Tessili Rogue

by Robin Stephen

  The stillness made Jey uneasy. She couldn’t deny that Lokim was right. It was only a matter of time before they were discovered.

  As if reading her thoughts, Lokim spoke again. “At least come to my hideout, for now. Leave this place. We can work the rest out later.”

  ◈

  The cheesery was quiet and dark. It was a wild night, with a cold wind gusting down the frozen streets and a bright, pale moon high in the sky. Lokim and Jey stood side by side in the front hall of Holdam and Biala’s house, waiting. Elle had slipped into the couple’s bedroom. She was even now weaving the spells that would make them forget they had ever known two girls hoping to learn the art of cheese making.

  It was the only way to have any hope of keeping them safe. Jey saw that as clearly as she saw the silver slab of the wall across the courtyard. Still, she couldn’t help but feel a pang at what they were losing. In some ways, Holdam and Biala were the first friends she’d ever had.

  She sighed and tried to turn her thoughts. Lokim was a dark shape next to her. He was positioned in front of a window, staring out into the night. He was carrying a bulky bundle – a portion of the belongings Jey and Elle had divvied up to carry. There was an earnest set to his shoulders that was undeniably endearing.

  Jey shook her head at the direction her thoughts had taken. She realized with a strange sense of surprise that she was starting to like Lokim. Worse, she and Elle seemed to rely on him more with each passing day. That was all right, she supposed, if he proved to be what he said he was. But if he wasn’t?

  Behind them, the bedroom door creaked as it opened. Elle ghosted into the hall on silent feet. In her eyes, there was something of the sadness Jey herself had been feeling. She spoke in a dull, tired tone. “They won’t remember, now.”

  Jey looked into her friend’s face with some concern. It would have been a lot of spellwork. And indeed, Elle’s face was pale, her eyes a little vague. “Are you all right, Elle?”

  Next to her, Lokim went stiff. “Passive echo spells. Now,” he hissed. He moved closer to both of them, backing them into a dim corner where coats hung on pegs. Jey didn’t waste time trying to see what had spooked him. She threw up her spell, extending it to cover the depleted Elle as well. Then she felt a strange, shimmery shock as her magic bumped and rubbed against Lokim’s. He was shielding Elle too.

  There was no time to comment on it. They were no sooner settled in their dark corner when the latch on the door clicked. It was locked, however, and the lock held.

  Jey herself wore one of the backpacks she and Elle had stolen from the academy so long ago. They hadn’t dared leave any trace of themselves in the room. She shifted the straps on her shoulders, feeling tense and claustrophobic in the crowded corner. She could feel her pack pressing into Elle’s side. Lokim’s shoulder was mere inches away from her mouth. She whispered, “How long can you hold a passive echo?”

  There was a pause and a series of clicks. Jey recognized the sound of someone using a set of picks.

  The shoulder moved up and down in a small shrug. “Twenty, thirty minutes, if I’m fresh.”

  Jey blinked, glad the darkness would conceal her surprise. She herself had rarely been able to hold a passive echo spell for more than five minutes. Elle’s stamina was even less.

  There wasn’t time to discuss the point. There was a sharp click as the lock on the door gave way. The door cracked open.

  One of the academy students slipped into Holdam and Biala’s entry hall, wearing the telltale dark cloak and the smooth leathers. The girl was slender, but Jey knew underneath that cloak was a lean body, firm with muscle. She could well remember the hours and hours of training, with weapons and without, that had made her own body tough and lithe.

  The girl stood inside the door for a moment, her face a shadowy outline in the moonlit entryway. Her head turned as she took in the hallway, the arched entrance to the kitchen, and the dark, empty corner in front of the coat hooks.

  Jey could feel the pounding of her heart in her ears. Although she knew she was invisible, she’d never felt so exposed in her life.

  The girl’s attention drifted towards them, then past. She stalked into the kitchen.

  A soft nudge in the small of her back told Jey they were moving. She wanted to protest. It seemed premature, but she heard the swish of Elle’s skirts as her friend went with Lokim. Biting back a curse, she followed.

