Children of the Wastes (The Aionach Saga Book 2) by J.C. Staudt Page B

to
request an audience with Tycho Montari. Now.”

CHAPTER 6
    The Goatskin Record
    When Lethari woke, his wife was sleeping next to him.
He had gone to bed late and hadn’t heard Frayla slip into bed beside him, so
lost in his dreams he might’ve slept through a windstorm. He decided not to
rouse her. He would wait in his den until she woke, then tell her what Amhaziel
had shown him and what he had decided to do. We will not leave this
household, neither one of us, until I have made clear my intentions , he
promised himself.
    He stole away and breakfasted alone in his great hall,
sitting in his high-backed ironwood chair at the heavy sandstone table which
embellished the cavernous room like an altar. When he excused himself, he left
a great deal of uneaten food on his painted clay plate; his travels had
acclimated him to slimmer rations, and the servants at home always prepared far
too much. He supposed that was because they liked eating the leftovers, but he
did not mind. And they had nothing to worry about on that score, as long as
Frayla never found out.
    Before retiring to his chambers for his morning rituals,
Lethari told Oisen to send Frayla to him after she had eaten. Once inside,
Lethari removed the cloth bandages Amhaziel had lain over his new sigil and
cleansed it with fresh water. He winced at the pain, but was pleased to see the
progress the scarring had already made. A pair of sharp horns rose above the
gentle curve of a snout that swept over his skin like a wave. A creature,
both beast and man . The cuts were perfect; in a few weeks, the healed flaw
would make a fine addition to the others.
    Lethari spent the rest of the morning doing all the things a
great warleader did while no one else was watching. He cut his hair and shaved
his face. He hummed a little tune he knew and had heard in the market upon his
return to the city. He exercised. He practiced his forms with one of the spare
scimitars he kept in his den. The scimitar he usually carried, Tosgaith ,
with its golden lizard’s-head pommel and two emeralds for eyes, had been
severed by one of yarun merouil at the factory camp in the steel city.
Lethari had commissioned the sword many years ago from Cairmag Charani, one of
the great smiths who lived just outside Sai Calgoar. Today, Tosgaith was
back in Cairmag’s forge, being remade.
    When there came a knock at his chamber door, Lethari thrilled
to think Frayla had woken. But it was only Oisen, coming to alert him that the
undertaker had returned with the lathcu ’s corpse. Lethari commanded them
to bring Daxin’s body into his den. They left the simple wooden casket—a
slave’s casket, reserved for the lowliest of lathcui —on the floor for
lack of a better platform, along with the burlap bag containing Daxin’s clothing
and personal effects.
    Lethari was far from superstitious about housing the body,
and he was not bothered about those who would renounce him for taking such care
over a dead pale-skin; he simply wanted to return Daxin Glaive to his hometown.
He owed Daxin’s family that much. To do that, Lethari would need Tycho
Montari’s leave to go to Bradsleigh instead of accompanying him to the hidden
sands. And with Diarmid Kailendi, Lethari’s second-in-command, still in the
steel city, the master-king would have to rely on one of Lethari’s lesser
warleaders to take him there.
    Changing Tycho Montari’s mind about anything would be a feat.
Changing his mind about this, Lethari knew, would be impossible without the
intervention of the fates. Lethari trusted the visions Amhaziel had shown him,
however, and he did not think the fates would abandon him on the eve of his
greatest triumph.
    Lethari removed the lid and stared down into the casket,
studying the grim countenance of the man who had for so many long years been his
friend and ally among the lathcui . Daxin Glaive’s face was dry and
sallow, his skin smooth and pale. At Lethari’s request, the embalmers had
dressed him in the