Shadow Games (The Collector Chronicles Book 2)

by D. K. Holmberg

  She frowned. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

  Talia had never struggled to peer through her darkness. This despite the fact that Durand claimed that she was not of Keyall, not as others were. She was obviously enough from the city that she had begun to take on the beneficial properties of this place.

  “I’m here. What were you doing in the cells?” Carth asked.

  “It was nothing.”

  “If it was nothing, you would share with me what it was, which tells me that it’s not simply nothing.”

  Talia shook her head. “If you need to know, you can lower yourself down and see if you can figure out which one I entered. There are more than a few caves here.”

  Carth decided not to share with Talia that she was all too familiar with the number of caves lining the rock wall and thought that she could find the one Talia had visited, but she had no intention of lowering herself back down, not after she had just barely managed to survive.

  “What kind of work do you do for him?” she asked.

  “I do many things for the Collector,” Talia said.

  “Why?” Carth asked.

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  Carth sighed. “I’d like to try. All I want is to help. Now all I want is to get my friends and leave Keyall, but it doesn’t seem as if I can, not until I find a way to do whatever the Collector needs from me.”

  “You believe there is an Elder Stone in Keyall?”

  Carth shrugged. “I don’t know what to believe about them. Alistan has shared with me what he believes, and he certainly seems to think there is something here.”

  “If anyone would understand such things, it would be him,” Talia said.

  Carth wasn’t sure that she cared any longer. “What happens when I’m gone? What will you do for the Collector then?”

  “Whatever it takes.”

  “You’re not denying anymore that you serve him.”

  “What’s the point? You’ve seen through it, at least enough to know that I have no choice in my service.”

  “We all have choices,” Carth said.

  “As I said, you wouldn’t understand.”

  Carth considered her for a long moment. “At least tell me who the Collector is so that I know who I am dealing with. Is it somebody that I’ve already met?”

  An interested smile flickered across Talia’s mouth. “You could say that.” Talia shook her head. “And before you begin thinking that I am the Collector, you should know that I’m not.”

  Carth glanced toward the rock overlooking the city before turning her attention back to Talia. The other woman met her gaze, saying nothing.

  “Let your master know that I will find him, eventually.”

  Talia shook her head. “I don’t know that you will.”

  Carth watched as she left, putting space between them, before heading back into the city. Once there, she made her way toward the tavern. She wanted nothing more than a bed.

  No, she wanted a meal first.

  She stopped in the great room of the tavern and took a seat along the back wall, motioning to an unfamiliar waitress and ordering food and a drink. When the woman brought them back to her, Carth leaned in close. “Has any word been sent for Carth from Alistan Rhain?”

  The woman’s eyes widened slightly. “You’re Carth?”

  Carth nodded.

  “There has been some word, but none knew what it meant. Wait a minute until I can get…”

  The woman didn’t finish before hurrying off. Carth began picking at her food and taking small sips of her drink. After being away for so long, she was incredibly hungry and her mouth was dry. She ate slowly so as not to get sick and glanced up when a figure appeared.

  The man could be Durand’s double.

  “You’re Carth?” the man asked.

  “And you’re related to Durand.”

  The man grinned. “He’s my brother. He asked me to find you and bring word to you.”

  “What kind of word?”

  The man slipped a sheet of paper onto the table. “This was left for you.”

  Carth unfolded the paper. On it was what appeared to be a drawing of a Tsatsun board, one much like she had used to teach Boiyn how to play. “Durand left this for me?” Carth asked.

  “He left it, but he said he didn’t write it. He found it addressed to you and directed to him.”

  Talia. It had to be. Why would Talia have left this for her? What was she supposed to see from the Tsatsun board and the way it was laid out? Carth could make out nothing from the position of the pieces that would make any sort of sense.

  “Thank you,” she said to the man.

  “Does it help you?”

  Carth shrugged. “I don’t know. Not yet.”

  Durand’s brother left the table and Carth turned her attention back to her plate, chewing slowly. Every so often, she would look up at the slip of paper, trying to make sense of what she saw but finding nothing there that was clear.

  When she finished her food and ale, she left coins on the table and made her way up to the room. She pushed the door open, ignoring the stench that had begun to come from Boiyn’s body. She would have to move him before she drew too much attention.

  She sat on the bed next to him, staring at his face. In death, he seemed to have found a certain measure of peace. Boiyn had never been all that at peace in life, always struggling with who he was and what people wanted of him. Carth had hoped to provide a measure of peace for him, but she had failed him.

  Once more, tears streamed from her eyes. Why would Boiyn’s death strike her so much? She had lost others before, but maybe it was because she’d thought that she should be able to protect him and keep him safe, and she had failed.

  It wasn’t only that she had failed, but that she had been so completely outclassed in the process. The Collector had beaten her time and again. And he had taken Boiyn from her.

  She looked over at the Tsatsun board. It had gone untouched. She began moving the pieces, playing out the game, turning it from side to side as she did. She played Boiyn’s side first, and then turned to play Linsay’s side.

