Solentine motioned me away from the dummy. I joined Gort and Kaiden at the table.
Solentine set the scroll case on the table and extracted two small, slender knives from somewhere in his jerkin. They had short blades, maybe four and a half inches long, curved like claws, with the inside edge sharpened. Their handles were bone, carved to provide a textured grip, with a ring large enough to slide a finger through at their ends.
“Ooh, ooh, he’s going to do the two-dagger thing!”
Yessss. His signature fighting style from the books. Yes, yes, yes!
“His Grace doesn’t need two daggers,” Kaiden said.
“Hush and watch,” I told him.
Solentine spun the two blades in his hands and struck at the dummy, lightning fast and yet smooth, flowing like water. His left blade slashed the dummy’s face, while his right hooked an imaginary arm and sliced through the inside of the elbow. He spun around the dummy, sinking his knife into the kidneys, stabbing into the armpit, slashing across the spine, and finished with a wide, beautiful cut to the throat.
I reached over and pushed Kaiden’s chin up to close his mouth.
“Straw doesn’t fight back,” Will said.
Solentine grinned at him. “Do you?”
Will pulled his knife.
The door opened, and Everard stepped out.
“Will, don’t you have blades to oil? Solentine, do not debone my soldier.”
Will sheathed his knife, bowed his head to Everard, and went inside.
“You ruin all my fun,” Solentine said. He flicked the knives, and they vanished back into his jerkin.
“Do you have news?” I asked. If he had figured out the missing link, I needed to know it right now.
“Yes, but not the kind we wanted.”
Solentine picked up the scroll case from the table and lobbed it at Everard. Everard snatched it out of the air, pulled the scroll out of the case, glanced at it, and swore.
“I told you. I fucking told you there would be consequences,” Solentine said.
“What is it?” I asked.
“We need privacy,” Solentine said.
“Let’s go to my office.”
We went up the stairs into my office, and I shut the door.
“Um,” Solentine said.
A small green fish lay on my desk. I sighed, picked it up by the tail, and carried it to the plate I’d stolen from the kitchen. I put the fish on the plate and slid it under my bed.
“I’m not even going to ask,” Solentine said.
“It’s Sushi,” I told him. “You insulted her by calling her the guard vermin last time you were here. She keeps trying to feed me because I’m garbage at catching fish.”
Sushi decided to poke her nose out from under the bed, gave Solentine a warning hiss, and vanished back into the gloom.
I wiped my hands on a towel, threw the ruined paper into the wastebasket, and sat in the chair behind my desk. “So, what’s going on?”
“Sauven is throwing a joedurar,” Everard ground out. “My attendance is requested.”
