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Dhairr thrust himself to his feet, his chair scraping stone, but Balram locked a restraining hand on his friend's arm. He ignored the blazing look in the lord's eyes. "Do not. I have sent whatever men could be spared to retrieve them, but if the attack comes soon, the lake and environs are the safest places."

Dhairr jerked his arm free and turned away, a clear sign Balram would win the argument. He seldom lost. "However it ends, you will see to him?" Dhairr asked.

"Yes. As you will see to Aazen, if the reverse is true," said Balram.

Dhairr nodded and sank back into his chair, staring at nothing. "Kall has always been defiant—like his mother. There are days .. . nights more than morns," he said, and paused. Another memory flitted before his eyes, but the scars this time were invisible specters. "I should not have sent her away."

"Alytia was a wizard," Balram said flatly.

Dhairr chuckled. His friend—the whole of Amn—predictably reviled the Art. His mirth quickly died. "You have also raised a motherless child. Was it so simple for you, Captain?"

Balram's lips tightened. "My son has never wanted for anything, my lord, and neither has yours." The remark held an edge of bitterness that Dhairr failed to notice. "By removing your wife, you have taken all magic, and the danger that inherently follows such power, from your house and from your son's eyes. Is that not worth whatever deprivation he may have suffered?"

"Yes," Dhairr said, but the familiar conviction did not come. Perhaps it was because he again faced his own mortality.

When he had first known her, nothing about Alytia seemed to matter—not her magic, her defiance, or even her association with the great meddlers of Faer?n. He'd hardly cared about anything save her beauty, her breath feathering his chest in the night, and the child they conceived after a year of such blissful ignorance.

While his son lay wailing in his crib, assassins laid open Dhairr's throat and left him bleeding on the floor of his bedchamber. He'd survived, but his eyes had been brutally opened.

He never learned the identities of the assassins, never knew for certain whether it was hatred of his wife's magic or her dangerous alliances that drove them, but he had taken no chances.

"Leave one alive," Dhairr said, turning his attention back to Balram, "to question."

"I will tell Meraik—"

"No." Dhairr cut him off. "I'll tell them myself. I'm going down."

"Is that wise?"

The lord of Morel house smiled grimly, but his face possessed a gray tinge, a wasted look enhanced by the scar at his throat. "I tire of waiting."

Balram half-bowed as Dhairr swept from the room. He watched through the windows as his lord crossed the garden, heading for the broad arcade that fringed the outer wall.

Stationed along the courtyard and beyond were the house guards, most handpicked and trained by Balram. They nodded respectfully as their lord passed.

The guard captain raised an open palm, surprised at the sweat he felt beneath his leather glove. The slight tremble to his fingers was even more distressing, but he dismissed it as heightened awareness, anticipation of the battle to come.

"You make for a fascinating study, Kortrun. Were you not, I believe I would have abandoned you and your little project long ago."

Balram did not turn at the voice. Soril Angildaen—Daen to those who knew him as a killer—would remain in his presence as long as Daen saw fit, whether Balram acknowledged the man or not.

"Lord Morel prefers soft wine to stronger drink, as the latter leaves his senses dull," Daen continued, unaffected by his companion's silence. He strolled into the room, his fur-capped boots making no sound as he moved to stand next to Balram. "Chessenta's finest fruit-white, as I recall you saying. I believe he keeps several bottles locked beneath an insultingly simple false bottom in this chest." He tapped the box sitting behind Morel's desk with his heel. "You might have shared a bottle, just now."

"We might have," Balram agreed, "and have, many times in the past."

"A noteworthy indication of friendship from Lord Morel, a man who, for the whole of twelve years, has demanded his food tasted for him, and scouts every door for a dagger point. Yet he drinks, uncaring, with you."

"He trusts me."

"Without question. Enlighten me, then; why is your esteemed lord and friend not dead?"

"He will be, very soon," Balram assured him.

Daen crossed his arms over a barrel stomach. Balram had no idea how the rogue managed to move so silently while lugging such a gut. He wore a yards-long, gray silk vest tucked snugly into a sash of the same color embroidered in silver threads. His shirt lay open at the neck, exposing pale hairs and a square-cut onyx gem clasped in a silver claw. Balram often wondered if the necklace didn't contain some form of magic. Unlike the rest of Amn, the Shadow Thieves were not known to shy from employing wizards.

"You could have slain him painlessly just then—a quick poison, a mark of mercy. Easier still, you could leave him alive—take his men and join us now, your conscience unfettered by the murder of a friend. Yet you plan this assassination in the same bloody manner as almost caused your friend's downfall twelve years ago. I applaud the irony and your enthusiasm, of course, but you risk much."

With much to gain, thought Balram. Like Morel, he had used his years wisely. "The men I have trained, the men who, if this attempt succeeds, will be assets to your organization," he added pointedly, "have not been tested."

"Ah, unfortunate," Daen agreed. "Men loyal to Balram but not yet weaned from Morel's purse. You have no idea if they will actually be able to betray the man who feeds and shelters them. Which brings up a point close to my heart," he added, as if the thought had only just occurred to him, "and those of my colleagues. How will you be able to survive without Morel's considerable income, should you succeed? The gem road connects his doorstep to Keczulla, and his fortunes look only to increase with the growth of that city. Forgive me, but financially, the jewel-lord of Esmeltaran is a more favorable prospect for the Shadow Thieves than the mercenary, Balram Kortrun."