by Barb Hendee
Rodian cursed inwardly, wondering how he could explain a visitor being allowed inside. If he even mentioned the young woman was here to see Wynn, it would incite High-Tower all the more, perhaps enough to send him charging to Sykion.
How many more times could he play his authority as trump against whatever challenge these sages cast in his way? Reiterating that he was in charge and would handle things his way would soon wear thin, and the royal family would step in again.
High-Tower shifted to the left more quickly than his bulk suggested possible. His head tilted, and his slash of a mouth opened. The domin was surprisingly silent as he looked around Rodian.
Rodian couldn’t help but look back . . . to find the girl and the wolf-dog gone as the outer portcullis thudded closed.
“Who was that?” High-Tower demanded.
Rodian didn’t answer and bolted into the gatehouse tunnel. There was no sign of the pair beyond the portcullis, and he grabbed the shoulder of Wickham’s tabard.
“Where is she?” he barked.
Guardsman Wickham blinked in alarm. “She left. I thought you sent her off.”
Rodian clutched the portcullis’s broad, upright beams, peering out to the bailey gate. As far as he could see over its top and up Old Procession Road, there was no sign of the elven woman with the strange eyes.
“Captain!” High-Tower shouted, and the crack of his voice echoed down the tunnel. “What is going on here?”
Rodian only cursed under his breath again.
A block down the main road from the bailey gate, Chap ducked around a corner with Leanâlhâm and peered back toward the sages’ small castle.
“Something is wrong in there,” Leanâlhâm whispered in Elvish as she leaned out above him. “We should return to tell the others.”
But Chap lingered. With guards inside the keep and the place locked down, he wanted more time to look for any other security measures. In only a moment, he spotted one.
Another guard came into view, walking the top of the bailey wall’s south half. The man paused on reaching the right-side small barbican, one of two framing the bailey gate. He leaned away, likely conversing with his comrade inside the portcullis, and then turned back the way he had come.
Chap hung his head. Of course there would be more guards than just the captain, one man inside the portcullis, and at least one in the gatehouse tower. Likely more than one walked the bailey wall, but he suddenly wondered about Wynn’s trick of memory.
Where—how and why—had she learned to willfully recall and hold a memory as she had for him to see? In all their lost days together, Wynn had never done this. She did not need to, considering he could always speak into her thoughts and she had a voice. The meaning in those memories she had shown him could not have been clearer. And for her to so vividly reexperience a past moment with such clarity, and then overlay others like it . . .
“Majay-hì!” Leanâlhâm whispered. “We must go.”
Pulled from his thoughts, Chap huffed once and turned up the road. If only there had been more time with Wynn. Perhaps she could have shown him even more with this new memory skill of hers. As he walked ahead of Leanâlhâm, he glanced back toward the keep.
A movement like a black shadow skulked along the bailey wall’s base.
Chap wheeled and tensed as another form came into view behind that black shadow walking on all fours. Someone in a gray robe trotted toward the bailey gate, passing that shadow, that . . . tall, black, wolfish form. He lunged a step back toward the castle.
The rope in Leanâlhâm’s grip snapped tight around Chap’s neck. He heard her stumble, but he fixated on that dark form. The black wolf hung back, out of sight of the portcullis, as the sage in gray opened the bailey gate.
Shade lingered close to the bailey wall as the sage paused, looking back at her. She opened her jaws and snapped them shut. Perhaps she had barked at the sage, but no sound carried to Chap. The sage hesitated an instant longer and then hurried through, closing the gate.
Chap watched as his daughter crept toward the gate, but she did not reach it. Her ears pricked, as if she listened. From a distance, Chap heard the grinding and loud clanks of the portcullis being raised.
What was Shade doing out here escorting a sage to the guild? Why was she not with Wynn, where she should be?
“What is wrong?” Leanâlhâm whispered. “What are you looking . . . ?” and then she gasped. “Majay-hì! Another majay-hì . . . here?”
Shade’s head twisted as she looked up the mainway.
