by Kim Wedlock
A middle-aged woman approached as a bell tinkled their arrival, and after a brief exchange, she stepped aside and graciously welcomed them in. Rathen felt her sharp, business gaze turn curious as they passed, but as they stepped behind the screens and out of her lingering sight, he suddenly didn't know quite where to turn his own eyes, though he was quick to cover Aria's.
Garon, however, spared little attention to the very naked bathers that occupied the three expansive baths. Instead he scanned purposefully across the humid hall until he spotted one of the towel girls. "You two wait here," he told them firmly, and started away without waiting for response to tread carefully across the wet stone that ran between the lengths of the baths.
Rathen sighed in frustration at his usual abruptness, then glanced around himself, discovered a private seating area nearby, and quickly ushered Aria inside it.
He dropped heavily into one of the chairs as Aria clambered up into the seat beside him, and she peered discreetly through the shutters until her cheeks flushed red and she spun back around. She turned incredulously bewildered eyes upon him. "Why are they...?" She didn't seem to have the words to finish her sharply whispered question.
Rathen managed a smile. "Well you don't have a bath with your clothes on, do you?"
"No - I also don't have a bath with everyone in the forest!" Her eyes widened slowly in realisation. "Is this what people do in cities?"
"Sometimes." He grinned as he watched her confusion deepen. She remained beside him with her gaze fixed firmly on a plant pot after that.
Rathen did his best to settle, allowing the smothering warmth of the bath house to ease his senses. But it could only do so much against a mind so knotted. His attention latched spitefully onto every detail behind him: the splash of water followed by sighs of relaxation, the hiss of fires as they were stoked in steam rooms, and he had to fight his neck not to twist at every playful giggle or delicate patter of footsteps. The calming bath house was doing him little good at all.
Defeated, he sat forwards in the chair to stop his knee from jittering, covered his eyes with the heels of his hands and attempted to draw in his mind. Slowly, finally, peace began to edge in, and soon he was able to ignore the approaching footsteps more easily, as well as the voice that whispered as they stopped on the other side of the screen.
"It's a long way to Toakh," a young woman said quietly as his shoulders finally began to loosen and he found some kind of appreciation for the warmth. "When did you say she left?"
"Two weeks ago," another replied.
"Ohh, then she'll be fine. She won't have even arrived yet."
"I'm not worried she'll be trapped in the city," the second replied, and Rathen frowned slightly at the desperate touch to her tone, though he tried to ignore it, "I'm worried she'll have been killed along the way!" She sighed mournfully. "How did this ever happen?"
"Because the military got duped," a third said cynically.
Rathen lowered his hands from his face as one of the women hushed her.
"They did!" She continued. "Skilan are smarter than we've been led to believe."
"Quiet, Ness, you're not helping!"
"I'm just being realistic. They knew we'd think they would come in from the west, so they made a show of it while sending small groups to the east. While our boys were moving one way, they were sneaking along through the shadows in the other. There was no one there to protect Toakh, Bowden or Ferna, they just walked right in and took over."
"But," the first added hurriedly, "Elaina will be fine. She wasn't travelling alone, and for them to have moved unnoticed like that, it can't have been a big force. She's not likely to run into them, especially not on the roads."
"Big force or not, they were smart. Apparently only a few are guarding--"
"Mages are going in to fix it."
"Like they're really going to help." Rathen could hear the woman's sneer in her voice. "Either way, most of the soldiers who took over have vanished. I reckon they've been concealed by magic and are moving deeper into the country."
"Ness!"
"What I'm saying, if you'd stop interrupting me, is that none of those three were their real targets, which means they have other intentions, and whatever they are, I doubt they'd risk drawing attention to themselves by attacking travellers. Elaina will be fine."
A thoughtful silence hung for a moment before the most concerned among them spoke. "You have a very odd way of comforting people."
Rathen stopped listening as Ness was scolded again.
