The worn surface of the bar became the tortured man’s new home. He spent days there—the last spot he could think of to search—where it had all become vain. Old habits claimed the man, but they were old habits from healthier days. His body had healed the wounds, yet his health still struggled. The bottom of a flagon was not the place to find peace from fretful coughing or pain-wrought nights.
This tavern—the Black Tooth, however that moniker had materialized—had been the scene of a violent brawl some two moons earlier. The Noressi spymaster known as Lord Sha had been killed by assassins during the brawl, and all that he had known had died with him—near as the tortured man could tell.
Assassins. Therein laid the true face of the drunken man’s tormentors. Hounded in his far-flung home and left for dead on the returning road…some enemy would not let the Black Tooth patron be. And until some answers were found—some security restored—the man could not become himself. He could not risk it.
A few weeks into his fruitless investigation and drunken stupor, the man watched a new patron arrive at the Black Tooth Tavern. Watching was hard—even from the ideal corner table—when one was three pints down. But something about the newcomer’s eyepatch stirred the wretched man in the corner, and he staggered to his feet.
He crossed to the bar, where the newcomer had gone, and stumbled into a countertop lean. The man with the eyepatch turned to look at him—it was Matek. It was glorious, bitter, loyal Matek.
“Lord Farek?” Matek gasped, staring at the mangey hair and matted beard of his old liege.
Finally, after months, Farek had a reason to be himself again. Through the drunken haze, he felt his dearest friend embrace him—and he found the strength to embrace back. Tears sprung to his eyes. “I can’t go home,” he sobbed. “Not until I know…until I know what Sha knew…”
“I know, I know,” Matek gasped, holding him close. “But how? How are you alive?”
Farek scoffed. He did not feel alive. His sour mirth went from scoffing to coughing, and he sagged back onto a bar stool. His mind ran through the last few months: the foggy scrap of the well-meaning Raenan citizen who had dragged his dying body from that alley; the murky memory of the healer who had tried his best to repair the hole in Farek’s chest; the paranoid recollection of the court magician they had next taken the dying lord to—a magician who knew that the court of High Raena was no safer for the wounded Noressi; and the entrapped flashback to the secret hideout where he had been nursed back from the brink.
There was no point to any of it if Farek did not get answers. Maybe he could just fade back into the inebriated oblivion he had created for himself. “I need to know…” he mumbled. “Were you there, when Sha died?”
“I was,” Matek said. “Are you sure you want to know? Now? You should sob—”
“Now,” Farek growled, grabbing Matek’s shoulder. There was no sign of Diaren, Sievus, or any of the others. A flitting memory of Enora Roek—his brief lover—passed by him. Had they all died? Was Matek the only one left—Matek, and the drunken remnant of Lord Farek?
Matek saw his wandering attention. “Most of us survived,” he told Farek. “We lost Sievus.”
“Gods.” Farek took a gulp from his mug, sloshing his beard with beer.
“Alvar, too,” Matek said, naming one of the additional guards lent to them by Jannia before their departure for the foolhardy mission of finding allies. “Ralla nearly lost her arm, but she’s healed up now. She’s staying at an inn near the harbour, along with Oakeb and those of Sha’s entourage that survived.”
“And Diaren?” Farek asked, readying his mug.
Matek smiled. “Diaren is fine. He took Ayvim and Sheem to report back to Soros.”
“To report what?” Farek asked, turning his relieved attention once more to Lord Sha’s untimely demise and the question that defined the shadow of Farek’s former life—Who keeps trying to kill us?
The smile faded from Matek’s face. He ordered a stiffer drink from the barkeeper and took a sip before turning to Farek once more. “Lord Sha, with his dying breath, told us…that it was the Matriarchs. The Matriarchs sent the assassins.”
“The Matriarchs…” Farek repeated. He couldn’t understand the phrase at first. He had imagined Tarro out there, hounding Farek and his friends for what they had done at Kiaraka. He had imagined the enemies of the alliance or lords of Soros he had once slighted. Why would the Matriarchs want him dead?
“Sha didn’t have much more to say than that before facing the next life,” Matek mumbled after a swig of his own drink. “Near as we figured, they’ve been targeting House Gallendris for a long time. Lord Sha could have been sent to Soros in the first place to cover up a botched attempt during that explosion on the estate.”
That one suspicion was like a match to a torch—Farek’s mind sprung awake like wildfire. That was why Lord Sha had lost favour—that was why Erril replaced him. Lord Sha had been tasked with bringing the Bank of Soros into the Matriarchs’ direct control. His efforts to get answers had been lies to conceal the truth from Farek and Jannia.
“Lord Polanar cried out his love for his son…at the end…” Farek recalled, his already furious stomach sinking into his boots. “Lord Sha or Erril…they must have had his son hostage. Those damned fiends. Those wretched rulers!” Realizing everything—realizing that Farek’s drunken absence had not resulted in safety for Jannia and Simi—Farek’s fury rose past the scar in his chest and poured out his mouth in a string of curses. “Gods burn them alive!” he bellowed, and kicked his bar stool back from him.
A few patrons chuckled at the outburst.
“Burn you, too,” Farek shouted at them, and staggered for the door.
Matek hurried after Farek, catching him when he almost fell off his feet. “Where are you going?” his loyal friend asked.
Farek had no answer. He found the shadows of the setting sun outside and collapsed against the wall of the tavern, bringing out another wave of coughs and an echo of the pain that hounded him. He tilted his head back to look at the sky. “I gave my blood to them, time and again…” Words could not suffice.
The tortured man and his friend sat in the weeds and watched the sun set over Saanazar.