Chap panicked, forgetting all that he had come here to do as his daughter stared up the mainway at him. The only thing left in his thoughts was the drive to make her understand how he could have done this to a daughter he had never seen before a night ago. A father she had never met had banished her from the world she knew to cross an ocean and a continent to serve a purpose that he could not.
He had suffered for two nights before going to beg Lily to do this for him . . . to do this to one of their unborn children. Even thinking back, he knew he would have made the same request. But here and now, all he wanted was to beg his daughter’s forgiveness, to help her to understand why he had done this to her.
Chap clamped his teeth on the leash cord and pulled sharply.
Leanâlhâm stumbled. “What are we doing?”
He kept jerking on the cord until the last of it ripped from her hand.
“No, no!” she called frantically. “We must go back to the others.”
There was so little time in this moment. Chap only hoped Leanâlhâm would remember what Magiere had told her. He called up the girl’s brief memory from last night of Magiere and Leesil. He recalled these two images over and over. Then he butted Leanâlhâm’s leg.
Her eyes widened as she almost fell. Instead of shock at the memories suddenly assaulting her, she shouted at him.
“No! You must come, too.”
Chap huffed twice, and when she opened her mouth to argue, he lost his self-control. He snarled and snapped at her, again raising that memory of the inn’s room. Her young face twisted with so much fright that he stopped. He wanted to rush after Shade, but he crept slowly forward and licked Leanâlhâm’s hand.
Confusion flooded her expression. She was still too unfamiliar with his ways. He shoved her with his head more gently this time. She knew what he wanted; he simply had to make her do it.
When he started to back up, to his relief, she didn’t follow. She turned halfway, still watching him retreat. He did not turn around until she finally headed up the street. Only then did he wheel about to race up the road.
Chap stumbled to a halt. Shade was nowhere in sight.
Perhaps like the night they had met in the catacomb archives, she wanted nothing to do with him. Why else would she leave after seeing him again? He broke into a lope, heading up the mainway, but he did not make it far.
A woman screamed out.
He stalled amid an intersection a full block from the bailey gate as a woman in a shimmering cloak and white fur gloves grabbed her toddling little daughter out of his way. Other people drew away from him in alarm. He retreated, trying not to startle anyone else, but there were people in every branch of the streets around him.
“Wolf!” someone cried out, and two men with long staves in hand turned and looked Chap’s way.
So much for soot and ashes and Leesil’s idiotic disguise!
It did not matter that he still had a rope dangling from his neck. Or maybe that just made it worse, as if he had broken from captivity.
All Chap could think of was his daughter, and why she was not with Wynn.
Charging straight at the staff-wielding men in his way, he had to clip one of their legs to get through. At the crack of a staff on cobble behind him, he swerved and bolted on at full speed. When he reached where the mainway met the loop around the sages’ castle, he slowed long enough to sniff the cobblestones nearest to the bailey wall. If sight would not help him, perhaps scent would.
Then he heard the running feet coming after him.
* * *
Én’nish had taken the day’s watch over the guild castle. Perched on a rooftop along Wall Shop Row near the castle’s front, she hadn’t known quite what to think when a filthy majay-hì, its fur smudged and smeared black, walked up to the portcullis beside a slender, cloaked figure. The cloaked woman was too small to be the monster Magiere, but all the filth upon the majay-hì did not hide who he was. Én’nish knew on sight the one that the humans called Chap.
When the pair had come out again only moments later, Én’nish had been prepared to follow them. Something unexpected stalled her.
A black majay-hì appeared, apparently escorting a young male sage in gray. This majay-hì did not follow the sage into the keep, and Én’nish knew this one, as well. It had been seen by one of her comrades in the company of Wynn Hygeorht upon the sage’s return to the city.
Én’nish could not fathom what any majay-hì would be doing this far from her homeland, let alone in the company of humans. She almost followed it, but only the one called Chap might lead her to the hiding place of the monster. About to pick up that abomination’s trail, she was startled again.