War had arrived, and they'd almost walked right into it. In fact, had they not stumbled upon the ruin in the Wildlands, they would have reached Bowden just a few days ago. When had it happened? And with Turunda's resources, how?
He'd felt the tension in the city as soon as they'd arrived but he'd been too preoccupied to consciously notice it, and even had he, he'd probably have dismissed it and put it down to the city's nature or the weather. But in hindsight, the atmosphere could have been cut with a knife - even in the bath house there was a certain suspense. And there had been no sign of any soldiers on the streets, either. Only guards, and despite the thread of corruption that ran through Carenna's force, they seemed more alert than usual, more keen-eyed and thoughtful.
Rathen's frown deepened in growing concern. The military wasn't to blame, he knew that well enough. Evidently the Arana had been distracted - though he quickly turned his mind away from wondering at what could have been holding their attention. Those were troublesome thoughts he was neither trained nor inclined to entertain.
Suffice it to say that it was surely important.
But, that point aside, this was smarter than Skilan ought to be... What were they doing?
He had little time to ponder it. Garon appeared at the edge of the seating area, his expression just as troubled as Rathen's. The mage leaned back in his seat. "I guess your uneasy feeling in the east was justified."
Anthis clutched the parchment beneath the folds of his cloak, concealed from the rain and any prying eyes that might take too much of an interest. He needn't have carried it at all, in truth; he knew its contents well enough, but his apprehension enforced a hampering need for precision. And at least his grip gave him somewhere to channel his anticipation rather than trip himself up over it.
He scanned across the masses through the dim, cloud-choked light, looking from one face to the next, his eyes quick but attentive from within the depths of his hood. He recognised no one, but that didn't matter. These searches were rarely so easy.
He followed the winding roads, the tall, narrow alleys offering momentary relief from the falling rain and the sludge the unkempt district's filth had churned in to. No one paid him any attention as he passed, as he looked just as shifty in his cloak as anyone else around him, and that alone kept him safe. No one knew who he was, nor his intentions, so no one risked attacking him.
Not that his safety was a present concern.
He turned onto a busier road lined with even more watchful caitiffs, and he absorbed their details even as his eyes flicked fervently from face to face. He swallowed hard, forcing his growing anticipation into submission, and tightened his fists as his hands twitched towards his blades. It was too soon, too obvious.
But he was so close.
Impatience threatened to overtake him. The third and final crystal set in the hilt of his dagger had turned jet-black days ago, and he could feel its corruption pumping through his body. He felt sick, shaky and distracted, and he could do nothing to hide his irritability from the others. He woke in sweats throughout the night, he felt watched throughout the day, and there were a thousand voices second-, third- and fourth-guessing everything he did. He suffered waves of energy that only fuelled his restiveness and what he hoped was paranoia, and bouts of fatigue when all he wished to do was sleep or weep. It felt as if an inescapable shadow of himself clung to his back and judged his every action, criticising everything, telling him he was doing everything wrong, and yet offered no sugges
tions.
Perhaps this was what it felt like to go insane.
There was only one way to stop it.
Rather than slow him, his desperation now focused his mind. He was close. He could feel it. A few more minutes and everything would be all right.
He turned down a south-eastern alley and forced his feet to keep their even pace. He couldn't afford to run, to draw attention to himself. Not now.
The path forked and he took the left. He was close to the western gate; he'd moved in a wide circle, but she was also on the move. And it was raining; it was easy to remain hidden in plain sight with weather like this, so of course she would take advantage of it. But while it worked to her advantage, allowing her to pass unnoticed even mere feet away from guards, it worked to his, too.
She flashed into sight. He was sure it was her. He hadn't seen her face yet, but she moved like the others did: lightly, quickly, and with the shadow of suspicion. But she didn't know he was there. She'd be moving quicker if she did, feeling his pursuit. This was simply a guilty conscience nipping at her heels. Something she was surely used to.
