by Barb Hendee
He had fallen so far from what she had once thought of him.
He had given her up that night in the ice-bound castle. With all the time that had passed, it should not still hurt this much. But after all she had been through, and seeing him in Welstiel's company, what else could he expect from her now?
"Drop your weapon!" one guard barked.
Chane let the sword sag in his hand and could not take his gaze from Wynn's hate-filled brown eyes.
Wynn's head ached. She had to find Chap, but here was Chane, staring at her. How could his gaze hold even a hint of remorse after all he had done?
"Drop your weapon!" one guardsman ordered.
Chane sagged, but he never looked at the pair of guardsmen ringing him in. He looked only at her, eyelids drooping, and his sword tip dipped toward the paving stones.
And Wynn faltered.
Three city guards lay in the street, the first still staring up at the night sky with a mangled hole in his chest. Chane hadn't done that, and something else had come for the folio as well.
"I said drop it!" the guard shouted again.
Wynn looked from the dead man to Chane. His eyes were fully open again as he studied that same lifeless body.
The guards inched in on him, yet he neither released nor raised his sword. He turned his eyes on her, nearly colorless in the dark, and slowly shook his head.
"Not me," he rasped.
He spoke in Numanese, her language. How had he learned it so quickly? When his gaze returned briefly to the mangled body, it suddenly hardened. He shook his head again.
"It was not me!" he snapped hoarsely.
"Shut your mouth and do as you're told!" the second guard demanded.
Doubt crept in upon Wynn.
She knew nothing of how he was involved here, but she might never learn if he were arrested. Not that two living men had a fair chance of containing an armed undead. There was only an impulse to guide her.
"Run!" she called.
One guard turned wide eyes on her. The other cursed under his breath and charged.
Only then did Wynn go chill inside, realizing what she'd just done.
Chane whirled.
He caught the charging guard with an elbow in the man's chest and slashed at the other with his sword. The blade's tip clipped the second guard's shoulder as the first one buckled wi [onest th a gasp. Both toppled as Chane bolted up the street, disappearing beyond sight.
Wynn turned all the way around.
She searched the night, listening for Chap's voice. But all was silent save for the curses and muffled groans of the guards. Alone with the wounded and the dead, Wynn went numb.
Somewhere ahead, the wolf's howls ceased.
"Where are they?" Rodian shouted. "Do you see them?"
"There!" Garrogh panted, and he pointed west down a side street. "Down there, I think."
His expression was furious as they ran on, and Rodian felt the same. Their own trap had turned against them.
They burst out of the side street into a wide main way, but it was empty. Rodian saw no dark wolf or black-robed fugitive. Frustration choked him.
He'd had the killer in sight, cornered by his men, and then the second one appeared. Worse still, they had seemed at odds with each other. Just how many thieves and killers was he trying to catch? How many unknown individuals found some gain or threat in whatever the sages were doing with Wynn's texts?
"Garrogh, do you hear anything?"
His second cocked his head for a long moment, and then his expression fell into a weary scowl.
"No… nothing."
"Damn it!" Rodian struck the street with his sword. A quick, sharp scrape mingled with a steel clang rolling along the vacant avenue.
"Wait," Garrogh whispered, and then pointed. "There!"
In the edge of a pool of lantern light lay a leather folio upon the cobblestones.
Rodian ran for it and snatched it up. The leather lace was broken, snapped rather than untied, and he flipped the folio open.
All the pages were still inside, but it didn't matter. They were fakes, arranged by High-Tower and a'Seatt in this effort to lure and trap the killer.
Rodian raised his eyes, looking through the dark broken pools of lantern light.
Had their quarry—at least the one who'd gotten away—realized the pages were a ruse? How could anyone have even glanced inside the folio during flight?
"Ruben and Lúcan should have the other in custody," Garrogh said. "We'll get some answers out of that one!"
Rodian simply nodded. Turning, he headed back at a trot, all the way to the Upright Quill. But upon drawing closer to the scriptorium, he slowed in caution.
