“I am Alric Rahl,” he said before she had a chance to ask.

“From D’Hara?”

He confirmed it with a quick nod.

“My husband has spoken highly of you.”

His cutting gaze remained fixed on her eyes. “Baraccus was more than merely a good man. He is the one man here at the Keep that I trusted. I am deeply grieved to hear that we’ve lost him.”

“Not as grieved as I am.”

His lips pressed tightly together with what looked to be heartfelt sorrow as he nodded again and then gestured to her door, off behind him.

“Would it be possible to speak with you privately?”

Magda glanced toward her door as the wall of men parted to provide a corridor lined with muscle and chain mail.

Magda dipped her head. “Of course, Lord Rahl.”

While she had never met the man before, Baraccus had spoken of him from time to time. From what she had gathered from the things Baraccus had told others, this was not a man to be trifled with. He looked the part of the stories she’d heard of him. She knew from comments made by members of the council that many didn’t think much of Alric Rahl, but Baraccus had. He had told her that, despite his audacity, he was a man to be trusted.

As Magda made her way toward the doors to her room, the grim soldiers spread out to take up stations up and down the hall.

She glanced back over her shoulder. “Are you expecting trouble, here, in the Keep, Lord Rahl?”

“From what I’ve seen,” he said cryptically, “the Keep is no safer than anywhere else these days.”

Magda frowned. “And what have you seen, if I may ask?”

“Three of my men have died since we recently arrived.”

Magda halted and turned back to take in his grim expression. “Died? Here in the Keep? How?”

He hooked a thumb behind his weapons belt. “One was found in a corridor, dead from over a hundred stab wounds. Another died in his sleep for no reason we could find. The third suffered a mysterious fall from a high wall.”

Magda had almost had such a fall. She still felt strangely disoriented, as if she were only now escaping the grip of a terrifying, otherworldly nightmare, rather than simply a grief-stricken moment of weakness.

“Perhaps the man who was stabbed had gotten into a fight with the wrong people over something?” she suggested.

“All three can be explained away if you try hard enough,” he said, making it obvious that he didn’t buy the easy explanations.

Magda worked to gather her composure as she started out once more, making her way past the looming, silent soldiers watching her. She didn’t like to think of the Keep as a place where danger lurked. Yet Baraccus, too, had been troubled by what he had thought to be suspicious deaths at the Keep.