by Barb Hendee
Shade was quick and agile, and gave them a lot of trouble.
One soldier spotted Rodian and held back for an instant. “Sorry, Captain. We can’t get a grip on it . . . without getting bit.”
Shade spun around, and at the sight of Rodian, she froze. Her racket dropped to a steady rumble.
He had no idea why his appearance would halt the dog in her place, and then he spotted one oddity. Wynn’s dog had never worn a collar that he’d ever seen, yet a strip of gray wool was tied around Shade’s neck. There was a piece of paper wrapped around that fabric.
“Back off, all of you!” Rodian ordered.
The three regulars exchanged confused glances but obeyed, standing poised around Shade but well out of reach. Slowly, cautiously, Rodian took two steps.
“Easy, girl,” he said.
Shade continued to tremble and rumble, but she stood there watching him. Stranger still, she took a step toward him, though it made him hesitate in turn. Much as he wanted to know what was on that paper, he had no desire to get bitten. Shade was rather a large animal, and easily had the advantage of height over any common wolf.
The closer Rodian came, Shade matched him in slower steps, and grew quiet. Reaching down, he ripped the note off the collar and took a step back. He peeled open the torn paper, quickly reviewing its contents. He’d already guessed whom it was from. The note was short, but when he finished reading, he was left mentally numb.
Part of him wanted to curse; another part nearly melted in relief. He read the brief note again and weighed the scales of what Wynn was asking him to do—with no explanation and no promise on her part.
What choice did he have?
He could certainly pin down and lock up Shade, and make Wynn come to him to get the dog back. But that wouldn’t get him the answers he wanted—needed—for what was going on inside the guild and between its Premin Council and the royals.
No . . . he had no choice. But he needed a quill and paper if he was to answer Wynn’s note. He looked down at Shade, who tilted her head.
Backing toward the gatehouse tunnel, Rodian said. “Come?”
Shade trotted after him.
Chane knelt on the floor, working on the heel of a boot. He remained externally passive, but how he felt on the inside was another matter.
Telling Wynn the truth this morning about the concoction—or at least the one he had completed so far—took away one burden. He still hid the secret of the white flower petals and dwarven mushrooms—the anasgiah and muhkgean—and the hint of their use in The Seven Leaves of Life. He was also worried about the risks Wynn would undertake tonight.
He had no contention with the plan that Leesil had devised, only with the fact that Wynn was actively involved. If Leesil was so clever, why not come up with a plan that kept Wynn out of danger?
Chane was also unhappy about a visitor due to arrive any moment, and it was not long before that hesitant knock came at the door.
Wynn looked up from sewing padding into the shoulders of the forest gray cloak Brot’an had provided.
“It me,” a soft voice said through the door.
Wynn swallowed and tried to clear her throat. “Ore-Locks, would . . . would you . . . ?” she stuttered.
The dwarf went to unlatch the door, and a tall, cloaked elf immediately stepped in. His amber eyes quickly found and locked on Wynn. This one was younger than Brot’an, with a long face, and loose, white-blond hair. Chane had seen him before and hated him at the time.
Once, in the Pock Peaks, this one had offered his full protection to Wynn—and she had accepted. Much later, when he had been injured, she had watched over him to the point of threatening Chane to keep away, though he had had no harmful intent in that moment.
“Osha,” Wynn said tentatively, clearly aware of the strain in the room. “Come . . . in.”
Chane still did not like him.
Osha did not even glance at Chane, either avoiding contact or because he was too fixated on Wynn. As he stepped closer to her, she put down the cloak and picked up Leesil’s stained and tattered green scarf. Reaching up, she put her hand on Osha’s arm.
“Let’s see how this looks,” she said. “Can you show me how he ties it up?”
Osha knelt beside her, taking the scarf.
Chane paused in his own work and had to fight to keep his hands from clenching.
“I think I hear Shade,” he said, and hurried out the door.
He had heard no such noise but would have taken—made—any excuse to leave. He descended the steps two at a time to get away from that room.