Four of his men lay in the street.
Only Lúcan was on his feet, hovering with sword in hand over Wynn, as the sage tended Ruben's bleeding shoulder.
Shâth lay with limbs askew where he'd fallen in a bloody mess.
Far to the shop's right lay Ecgbryht's limp form, his head cocked up against the shop's wall. Nearly all color had faded from his rough face, making the stubble of his blond beard stand out. His features were frozen in shock beneath tangled strands of gray-streaked hair. Taméne lay where the figure had struck him… his eyes open, his neck broken.
And the pale-faced man was nowhere in sight.
"Where is he?" Rodian snarled. "Where's the other one?"
"Ask her!" Lúcan snapped, nudging the sage with his boot's toe.
Wynn held a torn wad of tabard against Ruben's bleeding shoulder. She didn't even look up.
"What have you done now?" Rodian demanded.
Her shoulders curled forward as if she might collapse in exhaustion. Then she squeezed her eyes closed in a pained cringe.
"Gods damn you!" Rodian snapped, not caring what anyone thought. "You are under arrest."
Wynn tucked the makeshift bandage inside Ruben's split tabard, closing the edges over it. She rose up to lock eyes with Rodian, and then movement in the corner of Rodian's sight made him jerk around.
A shadow-cloaked figure approached along the deeper darkness of the next shop's awning. Rodian raised his sword, inching toward the silhouette draped in a black cloak and… a hat?
Pawl a'Seatt stepped out, wearing a black cloak over his matching vestment and a pressed white shirt.
Upon his head was the flat-topped hat of black felt with a brim almost wide enough to shield his shoulders. He swept his gaze over the scene, pausing briefly on the shattered window of his shop.
"What are you doing here?" Rodian demanded. "You and yours were to keep away until I told you otherwise."
Master a'Seatt didn't answer.
"Did you find the dog?" Wynn whispered.
Rodian glanced back in disbelief. Wynn gazed down the empty street like a child who'd wandered off and only just realized she was lost. Rodian didn't care.
After all the careful setup and planning, he'd failed. There had been not one but two perpetrators here this night, and both had escaped. Three of his men were dead and another injured—and he had nothing to show for it. And it was all wrapped around one meddling little sage.
"Garrogh, see to the men," Rodian growled, and he snatched Wynn by the arm, dragging her down the street.
Chapter 11
Wynn sat alone on her cell's bunk within the military's castle, staring at a heavy wooden door with no inner handle. On top of everything else that her superiors held against her, being arrested was going to destroy any grain of credibility she had left. She took a deep breath, trying to calm thoughts spinning out of control, but the effort failed.
A shrouded black figure, who could walk through walls, had stolen a folio and killed three of the Shyldfälches. The city guards had barely slowed it down. This only strengthened Wynn's belief that it was an undead as well as a powerful mage.
And Chane had appeared in the company of this monster, just as he had with Welstiel.
Then Chap had bolted out of the dark to protect her—only to vanish in pursuit o
f the black-robed undead.
It was too much to hold all at once in her head.
If Chap was here, then where were Magiere and Leesil? Though she ached to find Chap, to learn why he'd come, her jumbled thoughts kept turning back to Chane.
Once a minor noble in life, he was a scholar and sometime warrior who'd stood between her and death more than once. He was also another monster, a killer who fed on the living and had ended or ruined many lives. She'd tried to shut him out, to make him leave her once and for all in that forgotten castle of the Farlands' highest peaks. Yet here he was again—always again and again.
Wynn slumped, elbows on knees, and buried her face in her hands. Why had she believed his denial in the street?
She'd been disoriented by that thing coming out of the wall and the sudden appearance of Chane… and then Chap. Too much had happened in those panicked moments. Yet, even if Chane was a Noble Dead, he'd always revered the guild.
In Bela, across the eastern ocean, before anyone knew what he was, he'd often come at night to sit with her and pore over historical texts. Not once had he shown the slightest threat to her, Domin Tilswith, or the others trying to establish the bare beginning a new guild branch.
