by Barb Hendee
Rodian took supper alone in his office, not caring for even Garrogh’s company. He wanted solitude and time to think.
The pieces of this tangled intrigue were disintegrating, and he saw no way to keep them whole. Il’Sänke was the murderer—of that much he felt certain. The domin was the only one who fit all the criteria of ability and inside knowledge. But Rodian had no proof.
What was that man after in the translated pages? What was his motive?
Suddenly Rodian regretted his poor treatment of Wynn, regardless of her naïve outburst. Clearly that had been brought on by Nikolas’s delusional account of events.
Rodian looked down at his half-eaten beef, potatoes, onions, and carrots, then lifted his gaze to the growing pile of reports on his desk. Petty thefts, one other yet-to-be-solved murder, and a handful of social disputes required his attention. He’d let everything sit while trying to solve these guild murders and thefts. And with royals and sages standing in his way at every turn, all he had left were his other poorly attended duties—and his failure. Still, he couldn’t let it go.
He knew exactly who the killer was, but where could he find proof?
There was only one answer—Wynn Hygeorht.
She’d been studying the translations for two days. She must have learned something, at least a hint of what had been stolen. If so, how could he get her to tell him even that little?
He wouldn’t pretend to understand this odd and troublesome little journeyor, but she seemed genuinely driven to protect her guild. Perhaps, like her superiors, she was taking matters too secretly into her own hands. Would she still do so if she uncovered something concerning il’Sänke?
Would she give up her juvenile notions of ghosts and the undead?
Rodian got up and strode for the door. Pulling it open, he lifted his sword hanging upon a coat peg.
“Lúcan!” he shouted into the passageway.
But it was Garrogh who finally ducked around the door.
“Sorry, sir, I’ve got Lúcan watching the guild’s gatehouse tonight.”
Rodian nodded. So far the only report was of Wynn’s strange wolf coming back after dark—after escorting one of Pawl a’Seatt’s scribes who’d worked too late. Otherwise none of his men had seen anyone come or go past dusk.
He grasped his cloak. “Have these dishes removed and get Snowbird saddled.”
“Where are you off to?” Garrogh asked bluntly.
“The guild,” he answered.
“I’m coming with you.”
Rodian stiffened. “Pardon?”
“You’re not yourself,” Garrogh said, crossing his arms. “This sage nonsense has you turned around like a dog that won’t stop biting its tail. The men want their captain back, so I’m coming with you, before you bite your tail straight off . . . sir.”
Rodian was struck mute. He heated up, ready to put Garrogh in his place. Then he remembered the stacks of reports lying upon his desk and suddenly felt weary. Duty wasn’t the only thing he’d ignored, if his second now openly faced him down.
“All right,” he agreed. “But when we get there, wait for me in the courtyard. I need to talk to that journeyor again. She’s . . . odd, and might speak only to me.”
“Of course, sir.”
Together they headed for the stables, saddled their horses themselves, and rode out.
As always, Garrogh’s big bay protested at being forced out into the cold. The horse clomped angrily, throwing his head and grinding his bit.
“Next time you requisition a horse, I’ll pick it for you,” Rodian chided.
“Just ’cause you like them dainty doesn’t mean I do,” Garrogh returned.
“She could run yours into the ground.”
Garrogh’s brush with near-insubordination had roused Rodian. Along with other matters, he’d forgotten how sensible and aware his lieutenant truly was. And it felt better to do anything but sit and stew. Perhaps Wynn had discovered something that would help him prove the truth, so long as she spoke no more of her deluded beliefs. This murderer was not some undead of folk superstition. Then he might gain legitimate means to get a grip on il’Sänke. Not even the royal family would be able to deny him.
Soon Rodian and Garrogh approached the guild’s half-open bailey gate. It was never bolted and barred, but it still bothered him that it stood ajar. He looked up the path to the gatehouse’s closed portcullis.
There was no one out front on post.
“Where’s Lúcan?” Rodian growled. “And who is on watch with him?” Garrogh looked about. “I don’t know . . . Ulwald was paired with him. I’ve got two other pairs walking circuit around the place. Two more are off duty in the gatehouse above, waiting to rotate with others throughout the night.”
Rodian urged Snowbird into a trot all the way to the portcullis.
“Open it up!” he shouted.
One of his men shouted acknowledgment from above, and the portcullis began to rise. Rodian ducked, prepared to ride under before it was fully raised.
“Captain?”
He sat back up, reining in Snowbird. Lúcan and Ulwald came at a trot through the inner bailey.
“What are you doing off post?” Garrogh barked.
Lúcan halted, eyes shifting between the lieutenant and Rodian.
“We heard something in the trees, around the west tower,” Ulwald answered.
“You heard something?” Rodian mimicked. “What?”
“Not sure, sir,” Lúcan answered. “Something large breaking through the brush and branches.”