  Lokim must have done something to the latch. It didn’t click as it opened. He held the door for them and snugged it shut once she and Elle were outside.

  In the cheesery yard, the wind hit Jey’s face like a knife. Frost glittered along the paving stones and the top of the wall. The gusts filled her ears with white noise. She had a sudden moment of vertigo. She stared around the dark yard in disorientation, uncertain if the others were moving ahead or not.

  Then she felt Lokim’s warm, rough hand bumping into her arm. With a feeling of mixed impatience and relief, she let him find and grasp her hand. Together, the three of them walked across the yard.

  At the front, the entrance to the cheesery was an open arch. There were gates, but Jey had never seen them shut. The arch was wide enough the three of them could pass through without letting go of each other.

  They stepped through the arch and into the frozen streets of Deramor.

  Jey felt some of the pressure of fear leave her shoulders. She glanced to the left and saw nothing but the sheen of moonlight glinting on cobblestones.

  She glanced to the right and saw the hounds.

  ◈

  Lokim felt a drag on his hand as Jey stiffened. It was remarkable, the difference in the two girls’ grips. Elle’s hand was soft. Though he could feel the strength in her fingers and he knew, from having watched her, how agile and tough she was, something about her touch felt timid.

  Jey’s hand, however, had an energy to it – a feeling of restless tension that seemed to communicate up his whole arm. When her steps lagged, her grip tightened on his.

  There was a strange yip on the night air. It was a sound Lokim had heard before.

  He had been looking up the street, scanning the road, the rooftops, and the shadows for any sign of life. As he turned his head, he saw movement over his shoulder.

  And he saw the dogs.

  There were at least five of them, tall creatures with tapered muzzles and fierce eyes. They stood on slender legs, heads raised as they stared around the dark street. There were two men with them, dressed in strange robes that flapped about their ankles in the wind.

  “Those are sighthounds.” Jey’s whisper was difficult to catch in the restless air. “They can’t follow unless they see us. But the scenthounds won’t be far behind.”

  Lokim didn’t waste more time. He tugged the girls forward.

  The cheesery was at the outer edge of Deramor. The streets were not as dense with buildings here as they were within the city wall. Tradesmen lived on these lanes, their houses surrounded by grounds and yards, some walled or fenced, some not.

  An orchard stood across from the cheesery. The family that lived there produced preserves and fresh fruit. Their lands were fenced, but the fence was low.

  It was the only way forward, in any case. The cheesery wall stood at their backs. Going deeper into the city would give them fewer options. The pack of dogs blocked their way out of town.

  They reached the fence. Lokim felt strangely unmoored when, one after the other, Jey and Elle took their hands from his. He heard the swish of fabric, a thump of a boot on the ground. He set his own hands on the wood. It was weathered and cracked, rough beneath his palms. He stepped up onto the bottom rail and swung his body over. Then he walked into the swaying shadows at the base of the fruit trees.

  He paused to look back towards the cheesery. The men and their tall dogs had not come any closer. The girl was still searching within. They had a small window of time.

  Lokim turned to see Elle standing, completely visible, only a few yards away. Her face was pale in
the moonlight. She had the dazed look of someone who has lost her grip on a spell. He hurried to her and put his arm around her shoulders, letting his own passive echo spell conceal her again. Jey’s voice spoke out of the darkness nearby. “She’s over extended.”

  Elle’s shoulders felt narrow within the wrap of Lokim’s arm. The tossing wind brought him the scent of her hair, then snatched it away. For one long, sad moment, Lokim was filled with a longing for a different reality: one where their lives weren’t in danger and he and Elle could find somewhere warm and quiet and spend the night talking about all the unimportant things they did not yet know about each other.

  “We need to get to my hideout. Here.” Lokim extended his hand, reaching out into the night and pulling his passive echo spell back a little so it could be seen. The instant he felt Jey’s hand set into his, he started forward.

  Although Elle didn’t speak, she moved with him readily enough. They headed deeper into the orchard, moving along a row of trunks. The branches overhead were bare, black fingers between them and the silver sky.

