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Driga shrugs her delicate shoulders—delicate,I think, as if she doesn’t have at least a foot and a half on me—and gives us an offhand pout. “As a mated female, I no longer have an opinion.”
Jokahn doesn’t argue with her, meeting my eyes to continue our conversation instead. My opinion of the guy drops even further. In hindsight, I guess I should have known the Skoropi males on Liatra would be as bad as they come, given that I only know one and he’s a jerk.
“You want to investigate the temple and disarm the weapon that destroyed…” He pauses and looks at Malix. “What was it called?”
“Rath,” Malix says through gritted teeth.
“Right,” Jokahn says. “That destroyedRath. And I want the same thing, because Dalphox is a reckless fool who would rather kill us all than let the remnants of the Fifth House escape.”
“You think this was about Zandro?” I ask, frowning.
“When it comes to Dalphox, nearly everything is about Zandro,” Jokahn says, rolling his glowing orange eyes. Driga tilts her head in agreement, her brows rising. “He’s frustrated with the Fifth House’s refusal to die.”
“You’ve spoken with him?” Taraven asks, his tail twitching in agitation.
“I speak with Dalphox regularly,” Jokahn says. “I’m third in line to be warlord of Liatra; it makes perfect sense that we would be in communication.”
“And how does he feel about you hosting Zandro’s allies?” I ask, my eyes narrow.
Jokahn smirks. “Just because we talk doesn’t mean I tell him everything.”
…which I can assume means he isn’t tellinguseverything either.
“The weapon,” Malix cuts in, leaning forward. “What do you know?”
Jokahn’s brow furrows. “Frustratingly, very little,” he says. “I know that it is capable of great destruction. I know that Dalphox has learned how to be deploy it. Beyond that…not much.”
“You say he learned how to deploy it,” I say. “So that means he didn’t make it?”
Jokahn shakes his head. “Of course not,” he says. “The man has alienated the population of Traika, where our finest scholars reside—and they would not create such a weapon anyway. I don’t know for sure, but I highly doubt this is a weapon of Dalphox’s design.”
“Then where did it come from?”
“The ancestral temple in the dunes, I would imagine,” Jokahn says. His eyes glaze over as he stares past us, his expression vacant and horrified for a split second. “Three cycles before the destruction of the Lyran moon, we saw a strange light streak from the ground and up past the horizon…like a reverse shooting star. Small, but bright. The strangest part was that there was a minor gravitational disruption just after its launch.”
I exchange a look with Malix, but I don’t voice my thoughts; I have to hope he draws the connection between this gravitational disruption and the one on our stop before Azoth on his own. He nods almost imperceptibly, his muscles tensing under my palm.
Jesus—my hand is still on his knee.
I hadn’t even noticed.
“Needless to say, I’m very interested in finding out what this weaponisand how it can be disarmed,” Jokahn says. “Many of us here on Liatra have become dissatisfied with Dalphox’s mismanagement of the Second House and consider him a madman; we want to get rid of him as much as you do.”
“I find that hard to believe,” Taraven mutters.
“You should,” Jokahn says. “If there is one thing worse than having dangerous enemies, it is having dangerousallies. In this, Zandro is a known quantity. He is steady, reliable…and I wish to see Zanpi restored to its former glory.”
Taraven’s eyes snap up, and even Driga looks intrigued. I wish I knew more about what was going on—at the very least so I could explain to Malix, who looks totally clueless.
“Why?” Taraven says.
Jokahn shrugs. “I used to enjoy vacationing there.”
Taraven leans forward, his glass barely touched. The amber booze inside sloshes over the side a bit, but he doesn’t seem to care.
“Zanpi was destroyed,” Taraven says. “We passed it on our way here; there’s a crater the size of a continent on one side of the planet. The atmosphere and wildlife have been decimated—”
“Yet we were able to track downcaltanin its oceans,” Jokahn says. “We brought our mounts here from Zanpi—and the planet longs to grow back.”