The cloaked figure turned down another alley and he let himself drop behind. There was no need to hurry. He wouldn't lose her now. Her presence stood out like a beacon, so valuable she was, and he tracked her easily through the shadowed lanes. He glimpsed her face twice in that time; young and beautiful, if also a bit plain. She had the look of someone to be trusted, someone to confide in. Essential for a nurse, really, and it was almost a shame that she matched the bounty. But what would anyone see in a serial infanticidal lunatic?
The passes were growing emptier now. Darker in the shadows of the taller buildings and deepening clouds. The rain hammered all around him, the clamour of thundering raindrops intensified by the acoustics. But he couldn't do it there, not in an alley. It was too easy to be spotted, and evidence would be found too quickly.
Vokaad must have heard his silent pleas. The nurse paused and Anthis ducked behind a wall. She hadn't spotted him. She stepped instead into a small alcove, the door of an old, dishevelled house. It was empty, he could tell that much already.
It was perfect; well within his comfort zone.
He counted ten breaths after he heard the latch fall back into place, then followed along, keeping close to the deepest shadows. The door was unlocked - she was that confident. It would have sickened him had he not been so focused. Instead he pushed it open slowly, carefully, just far enough that he could slip in while avoiding the creak he'd noted when she'd opened it herself, and stepped inside with feather-light footsteps. Now, at last, he allowed his hand to reach for the plainer of his two blades.
Petra fought the urge to take a deep breath. The air was sooty in this district, pumped out by the blacksmiths' forges, and the heat was almost stifling. Rain hissed as it struck the fires, and clouds of steam were belched out as red-hot metal was plunged into troughs, making pockets of the street stiflingly worse. How the smiths could handle it day in, day out, even in the thick of summer, she had never been able to comprehend.
But despite the discomfort of the heat and the darkness that crept up in her heart, she couldn't help the smile that tugged her lips. She hadn't been in Carenna for...could it really have been a year? She found it surprisingly good to be back. Despite everything, this was her home, even if her most dominant memory of it bitterly consumed her entire being to that very day.
"Petra?!"
Well...perhaps there was a smidgen more lingering just behind that memory, but that detail only contributed to a spot in her heart that she'd shut away years ago.
And yet she looked up and ahead to the most familiar of the forges and found the man of early thirties operating it. His hair was darker than she remembered, though his angular, grinning face was just as blackened by soot as it should have been, and she smiled in spite of herself.
"Egan!" Her feet rushed across the street before she could stop them, artfully dodging around the buyers who were out despite the weather, and stopped at the edge of the young blacksmith's stall as he headed around to meet her. The next moment was pleasantly awkward. She wanted to reach out to him as he stopped in front of her, and she could see he wished to embrace her the same, but all either of them did was smile.
But Egan's smile, charming as usual, and a touch giddily absent, soon faltered. "What are you doing here?" He asked urgently, his eyes flashing in panic as he tugged her back behind his stall and towards the forge, out of public earshot. "I've heard rumours - tell me they're not true."
"They're not true," she sighed, "and I'd hoped you of all people wouldn't believe them."
"I didn't," he assured her quietly, "and no one else does either, thanks in part to my own efforts to quell them - but where did they come from? They say you aided the Order's attack in Mokhan!"
"No one attacked Mokhan, the stupid old towers just collapsed," she explained wearily, already sweating from the heat of the flames. "They were rickety and unkempt, it was only a matter of time. And a mage was involved, but only as far as trying to protect everyone who came running to gawk at it. I got involved because everyone else was about ready to kill him, and that same mage had helped me in Edam. I was just returning the favour."
Egan's dark eyebrows drew together. "He helped you? Why?"
"Sore loser. The usual story."
He nodded slowly as his brown eyes passed over her, and she suddenly felt heat rise in her face. He looked away a moment later, feeling similarly inhibited, and turned his attention back to his work. For appearances, of course, though whether for her benefit or the rest of the city's, she couldn't tell. She felt her smile return, but it didn't linger.
