Arrow on the String: Solomon Sorrows Book 1 Dan Fish (best book club books .TXT) 📖

around the dance floor. After she finished her Maiden’s Dance, she invited others to join, as tradition demands. The musicians played until just past midnight. Some guests left. Those who had traveled retired to their rooms. We took Zvilna up to bed and bid her goodnight.”

“She was afraid,” Trellia said. She looked at Sorrows. “She watched for you all night. She didn’t want—”

Trellia collapsed on the floor, on her knees, on the crimson and gold rug that matched the rug in the hallway. Her shoulders shook with sobs. She wiped her eyes.

“She didn’t want to be alone. She wanted to sleep in the great room with us, her other family, her friends.”

“Preposterous,” Zvilna’s grandmother said.

But it was just a word. Spoken without conviction. It left her lips and hung in the air, echoed faintly off the stone walls and floor until it was swallowed by a gust of wind that rattled the bedroom window.

“We need some time to search the room,” Davrosh said.

“Of course,” Trellia said.

Davrosh walked around the bed, took Zvilna’s grandmother by the arm, and helped her out of the chair. Trellia stood, took her mother-in-law’s hand, and the two left the room. Trellia’s sobbing resumed in the hallway but grew faint as she shuffled away. He and Davrosh were alone. Zvilna Gorsham lay on the bed, arms wide, an arrow protruding from the center of her forehead. Sorrows ignored the body. Had other questions to work through first.

“Talk to me,” he said.

He spoke in a low, quiet voice. A near whisper. Even then, his words filled the room. He walked to the door.

“What do you want me to say?” Davrosh asked.

“Anything. Doesn’t matter. Talk in your normal voice.”

He stepped into the hallway, pulling the door shut behind him. He sat in the chair the guard had sat in. Leaned back with his head against the wall like the guard would have leaned. He could see the full length of the hallway out of the corners of his eyes. Shapes were blurry, indistinct, but he would notice someone walking toward him. Davrosh started talking. He couldn’t make out the words, but he heard her voice clear enough. He got up out of the chair, opened the door.

“—such an orchole. The biggest orchole I know. The biggest orchole I’ll ever—”

She stopped, grinned at him.

“How’d I do?” she asked.

“Guard would’ve heard anything that went on in the room,” he said. He stepped into the room. “Definitely any cries for help. The killer’s keeping the girls quiet somehow.”

“Gagged?”

“You ever been gagged?” he asked.

Davrosh shook her head. “No.”

“You can still make plenty of noise gagged.”

“Magic?” she asked.

“You tell me,” he said. “You ever hear of that kind of magic?”

She shook her head. “No, I suppose not.”

“Me neither. Maybe he’s killing them in their sleep. Maybe it is the arrow after all.”

“She wasn’t sleeping,” Davrosh said. “You saw Trellia. She didn’t sleep. No way in hells Zvilna slept.”

“There’s magic to make a person sleep,” Sorrows said. “Maybe our guy weaves some sleeping magic first.”

Davrosh shook her head. “Would leave a residue like restoration magic. Besides, how’s he going to do that without being seen? This is a big room, but they would’ve checked the corners and closets. Would’ve looked for monsters under the bed.”

“Maybe he’s a Weaver?”

“A Weaver who could turn himself invisible? That’s one hell of a Weaver. Not saying it’s impossible, but he’d have to stay perfectly still, and even then it’d be tough to fool someone looking for something.”

Sorrows shrugged. “This guy’s good. He’s got some sort of an edge. Maybe that’s it.”

Davrosh frowned. “We’d be talking elf then. No way a half-born gift would be strong enough.”

“Maybe that’s been our mistake,” Sorrows said. “I’ve been thinking half-born from the start.”

“Same,” Davrosh said. “Because dwarves don’t kill dwarves.”

“Right. And elves don’t give orcpiss about anyone other than elves.”

“You think we found one who does?”

“Maybe.”

Sorrows moved around the room, glanced out the window. The night was dark. Light from the great room spilled out into the storm twelve or fourteen paces below.

“Two guards below,” Davrosh said. “Roof covered in snow, arm’s length of eaves.”

Sorrows nodded. “Doesn’t get in through the window or the door. Doesn’t make a sound.”

He sighed, checked under the bed, ran his finger along the frame. Pale oak, thick, scuffed from years of use. Nothing unusual. He moved his gaze level with the bed, swept his eyes from a quilt, half-folded and draped across its foot, to the pillows piled at its head. Zvilna rested on a coverlet the same buttermilk color of the dress Mig had worn earlier that day. Zvilna’s left hand hung limp in front of his face. Her arm created a soft valley in the bedding, pressing into the mattress underneath. Another impression showed where she had sat when she climbed into the bed. Another where her elbow had touched as she rolled onto her back. Sorrows walked to the other side of the bed, saw the same valley beneath her right arm, but no other shadowed shallows marred the buttermilk fabric.

“How’s he get the shot off?” he asked.

Davrosh followed his gaze, shook her head. “He’d have to be standing on the bed, straddling her.”

“Try that shot sometime. Let me know how it turns out.”

“So he shoots her on the floor?”

“And she crawls herself into bed afterward?” he asked.

“Gods, I don’t know,” Davrosh said. “We asked the same questions with the other four. That’s one way I got to my piss-poor guess. You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know.”

“Then why bring me here at all?”

“I don’t know.”

“What did you hope I’d see?”

“Who knows? Something.”

“I don’t see a splitting thing.”

“Yeah? Well, don’t blame me, orchole. La’Jen wanted you here. Not me. I just gave him the reason.”

Sorrows said nothing for a spell. Davrosh stomped around the room, looked at the rug, looked under the bed, looked at the bench by the window.

Sorrows frowned. “What do you mean, Oray wanted me here?”

“He knew who you were and wanted you in Hammerfell.”

“Why?”

“Because you hunt monsters,”