The creaking rumble of a coach approaching warned her. Shironne scrambled away to get out of its path, not certain what it might do to her dream-self. A lumbering traveling coach slowed to a halt only a few feet from where she stood. It bore no crest—the sort of vehicle a nobleman might use when he wanted his identity hidden.
The door opened and two men jumped down. Their victim watched them come, his knees giving out as they neared him. He slumped to the stone pavers.
Shironne gazed at them, trying to find something distinct about them in the gloom. Their faces and clothes told her nothing, as nondescript as their victim’s. The victim’s panic turned to frustration, leaking through Mikael across her senses. His captors raised him to his feet again.
A third man stepped down from the coach then, his presence drawing her attention as if he was now the center of the dream.
His features looked Larossan. She would guess his age to be around forty, but she wasn’t particularly good at that. A touch of gray marked his temples. He seemed a man accustomed to getting what he wanted. His clothes were of the finest quality, clearly better made than those of his two associates. The cut seemed odd to her, though.
He laid one bared hand against his captive’s cheek. Then he looked at her . . . and, unlike the others, he actually seemed to see her.
Shironne forgot everything else when his dark eyes stared into hers. Mesmerized, she watched as the distance between them seemed to disappear. The rest of the dream slowed to a halt. The two other men dragging their victim to the coach appeared to stop, suspended in time, the horses unmoving.
The only sound she heard was her own terrified breathing.
The man reached out with his other hand, almost as if to caress her face. She wanted to back away but remained frozen there. One of his fingers slid down the curve of her bruised cheek.
I’ve come looking for you.
His lips moved, words coming forth that her ears didn’t recognize. She was learning it thirdhand, like an old rumor, passed via the victim through Mikael to her. The words’ meaning whispered into her mind all the same, things he wanted repeated. He wanted her to bear his warning, claiming that she alone would come out of this dream with the memories he wished. As if he knew her, as if he recognized her, he understood what she could do better than she did herself. The familiarity of his touch terrified her.
Shironne jerked away, almost shredding herself out of the dream to escape him. She fell to the pavers and then scrambled up. She ran to a nearby house and crouched down by the steps, making herself as small as possible, hoping to escape the man’s attention.
He hadn’t moved from where he stood. He watched as the others—three of them now—struggled to lift their burden into the coach. They climbed up, clambering over their victim’s body. The older man turned, gazed at her again, and smiled.
Shironne ran, turning into an alleyway that was weirdly unformed. The buildings faded off into blackness, leaving her nowhere to go. Fear beat in her blood, so she leaned against the alley wall, trying to calm herself. Somewhere in the dream she still sensed Mikael’s presence, but she didn’t want to be where he was—not if that man was there.
She concentrated on keeping contact with Mikael in her mind, sinking down until she sat in the vague alleyway. Darkness crept about her, unformed spots in the fabric of the dream. This must be a place in the city Mikael didn’t know, this alley, and therefore he couldn’t dream it well.
She could feel Mikael’s anger and fear coupled with the victim’s desperate worry, ever present, the very air of the dream. Time passed, and his fear settled. The victim understood that Mikael would be there, watching over him.
And then she was sure. Even though she wasn’t sensing the victim with her own mind, the perception she had of him through Mikael told her that this man, this victim, was Lieutenant Aldassa.
She put her head on her knees, unable to stop the tears. She couldn’t do this. She couldn’t bear to watch Aldassa die. How did Mikael live through this, over and over? She put a hand over her mouth to hold in her sobs.
If Mikael could do this, she could.
She was here to protect Mikael, and she had to calm herself to do that. Shironne reached into her tunic pocket, trying to find her focus so she could anchor herself to it, pull herself out of the dream. Only she didn’t have it. The crystal was in the pocket of her blue coat, and Verinne had taken it away.
Her heart began to flutter. How can I pull Mikael out of this dream if I don’t have it?
