“No hope here,” the elder tracker said. “Naught but a few cracks in the mortar. But we’re on the trail. I can catch a whiff or two of the musk through those cracks. Another level or two-”
“Tracker Lorr,” the younger tracker called from another corner of the room. He held up his leech-oil lamp.
“What is it, Kytt?”
“The scent is strong here. And I’ve found a loose brick.”
Curiosity drew Dart and Brant inside. The bullhound tried to push after them, tongue lolling, but Dart stopped him with a palm on his wide nose.
“Stay, Barrin. That’s a good boy.”
He harrumphed and settled to a squat, filling the doorway. The giants looked equally discontented to be left in the hall, but the room was too low and cramped for their large forms.
Brant and Dart followed Tracker Lorr to the corner. Kytt squatted, wide-kneed, and pointed to the bottom stone in the wall. “The block here is loose from its mortar. If we worked, we might push it free.”
Lorr examined the stone and found that it rocked easily, like a rotten tooth. “Give me both your shoulders, lads,” he said with a nod to the young tracker and Brant.
Brant and Kytt supported Lorr as he sat on the floor and shoved the block with his feet. As they strained, Brant found himself nose to muzzle with the black-haired young tracker. The boy had the amber eyes of his ilk. Brant found himself holding his breath, not wishing to breathe this one’s corrupted air.
Kytt must have sensed Brant’s distaste, for he glanced away.
Brant felt a twinge of shame, but he could not fault his upbringing. In Saysh Mal, it was considered wrong to misshape man’s natural form with Grace, whether for good or ill. Such men were forbidden from the Huntress’s forests. And, Brant believed, rightly so. Especially when it came to wyld trackers. It went against the Way to turn man into beast, then to turn around and use those same blessed senses to hunt more beasts of the field. It was a cycle of corruption that had no place in Saysh Mal-or anywhere in Myrillia.
Out in the hallway, Malthumalbaen called to them. “Ock! Do you need an extra bit of muscle?”
“Not yet,” Lorr said with a groan as he shoved again, edging the stone farther into its socket.
Brant heard Dral mumble something to his brother.
Malthumalbaen answered, “No, I don’t know what bullhound tastes like.”
Brant found his eyes again on Kytt’s form. He remembered feeling a similar discomfort when he had first encountered the pair of Oldenbrook guards. Like wyld trackers, loam-giants were also forbidden from the cloud forests of Saysh Mal. Yet, Brant had found Multhumalbaen and Dralmarfillneer to be as big of heart as they were of limb. And hadn’t their strength saved his life in the storm? Did he not even consider them friends?
Kytt’s eyes flashed to his, stuck a moment, then glanced away.
Despite the contradiction, Brant found himself still bristling. Loam-giants were one matter. Trackers were another. They were an offense in both form and purpose to the Way. He felt this in his bones and blood.
“Hold tight!” Lorr called. “Almost there!”
Kytt and Brant braced Lorr’s back as he shoved one last time. Brant felt the tremble of the tracker’s strain. Stone scraped stone-then suddenly the block fell free, toppling into an empty space beyond.
A wash of stale air wafted out. Even Brant caught the taint of musk that came with it.
“There we go,” Lorr said, gaining his feet. He supported his lower back and kneaded out a kink. “The hard part’s over. All’s left is to fetch that pair of cubbies out of their stone burrow.”
Kytt had lowered to his belly and leaned his lamp through the opening. “I think I see some steps back there. An old stair. Looks like they may go down some ways.”
Confirming this, a faint animal whimper echoed up to them. It sounded as if lost down a deep well.
Lorr shook his head. “So it’s not going to be as easy as I’d hoped. But no matter, it must be done.” He squatted down again, and with a slight grimace, rubbed one of his knees. “It’ll be a narrow squeeze, but Kytt and I will flush them out.”
“I’m going with you,” Brant said.
Lorr shrugged, but his manner was unwelcoming. The old wyld tracker had recognized Brant from his clothes and skin as someone from Saysh Mal. He knew what folks from that god-realm thought of trackers. Brant suspected the only reason he was getting any cooperation from Lorr was because of Dart’s good word on his behalf.
So be it.
They didn’t have to like each other to work together. Brant had learned that well enough from Liannora in Oldenbrook.
Voices reached them from the outer hall.
Malthumalbaen hissed toward them, “Someone’s coming. Looks like a pair of shadowknights.”
Brant eyed Dart, who had already begun surreptitiously shooing something toward the opening in the wall.
Pupp, no doubt.
“I think it might be good if Dart came with us,” Brant said.
“And perhaps we should move quickly,” she added.
Dart matched gazes with Lorr.
The tracker nodded at some silent message passed between them. “Then why don’t you both go first,” he said. “I’ll make sure Barrin acts the good watchdog, along with your two giants. We’d best not have any strangers spooking the cubbies while we work.”
Dart pulled up the hood of her cloak and hurried toward the opening. She dropped to her belly and squirmed through. Brant waited until she was clear, then followed.
Once on his feet, he found Dart a step below him. The lamplight in the far room offered scant illumination. The narrow stairs spiraled quickly into an inky darkness. Spider threads whispered overhead, disturbed by their arrival. Underfoot, the steps were well-worn into raw stone, dry and dusty as old grave bones.