At Rodian’s shifted glance, Ulwald nodded agreement.
“Then one of you goes alone!” Rodian shouted. “Or you get whoever’s off duty above to watch while you both check.”
“You had to have heard it, Captain,” Lúcan exclaimed. “Others have. Gael heard something the other night and—”
“No post is left unwatched!”
Both men stiffened, whether in resentment or fear at the rebuke, it wasn’t clear.
“Yes, Captain,” they answered, but Lúcan glanced toward Garrogh.
“I’ll handle this,” Garrogh said. “You go on . . . find that nosy little sage.”
Rodian took a slow breath. He wasn’t the only one under pressure—or had he passed on his own duress to his men? They wouldn’t have left their post together without some real concern. He dismounted, handed Snowbird off to Garrogh, and walked the rest of the way in.
When he reached the main doors, he knocked and waited this time, though his patience had worn paper-thin. The young apprentice who’d led him to the hospice yesterday peered out.
“Ah, sir, it’s you.” The young man opened the door wide. “Should I announce you? Do you need to see Domin High-Tower?”
“No, I’m here to see Journeyor Hygeorht,” Rodian said, and stepped inside. As yet, he wasn’t certain where they might talk, but she would probably have an idea.
The apprentice blinked in brief uncertainty. “A moment, sir. I’ll see if she is available.”
The boy was well-spoken, with a slight accent. Rodian wondered which province he came from, perhaps as far south as Witeny. He nodded, and the apprentice stepped out, hurrying off toward the dormitory on the courtyard’s southeastern side.
Rodian paced the entryway for what felt like too long. A few young sages passed on their way elsewhere, but none were anyone he knew. The apprentice came running back in.
“She’s not in her room,” the boy said. “I’ll see if she’s at the common hall . . . or if anyone knows her whereabouts.”
Rodian nodded and waited again. More time passed, and his patience was all but gone. Finally the apprentice came trotting back down the passage.
“I am sorry, sir, but Journeyor Hygeorht cannot be found. Domin High-Tower was just informed, but—”
“Not again!” Rodian hissed.
He brushed past the boy, striding toward the common hall, and as he rounded through the main archway, he nearly collided with High-Tower. The hall was fille
d with sages eating, talking, or just milling about.
“Where is she?” Rodian demanded.
High-Tower’s red hair and beard looked huge, strands rising in the hall’s warmth, but his features seemed even redder, and his dark pellet eyes were wild.
“You have no jurisdiction here!” the domin snarled back. “I thought that much was clear by now!”
But the dwarf looked around nervously, as if Rodian’s arrival were an unwanted interruption of something else.
“Where is she?” Rodian repeated more calmly. “And where is il’Sänke?”
High-Tower huffed loudly, but indignation faded from his face. “I do not know . . . nor do I see your point.”
Rodian forced himself to calm again and called out loudly, “Has anyone here seen Journeyor Hygeorht or Domin il’Sänke since this afternoon?”
The buzz in the hall diminished, and someone with a nasally voice called out, “I have.”
A young woman in a brown stood up. She was thin to the point of being bony, and even from a distance her nose was too long for her face.
High-Tower grumbled through gritted teeth and hurried toward her. His wide girth and vibrating steps sent apprentices and initiates shuffling out of his way. Rodian followed on the domin’s heels.
“Regina,” High-Tower puffed. “Who did you see?”
“All three of them,” she answered, her lip curling into a sneer. “Wynn, the domin . . . and that supposed majay-hì. I was helping in the kitchen when they came through from the storage building. They went straight to the other side, to the rear hallway leading to the north tower. But when I peeked out . . .”
High-Tower rumbled as he glared at the girl.
“When I peeked out,” Regina repeated, “they weren’t there. They were gone, and too quickly to be heading into the keep or even the tower . . . for whatever reason.”
Rodian knew of only one destination in the tower—High-Tower’s study.
“Where were you about that time?” he asked the dwarf.
“In my study, of course,” High-Tower replied. “The door was open, since I was available to students and apprentices. I saw or heard no one.”
“There’s always the back door,” Regina piped up. “It opens on the back of the keep . . . right across from the kitchen.”
This spiteful pole of a girl glanced up at Rodian, adding, “None of us are supposed to go out at night.”
Rodian ignored this thinly veiled accusation, and turned on High-Tower. “If they’re here, I want them found. Either you do it, or my men will, and I’m not waiting for permission from your premin.”
What followed, after the seething dwarf headed off, were long moments of Rodian pacing before the hall’s main arch. Too many curious glances turned his way, not to mention a pack of whispering young sages who gathered around Regina as she smugly returned to her table. And when High-Tower reappeared dourly at the hall’s narrow side arch, Rodian knew the domin had found nothing.