Cracking open the inn’s back door only a fraction, he hid behind it, against the daylight. A short while later, when Shade did arrive, she did not need to scratch. She poked her head inside, peeking around the door at him, and he widened the door for an instant, then shut it after she slipped in.
Shade trotted up the stairs and Chane followed, though not quickly enough; his reprieve from what waited in that room was far too short. Shade was already scratching at the room’s door, and in her makeshift collar was a folded slip of paper, though not the one Wynn had sent.
Wynn jerked open the door from the inside before Chane gripped the handle. She snatched the paper as Shade stepped into the room. Chane was left standing on the landing as Wynn fumbled to open the sheet. One quick read, and she raised her eyes to him.
“He’ll do it,” she said, exhaling.
Chane ushered her back from the doorway and reluctantly followed her in and shut the door. No matter that the next step had been achieved, he watched Wynn already fretting again. Her gaze roamed as she looked at nothing, and he knew her thoughts were tangled up with what came next.
The cascade of events had begun and would not stop until all of this was over and done.
“We need to get word to the others,” she said, and turned to Ore-Locks. “Leanâlhâm must leave as soon as the first wagon arrives. Can you go tell Magiere?”
At the mention of Magiere’s name, Chane almost flinched.
Ore-Locks nodded, retrieving his staff from behind the door.
The plan may have been Leesil’s, but whenever Magiere was around, she was always at the heart of more risks to Wynn’s life. Chane could not help wondering how different things might have been if Magiere had never come back.
“Are you all right?” Wynn asked him.
“Yes . . . I am fine.”
If nothing else, he would be with her this night. And if all went well, Magiere would soon be gone again.
Midafternoon, Leanâlhâm stood alone, outside the inn, dressed in Wynn’s cloak with the hood pulled up. Behind her on the inn’s porch were two large trunks and two crates of weathered wood planks. When she spotted a wagon rolling slowly up the street among the people coming and going—so many human faces—her stomach began to quiver.
The driver pulled his horses to a stop as another man beside him jumped down.
“You arrange for transport to the docks, miss?” the driver asked.
“Please,” she answered carefully. “Thank you.”
Brot’ân’duivé had coached her on what to say and how to say it. As with most foreign languages, more so this new one of Numanese, she understood more than she could actually speak.
At her silent direction, the second man loaded the crates and then the trunks, or, rather, he tried. When he attempted the first trunk, he grunted and could not quite lift it. The driver immediately hopped down to help.
“Begging your pardon, miss,” the driver asked with a friendly smile. “What did you pack in there—rocks?”
Leanâlhâm tried to smile in turn, though nervousness made her small lips twitch. She looked away and down as she said, “Only some books . . . many books.”
Brot’ân’duivé had thought this the best answer if needed.
“Books, eh?” the other man said, shaking his head.
The two men tried to lift the first trunk, but then thought otherwise. They dragged it to the wagon’s back before he
aving it up. The first trunk landed on the wagon’s bed with a loud thump, and the wagon rocked. So it went with the second trunk.
“That’s everything,” the driver said, “Come on, miss. Up you go.”
Leanâlhâm wavered. Once she boarded this wagon, there was no turning back. She had to manage this part of the plan alone. It would be the rest of the day and into the night before Osha—and Brot’ân’duivé—finished their tasks and rejoined her. She was frightened to be out in this strange, foreign place without Osha.
Brot’ân’duivé was dutiful to all his people, keeping them safe, including her. But Osha was truly good and kind, and as wounded by loss as was she. Perhaps even more.
“Miss?” the driver asked impatiently.
Leanâlhâm inhaled deeply. She took the driver’s hand and let him pull her up onto the wagon’s bench, as the other man climbed in back. There was nothing else she could do now that the cargo was loaded.
The wagon rolled down the street, farther and farther from the inn. In a surprisingly short time, the driver pulled up at the port. The waterfront and docks were filled with even more people than the street outside the inn, and none of them looked anything like her. The men unloaded the two trunks and two crates, carrying them off to the third pier, which she indicated as instructed by Leesil.