But the crystal couldn’t exist in the dream anyway. Mikael didn’t know she had it. So how had she used it to yank him out of his memories before?
It was the idea of the focus. She slid her hand into her tunic pocket and felt the cool edges of the stone under her fingers. She felt its clean lines and simple structure. She drew the focus out of her pocket and stared down at it. It had the shape her fingers remembered. It was blue, as her mother had said when she gave it to her long ago, and it glowed softly, a beacon in this dark alleyway. She cupped her hands around it, memorizing it, fixing it in her mind so that it would be a tool for her to use whenever she needed it.
She took a deep breath and forced away the victim’s fear, Mikael’s fear. She had to keep a level head if she meant to control this dream world, to be the witness they all needed, that Aldassa deserved. She had to get Mikael safely out.
She pushed herself to her feet. She wanted to be where they’d gone rather than abandoned in this chilly alleyway of Mikael’s mind. She tried to make Mikael hear her, thinking that it was his dream and he must control it somehow. The world changed around her abruptly, showing her Aldassa being hauled from the traveling coach in a different dark alley.
Three men dragged him across the ground, his head drooping to his chest. One of their number stayed behind in the coach, his face reflecting anguish—the involuntary witness. The last man, the one who could see her, followed them at a distance, not taking part in the gruesome pageant. Shironne shrunk back into a doorway, caution overriding her need to witness the crime.
They were in the Lower Town now, a slum. The stench was less pungent in Mikael’s dream, but distinctive even so. There were no streetlights here. The police didn’t frequent this quarter, saving their efforts for those parts of the capital that made stronger demands. People here kept indoors at night, and those who didn’t had ill reasons for being abroad.
She watched as they dragged the man down the stone embankment into the shadows of the Lower Town Bridge. The fourth man trailed behind them as if too fastidious to soil his clothes. He followed the others to the embankment but went no farther, waiting with one foot up on the stone wall, looking as if he’d merely gone for a moonlit stroll.
She didn’t want to watch. Her heart fluttered wildly—the victim’s fright, shared with Mikael and thus transferred to her—and she forced it back down. How much time passed she didn’t know, but then the men returned from the embankment and strode into the shadows.
Was it over?
No, they were still in Mikael’s dream.
He was trapped in Aldassa’s dying body, counting on her to bring him back.
Forgetting her caution, Shironne ran across the dirt street and flung herself down the embankment, landing in the sludge that lined the edge of the river. Crumpled fabric lay near the flow of water and a rope snaked off into the darkness, tethering something away from the black water.
She screamed Mikael’s name.
She heard laughter and turned back to see the last man standing on the stone embankment, limned by the faint moonlight. He smiled warmly, almost affectionately, at her, the way Father used to smile at Perrin.
“Remember,” he said—a foreign word, but she knew it.
She grabbed for her sense of Mikael and the dream shredded, catapulting her back into blindness.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Mikael
took a great breath, the air rushing into his lungs. He was alive, which he’d doubted a moment before. Shironne Anjir had called him back from death. He was safe.
Deborah was helping Miss Anjir sit on a chair next to the bed. The girl’s hair was rumpled, as if she’d been sleeping. She clung to his hand, her face stricken.
And then it all returned to him, erasing the relief of having survived another dream. He rarely had memories of his dreams right away, but this time he was sure. The victim had been David Aldassa.
Mikael sat up and struggled to get to his feet, entangled in the heavy blanket Cerradine had thrown over him. He reached out for his jacket, determined to go out and see for himself, to find Aldassa, but Shironne’s hands grabbed at his arm.
“No,” she cried. “There’s nothing you can do. It’s over.”
He almost pulled away from her in anger but saw tears in her eyes, his own regret reflected on her face. “I have to know.”
“You already know it was him,” she said. “It’s too late.”
