Chapter Ten

More than anything else, Sir Elstone Kinsaid hated accountants. He hated anyone who could take a group of Knights—honorable, heroic men and women ready to sacrifice their lives for the Knighthood—and reduce them to numbers and figures in a book: a quantity of rations per day, a bill for monthly repairs to armor and equipment.

On the desk before him lay a short missive, written in a crisp, efficient hand on a half sheet of paper. It read:

With a snarl, the Lord Knight of Palanthas crumpled the letter into a tiny ball, squeezing it in his fist until his knuckles turned white. With a spasm of anger, he opened his fingers and let the note roll from his palm and fall onto his desktop. It lay there in a valley surrounded by mountains of reports, analyses, and studies that demanded his perusal, approval, and signature, so that they could be filed away somewhere where no one would ever be likely to read them for the next thousand years. Dragons may hatch, grow up, age, and die, but the work of accountants goes on forever.

The writer of the letter, Morham Targonne, had wrested control of the Knights of Takhisis from Mirielle Abrena, the Knight who had almost single-handedly held the Order together after the Chaos War. A few short months ago, around Yuletide, word had arrived by wyvern rider that Lady Mirielle had “retired” and passed the leadership of the Knights of Takhisis to Morham Targonne, a man who had entered the Knighthood as a clerk, a mere accountant, a man whose hand better fitted the grip of a pen than a sword. Everyone learned, sooner or later, what “retired” meant. She had been murdered, probably poisoned.

One of the new Lord of the Night’s first orders had been to change the name of the Order to the Knights of Neraka. This was a move Sir Kinsaid opposed most vehemently… in private. He said nothing to his officers and pretended to support the change lest they think him weak or rebellious, but within his own heart, he felt deeply offended. He had been in the Order long enough to have shared in the original Vision, the gift of their dark queen, Takhisis, to all her Knights. Thanks to the Vision each Knight knew his or her place in Her Dark Majesty’s plan. Then Takhisis had abandoned Krynn, along with all the other gods, after the Chaos War, and with her went the Vision. This did not change the loyalty Sir Kinsaid felt toward his queen. The Knights of Takhisis had been founded to serve her. To change its name to the Knights of Neraka was to betray her. It bespoke of an Order whose guiding purpose had shifted from a Vision of the glory of their immortal queen to a worldly Vision, one where Knights sought the wisdom of merchants, and consulted accountants before riding off to battle.

A knock at his door brought Sir Kinsaid back to the matter at hand. At his gruff command, the door opened, and a young Knight of the Lily stepped into the room, snapping to attention as the Lord Knight of Palanthas raised his eyes from the reports on his desk. “Sir Arach Jannon to see you, sir,” she said, sharply saluting with a fist to her black armored breast.

Returning her salute, he answered with a sigh. “Show him in.” If there was one thing he hated almost as much as accountants, it was mysteriously behaving wizards.

Moments later, the Thorn Knight glided into the room, his hands folded into the sleeves of his gray robe. He wore his usual smug smile, his black eyes twinkling with some inner merriment. Seeing him, Sir Kinsaid felt his anger at Morham Targonne boil up and come rushing out, aimed like a jet of steam from a gnomish tarbean tea brewer, straight at the face of the Lord Justice.

“Remove that silly grin from your face, Sir Knight,” he growled.

Sir Arach’s mouth fell open at these words. He stammered, trying to regain his composure. Finally, the best he could manage was a puzzled stare. “M’lord, I was told… I was told you wished to see me?”

Sir Kinsaid snatched a letter from his desk. It was not the letter he intended to grab, but it didn’t matter. He shook it at the Thorn Knight. “Do you know who this letter is from?”

“No, m’lord,” Sir Arach said. By his best guess, it could be one of two dozen that had been reported to him as having arrived upon the Lord Knight’s desk this day. One of these, he knew to have come from the Lord of the Night himself. He had deduced the letter had been his promotion to Lord Justice of Neraka (thus his smug grin as he entered the room). Obviously, something had gone awry.

“It’s from Mistress Jenna,” Sir Kinsaid barked. Actually, it was from his sister, but the wizard hadn’t been invented yet that could read a letter he waved in his hands.

“Oh? What does she say?” Sir Arach asked. Strange, he hadn’t known about this particular letter. A hole must exist in the circle of informants surrounding the Lord Knight.

“She demands to know the status of her case—the theft at the house of Gaeord uth Wotan. She says she has been able to get nothing from you except evasive responses and flat denials. She grows weary and demands justice or else, she says,“ she will take matters into her own hands.”

“What does that mean, take matters into her own hands?” Arach said smugly.

“Aren’t you listening to me?” the Lord Knight roared, his face red as a radish, the veins standing out along his neck like worms. “She demands! She threatens!”

“The audacity!” Arach exclaimed sympathetically.

Sir Kinsaid’s face flushed a deeper shade of burgundy. “I am under strict orders from General Targonne to leave Mistress Jenna alone. Leave her alone! In other words, don’t rile her up with evasions and denials!” he bellowed. Sir Arach glanced around nervously, wondering if those in the waiting area outside could hear. It would not do to have the tale of this dressing-down travel beyond the Lord Knight’s castle. He noted the thickness of the door and the walls with some relief.

“Who is this thief, and why has he not been arrested?” Sir Kinsaid demanded. “Don’t you think I have enough to do without having to coddle irate sorcerers and whining merchants?”

“His name is Caelthalas Elbernarian, but he goes by the alias Cael Ironstaff. He professes to be the son of Tanis Half-Elven, a Hero of the Lance, but his claim seems to have little merit,” Sir Arach spouted officiously. “Probably the name is a fabrication. This Ironstaff is a notorious rogue, a liar, and braggart, by all accounts.”

“You seem to know so much about him,” Sir Kinsaid said, somewhat mollified. “Why haven’t you captured him yet?”

“We think he has left the city,” Sir Arach answered.

“How do you know that for sure?”

“We don’t, but he has not been seen in three weeks, not since the day of the Spring Dawning festival, when one of your Knights let him slip through his fingers at the Horizon Road gate—he has been executed for his dereliction of duty, of course. Ironstaffs dwelling and the places he frequents—the Dwarven Spring, the alchemists’ shops, the University and the Great Library—have been watched most closely. He has vanished. He has either left the city willingly, or he has been slain by another thief and his body dumped in the sewers. So, as you can see, we are working on the case but there is little I can do right now, no matter how loudly Mistress Jenna protests.”

“She says in her letter that the thief is being hidden by the Thieves’ Guild,” Sir Kinsaid said.

“There is no Thieves’ Guild in Palanthas,” Sir Arach assured him.

The Thorn Knight jumped as Sir Kinsaid’s fist struck the desk. An avalanche of papers and reports cascaded to the floor. “If there is one person in this city who truly believes that lie,” Sir Kinsaid said in a voice tight with barely suppressed emotion, “he is a fool. I don’t care where this thief is or who is hiding him. If this supposed son of Half-Elven is in Palanthas, whether he be a living thief or a bunch of bones in the belly of a sewer monster, I want him found and his theft restored. I want Mistress Jenna satisfied. Do you understand me, Sir Knight?”

“Yes m’lord,” Sir Arach responded with feigned humility, bowing his way to the door. Almost as an afterthought, he added, “If it comes to searching the sewers, it might prove expensive.”

“Get out of my sight!”

Sir Arach ducked though the door as a glass paperweight shattered against the wall by his head.