The Seer

by Rowan McAllister

  Table of Contents

  Blurb

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Epilogue

  More from Rowan McAllister

  Readers love the Chronicles of the Riftlands by Rowan McAllister

  About the Author

  By Rowan McAllister

  Visit Dreamspinner Press

  Copyright

  The Seer

  By Rowan McAllister

  Chronicles of the Riftlands: Book Three

  For the past ten years, smuggling magic users safely out of Brotherhood-controlled Rassa has been the only thing keeping Dakso Kavalyan going. But with his funding cut and rumors of impending civil war, his orders from the Mage’s High Council are clear: his final mission is information gathering only. No rescuing even one more hunted soul.

  Daks has never been great at following orders. When he stumbles upon a Seer spouting prophecy in front of one of the hated brothers, he can’t just walk away.

  Ravi never asked to be rescued, nor did he ask for the Visions plaguing his life and endangering everyone he’s ever cared about. The last thing he needs is a reckless brute crashing into his carefully laid plans. Seems the gods have other ideas.

  As Daks and Ravi flee the city together, their reluctant alliance blooms into something more, but trials, bad luck, and Daks’s infuriating penchant for finding trouble dog their every move. Will trusting this reckless rogue with his heart and his life be the worst decision Ravi’s ever made… or the best?

  To all those who feel like being different is a curse.

  Remember, no discovery, invention, or innovation was ever made by someone who wanted to be like everyone else.

  Cherish and nurture what makes you different, because a rainbow needs every color to make it whole.

  Chapter One

  DAKSO KAVALYAN swaggered down the gangplank and onto the dock, swallowing against the thickness in his throat. As he gave anyone who eyed him too closely a hard stare, he surreptitiously wiped his sweaty palms on the supple worn brown leather of his breeches and licked the beads of salt and sweat from his upper lip.

  “I swear that gets worse every time,” he grumbled only loud enough for his partner to hear.

  Shura gave him a friendly shove from behind to get him moving out of the way of the other disembarking passengers, and when Daks threw her a disgruntled scowl, she smirked up at him. Her dusky cheeks had flushed darker in the wind off the water, and even though she’d braided her thick black hair, stray strands whipped wildly around her face.

  “Guess it’s a good thing this will probably be our last trip, then, isn’t it?”

  Her words were quickly snatched away on the wind, while gulls screeched overhead and the general chaos of the docks tried to drown her out.

  “Yeah, maybe,” he grunted.

  As they made their slow progress with the rest of the crowd toward the gates to the city, he warily scanned their surroundings, taking note of any red cloaks of the Brotherhood or blue tabards of the King’s Guard in the bustling mass of humanity.

  A blast of warm, salty air caught his own heavy brown cloak, and he reluctantly pulled the damp wool tighter around him as he cast a sour look at the threatening clouds blanketing the sky. Spring had been unusually warm this year, and that wasn’t exactly a boon. This far south, a good long winter kept many things at bay contagious fevers, pirate raids from the Southern Isles, and war, to name just a few. It was the latter that worried him most. From all the reports and portents he’d overheard that winter, too much of the three kingdoms of Kita was unsettled these days, and the weather seemed to be mirroring that unrest.

  Another shove from behind had him reaching for the dagger sheath hidden at the small of his back, but Shura only rolled her eyes at him and made shooing motions with her hands when he glared over his shoulder.

  “Move, you great lump. I would be somewhere with a roof over my head before Tomok Skygod decides to relieve himself all over us,” she hissed.

  He shot an anxious glance at the men and women in their immediate vicinity before frowning at her. “I’d watch that kind of talk, if I were you.”

  She only rolled her eyes again and pushed past him. “How many trips does this one make? I am not an idiot. And, in case you’ve forgotten, you’re the one who usually gets us into the most trouble, not me.”

  He allowed his lips to curve in a slight smirk before pulling them into a forbidding scowl again.

  She had a point.

  Even with his much longer legs, he hurried to keep up with her as the crowd shuffling toward the gates seemed to part effortlessly before her determined stride. He had to hide another smile as he swelled a little with affection and pride. Sometimes being exotic—and a little scary—had its advantages. Shura might be a foot shorter than him, but she could be just as intimidating.

  The blue-tabarded soldiers of the King’s Guard posted on either side of the great iron gate above the docks eyed them suspiciously as they approached, but obviously decided they weren’t enough of a threat to interrupt the flow of traffic to question. When the gate and guards were successfully behind them at last, Daks cracked his neck and rolled his shoulders, trying to ease the tension that had built there. He needed to relax or he’d start to draw attention they didn’t want.

  They wove their way in hurried silence through the familiar warren of streets from Rassat’s seedier harbor and warehouse districts toward their usual lodgings in the slightly safer merchant area that bordered them. Shura’s Cigani skygod, Tomok, had apparently decided he’d held it long enough, because he released his burden on them in a heavy downpour several blocks from the Dog and Duck, and they had to run the last bit or be drenched to the skin.

