that it surely boded. ‘Only the ashas were allowed to read and write. You know that.They’re all dead.’ He laid his hand down over the paper, covering up the symbol, and looked at his master. ‘My Lord, who are you looking for? Who is in danger?’
    Eofar clutched the quill even harder, and his eyes darted away. ‘I wanted to tell you – this secret, it was not my idea.’
    ‘Tell me what?’ It was beginning to dawn on him that whatever Eofar had been hiding was far more serious than he had imagined. ‘My Lord,
who
is in danger?’
    ‘My wife.’
    Daryan’s face went slack with shock. ‘Your
what
?’
    ‘We made plans to leave the Shadar. I helped her escape, so she could see her family again. She didn’t tell me where they were; she said it wasn’t fair to them. We had a signal for when she was ready to go. It should have been a few days, a week. I waited. I’ve been waiting for five months. I couldn’t wait any more.’
    ‘Escape? But that would mean—’
    ‘You have never seen a place with that?’ In his impatience Eofar’s voice had risen to a squeak like a rusty hinge. ‘A doorway, like this,’ he drew the shape in the air with his free hand, the other still holding the quill, ‘with this above it?’
    Daryan shook his head. ‘No,’ he responded truthfully, still reeling, ‘I never have.’
    ‘Not in the Shadar? Before you came here?’
    ‘I don’t know what you saw, my Lord, but it could not have been in the Shadar,’ he said definitely. ‘No Shadari would ever make a mark like that – or allow one to be made.’
    ‘Harotha’ – Eofar paused. His eyes