  But Jey’s hand was still dragging on his. Lokim wasn’t moving quickly, guiding and supporting Elle as he was, but Jey seemed always one step behind.

  They left the first grove of trees and entered another – this one of scrubbier, lower shrubs with bristling branches. Once they crossed into the new rows, Jey gave a gasp and let her passive echo spell drop. She pulled her hand out of Lokim’s and turned to look back.

  Lokim paused, looking towards the cheesery. He could see nothing but swaying shadows and the high, cold moon. He said, “Jey, we need to hurry.”

  But Jey was shaking her head. Her light hair was shorter than Elle’s and she wore it in a ponytail instead of a braid. The wind whipped it back and forth over her shoulder now, like a playful cat batting at a string. “You don’t understand,” Jey said. “They brought the hounds.”

  As if to emphasize her words, a single, silver-toned bay filled the night air. It was a clear noise. It rang over the blast of the wind – filled with a haunting sense of desire.

  Lokim was barely containing the urge to grab Jey’s hand and yank her around, to force her to continue forward. “Exactly,” he hissed. “We need to get out of here.”

  Jey turned to look at him. There was something sad and hollow in her face. When she spoke, her words seemed to settle like cold rocks in stomach. “Hurrying won’t make any difference now. With a trail this fresh, we’ll never be able to throw them off our scent.”

  Lokim frowned. Elle made a small whimper and turned her head inward, as if to hide it against Lokim’s shoulder. Lokim felt he was missing something.

  “How did you do it before?” He said. “You escaped from the academy, right? They must have sent the hounds after you then.”

  Jey turned back to stare through the dark orchard. “They did,” she said. “We killed them.”

  ◈

  Jey turned to walk through the wild night. She did not hurry.

  “But I’ve seen you,” Lokim said. “We can use the stream, go through the water.”

  Jey was still shaking her head. “That’s just a precaution. If they don’t find the trail for a few days, if the conditions are right, such tricks can throw them off. But this …” she gestured back over her shoulder towards the road. “They’re right behind us. That kind of thing will never work.”

  There was a silence. Their footsteps were bare thumps on the frozen ground, the wind a constant presence. Those things would help slow down the inevitable, but they wouldn’t be enough. “What we need to do,” Jey said, “is find a defensible position.”

  Lokim stopped walking to stare at her, Elle still encircled by his arm. “What do you mean?”

  Another bell-toned bay rose up towards the moon. If their trackers had found the room where Elle and Jey had lived for the last many months, there would be no difficulty getting the dogs onto the right scent.

  Which meant they didn’t have much time. “The only way to get these hounds off our trail,” Jey said, “is to kill them.” She tried to keep her voice firm and steady as she said the words, but inside, she felt a tremor of distaste. Memories returned to her – those first terrified nights she and Elle had spent running and hiding. They’d tried everything they could to shake the hounds.

  Nothing had worked. In the end, they’d found themselves fighting for their lives more than once. At first, the dogs and handlers had been incautious, blundering upon the girls unprepared. After losing a few valuable scent dogs, however, the tactics shifted. Now the handlers were slower – taking their time, watching for ambushes, sending a student or two to range ahead so the defenseless dogs weren’t in the most vulnerable position.

  In spite of the fact Jey had been trained as an assassin, she did not like killing. She didn’t like killing the men who hunted her, but she liked destroying the blameless dogs even less.

  Still, the animals were relentless. Once on a scent, they were unshakeable. And if the orderlies got close enough to release their sighthounds ….

  Jey shuddered, fingers straying over her left forearm where an array of silver scars decorated the skin. She’d been torn up one night trying to evade a dog without hurting it. She wouldn’t make that mistake again.

  Lokim was still looking at Jey, frowning. “Don’t they sniff along the ground?” he said. “I mean, if we could get off the ground, would we be safe?”