Echoing him, his own helplessness turning on her. Mikael tried to control his pain, wanting not to inflict it on her further. He drew a sniffling breath, sat down on the edge of the bed, and rubbed his free hand over his face. He was always too late. That was his curse—to watch others die and never be able to save them.
“Who?” Cerradine asked.
Deborah waited on the other side of the bed. Dahar glanced at her and then shook his head in a puzzled fashion.
Shironne put her free hand over her mouth to stifle a sob, her dark eyes filling with tears. Mikael wished he could put his arms around her, but that wouldn’t be appropriate, so he stayed the impulse. He looked back at Cerradine, whose expression betrayed only curiosity. “I think they took David Aldassa, sir.”
Cerradine went still, olive skin paling. “No.”
“He knew, sir. The victim knew I was with him. He wanted me to remember things, so he had to have known me.”
“Are you certain?” Dahar put a hand on Cerradine’s shoulder.
“He knew me.” Mikael shut his eyes, trying to recall what had identified the victim as David Aldassa in his mind. “He worried about his daughters and his wife. It was him.”
Cerradine turned away and leaned on one hand against the door.
A tear spilled from Shironne’s eye and slid down her cheek. Cerradine’s pain had to be tearing at her. Mikael could almost sense that.
“Do you remember anything?” Dahar asked. “Where? What did you see?”
Mikael closed his eyes, trying to answer the questions. Only the victim’s emotions and sensations stirred in his mind. The details escaped him. Then he recalled there had been a second witness this time.
“I think it was the Lower Town Bridge,” Shironne said unprompted. “It smelled, and the dirt near the embankments was slimy. The coach is big, but unmarked. Five men, all gone now. He knows about Mikael.” She sounded exhausted. Mikael squeezed her hand in reassurance.
“He?” Dahar asked.
“The head . . . person of them,” Shironne faltered, then went on. “He talked to me in some other language, but I understood him. He’s been trying to reach Mikael, to talk to him, but he couldn’t, so he waited for me. He knew I would be there, so he spoke through Mikael to me. Well, I guess through Aldassa and then through him to me. He says we know what he wants. He’ll keep killing until he gets it and he’ll get closer to home every time.”
Cerradine looked around at those words, his face grim. He got up and began moving, gathering his coat and hat. “You are to stay with Deborah—do you understand me?” he said to Shironne, putting a hand on her cheek. “I don’t want you out on the streets.”
Shironne nodded. She was familiar enough with the colonel that his touch didn’t disturb her. He’d done it to underscore his urgency. He’d wanted to be certain she knew he was concerned for her. “I’ll stay with her, sir.”
Cerradine drew on his coat, and Dahar did the same. Mikael moved to join them, but Deborah’s hand came down on his shoulder, pressing him back to his sitting position on the rumpled bed. “I’m not letting you go until I know you’re not hurt.”
Mikael tore at his collar, opening the throat of his shirt so that she could see his shoulders. He didn’t need to look down to know there was nothing there. He felt normal—or as normal as he would any other time he’d been woken out of a dead sleep.
Deborah’s eyes scanned his bared shoulders and then flicked toward Shironne. “Go, then,” she told him, “but don’t forget you’ve left us here.”
He glanced down at Shironne. She made a waving gesture with her hands, so he grabbed up his coat and headed out to join the colonel and Dahar down in the common room of the tavern.
“There was a rope,” Shironne said just before he passed through the doorway. “They didn’t want the river to wash him away, so he’s tied there. Look for that.”
Mikael nodded. She wouldn’t see him, but she would catch the sense of it from his mind. He shook his head. This was a body none of them wanted to find. He only hoped he located David Aldassa before the colonel did.
• • •
Shironne felt Mikael’s anxiousness abate some once he’d left the small room they were in. Once he was doing something, he felt better, a reaction she could well understand.
“Thank you,” Deborah said softly. She touched Shironne’s sleeve. “You seem to have found a way to keep him safe.”
In the dream, she meant.