Right then he thought of putting Lúcan and Ulwald on night patrol, walking the Graylands Empire for the next moon.
High-Tower waded through the hall, his hands folded behind his back. But Rodian wasn’t thinking of Wynn at that moment. There was only one possible way the errant trio had gotten out: Someone had somehow tricked Lúcan and Ulwald.
Ghassan il’Sänke.
Rodian almost demanded whether High-Tower knew how the Suman had done this. But if il’Sänke had such tricks, whatever they were, it seemed unlikely that a murderer would share such with anyone.
“Where would they have gone?” he asked instead.
The dwarf appeared lost for what to say. “I do not know why they would leave, let alone to where. Il’Sänke isn’t fool enough to do this without telling someone what he was up to.”
Once again, High-Tower provided a less than worthless answer.
“Thank you for your help,” Rodian said coldly.
He strode out of the keep and ran down the gatehouse tunnel. Garrogh was waiting there with the horses.
“She’s gone again!” Rodian spit, losing hold of his anger. “And so is that Suman sage! No one knows how or why, but they are out in the city somewhere.”
He swung up on Snowbird and urged her out, but where could he even begin looking?
“She’s alone with the killer,” he said, wiping a hand across his face. “Where would she go?”
He wasn’t really speaking to Garrogh, but his lieutenant replied, “Both times she’s disappeared, she ended up at a’Seatt’s shop.”
Rodian’s eyes flew to Garrogh’s face. The first night, when he’d caught Wynn inside the shop, she’d been quite friendly with Imaret. And Rodian still believed that Pawl a’Seatt was hiding something.
“Yes,” he agreed, for at least it was somewhere to start.
But what would il’Sänke do if Rodian found them and tried to take Wynn away? The mage had some motive for taking her off alone—and so recently after she’d gained access to the translations.
Rodian pulled up outside the bailey gate. Garrogh’s horse skidded to a stop beside him. There was no time to send for more men, regardless that he was about to countermand his own snarling outburst. He needed at least one more of his guards.
“Lúcan! Where’s your horse?”
The guardsman looked confused and pointed off along the bailey. “We tied ours off in there, sir.”
“Get yours! And come with us.”
CHAPTER 18
Wynn strolled up the street past the Upright Quill as if engaged in some halfhearted errand. She kept a lethargic pace, fearing to get too far, too fast. If she traveled more than a block past the scriptorium, then Chane and Shade might grow anxious and try to shadow her through the alley behind the shops. She would be out of their sight line for too long.
The street was still empty as she passed the silversmith’s fine establishment and then the perfumery. When she finally reached the far intersection, she stopped near the candle maker’s shop.
“Bother!” she whispered loudly, feigning forgetfulness, and turned to head back the other way.
In spite of an outward semblance of being put upon in her late task, Wynn was tense inside. Domin il’Sänke had her sun crystal, and she was completely defenseless. In her mind’s eye she couldn’t stop picturing the wraith as it had appeared in her room last night. Wraps of black shroud cloth—its burial raiment—covered its shriveled form beneath the robe and cloak.
An undead, but far different from those she’d come to think of as the Noble Dead. It could kill with a touch—could feed upon her with great speed—and nothing seemed able to harm it but another undead or a majay-hì. In comparison, a vampire seemed far less of a threat.
Some of them had unique abilities, aside from knowledge and skills carried over from life. But Leesil, Chap, and Magiere had destroyed such, and Wynn had even helped a few times. Decapitation and incineration were effective in finishing them off, but these were worthless upon a creature with no true physical form. What powers did it possess aside from mimicking physical presence at need? Worse, what if it was still a mage as well?
Forcing calm, Wynn hummed a low tune she’d learned from Leesil on the voyage from the Farlands. A terrifying truth had been forming in the back of her mind.
The wraith seemed to know too many things about the guild’s project and the comings and goings of the folios. Tonight’s ploy to lure it out depended upon its somehow learning where she was. And no one at the guild knew of this plan.
The wraith had entered the guild last night. Had it done so in the past, perhaps tracking those involved in the project? Obviously literate, since it sought folios, if it had once been Suman, then it could read its native language. Even il’Sänke could read some of the ancient dialects of his own tongue, but only if given enough time.
So why had the wraith been stealing translated passages, instead of going after the original texts?
It could walk through walls, and since Wynn’s return surely it
could have searched every corner of the guild’s keep and catacombs.
Wynn slowed a little too much in her walk.
Any search of guild grounds, for a creature that could go anywhere, would have succeeded . . . unless the texts were stored somewhere else.
Wynn picked up her pace again. This wasn’t the time to get distracted by more puzzles.
As she passed the perfumery once more, she slowed to glance at its front windows. The inner shutters were closed and barred, hiding displays of hand-blown glass and porcelain bottles filled with heady fragrances. With nothing to look at she moved on—and then stopped completely.