So how and why was he involved with the missing folios? And what had happened inside the Upright Quill that led to a conflict between him and the cowled figure? Perhaps Chane was more interested in the work of sages than she'd ever guessed.
She stiffened at a metal jangle outside her cell door. The heavy lock clacked, and the door opened partway.
Rodian hung in the opening, staring at her.
What could she say that would matter at all to him?
Oh, don't worry. The wolf was actually an elven dog, a kind you don't know about. And along with a woman you've never met—a half undead, half something you don't believe in—and a half elf you've never heard of, they hunt undeads, and…
Oh, yes, that would fix everything. They wouldn't lock her up for interfering with the city guard. No, they'd just stick her in a room in the city ward until she was cured of madness.
When the captain finally stepped in, Wynn could tell he was calmer than when he'd nearly thrown her into the cell. But his neatly bearded face was drawn tight, and dark rings surrounded his eyes. His jaw muscles bulged slightly as he ground his teeth.
"You set a trap," she said.
Rodian paced before the door, taking only four short steps to cross the cell before turning back the other way.
"Domin High-Tower must have helped, if he sent out that folio," she went on, "and Master a'Seatt."
The captain stopped, and the lack of his boots' rhythmic scrape made Wynn tense in the silence.
"What were you doing there?" he asked flatly.
For an instant Wynn considered telling him the truth. That the texts he'd been denied had been penned by ancient vampires. And that she was trying to learn which pages were being stolen and why.
"Answer me!" he snapped. "You're already complicit in three guardsmen's deaths… though after the fact."
Wynn almost shouted a denial. She swallowed immediately, studying his face.
Yes, she'd told Chane to run, but Rodian wouldn't care about her side. His only interest lay in stopping these murders, giving the royals a rational and satisfactory answer—and in so doing, advancing himself. He had no interest in the truth, and he certainly had no intention of reporting anything from her that might get him laughed out of his position. As things stood, he would have a hard enough time explaining a culprit emerging through a shopfront.
No, he could handle only pieces of the truth.
"I overheard messengers returning from the Upright Quill," she began.
"After what happened at Master Shilwise's shop, I feared the worst. So I ran, hoping to find someone still at Master a'Seatt's scriptorium and check on the folio, perhaps bring it back. That's why you caught me peeking in a window."
His expression never wavered. "You knew the second man."
Wynn panicked, ready to deny this as well.
"Don't bother lying," Rodian said. "He knew your name."
"Since returning from the Farlands," she answered, "many people I've never met seem to know my name."
She expected him to press further, as her answer was hardly satisfactory.
Instead he asked, "Did you get a clear look at the man who took the folio?"
"Man?" Wynn repeated.
"The mage in black robes." He paused and squinted at her. "What did you see?"
Wynn settled farther back on the bunk. The captain didn't want to know what she saw—or rather what she knew. He'd already convinced himself otherwise.
A mage, perhaps—but an undead as well—though one thing didn't quite fit: Its body passed right through a wall, yet it was unable to make the folio follow. It had to break the window to get the folio out.
"You saw it shatter the window…" Wynn said, then wavered, anxious at his darkening expression.
"Was il'Sänke at the guild before you left?" he asked.
The venom in his voice startled her. "I don't know… I was coming out of my room when I heard about the folio, so—"
"Why would a mage be working with a wolf?" Rodian demanded.
Wynn lost her temper in the jarring shift of questions. "The dog wasn't working with that thing!"
"And how would you know?" Rodian asked quickly. "The wolf, or dog, jumped out into the street when the thief ran, and it followed. They both fled together."
For all the captain's acclaimed cleverness, he was the half-wit, not her. Even he should've seen that Chap had chased off the undead.
"Why ask me?" she shot back. "When it doesn't matter what I say?"
Rodian ran a hand through his hair and fell silent.
"How long will you keep me here?" she asked. "If I'm to be charged, then get on with it."