  Breathless and dripping all over the rough plank floor, they crowded into the dimly lit common room as more people ducked in out of the rain behind them, forcing them farther inside before Daks’s eyes had time to adjust. He threw a glare over his shoulder, and the people closest to him stumbled a step back, throwing up their hands in a combination of fear and apology.

  “Come in. Come in.”

  Faret, the portly proprietor, waved cheerfully at the growing crowd from his place behind the long wooden bar that dominated one side of the room.

  When Shura pulled back the hood of her cloak, revealing her face, Faret’s eyes widened briefly and his smile tightened. His gaze swept the people behind them before he waved again. “Come. I have a table for you,” he called, switching to common tongue as he rushed around the bar.

  After more than ten years of missions, both Daks and Shura were quite fluent in Rassan, but no one else needed to know that, so they never corrected him.

  The two men seated at the table Faret led them to in the far back corner of the room moved off without comment after he whispered in the ear of one of them. And once Shura and Daks were seated, he said, “I’ll bring food and drink,” and hurried off to tend to the other newcomers.

  They tucked their heavy, sodden packs safely under the table and draped their cloaks over the backs of their chairs to dry out as much as possible. The common room was crowded, noisy, and overly warm. The odors of unwashed bodies, wet wool, fish, ale, and pipe smoke were heavy and overwhelming after the gusting salt-and-sea air of their crossing from Samet. Shura’s small roun
d nose scrunched and her scowl deepened, but since her face seemed set in a perpetual scowl, only someone who knew her well would be able to tell the difference.

  “The smell never gets any better either,” Daks groused under his breath, and her full downturned lips twitched.

  Though from vastly different backgrounds, both of them preferred the open air, fields, and forests of their childhoods to the tightly packed press of humanity and buildings of a city, but duty and conscience called… at least one more time anyway.

  Feeling his mood sour even further at the thought, Daks expelled a breath and tried not to let his face show the seething anger that had churned inside him since their last meeting with the powers that be in Scholoveld. A small, forbidding scowl was enough for the role he played; anything more than that and he risked having the guard called on him by some nervous local.

  One of Faret’s daughters—Ilia, if he remembered correctly—arrived with a tray of stew, coarse bread, and tankards of ale, and Daks handed over a small pile of coins. Though he’d paid much more than the meal was worth, the girl pocketed the money with a solemn nod and hurried off to see to the other patrons.

  “You better be careful with that,” Shura murmured behind her tankard. “Those cheap bastards didn’t give us much to work with this time. We can’t afford to be quite as generous as before.”

  He reluctantly set his tankard back down after a taking a big, much-needed gulp. “I know,” he replied, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. “But it may be a while before we’re back, if ever, and Faret and his family have been kind to us. They do a lot of good here when they can.”

  Her perpetual scowl softened as she threw him a concerned glance. “I know it’s killing you that we won’t be able to hit the market, that we only have enough to pay for information and leave, but we’re still doing good here and back home too.”

  Daks grunted and took up his tankard again, as he scanned the room while trying not to make it look like he was scanning the room. He’d been in the spy business for more than twelve years now, and the mantle still didn’t sit comfortably on his shoulders. It itched like the cheap, low-grade wool Rassan merchants sold to travelers too stupid or greedy to know the difference.

  “Your heart’s always been too big for this,” she continued quietly, startling him with both her sudden loquaciousness and the uncharacteristic sentimentality.

  He snorted and shot her a look before turning his eyes back to the room. “I think you might need to slow down a little on that ale. Heartless scoundrel happens to be my middle name. Just ask anyone.”

  He threw her his best cocky grin, and she sniffed. “Only for someone who doesn’t know you.”

  This time he set his tankard down and focused all his attention on her, their cover be damned. The wisps of black hair the rain had plastered to her face had dried a bit, so they framed her high cheekbones and firm jaw rather than clinging to them. Her straight black brows had drawn down enough they almost touched the bridge of her nose, and her dark brown eyes studied him right back, more somber than their usual wary sharpness.

  “Maybe I was wrong,” he said. “Maybe you should drink more. Don’t get sentimental on me now, Shur. You’ll scare the shit out of me.”

  Her answering scowl was all he needed to settle the small tremor of unease in his belly. “Ass,” she growled under her breath. “All I’m saying is that it might be a good thing we’re being forced to move on to something else, because this is sucking the life out of you. I see it every time you set foot in this city. You can’t save them all.”

  The “and Josel is long past saving” hung in the air between them, but thankfully she didn’t say it out loud. They both couldn’t get all weepy and emotional. They still had work to do.

  When he only grunted, she angled her body away from him again, and they drank and ate together in silence for a while, trying to catch snippets of the conversations around them.

  The heavy wood door to the inn opened and closed. People came and went. Luckily, no one seemed to be paying them much attention beyond the usual amount Shura’s unusual looks garnered. The noise and bustle seemed much as it always had been, but Daks didn’t think he imagined the new undercurrent of tension, a tightness around the eyes of everyone in the room, a brittleness to the laughter.