Leanâlhâm found herself waiting again, this time for a skiff to take her out to a ship.
The men headed off down the dock as the driver called out, “Safe voyage, miss.”
For some reason, those words touched her, as if he truly wished that for her. She wanted to thank him but stumbled on the words, and then he was lost in the waterfront crowd. She checked the latches and straps on both trunks to make certain they were secure and then looked out over the great bay, past the docked ships and those beyond, toward the open sea. She looked anywhere to avoid seeing all the people around her and feeling so out of place. And yet . . .
Another voyage upon water awaited, with nothing to do but to ache for a home that no longer existed—at least not for her anymore. Had it not been for Osha on the journey here, she could not have borne sailing farther and farther from the only land she knew. At least she would still have him for company, and he would soon be far away from Wynn Hygeorht again.
That last thought filled Leanâlhâm with shame. Osha deserved something—someone—to cherish for all that he had lost and the burdens he now bore.
“Hold there!” a masculine voice commanded.
Leanâlhâm whirled in fright and saw an armed man in a red tabard. The way he looked at her as he strode up the dock clearly meant those words were for her, and she had no idea why.
She froze as he neared, and he dropped his head a little to peer directly into the hood of her cloak. Then he frowned and cocked his head in puzzlement, likely seeing her dark tan skin, her slightly narrow face, with those large, slightly slanted eyes that were green instead of amber. Then he looked over her cloak, the one Wynn had given her, and shook his head.
His manner changed instantly, and he stepped back, bowing slightly.
“Pardon, miss. Didn’t mean to alarm you.” Then he looked up and out beyond her. “Is that your skiff coming?”
Leanâlhâm followed the city guard’s gaze out over the bay. She did not know if this skiff came for her, but she quickly nodded just the same. Whether it was this one or the next, she would soon be on a ship, waiting for nightfall.
CHAPTER 23
NOT LONG PAST DUSK, Én’nish still crouched upon a warehouse roof overlooking the southern end of the waterfront. Though she peered north along the high warehouse roofs, she could not make out Rhysís positioned at the northern end.
A few nights past, Dänvârfij had ordered a cease of all searches in the city. Tavithê was placed on watch at the city’s southern gate, and Eywodan on the north exit, which spilled out onto the road leading up around the bay to the peninsula said to be the home of the dwarves. Dänvârfij herself took watch over the guild’s castle.
They were all disciplined in long spells of wakefulness, but lack of sleep had begun to take its toll. Én’nish hoped someone from Magiere’s group of misfits and traitors would show soon.
The city’s guards had not been making her task any easier. They had been seen conducting their own sweeps through the city. Eywodan had surreptitiously learned they were looking for the sage, whom they claimed had been abducted from the guild. The city guards had been questioning people, using both the sage’s description and several possibilities of attire.
Én’nish and her people now knew that Wynn Hygeorht was no longer inside the guild’s castle.
She checked in with Rhysís at each bell that rang during the city’s day, but neither of them had spotted anything noteworthy. Earlier, Rhysís had reported something that gave Én’nish a fragment of hope. A slender woman in a full cloak had arrived at the docks with luggage, and one of the city’s guards had approached her almost immediately. The cloak the woman wore had somewhat matched a description that Eywodan had overhead the guards mention.
Rhysís had not been able to draw close enough to see the woman’s face, but the guard had quickly departed. So it could not have been the sage, and the young woman was soon loaded onto a boat that rowed for a ship anchored in the bay. And Wynn Hygeorht would have never left the city alone.
Most Aged Father had been clear on this point. Magiere’s people were fanatical about remaining together; they had proven so more than once. Still, Én’nish studied that one ship in the bay until dusk, never noticing anything of interest.
Her eyelids drooped and she shook herself, opening them. Sleep could come once their purpose was complete.
A patch of darkness in the street below moved of its own accord.