Chap returned, only a city block ahead of two shouting men carrying staves. The majay-hì paused at the bailey wall where the black one had been moments before. Then Chap took off at a run, following the black one’s trail.
To follow, Én’nish took a running leap and landed lightly on the next rooftop.
Still at the window, Wynn’s stomach churned with mixed relief and worry.
Chap had come and now he knew where she was. He’d told her they’d be coming for her. It made her feel more secure than she could’ve imagined, but she’d already sent a message to Chane giving him two days. After that, she knew he’d be coming for her, and Chane was not always patient. He might not listen—might even try sooner.
Leesil was a master of infiltration; it was part of what he’d done in his youth. Now that Chap could tell Leesil where Wynn was, Leesil as well might not wait too long.
And if Leesil and Chane crossed paths . . .
Wynn’s stomach knotted. All of her relief drained away. She had to get another message to Chane, and quickly. The midday bell had passed, so likely Nikolas would come with her next meal. She spun around, grabbing a sheet of paper from her little desk table.
“What are you doing?”
Startled, Wynn turned at the harsh challenge she heard in the passage outside her room. She’d almost not recognized that voice at first, for she’d never heard Nikolas sound hostile before.
“None of your concern.”
Wynn froze at Dorian’s cold reply.
“That is my duty,” Nikolas almost shouted.
Wynn ran for the door and jerked it open. The first person she saw was the guard as he instinctively reached for the hilt of his sword. It wasn’t Lúcan, and she didn’t recognize him, but at the sight of her, he relaxed and turned his wary eyes back on the two sages.
Dorian stood in the passage, holding a tray with a bowl of soup and pot of tea. Nikolas stood a few paces beyond, nearer the stairs, his mouth tight and his hands clenched on a similar tray. Dorian eyed the Shyldfälche guard.
“Premin Sykion has instructed that I bring the journeyor’s meals from now on,” Dorian commanded. “No one but me.”
The guard did not appear impressed. “I take my orders from Captain Rodian or Corporal Lúcan, and I’ve heard of no such change.”
“Then you’d best check with your superiors,” Dorian answered. “The instruction has already been given.”
Without another word, Dorian pushed past the guard and came straight at Wynn. He didn’t even pause, forcing her to back up into the room. When he entered, he went to the desk without even looking at her and set down the tray. The last thing Wynn saw was Nikolas’s desperate face as he stood outside in the passage, and then Dorian quickly left, closing the door.
Wynn sank onto her bed’s edge, with no way to get a message to Chane.
Chane sat leaning against the passage wall at the back of Nattie’s inn, hoping he had done right in sending Shade off with the young sage. Too much time had passed. Or perhaps it just felt so as he quivered and itched, wanting to scratch off his skin and imagining the burning sun just outside the inn’s back door. He hated this and longed for the oblivion of dormancy.
A wild, eager scratching outside the door was followed by a loud huff.
Chane quickly rolled to one knee, pulled his hood low, and shoved open the back door. Shade rushed inside and passed him, and he pulled the door shut. But as he turned about, he saw only her tail as she bolted up the stairs, huffing and panting in agitation.
Something had gone wrong.
Chane did not hesitate and followed Shade quickly, taking two steps at a time to where she sat panting and whining at their room’s door. He opened it, only to have her rush into the room. Quickly stepping inside, he latched the door and crouched before her.
“What is wrong?” he rasped. “What happened?”
Shade rumbled and then whined again, and Chane’s alarm grew. Without warning her, he slipped off the brass ring. She did not even snarl, but instead fixed her crystal blue eyes on his.
A memory rose in Chane’s awareness.
He saw the moment when he had looked down from Wynn’s window into the courtyard that first night back at the guild. He had seen Magiere, Leesil, and Chap step out of the keep’s main doors with Wynn and Shade. Then he saw a flash of them being “escorted” out. The jumbled flashes made him dizzy until the memory seemed to narrow in scope and focus only on parts of the images . . . on Chap. This repeated and repeated until Chane jumped to his feet again.