Kytt came next, brightening the stair with his oil lamp. He proceeded down a few steps, away from Brant. He busied himself with inspecting the stairs. Lorr came last with a bit of grunting.
He passed the second lamp to Dart.
“Tracker Lorr,” Kytt said, “come see this.”
Lorr squeezed past Brant to join the younger tracker.
Kytt lowered his lamp and pointed a finger. In the dust of the steps, a tiny paw print had been pressed.
Lorr nodded and moved slowly down a few more steps.
“They continue to flee deeper.”
“Wolf whelpings are always snugged in the darkest hole in their warren,” Brant said. “It’s where they feel safest.”
Lorr stood with a slight shake of his head. “ Safe is not a word I would use to describe this passage.” He huffed the air, nose high for a moment. “Something…something scents wrong here.”
Brant tested the air, but he could discern nothing but a bit of musk and an echo of bile, most likely coming from the houndskeep far overhead. Brant remembered his thoughts about its former use as a dungeon. Had the blood of the tortured once drained down these same steps? Did it still taint the passage?
Lorr lowered his muzzle. “Mayhap we’d best wait.”
Brant balked at this. If the whelpings’ trail grew any colder, they’d never be found. Who knew where this stair led or how much of a maze it might empty into? The best chance to secure the wolf cubbies was to keep as close on their tails as possible.
Muffled voices reached them from the outer chamber. The knights had reached the room and were questioning the giants.
Dart whispered, “It wouldn’t hurt to explore a bit farther.”
Lorr reluctantly agreed. “I will go first with Kytt. But only a few more levels. No one’s walked this passage in centuries. It could all come crashing atop us.”
Brant followed with Dart. At some point, he had offered Dart his hand to help her over a scrabble of broken steps, and she had yet to let go as they wound down into the depths below Tashijan.
Lorr paused every few turns to inspect the steps, watching for signs of the cubbies. But Brant noted how he kept on
e ear cocked and sniffed the air with growing frequency. Something had raised the hackles on the wyld tracker.
And now it had crept into him. Brant’s hairs prickled along his arms. For the moment, he wished he could borrow the trackers’ senses. He felt blind and deaf. Perhaps he should have bowed to the tracker’s earlier wariness.
The stairs slowly tightened in their spiral. It now took only three steps to lose sight of the person ahead.
Finally Lorr stopped. Brant suspected that the tracker could not be uprooted to proceed any deeper. This time Brant was not going to argue. The whelpings were wild creatures. Perhaps they would eventually find their way out on their own. And maybe that was for the best. Better than being caged.
Lorr hissed at them, silently signaled Kytt, and both trackers dimmed their lamps and shaded them with the edges of their cloaks.
Brant crouched down with Dart as if the falling darkness had crushed them to the stairs.
“Lorr?” Dart breathed out softly.
“Hush.”
Brant’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, discovering it was not as complete as he had first imagined. The lower stairs were slightly less murky than the deep blackness above.
Faint words reached them, rising from below, too muffled by distance to discern.
Someone was down there.
“I would question this squire myself,” Kathryn said.
She stood in the middle of her hermitage. She let her outrage at the violation of her private spaces ring in her voice. Half a bell ago, she had arrived in the high hall to discover an upended beehive of confusion. Men and women, knights and masters, all scurrying about or standing dazed. The word daemon echoed all around.
Worst of all, the door to her hermitage had been standing wide open.
She had discovered Warden Fields already in her rooms, fists on hips, ordering the place searched from niche to cranny. By the time Kathryn had shouldered through his guards, she had been red-faced and barely able to speak. She had stopped it all with a resounding command to desist.
Though Argent might rule Tashijan, all knew the hermitage was the sole domain of the castellan.
“I understand your consternation, Castellan Vail,” Argent said calmly as his men cleared from her spaces. “But I have already summoned soothmancers to examine the young men, to test the veracity of their claims.”
Off to the side, Master Hesharian stood with Keeper Ryngold. The rotund master kept his hands folded across his robed belly, looking serenely dispassionate about it all, but Kathryn read the glint of amusement in his eyes. Contrarily, the head of the house, Keeper Ryngold, shared none of the master’s amusement. He stood beside Kathryn’s maid, Penni, who still had her face covered with her hands, sobbing silently into her palms. The shoulder of her dress had been ripped. Apparently Argent’s men had manhandled her upon breaking in here. Keeper Ryngold was not pleased, almost as angry as Kathryn. Penni was one of his charges.
Kathryn stepped closer to Argent. “Perhaps you should have tested their stories before breaking my latch and entering my inviolate spaces. My hermitage is as sacrosanct as your Eyrie. To break that threshold upon the rantings of an injured boy is an affront beyond measure.”
Before he could respond, a figure stepped out of Dart’s garret and back into the main room. His face and hands were caked in black, reeking of black bile. A bloodnuller. Kathryn gaped at him. She had not known anyone was still in there. Men of his caste were imbued with alchemies of bile, able to nullify Grace with a smear of their fouled hands.
