"Oh?"
"They may try to take her by force."
"From Thendulla Lypella?"
"It is completely possible, Honored One. You see, I have done some checking and these are the very people suspected of stealing the artifacts last winter, the people who suborned the loyal Grateful Peace. They might try to take Citrineùand never mind who might be hurt in the process."
Torio wasn't completely certain he cared whether or not Citrine remained, but he was positive that, having taken the girl in, Melina would not let her go for any reasons but her own.
"These guardians then are criminals?" he asked.
"I perhaps used the word too freely," Xarxius said.
By my own left hand, I am certain you did not, Torio thought. What game are you playing at, old schemer?
"Lady Archer, Lord Kestrel, and their companions are suspected of complicity in the matter, but no formal charge has ever been entered in the books. It is a matter of circumstance."
"Oh?"
"Well, the artifacts were stolen by a small group which included several people dressedùunconvincingly, it seemsùas New Kelvinese. Among these people was a woman accompanied by a large wolf. Although she wore cosmetics, robes, and had her hair styled in the New Kelvinese fashion, there is little doubt that this was Lady Blysse Norwood."
"The feral child?" Torio asked, vaguely recalling some minstrel tales from the mists in his memory.
"The very one, though no child, rather a young woman and apparently as vicious as the monster that accompanies her everywhere. On the same night as this strange group in the company of the traitorous Grateful Peace infiltrated Thendulla Lypella, the other members of their company vacated their hired lodgings in the city. None of them were ever caught, though a group matching the description of those who came into the Earth Spires attacked an isolated guard post at the end of the sewer line. It is assumed they escaped from there."
"And were never captured?"
"Grateful Peace was with them," Xarxius said apologetically. "He may have known secret ways. It was also winter and the weather was so horrid that normal communications were slowed or stopped entirely."
"But no formal action was taken?"
"No, Honored One."
Xarxius looked at the tip of one curled slipper, though whether in shame or in embarrassment that the Healed One recalled so little of these monumental events, Toriovico could not tell.
"Further investigation showed that Baron Endbrook and his queen may have been precipitous in offering us the artifacts. They were takenùmany said illegallyùfrom the treasury of Bright Bay. The question, then, was open as to whether these people were guilty of theft or merely of repossessing property belonging to their allies.
"Moreover, both Hawk Haven and Bright Bay have proven of late that they will go to war to enforce their prerogatives. The Primes decided that it was best to overlook the matter and not risk similar confrontation. There was also the fact that several members of the group were well placed in Hawk Haven society."
For a moment Torio forgot everything but that he was the ruler of a kingdom whose rights had been violated.
"They had the gall to return here?" he asked indignantly.
"They were under no official ban," Xarxius reminded him, "and there was good reason. Lord Kestrel will someday inherit a major holding just across the White Water. His father is known to be very ambitious. Lady Blysse is his adopted sister and therefore will have the family interests at heart. Lady Archer's prospective holding is of lesser stature, and she may be eager to enhance it. She is also said to be a linguist and an admirer of our culture. The letter I mentioned was written by her."
"Let me see it."
Xarxius obeyed, and Toriovico studied the version in New Kelvinese.
"They do seem concerned for Citrine," he said, handing the documents back. "Even as I am. Let us look into this matter, you and I, but I think Consolor Melina need not know anything just yet."
Xarxius nodded and slid the letters into his sleeve pocket once more.
"I understand, Honored One."
I think you do, Toriovico thought as he recited ritual farewells, then watched the other man walk out the door. I think you understand a great deal more than you are saying, Xarxius, but I am not quite ready to take you into my confidence… not just yet.
Chapter XXIX
FIREKEEPER WOULD WAIT NO LONGER. The moon's face had grown full since the terrible night that she had been forced to abandon Edlin and Peace in the cavern beneath Thendulla Lypella. As she saw it, nothing good had been achieved in that long time. Matters, had, if anything, grown worse. Citrine was still in Melina's handsùand they seemed to have no more hope of retrieving the girl than they did of finding Edlin and Peace, no matter what letters Elise had written. The citizens of Dragon's Breath had progressed from acting arrogant but being secretly curious, to being nervous and hostile, to indulging in active assault.
If it wasn't that Hasamemorri was a defiant sort, devoted to Doc for the relief from pain his treatments brought her overburdened joints, they might have found themselves thrown out into the streets. As it was, they lived with the shutters along the front of the house closed against thrown rocks and one of the ground-floor tenants awake and on watch at all times. "I must do something," Firekeeper argued with Blind Seer. They were out in the shady stable yard, her favorite refuge now that the streets had become unsafe and the house so closed and crowded.
The wolf stretched and licked one forepaw as if bored, but she wasn't fooled. Little hairs stood raised along Blind Seer's neck, the beginnings of hackles raised as he contemplated her madness.
"And what will you do?" he asked as idly as if they had not discussed this same matter dozens of times in the days that had passed.
"I will go into the sewer again," she said, "with you if you have the courage. I will take with me a copy of the mapùDerian has made several and stealing one will be easy as breathing. Then I will make my way to where we last saw Edlin and Peace. I shall track them from there, find them, and if I can, bring them away. If not, I shall at least know more and be able to make better plans."
