In the city of Nidel, General Trigorah pored over her notes of the weeks gone by. Progress had been slow, painfully slow. Her duties had required her to track the path of the sword and those who may have contacted it. To that end, she'd been quite successful. Indeed, in front of her was a description of the very weapon she sought, provided by an elderly weapon shop owner who had agreed to buy it. The last of the prospective witnesses had been identified, and their current whereabouts noted.
Every last story that there was to hear had been heard, and the last of the truth was being gleaned from them. There was the strong indication, though not the certainty, that Myranda . . . that the target had been in possession of the weapon when she left the weapon shop, but not when she had arrived in the town of Nidel, and certainly not when she had been captured.
It was here that things had ceased to fit together. There was the church. Trigorah knew her target tended to visit places of worship when seeking shelter. There had been a church, burned, and four soldiers killed. That didn't make sense. Why burn the church? To hide evidence? Perhaps, but the remains of the soldiers, some of Demont's men, were left for all to find, when they could easily have been thrown among the flames. If evidence was being destroyed, it was evidence of some other crime.
From the descriptions of her target, it seemed highly unlikely that she would have been capable of defeating four soldiers. And then there was the fact of her escape. The carriage was burned. More fire . . . but this time well-used. Aside from requiring that the girl be captured as well as the sword, the escape made it clear that she could not have been working alone. No, there was another hand at work here.
As she stared at the totality of the information, a solution stared back at her. All of this had a familiar ring to it. A color . . . a texture to the events that she'd become sensitive to. She knew that the assassin had been sent for the sword, and that he likely still held it. That much was not a mystery. The mystery was where he could be found, and it was one of which she'd spent decades frequently in the pursuit of a solution.
She didn't have the time for that. She needed progress quickly. Some sort of step forward. The reports of the escape held clues. The horses were missing. The armor was missing. There had been looting. Not unheard of, save for the destruction of the black carriage. That was an act of vengeance. Only one group sought weapons, armor, and revenge. The Undermine. Trigorah stood and stalked out to her waiting Elites.
"Saddle up, men. We are heading east," she ordered.