“Nothinggg,” the man slurred with a bow toward Argent.
Kathryn shoved her arm toward her door. “Begone from my rooms!”
The man hesitated until Argent gave him a slight nod to obey. He shuffled out, trailing his stench behind him.
Kathryn glowered at Argent. “I hope such a discovery will temper your unseemly haste until you’ve had the squires properly soothed. As I understand it, one of your squires had already confessed to attacking my page. Yet it is upon the word of such dishonorable young men that you break the peace of my private rooms.”
She said this last loudly enough to be heard out in the hall, where she was sure many ears were listening. Let that rumor be spread, too-to counter the talk of daemons.
Argent’s face grew a shade more red. “That is all well said,” he forced out grudgingly. “I certainly owe you my sincere apologies. But in such dark and trying times, it seems that an overly officious attention to protocol might not serve us well. Remember, we have many high personages from around Myrillia under our roofs and have a responsibility for their security. Do we not? Is it proper to sit on our swords when word arises of daemons among us?”
“Better to sit on our swords than panic,” Kathryn said, loudly yet again. “There are reasons for protocol, for rules of conduct…lest in haste someone get accidentally stabbed with a cursed sword again.”
Argent’s one eye flared. He flushed as if she had slapped him.
Off to the side, she noted Master Hesharian backing toward the door. This was a tender point that even the master wanted to avoid.
Argent glared a moment more. “Then we’d best begin the soothing this very night. I find it strange, though, that your page remains missing.” He let this question linger, tying guilt to her absence.
Kathryn refused to let it hang unaddressed. “Is it truly any wonder? After being attacked by three squires twice her size? She must wonder whom to trust after such a violation.”
“I assume she trusts you well enough,” Argent said, heading at last toward the door. “And I’m sure you’ll present her to be soothed when she comes out of hiding.”
Kathryn followed him, ushering everyone from her rooms. “Most certainly. And the first question I will ask will be concerning her attack. I wonder if it was a random act of malice or if some other hand might have directed them. I understand that all three bore the sigil of the Fiery Cross. And that a branding iron with your symbol was found in the room where the attack took place.”
Argent glanced back to her. His eyes narrowed, more with concern than anger this time. Kathryn doubted the warden had had any hand in the attack. At least not directly. Members of his Fiery Cross had grown more emboldened of late, stoked by Argent’s fiery speeches. Still, it didn’t hurt to plant a seed of doubt in his mind. It would be a blight on his image if it was found that the Cross had planned the attack as some affront against the castellan. It could turn the tide against him.
Kathryn suspected that to assuage such suspicions, Argent would spend a fair stretch of the night doing his own private investigations. The distraction would allow her additional room to maneuver, to find some way to circumvent Dart’s exposure.
With nothing else to be said, Argent sailed out of her room with a flourish of his cloak. He was followed by a cadre of his men, a flock of black geese headed to warmer climes after the cold greeting they’d received here.
Master Hesharian bowed, almost mockingly, and left, collecting another robed master with him-Master Orquell, the one who had come here from Ghazal. His milky eyes glanced over Kathryn’s face as he turned. Though he appeared to be nearly blind, she suspected he saw more than most ordinary men.
At the door, Keeper Ryngold promised to console Penni. “A bit of honeyed mead and a warm fire will settle her. If there is anything you need in the meantime…”
“I’ll be fine. Thank you.”
He set off, and the hallway slowly emptied out beyond her door. As the flow of robes and cloaks drained away, a single figure remained, a bronze boulder in the waning stream.
He forded toward her through the last of the onlookers.
“Gerrod…” Kathryn sighed with relief. She stepped aside to invite him into her rooms.
He touched her on the elbow as he passed, a silent approval of her handling of Argent.
She closed the door after him.
He stood a moment, glancing around.
“We’re alone,” she assured him.
Kathryn smiled.
“And I’ve heard he had to cancel his grand feast.”
“Small favors there.” Kathryn motioned him to a seat. “At least Tylar will be happy to hear about that.”
“Yes, but he might not be so happy to hear about what we discovered about his flippercraft.” He ignored her offer to sit and crossed toward her draped windows.
Kathryn followed him, noting a slight complaint that rose from his mekanicals. “What did you find?”
He pulled aside the heavy woolen drape. The hearth’s firelight cast the glass into a mirror. She read the worry in her friend’s expression.
“The ship’s apparatus appeared fine-at least what we could tell from the burnt slag. But it was the reserve of blood alchemies that seemed to be the source of the trouble. We tested the level of Grace and found it almost drained. Only a few dregs of power remained. The ship was lucky to land at all.”
“So what do you think happened?”
“The Grace must have been drained from the alchemies while it was in flight.”
Kathryn sat straighter. “How? A saboteur? Did someone pour black bile into the mekanicals?”
“No, I spoke with several of the crew. The problems all started when the ship was caught in the front edge of the storm that besets us now.”
“The storm?”
Gerrod nodded to the window. Kathryn stepped closer, sharing the opening in the drapes.
The world beyond the panes was misted with a swirl of snow. The branches of the wyrmwood tree that shaded her balcony were heavy with white shoulders. And the snowfall grew thicker.
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