  Rassans were a fairly tense people as a rule. Who could blame them with a religious order that was part loving embrace, part iron fist dominating their lives and hovering over their shoulders all the time? But things had changed in the capital city of Rassat in the three cold winter months since their last mission. He could see it for himself now. He could feel it along his skin.

  All the rumblings coming out of Rassa and the portents of the Seers at the Scholomagi said Rassa was hurrying toward civil war—or at the very least, a rebellion. As soon as winter had released its icy grip on Scholoveld, Daks and Shura had been dispatched by the High Council, along with others, to confirm.

  The king of Samebar had his own spies, but he rarely saw fit to inform the High Council of the Scholomagi of their findings, so the High Council employed a few of their less talented magic wielders, like Daks, to gather their own intelligence. He’d never given a damn about the politics and seesaw of power between the mages in the north and the king in his southern capital. All he’d ever cared about was finally having something useful to do with the pathetic “gift” he’d been given. And if he got to drink free ale, save a few lives, and bash a few evil bastards’ heads along the way, he was a happy man… mostly. Now, though, even that was being taken away from him.

  Shura shifted in her seat, and her sudden tension snagged his wandering thoughts. He followed her gaze to Faret as he approached their table and ducked his balding head.

  “Pardon, travelers, but we are busy this day. Would you share your table with a fellow traveler?”

  “Of course,” Shura said, nodding to the slight figure hunched beneath a dripping brown cloak at Faret’s elbow.

  Daks had been expecting their usual contact, as arranged, so when the newcomer drew her hood back to reveal a stranger, he and Shura both sat up.

  “I’m Dagma,” the young girl said hurriedly as she cast nervous glances to either side before focusing on them again. She took the seat across from them, with her back to the room, and leaned over the table. “Maran couldn’t make it. I’m her daughter. She sends her apologies,” she hissed far too conspiratorially in trade tongue.

  Both Daks and Shura eyed her skeptically, still tensed for possible fight or flight, but when Daks shot a questioning glance to Faret, the innkeeper gave an almost imperceptible nod before hurrying back to his bar.

  “Sit back in your seat, bebe. You don’t want people to think you’re up to something,” Shura murmured almost gently for her. The use of the Cigani pet name was new too.

  Daks quirked an eyebrow at her, but she only scowled back at him and returned her attention to the girl.

  Dagma hurriedly sat back with an almost yelped “Sorry” and flushed cheeks as she undid the ties of her cloak and let it fall over the back of her chair. The girl had her mother’s wheat-colored hair, pert nose, and soft brown eyes, which helped reassure Daks that she was who she said she was. The change to the plan still made him uneasy, but it wasn’t as if Maran was a key contact. As a highly sought-after dressmaker for many of the wealthy families whose social circles reached as high as the king’s court, she’d been a useful enough informant. She had a steady flow of gossip and had always been willing to pass it along for good coin. But nothing she sold to them was worthy of this much drama.

  “Is your mother all right?” Daks asked, bored with the situation already but trying not to sound it.

  “Yes. It’s just—” She shot another nervous glance around her. “—things are happening faster these days, and she had to meet some… others. The rain meant certain… things were canceled, and the others had time to meet with her. Plus, her face is becoming more recognizable, and it’s harder for her to move about
… unnoticed.”

  The girl was enjoying playing spy far too much. Her exaggerated stops and starts and emphasis on vague words were pushing him from bored to irritated. But for some reason Shura continued to nod indulgently and make little encouraging sounds, while Daks blinked at her in disbelief. Shura was practically cooing. If the girl hadn’t been far too young, Daks might have wondered if Shura was hoping to get her into bed later.

  Where was Shura the irascible, Shura the Cigani scourge of villains, Shura of the barbed tongue who did not suffer fools lightly? His Shura?

  She kicked him under the table.

  There she is.

  “I’m sorry, what?” he asked as he surreptitiously rubbed his shin.

  “She was saying her mother will be able to meet with us tomorrow, somewhere a little less public, and will hopefully have more news than she would have had today. But Dagma can answer some questions for us now,” Shura hissed irritably.

  “Oh.”

  Does that mean we have to pay both of them? He palmed the small pile of coins in his purse.

  Any lingering softness in Shura’s expression soured as she stared at him, and Daks forced himself to focus on the young woman across from them. “Where does she want us to meet? I don’t think going to her shop would be a good idea, even after dark,” he said, trying to sound helpful and involved.

  Dagma frowned as her glance shifted to Shura and back to Daks. “You don’t know?”

  A niggle of foreboding tingled along his skin. “Know what?”

  Dagma licked her lips and leaned in. In a hushed whisper she said, “Mama has joined the rebels. She closed her shop two months ago after the brothers took Val.”

  “Who’s Val?” Shura asked, shooting Daks a worried look.

  Dagma’s eyes glistened in the dim light. “My little brother,” she replied, suddenly sounding very young. “Mama fought and screamed. Val cried. The neighbors had to drag her away before the brothers could call the guard. It was—it was horrible.” Her lips trembled.