"Has Celise suffered for it?" She asked softly, finally acknowledging the only concern she'd carried away from the event, but he looked back up at her with unreadable eyes.
"No," he replied after a moment, to her relief, "not that I'm aware - but things aren't exactly easy for mages at the moment, and for precisely this kind of thing." He shook his head and sighed gruffly. "How did you ever get wrapped up in this?"
"Because it was the right thing to do. ...But, thank you for dissuading the rumours."
"Like I'm really going to let people speak badly of you."
She smiled gratefully, and it broadened in amusement as he seemed suddenly unwilling to look at her. It was silly to still behave like children around one another, but she found that she quite enjoyed it. And she also found that while a part of her wished to embrace whatever spark still flickered between them, the purpose of justice she'd forced upon herself seemed to have set it out of her reach, as if she'd captured that spark in a jar and preserved it high up on a pedestal, unwilling to let it grow into a fire, nor to fizzle out.
She had the sense that Egan's ideas mirrored her own, and she wasn't sure whether she was grateful for that or not. But she knew at least that he respected her wishes, and for that, she was thankful.
Her smile faded. "Have you heard anything?"
His eyes had changed when they fell back upon her. They were grim and regretful. But hers were hard, and she hid her disappointment as he shook his head and looked away again. But she hadn't truly expected him to say otherwise. She'd have been back sooner if she had.
"Not a whisper," he replied, turning back to the blade he was forging, twisting the untamed metal in the firelight, "and believe me, I've been looking and listening, especially in arena season." He looked at her, sidelong. "Have you had any luck?"
"Actually...I may have."
He suddenly lost interest in his work.
"I fell into the company of an inquisitor. He's stiff, won't talk about work, but I figure he or one of his colleagues could know something about it, so I've been trying to soften him up. Not that it's working - but if he knows anything at all, it could be a substantial lead."
Egan's eyes narrowed suspiciously, though their hopeful brightness remained for a moment. "There was mention of an inquisitor in the earliest rumours..." He turned squarely tow
ards her, his eyes suddenly incredulous. "Petra, you're not still with them all, are you?!"
"It was the only choice I had! I was lumped in with them before I had the chance to explain myself so I got chased out of Mokhan, too, and since I'd left everything at the inn, all I had left was what was on me at the time." She gestured to herself. The situation hadn't really changed. "It was either follow them or risk going alone and starving, because I had no money and you know my trapping skills aren't exactly exceptional."
An unstoppable smile suddenly pulled across his face. "I find it hard to believe your skills haven't improved in fifteen years."
"I just don't have the knack," she confessed. "So I leave it to others and appreciate their abilities at the butcher's counter."
She smiled as he chuckled, but his solemnity was quick to return. "Well, I suppose you could be in worse company...but I do hope something comes of it, that it's not for nothing..."
She could see there was more he wished to say on the matter, but, as always, he left the words unspoken.
"Well," he continued a little lighter, brushing those thoughts aside in an attempt to brighten the atmosphere, "if you're still in need of income..." He smiled at the enthusiasm that already glittered in her eyes.
"You know where I can find a challenger."
"I know where you can find two."
Chapter 25
"It's so..." Aria peered up at the Crucible's lofty, crumbling heights, pursed her lips and considered it for a very long moment. "Big."
"That was the best you could come up with?"
"It's appropriate." She stepped closer to the imposing walls and stared at the carvings that had long ago been etched into the stone. "It's elven, isn't it?"
"Yes," her father replied, "but that's all I can tell you."
"So you don't know what these pictures mean?"
"They're stories." Rathen and Aria looked to Garon in surprise as he continued to survey the city from beside them, his face twisted in its usual authoritative glower. He didn't return their stares. "The Crucible is an arena now, but it used to be a stage for plays and arts. The carvings are the stories that were played out here."