"And the traps that we met with before?"
"Peace showed us how to disarm them," Firekeeper said with more confidence than she felt. "Most we can move around. If you do not trigger them, they are no danger. I have more to fear from your nose betraying you than from any wire or arrow."
The wolf ignored this, saying instead:
"And the locks?"
"They can be broken. If I must, I will tear apart the gate itself."
"In complete silence," the wolf said sardonically.
"Would you have me abandon them then?"
"We do not even know if they are there any longer. There are many buildings in the Earth Spires. Melina could have cached them far away from the tunnels."
Privately, Firekeeper feared that the wolf might be right, but her desire to do something was stronger than her reason.
"Then the tunnels will not be guarded or trapped," she said, "for they will have no need of either."
"Except, perhaps, as a snare for eager puppies," Blind Seer replied. "Had you thought of that?"
"They know we are too wise to make the same mistake twice," Firekeeper said, inspired by this new vision, "and the moon has turned over a third of her cycle since last we went that way. They will think we have given up, that we wait for Elise and Ambassador Redbriar to solve our problems."
Blind Seer seemed inclined to be convinced, and so Firekeeper pressed on.
"Do you go with me or not?"
"Will you tell the others of this full-moon madness," the wolf asked, "or will you go without telling them and give them yet another worry?"
Firekeeper, pack creature that she was, had been almost as troubled over this as she had over the finer details of her planned expedition.
"If I tell them," she said, "then someone will insist on going with me."
"Is that an entirely bad thing?" Blind Seer a
sked. "You are not the wisest when keys and doors and written speech are concerned."
Firekeeper glowered at him.
"I can follow a map," she said, though with more confidence than she actually felt, "and I have told you that locks can be broken. If you and I had been alone the last time no one would have been captured."
"Oh?"
"Didn't we get away?" she challenged.
"Only because of Edlin's cleverness."
"Edlin's cleverness let us take away the map," Firekeeper said, "but my own skills carried me away."
"If you insist."
Firekeeper refused to argue further a point about which she wasn't completely confident, and returned to the first question.
"If I don't tell them," she said, "you are right and they will miss me and worry. Therefore, I have a solution."
"Do tell," said the wolf, but he seemed more scornful than interested.
"There are many writing things left in Edlin's kit," she said. "I shall take a piece of paper and make on it a mark like my hand and another like your paw. Then I shall make lines like the sewer mapùmaybe I shall even leave this note on the place where Derian has been making maps. This will tell them where I go and that you go with me."
"Can you make these marks?" Blind Seer asked, genuinely curious.
Firekeeper demonstrated in the dust.
"It is not too like my paw print," Blind Seer said, inspecting her work and sneezing when he breathed in some chaff, "but it may be good enough. Our lives would be easier if you would learn to read and write."
"I try," Firekeeper said, "but the words do not like me."
"Or you them," the wolf replied, and she knew he was the more correct.
Wendee claimed to have some difficulty clearly reading words that otherwise had been faultlessly written. She said that the letters swam and changed places on the page. Firekeeper had appropriated this excuse for her own. Who, after all, could see through her eyes? Not even Blind Seer could be sure.
"I will learn in time," Firekeeper temporized. "Now, I have answered many questions for you. Will you come with me or not?"
"I could," the wolf said slowly, "make your plans known. Derian would understand a little, perhaps. Or I could just sit on you. Then, however, you would abandon me also and go away some other night."
"So you will come?"
"I will, but only because you are foolish enough to drown while snapping at your own reflection in a pond."
Firekeeper didn't like this, but she also couldn't bear even one more night of waiting. Tonight, then, they would go.
LEAVING WAS EASY. They left after nightfall when the others were relaxing until those who had drawn the watch for later in the night needed to get their first sleep.
Even Derian, who had watched Firekeeper closely the first several days following Edlin and Peace's capture, had grown more relaxed about her occasional disappearances. Of course, it had helped that he always found her quickly enough, usually sleeping, for she had never lost the wolf's sense that ample sleep and food were the two greatest luxuries.
And perhaps, Firekeeper thought, trotting quickly down the alley toward the sewer, Derian will not look too soon, for in his heart of hearts we are doing what he would do if he had the skill.
Beneath the moon's caress the wolf-woman felt quick and bright and strong. No one was anywhere near the sewer opening and in less than the time it took her to take three deep breathsùa thing she did in anticipation of the stench belowùthe cover was up and she and Blind Seer had made their descent.
The sewer smelled even worse than she had remembered, a thing Firekeeper had not thought possible. Yet she made not the least complaint. It was her choice to hunt in these subterranean grounds in defiance of advice and, perhaps, even common sense.
Firekeeper had carried a lantern with her so she could consult the map, and now she opened one side shield the smallest amount so that they would have some illumination. She had told Elise that she had learned how to see in the dark, but that did not apply to this completely sealed cavern. When she and Blind Seer had fled from Idalia, the wolf had been able to backtrack along their own scent trail. They had made their way underground until they found an access ladder that led into the city above.