“The others,” she went on, “don’t understand the sort of risk that was for you. Especially the colonel. He’s always seen this possibility as a way to fine-tune Mikael’s dreams. To find murderers.”
Whereas for Deborah, this exercise was more about saving Mikael.
“I want to find that man who killed Aldassa too,” Shironne said.
“I know,” Deborah said and then sighed. “For now, I need to decide what to do with you, Miss Anjir,” the doctor said. “It’s at least an hour before dawn.”
Shironne lifted her head. “How long was I sleeping?”
“A few hours. Mikael’s dreams aren’t like normal dreams, coming and going. When he does this, he dreams for a long time. From the moment he contacts the victim until . . .”
Until they die. How long had she spent sitting in that dark alley of Mikael’s mind? Hours? It had seemed to pass so quickly.
“Dahar brought some clothing for you to wear,” Deborah went on.
Shironne wondered what manner of garments the prince—her uncle—would have thought to bring for her.
“I had to guess on your measurements, but I’ve had a great deal of practice. Why don’t we take care of that, and then decide what’s to be done?”
Dressing in unfamiliar clothes, even with Deborah’s help, was a daunting prospect, but Shironne was too worn down to argue. She sighed.
“Are you skin shy?” Deborah asked gently. “I can leave if you prefer.”
That was a term the Family used to describe members of a yeargroup who preferred never to be seen undressed, a rarity in most yeargroups, where they grew up in close quarters. “No, I’m fine. I have two younger sisters who don’t believe in privacy.”
Deborah chuckled but then sobered. She explained each garment—trousers, shirt, vest, jacket. The jacket and vest had hidden plackets. Shironne felt the linen of the shirt, finely woven and new. No dye.
She’s brought me a uniform. A Family uniform. Her mother wouldn’t like it, but she probably wouldn’t like her daughter to wear an army uniform either. “It’s brown, isn’t it?”
“Yes. You are still a child, dear,” Deborah said. “And before you point it out, I am aware that the threshold we’ve set for adulthood is arbitrary.”
Shironne supposed they had to have some criteria. Perhaps Family children just matured later than Larossans. “I’m blind. T
hat would surely make me a liability for the Family.”
“I think that tonight you more than proved your worth, dear.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Mikael wasn’t certain how long he’d slept, but the patrons of the tavern’s common room had all departed, leaving the place in relative quiet. It had to be well past midnight. Synen and a guest argued near the doorway, the guest complaining that comings and goings in the night had ruined his sleep. Not wanting to lose Synen’s goodwill, Mikael offered to pay the man’s lodging. Surprised at the sight of the two non-Larossan patrons in their Lucas Family uniforms—accompanied by an army officer—the man hastened to agree with the plan.
“Just send the bill to me at the palace,” Dahar interrupted, sounding out of sorts.
Cerradine stood to one side, arms wrapped around his chest. He was clearly trying to calm himself, but Mikael suspected his emotions were leaking out, provoking Dahar’s snappishness.
Synen nodded, not bothering to ask Dahar’s name. He probably knew exactly who Dahar was. The placated guest picked up his bags and returned upstairs to finish his night’s sleep. Synen turned to Mikael. “What are you up to, lad?”
“We need to borrow a few things,” he said. “Do you have a wagon?” He’d seen one before in the stables in the tavern’s back court.
“There’s the hay cart we use in the stable,” Synen said hesitantly. Mikael could tell from his dour expression that Synen suspected what they wanted it for. “You can take that.”
“Could we also borrow a few blankets, and perhaps one of your stable boys as a driver?” Dahar asked, sounding more diplomatic now.
“A discreet one,” Mikael amended.
Synen nodded, stroking a finger along his stubbled jaw. “I’ll send my older son with you,” he told Mikael. “Just keep him out of harm’s way.”
Synen went back into the kitchen to make the necessary arrangements. Dahar paced around the quiet common room, clearly upset, occasionally pausing to pick up an object and look at it.
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