“Chap?” he asked. “You saw Chap?”
Shade let out a sharp huff. She raced to the small, dingy window and rose, setting her forepaws on the sill. Chane joined her, though he flattened against the wall to one side when she pushed her nose around the canvas curtain’s edge to peer down outside. He had no idea what she was trying to tell him.
Shade pulled her head back and looked up at Chane, and the same dizzying flash of memories came to him again. He glanced at the curtained window in alarm.
“Chap . . . is here?” he rasped.
She huffed once.
Chane quickly slid the brass ring on as Shade dropped and backed away from the window.
Chap scrambled after Shade’s trail through streets, cutways, and alleys, stopping only when he could to test for her scent. He caught sight of her twice, but each time she somehow outdistanced him. Every time he took to an open street to catch up, he heard someone shouting near or far behind him. When he trailed her all the way into a seedy district, some of what he saw seemed familiar.
He was somewhere else in the very district in which Magiere and Leesil still hid. Then Shade’s trail took another change.
Chap entered a long strip of worn buildings where the next cross street was too far off for Shade to have reached it so quickly. He backtracked, sniffing along the buildings’ side walls until he picked up her trail in an alley. He followed it, until it ended at the back door of a bleached gray, wooden inn with two stories and a high-peaked roof.
He dug his claws into the rear door’s gap.
No matter how hard he levered and pulled, it would not open. Shade could not have gotten in this way, and he doubled-checked that her trail did not continue farther along the alley. The stench of the alley’s center gutter made it hard to be certain, but he could find no scent of her beyond that one building. His daughter had to have gotten through that door.
Shame at what Chap had done to his daughter began to wane. Anger began mixing with his bafflement. If Wynn was locked in a room at the guild, with city guards at the portcullis, what in the world was Shade doing out here alone?
He looked up and down the alley, prepared to slip around the block for a peek at the building’s front. A stinging chill ran over him, making his fur stand on end. Instin
ctual fury followed, running through his flesh. His hackles rose and he snarled before he even realized why.
Choking in rage, Chap was almost overcome by the sudden, overwhelming presence of an undead.
It was somewhere nearby, and he turned a full circle to peer up and down the alley. Nothing moved in his sight, not even rats scurrying among the refuse and ash cans. He looked again to the locked rear door and up across the windows above it.
Chap swallowed down the need to cut loose a howl. It was inside the place where Shade had gone! Had she been hunting?
He charged and rammed the rear door. It bucked and crackled but did not give way. With his head ringing, he backed up for another run at it.
Then the sickening presence that heated him within suddenly vanished . . . as if it had never been there at all.
Chap froze where he stood, trembling with lingering fury, almost unable to think.
The door swung out so hard it knocked over an old crate for collecting kitchen scraps. A corpulent, middle-aged woman in an age-faded apron waddled out, wielding an upturned broom like a club.
“What in the Trinity of Sentience is goin’ on out . . .”
She faltered, her angry scowl vanishing as she spotted Chap.
“Wolf!” she screamed.
Chap came to his senses as a large, old man burst out behind the woman.
“It’s a wolf, wolf, wolf!” the woman screamed, ducking behind the old man. The sound of running feet and further shouts carried out the open door from behind the couple.
A snarl turned to a whine in Chap’s throat as he wheeled and raced off down the alley.
All because of Leesil and his stupid, worthless disguise.
CHAPTER 11
LEESIL HAD NEVER BEEN good at sitting and waiting. This situation was no exception. By the way Magiere paced the small room, she was little better. The clap-pause-clap of her boots was getting on his nerves.
She still limped, but he knew that would pass soon because of what she’d done to herself. That thought took away half his relief that she would be all right. To make things even more uncomfortable, Osha was up on the roof, Leanâlhâm was still off with Chap, and only Brot’an remained. He lay on the floor in a pretense of rest, but his eyes were open, staring into the rooftop’s rafters.