  She noticed something strange when she did.

  Linsay’s movements were skilled—and certainly more skilled than what Carth had once given her credit for. But that wasn’t all that she found interesting. It was the way that she moved, the aggression that she had in her movements.

  There was something off about them.

  Carth continued the game, playing one side and then the other, finally setting down the last piece as the Stone was moved across the board, Boiyn’s side the victor, as she had thought when she’d first seen the game board.

  As she sat there, studying the pieces, she realized what it was that troubled her. Linsay’s movements were quite skilled, enough that she would be considered a master of Tsatsun. Not only that, but there was something about Linsay’s play that reminded her of the Collector.

  Carth held the piece, twirling it in her hand, trying to figure out what it was that felt that way. She couldn’t come up with it, not without trying to play it.

  Carth quickly set up the game board again.

  The game played out quickly, with Carth making each move that would be required to position herself in Linsay’s game. Each move helped her see what Linsay would have needed to do in order to reach that point on the game board. Each move brought her a greater understanding of Linsay. And as she played, Carth began to see that Linsay had never applied herself when they had played.

  Carth had suspected that to be the case and thought that Linsay must have been taught by the Collector. And if she had been, then Linsay would be more skilled than she had let on. But what Carth saw was something else.

  The moves that Linsay had made reminded her of the way the Collector maneuvered her. It was unconventional, which was why Carth had such a hard time with it, and her way of playing was unconventional. There was a recklessness to it, though it was a controlled recklessness, and Carth could
see how she would have intended to play.

  She paused, resetting the game board and beginning again.

  When she played Tsatsun, it was easy to get into the mindset of her opponent, and as she played this out, it was apparent that Linsay had not expected Boiyn to be as skilled as he was. In order to have her game end up the way that it had, she would have played in such a way that it would have left her unconcerned about what Boiyn might do, convinced that she would easily defeat him. It was only when Boiyn seemed to have caught on and his pieces had shifted that she’d realized that she needed to play with a greater intensity.

  Carth reset the pieces and started again, not certain that she had the right of what she had come across. Maybe she was only imagining what she thought she had come across in the game. She played it out again, and again she came up with the same answer.

  Carth started again, playing with a frantic energy. She turned the board each time she made a move, unsettled by what she saw.

  Once again, she came up with the same answer.

  Resetting the pieces, she played out the game again. This time, she focused on what she could gather from the thought process that Linsay must have used as she played. She had spent so much time trying to understand the Collector, and the answer had been right in front of her.

  There was real skill in the game, and Linsay had not expected Boiyn to pose a challenge, never seeing his mind the same way that Carth did. And Carth had recognized the beauty of Boiyn’s mind and recognized that he could be helpful to her, and could help challenge her, so that she could become a better Tsatsun player.

  Even after working with Boiyn as often as she had, it appeared Linsay had not appreciated his brilliance in quite the same way.

  When she set up the game another time, moving through it deliberately, bringing the pieces to the point where she had found the game board, she knew with certainty. The answer that she had been missing came to her.

  Now she had to go to Talia and convince her that she knew the Collector’s secret.

  25

  Alistan looked over at Carth. He was dressed all in black, with a heavy cloak hanging around his shoulders. There was a bit of an evening wind, and there was a chill to it, but not enough to need a cloak quite like that. Carth was dressed more simply, in little more than a shirt and pants, her arms crossed over her chest as she stared into the darkness, parting the shadows with a gentle pull.

  “Are you sure about this?” Alistan asked.

  He hadn’t questioned her when she had come to ask him to accompany her. She needed him with her, if only to confirm something for herself. Alistan had agreed, though she had needed to explain where she had been the last few days. When she had described what had happened to her, he had studied her with his strange, dark, unreadable expression. He had said nothing. She had a sense that he was disappointed, though she wasn’t certain why.

  “More certain than I’ve been in quite some time,” she said.

  “And you learned all of this from playing Tsatsun?”

  Carth closed her eyes and couldn’t shake the image of the game board sitting in front of her. It seemed to be burned into her mind, an answer that she should have come up with long before she had. She had failed, but perhaps not in the way that she had at first believed. Her failure had been one of an abundance of trust.

  It was odd to think that, especially as she was not naturally trusting. Yet that was the only answer she could come up with.

  “You don’t have to do this, Carth. I believe you. I will speak on your behalf to the tribunal, so that they will understand what you’ve gone through.”

  Carth looked over at him. “You will speak on my behalf? And what have I done to convince you?”

  “You’ve proven that you have no interest in abandoning the laws of Keyall.”

  “Don’t I? I came to Keyall and have done nothing but defy your laws.”

  “You don’t want me to speak on your behalf?”

  “I’d like to know what side you’re on,” Carth said, holding him with a steady gaze. To his credit, Alistan didn’t blink and made no attempt to turn away. Carth had already known that he had a steeliness to him and wasn’t surprised that he seemed unmoved by her effort to intimidate him.