Én’nish twisted around, scrambling to the side of the warehouse’s roof. A shadow that moved was now their greatest fear after Dänvârfij had told them what had happened when she had gone to speak with Most Aged Father.
Brot’ân’duivé, the traitor, was hunting them again.
She stuck only the top of her head over the rooftop’s edge, just enough to look downward. Had it been only imagination and exhaustion addling her wits? The darkness moved again, and this time she saw it clearly.
It stepped through a pool of light cast by a street lantern, and Én’nish held her breath.
The near-black majay-hì silently padded toward the waterfront’s far end and Rhysís’s position. But along the way, it swerved into a side path and reappeared a block farther into the city on the double-wide street behind the waterfront.
Én’nish climbed the roof to its ridge and ran to leap to the next rooftop . . . and the next. When she was one rooftop away from Rhysís, she clicked her tongue five times. He rose like a dark silhouette sprouting from the shakes, and she pointed his attention toward the rear of that building. When he spotted the majay-hì, his return gestures indicated a question.
Follow?
She was torn, not wanting to split up if the dog led them to something important, but also reluctant to leave the port unwatched.
The majay-hì stepped into the light of another lantern. In that light, a shadow passed suddenly over the dog’s head. Én’nish padded silently to the roof’s rear edge for a better angle of view.
A cloaked figure walked right past the majay-hì, vanishing out the other side of the lantern’s light. The majay-hì followed, but even the brief glimpse made Én’nish freeze. The figure had been taller than any human, with broad shoulders for such a stature. Its cloak and hood were a familiar forest gray.
Brot’ân’duivé had appeared and met up with the sage’s black majay-hì, and he was clearly dressed for a hunt.
Én’nish rose on the roof, looking toward Rhysís in the same instant that he looked at her. For the first time, she was glad that she had teamed with him rather than with Tavithê or Eywodan. Dänvârfij was incapable of understanding anguish and the need for vengeance. Én’nish did not see either as a fault; they were imperatives for
justice.
As Rhysís began assembling his short bow, Én’nish held up one hand to stop him. He paused, as if with great effort.
They could not yet kill Brot’ân’duivé. The traitor and the majay-hì were on the move—but to where? Any attack now would cut them off from the answer. If the greimasg’äh had slipped up in exposing himself, he might also expose the location of Magiere and the others.
Rhysís finished with his bow just the same and slung it over his shoulder. He stood waiting as Én’nish backed up to take a running leap across to him. Together they followed their quarry from across the waterfront’s rooftops. This was what Én’nish had been waiting for, and they picked the trail of their target.
The majay-hì and Brot’ân’duivé were not difficult to follow, but that in itself left Én’nish wary. At the end of a row of slightly shabby shops across the street below, the pair stopped at the mouth of a broad cutway nearly as wide as the street itself. In that space stood a wagon with a team of two horses.
Én’nish slowed, ever more cautious as she crept to the roof’s rear edge and leaned out to look.
The wagon rolled out into full view, turning the corner with its team pointed away up the street. As it stopped, a short figure stood up in its back. This small one wore a gray robe and full cowl: the sage. But even more than that, the driver riveted Én’nish’s attention.
With his back turned to her where he sat on the bench, reins in hand, she still saw his hood was half pulled down. Over his head was an old, green scarf that held back long, white-blond hair. She had seen that scarf once before.
The sight of Léshil flushed Én’nish with sudden heat.
The sage stepped to the wagon bed’s rear, patting her thigh, and the black majay-hì leaped up to join her. The greimasg’äh followed, and Én’nish heard the flick of reins. The wagon rolled away behind the waterfront, heading north through the city’s bay side.
Én’nish grew more confused and anxious with each heartbeat.
The wagon could only be heading for the city’s northern gate, but where were Magiere, Osha, the girl called Leanâlhâm, and the deviant majay-hì they called Chap? Most Aged Father wanted prisoners for questioning, but the primary need was to capture Magiere. Why would Brot’ân’duivé try to escape with only Léshil, the sage, and the younger majay-hì?