He hesitated, and Wynn waited.
She had shouted at Chane to run and interfered with an attempt to catch a murderer. Even if a charge of complicity were dismissed, fouling the captain's investigation wouldn't be taken lightly. The high advocate of the people wouldn't have much trouble proving her guilt.
"Your superiors are waiting," Rodian said, and the words seemed to stick in his throat. "I'm releasing you to them."
He pushed open the cell door. It banged against the outer wall, and he just stood there, waiting.
Wynn rose slowly off the bunk, watching him in bafflement, even as she stepped into the dim corridor with its line of other heavy cell doors, all closed and silent. Rodian followed and led the way to the far stairwell in silence. Wynn kept quiet as well.
They climbed to where two regular soldiers stood in the alcove at the top. One unlocked the outer door as they approached. Wynn stepped out with the captain and followed closely as they crossed the paved courtyard to an old two-level barracks. They entered through a side door at the near end.
"My office," he said quietly, pointing.
Down the corridor, Wynn walked into a large room furnished with little more than a desk and two chairs. Premin Sykion and Domin High-Tower were waiting inside.
The latter ceased his heavy pacing, and his thudding footsteps were nothing compared to the weight of his glower.
"My dear," Premin Sykion said, closing on Wynn. "We are thankful you are unharmed. You must not go wandering off without telling someone."
The premin placed her slender, wrinkled hand on Wynn's shoulder, patting it twice before turning to Rodian.
"Thank you for looking after her, Captain."
Wynn's heart sank. Wandering off? Looking after? They painted her as a half-wit again, so no one might give her any credence.
"I'm sorry tonight's endeavor was not successful," Sykion went on to Rodian, but she cast a dark glance at High-Tower.
Wynn realized the premin hadn't known of the scheme hatched between the domin, the captain, and Master a'Seatt.
Rodian only looked at Sykion with a hint of distaste. Then he glanced sidelong down at
Wynn, not even bothering to face her directly.
"You are free to go," he said.
Just like that. First he arrested her, locked her up, and questioned her concerning mostly obvious answers he never let her finish—almost none of which had anything to do with what mattered. And with a few condescending words from Sykion, she was being sent home to bed.
Wynn suddenly wondered what Magiere might say in this moment. Probably nothing, but both the captain and the premin would be bleeding by now. Magiere never backed down from anything. Beneath her derisive disinterest, always wishing to be left alone, she was furious when something got in her way or threatened those she cared for. And Leesil could be coldly vicious beneath his outer warmth and wit when it came to protecting his own. And Chap…
He'd always been manipulative, though usually for the best of reasons. He wasn't above putting people in a hard place to save them from themselves.
Wynn began to see that a bit of all of her wayward friends' attributes would be necessary here. She straightened.
"I apologize if I sound dense," she said. "But are we still embroiled in a murder investigation?"
"That was never your concern," High-Tower warned.
Premin Sykion reached for Wynn's arm. "Come, dear. You've been through enough, and none of us wishes you burdened any further."
Wynn pulled away, backing toward the office door.
"The captain failed tonight, and more people are dead… over the contents of a folio. I want access to the translation work, to see which passages are being sought."
"Not this again!" High-Tower growled in disbelief. "You have mucked things up enough!"
Wynn dropped her own voice to a low threat. "Perhaps you can't stomach that a mere journeyor discovered a treasure of history on her own. Are seven lives worth a little damage to your pride?"
Premin cize wo Sykion went pale, losing any crafted display of sympathy, and High-Tower flushed with rage.
But Rodian watched this exchange intently, his eyes shifting quickly among them.
"Wynn!" High-Tower rumbled. "This is no time or place for your nonsense. Tighten up your cloak. We are going home."
"Yes, my dear," Sykion added. "It is time to leave."
Wynn didn't budge. She'd heard all this before, and she no longer cared if they thought her addle-minded or even mad. There was only one option left, though it could end in her permanent dismissal from the guild.