The small amount of light from the lantern made all the difference for eyes accustomed to navigating by starlight, and soon the pair were moving through the tunnels at a fair pace, slowing themselves deliberately so that they could check for trip wires and other indications of traps.
The only thing they found was absence. There were no traps or tricks, and when they reached the point where Peace had unlocked the first gate they nearly missed it. The gate was gone, only the scarring in the stone left to prove that it had ever been there.
Though they both tried to take comfort from thisùhumans were the great masters of inexplicable actionsùneither Firekeeper nor Blind Seer was particularly happy.
"Is it taken away so that we will be lured on?" Blind Seer asked, sniffing around the scoring in the stone in hope that he might find some explanation.
"Or is it merely that the sewer workers complained of the inconvenience?" Firekeeper offered. "Look how often we must chase around Hasamemorri's looking for a key now that we are keeping the doors locked. Perhaps the workers grew aggravated at the inconvenience?"
Blind Seer shook his entire body as if uncertainty was a physical pressure.
"I recall, now," he said, "that Edlin chaffed Peace for not putting in such gates himself when he was the guardian of the city and Peace defended his action by saying that these tunnels were meant to let the sewage pass and that such gates might provide blockades when the water ran high. Perhaps the gates were removed for that reason."
Firekeeper nodded. Whichever reasonùor another entirelyùmight be correct, they had found a kind of sense behind the removal of the gate. Turning back from a nothing that might be a reason for fear rather than from something physical and solid seemed to make little sense. So thinking, Firekeeper urged Blind Seer on.
The wolf came more willingly now, his head dipping intermittently to sniff the stone while Firekeeper cast about for sign of a trip wire or other trap. They found none for there was none to find. When trouble came it was far less subtle.
They had stepped from their tunnel into the area where several such tunnels met to form a larger river when, without warning beyond the hissing of ropes running rapidly through well-greased pulleys, a large, weighted net plummeted from the shadows overhead. The net was quite wide, meant to catch them both and entangle them in its mesh, but at the first sound out of the ordinary, Firekeeper leapt back.
Her lantern guttered out and darkness blanketed them, a darkness so complete that she could not tell whether her eyes were open or shut.
"Hold your place," Firekeeper called softly to Blind Seer, who, larger though no less alert, had not escaped the trap, "and I will see if I can free you."
"You must, for I cannot free myself," Blind Seer replied with a whine of frustration. "I am so wrapped and tangled I fear that if I move I will only draw the strands more tightly."
Firekeeper patted him.
"This was dropped by human hand," she said, "not by any loose rock or wire we failed to see. The one who loosed it will come to check his catch. Listen for someone coming while I see what I can do here."
The wolf growled his agreement. For her part, Firekeeper tried to make sense of the tangle of ropes. She didn't waste time trying to find her lantern and light it. Her nose had adjusted somewhat to the stench of the sewers by now, enough that she could smell spilled lantern oil. Moreover, even if she could manage a light, it would give her away. Better that she see the trappers before they could clearly see her and Blind Seer.
Rapidly, Firekeeper's fingers examined the net, finding the mesh very heavy, of a type used to catch and hold large prey rather than to snare birds or rabbits. The strands had been coated with something sticky that caused them to cling to her fingers, making it difficult to l
ocate an edge or manipulate the heavy mass of rope.
This alone would have made her reluctant to dull her Fang against its edge; then, too, there was the fear that she might slip and cut Blind Seer. Better to work more slowly until she was certain.
As she struggled with the net, Firekeeper recalled the roadhouse tales of giant spiders that fed on human blood. Hadn't it been said that Melina kept many of these creatures, that she was gathering slaves with which to feed her pets? The wolf-woman shivered, almost paralyzed with fear. What if one of these spiders and no human was coming upon them? A spider might not need a light. A spider might make no sound but the faintest tapping of chitinous legs on the stone.
The wolf-woman strained to hear, her fingers moving independent of any conscious will on her part. Imagining a hairy leg reaching out to grasp her, Firekeeper fought down a scream of terror as irrational as that which came to her sometimes after the nightmares she could never remember.
Then her fingers touched a knot, and near that knot a heavy lead weight. These proofs of human agency banished the spiders back into imagination. Still breathing hard, Firekeeper felt her way from weight to another knot. Surely this would be near the edge.
"I'll have you free soon, dear heart," she said to Blind Seer.
The wolf growled. Perhaps he, too, had been imagining what might be coming for them. Perhaps he only hated having his freedom restricted.
"Don't worry for my fur," he ordered." When you have an edge lift it and I will creep out."
Firekeeper grunted her agreement, working as rapidly as she could.
"Do you hear anything?" she asked.
"I think so," the wolf said. "Work faster!"
Firekeeper didn't bother to tell Blind Seer that she was working as fast as she could. The mesh was not only strong, but it had been made so that it would bind to itself as well as to its target, and she was frequently forced to stop and relocate her edge.
"Light!" the wolf cried a moment later, his excitement making an echoing bay of the announcement. "It reflects off the tunnel walls, coming, I think from the same that Peace led us to before. Am I free?"
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