  They were still walking, passing tree after three. The orchard would be a terrible place to fight. Dogs could come at them from all directions, surround them and hold them there until the orderlies with stunrods could come upon them. She answered Lokim absently. “They sniff the ground, yes, but they also sniff the air. They can follow a scent on the wind. Believe me, Lokim, we tried everything. They can’t be tricked.”

  Ahead of them, the scrubby trees ended and transitioned into a grove full of slender silver trunks. Behind them, all had gone quiet. Which meant the hounds were coming, eating up the ground at their steady shuffle.

  Still under Lokim’s protective arm, Elle stumbled. Lokim spoke, his voice a little harsh over the wind. “Jey, stop for a minute.”

  Jey stopped. She realized with a mild sense of despair that she was no longer anxious. Her heart rate had stabilized. Her mind had taken on the steady clarity it always did when she knew she was about to fight. She touched the long knives at her hips and ran her mind along her connection with Phril. He was gnawing on a brillbane husk, somewhere far away. It was convenient, she couldn’t help but think, to have him out of danger.

  “Jey.” Lokim spoke her name firmly, as if trying to get her attention. She realized she’d turned to look back through the trunks. The orchard was a horrible place for a fight, but if the hounds found them here, this is where she would meet the hounds and kill them.

  “Jey, look at me.”

  She turned to Lokim. His features were lost in shadow, but there was an intensity about the way he was staring at her. “Elle said you’d never heard of a passive barrier spell before. Was that true?”

  Jey gave a small, unhappy nod. Although she was almost to the point of trusting Lokim, she still didn’t like admitting any weakness.

  Lokim’s cloak blew and flapped, swirling around both him and Elle. Elle was still silent, still disconnected in the vague haze of over extension. “I think a passive barrier spell would contain our scent,” he said. “But we won’t know until we try.”

  ◈

  Elle seemed to be coming around a little. Lokim had taken his arm from around her shoulders, the better to concentrate on his spellwork. Jey led her now, holding her friend’s cool, slender hand and doing her best to guide her over the rough terrain.

  They’d left the orchard and moved into the forest, doubling back to head south and skirt the edge of Deramor. They’d changed directions several times – Lokim’s compulsion to not walk straight to his hideout, Jey supposed.

  Lokim’s face was strained and pale. He strode ahead of them, leading the
way. It had been at least fifteen minutes since he’d taken up the passive barrier spell. Jey could feel it around them, a light electricity on the air. And it seemed to be working. A bare minute or two after he’d cast the spell, the night had erupted with the voices of the frustrated hounds.

  It seemed they’d lost the trail. For now, anyway.

  Lokim, however, was growing tired. Passive spells weren’t as taxing as active ones, but holding them for long periods of time was exhausting. Elle was still out of it, which left it to Jey to watch the night for signs of danger. She found herself missing Phril. Far away on his brillbane bush, he was aware of her anxiety but not enough bothered by it to come back and check on her.

  If he’d been with her, he’d have been wild with rage and energy, ready to fling himself into the face of any foe. He would have been a liability, of course, but one that would have boosted her spirits a bit.

  Up ahead, Lokim stopped. Jey stopped too, pressing Elle’s hand to keep her from blundering into the young man’s back. It was darker in the forest. A scrim of clouds had blown in to cover the moon. Jey could make out the outlines of trees and the bulk of a hill rising before them.

  There was a grunt and a scrape, the grinding sound of stone on stone. Lokim’s voice spoke out of the darkness. “In here,” he said. “Go ahead. I’ll close it behind us.”

  Jey strained her eyes to see, moving a few steps towards the hump of the hill. She could just make out an even blacker outline – a doorway leading into the hillside.

  Off in the orchard, the dogs had quieted. Which meant they’d either picked up the trail or been called off. But even if Lokim’s spell had neutralized the scent hounds, they were not safe. There were still the orderlies with their stunrods, the sight hounds, and, most dangerous of all, the other students.

  Their situation was urgent, if not quite as desperate. Still, as Jey stared at the dark opening in the hillside, her calm evaporated. She felt a sudden fear sweep over her. Her heart seemed to constrict. Her mouth went dry. Her hand was slick where her palm rested against Elle’s.