  “I’m on the side of knowledge,” he said.

  “We’ll see.”

  They didn’t have to wait long. Talia appeared out of the darkness, her shadowed figure slowly becoming clearer. Even at night, she cut a striking figure, and irritation bubbled up within Carth.

  “You summoned me?” Talia asked with a smile.

  Carth nodded. “I did.”

  “Why? You’ve already concluded that I work on behalf of the Collector. And you’ve already decided that fact frustrates you.”

  Carth shrugged. “I think that your service to the Collector has been longer than I’ve ever considered.”

  “And what do you mean by that?” Talia asked.

  “Only that you and the Collector know each other better than I realized. I had thought to save you from the Collector, but that’s not possible now, is it?”

  Talia frowned at her. Carth could feel the heat of Alistan’s gaze on her and avoided looking over at him. For this, Talia needed her attention, and Carth needed to keep her focus on Talia so that she could determine whether she had read the situation correctly or not.

  “And why do you think that is?”

  Carth shook her head. “You can have the Collector come out. I suspect she’s observing.”

  “You really do overestimate yourself, Carth.”

  “Maybe I have in the past, but I don’t think so, not this time. This time, I’m quite certain that I have the right of what I suspect.”

  “And what is that?”

  “Her identity.”

  Talia didn’t blink, but she heard Alistan’s breath catch.

  “Now. I would like for her to come forward. Otherwise…”

  Talia frowned. “Otherwise what? What do you think that you would do, Carthenne? Do you think to accuse me of being the Collector? You’ve claimed I serve her often enough that changing it to me being her would be something entirely different.”

  “You’re not denying my statement.”

  “And what is that?” Talia asked.

  “Have the Collector step forward. Tell Linsay—or whatever her name actually is—to come forward.”

  She still wasn’t certain from Alistan or his reaction whether he had known. Carth still wasn’t a hundred percent convinced that she had this completely right, but the time that she had spent playing Tsatsun over and over again had shown her a way of thinking that didn’t make sense, not for someone who wasn’t a highly skilled master player.

  Everything that she had seen from that game board had screamed that Linsay was something else: the very person that Carth had been searching for.

  Carth didn’t know whether Linsay would expose herself, but if she was right, this was the next move in the game. If nothing else, Linsay had wanted her to learn her identity.

  Or maybe she hadn’t. Maybe that was the reason for Boiyn’s death.

  “You certainly take your time coming to a conclusion,” she heard from the darkness. The voice sounded like Linsay, but there was a different element within it that Carth didn’t recognize. An arrogance.

  It was Linsay, but it was not.

  “You’ve been with me the entire time. You’ve been watching me the entire time. Why, if you only wanted to use me?”

  “Why? The challenge. You’re a player of Tsatsun, Carthenne. I’d think that you of all people would understand the why.”

  “After everything that you’ve seen me do, this is how you repay me?”

  Carth had chosen her words carefully, mostly curious about what response she would elicit from Linsay. Spending time playing as her had given her a different insight, and she thought that she understood, but she needed the confirmation. She needed Linsay to prove it, and the one way that Carth knew to get her to do that involved
coercing her into a reaction.

  “And what have you done for me?”

  “I brought you to safety. I gave you connections, friends, and you attacked them.”

  Linsay shrugged. “Boiyn was troublesome from the beginning. It was good that he hadn’t played Tsatsun, or I think he might have spoiled this surprise long before. He really did have a bright mind.”

  “And you killed him because he learned your secret? Or did you kill him because he was going to win?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “It matters. You knew Boiyn, so you know it matters.”

  “Boiyn knew what I wanted him to know of me, much as you knew what I wanted you to know of me.”

  “And you wanted me to find you like this? Why? What is it that you needed me to do that you couldn’t do yourself?”

  Linsay laughed as she stalked toward Carth. She wore a long, flowing black cloak with the hood pulled up, nearly covering her face. “I remembered hearing stories of a powerful woman. She was said to have trained with the A’ras, and she forged an alliance that was never believed possible, and she was known to have an affinity for gaming. It took some digging, but I was able to learn that you played Tsatsun, and when I learned that, I needed to know more.”

  “Tsatsun? That’s what this is all about?”

  “Even you know that it is more than just a game,” Linsay said. “Even you know that Tsatsun allows you to peer into another person’s mind in a way that anyone other than Alayna would never appreciate.”

  Carth frowned at the mention of Alayna. The people of Elaeavn were said to have individuals with the capability of reading one’s mind, much as Alayna could catch glimpses of possibilities.

  “Where are they? What have you done to Jenna and Alayna?”

  Linsay tipped her head with a smile. “What did you mean when you told Talia that she had known me longer than you had given her credit for?”

  “You’re sisters. Isn’t that it?”

  Talia glanced over at Linsay. “I told you that you underestimated her.”

  “Underestimated her? She’s sailed with me for months, and never once did she question the fact that I seemed to be steering her this way the entire time.”