by Barb Hendee
She might have gone on, but the domin halted her with a raised hand. “Who?”
Wynn held her breath and then exhaled sharply. The domin had never met Magiere, Leesil, or Chap, but there was no doubt they would’ve found him. Magiere was nothing if not . . . well, “determined” was the polite word for it. Something had gone wrong.
Before she asked another panicked question, Ghassan il’Sänke blinked slowly with a shake of his head.
“Ah, yes,” he added. “I believe I did see them . . . briefly.”
That panicked Wynn even more—“see” and not “meet.”
The domin, so strangely dressed, nodded.
“I recognized them from the descriptions in your journals,” he went on. Then he paused a bit too long. “Your friends were arrested, along with a mixed-blood girl, and imprisoned below the imperial palace grounds. I never spoke with, let alone met, them.”
“What?” Wynn gasped.
“Mixed-blood?” Osha repeated. “What you mean?”
Wynn glanced at him and then Chane. Magiere had never actually reached Ghassan il’Sänke, never spoken to him. She, Leesil, Chap, and Leanâlhâm had been locked away, but for what reason?
“How long?” Chane rasped.
He and the domin hadn’t parted on good terms the last time they’d all seen one another.
“Perhaps a moon,” il’Sänke answered.
“And you haven’t seen them since?” Wynn asked.
“No.”
Wynn’s panic edged toward frantic. Even the dim light from a lantern up the way in the street hurt her eyes. The walls of the cutway felt too close.
“This can’t be happening,” she got out and then fell in the babbling. “We found another orb, and Magiere was here seeking the last one . . . You were to help her. So we brought ours here and—”
“Wynn!” Chane rasped, and even Shade snarled in warning.
Wynn snapped her mouth shut under the fixed stare of Ghassan il’Sänke.
“This is not the place to speak of such things,” he said too calmly. “Come with me. I will take you to a place of safety.”
“Safety?” Chane hissed. “Your high premin would have simply sent us away . . . until your name was mentioned. No one is going anywhere with you if—”
“Chane,” Wynn interrupted. “We need to speak privately and not here in—”
“No, Chane is correct,” Osha countered in Elvish.
Before Wynn could argue, Osha narrowed his eyes on the domin.
“You . . . hunted?” he said in Numanese. It was less a question than an accusation.
Wynn sighed, exhausted and still panicked as she turned back to the domin. Perhaps his own branch’s Premin Council was seeking him, but the city guards could hardly be after a sage like il’Sänke.
“Just answer them,” she encouraged. “Are you wanted by the authorities?”
Ghassan il’Sänke’s eyes shifted to fix on Chane in the cutway’s silence.
CHAPTER TWO
Brot’ân’duivé—the Dog in the Dark—crouched upon a rooftop outside the great wall of the imperial grounds. He maintained this vigil out of little more than habit, as he had come to accept there was little else to do at present. And so it had been for the last moon.
Much of the time, he remained in hiding, for his physical appearance in this land and city attracted much attention. Even cloaked and with his hood up, his height brought curious glances. Up north in the Numan lands, he was half a head taller than most human males. Here he towered over everyone and was easily visible even in a crowd.
Coarse white-blond hair, with streaks of gray darkening some strands, hung over his peaked ears and down his back beneath his hood and cloak. He was deeply tanned, nearly as dark as the Sumans, with lines crinkling the corners of his mouth and his large amber-irised eyes. But the feature that stood out the most, if someone drew near enough to look into his hood, were four pale scars—as if from claws—upon his face. Those ran at an angle from the midpoint of his forehead and slanted down through one feathery eyebrow to skip over his right eye to his cheekbone.
He spent much of his time near the palace grounds, where he watched for anything that might be used to his advantage. Patience was a necessity more than a virtue among the Anmaglâhk, guardians of the an’Cróan people and their vast territory; it was even more so for him as a master among them, a greimasg’äh, or “shadow-gripper.”
During the waterfront arrest of Léshil, Magiere, and Chap—and Brot’ân’duivé’s own young ward, Wayfarer—he had made the instant assessment that he could not stop it. Instead, he vanished before it happened. This had seemed prudent at that time, for they had been so outnumbered that even he saw no way to extract all of the others alive. Within moments of their being taken away, he had managed to sweep back in and save their belongings left in the street. These he had later hidden well.
Now . . . he had come to question his quick decision.
Among the Anmaglâhk—viewed only as assassins by any human who’d survived to recognize one—he was one of the few remaining masters. But he no longer wore his caste’s garb of hooded forest gray cloak, vestment, pants, and felt boots. Instead, he now dressed in simple breeches and a weatherworn jerkin beneath a marred and smudged hooded cloak. His change of attire was no simple disguise, for he was at war with his own caste.
Many of his brethren still served their too-long-lived leader, Most Aged Father, a paranoid madman who was utterly self-serving at the expense of his people. Brot’ân’duivé was determined to stop Most Aged Father and his loyalists at any cost. This was one reason he had traveled halfway across the world in protecting Magiere and Léshil from a team of loyalists sent after them.
Once again, Brot’ân’duivé studied the outer wall of the imperial grounds. He had seldom felt regret in a long life, as he did now over his choice to abandon his companions at the waterfront. He assumed he could soon rescue them, but he could not have known then that a human construction would be able to keep him out.
The wall was taller than any he had seen in his lifetime. It was also taller than any surrounding building, for he had set foot on every rooftop around its circumference. That had taken two days and half of the following night.
Sheer and smooth, as if impossibly made from solid sandstone, the wall offered little chance of purchase for a blade’s tip to climb it. And even if so, the broad space between it and the nearest structures was twice the width of the widest street in the capital. Regular patrols of city guards walked the wall’s outside and top, and imperial guards with gold sashes manned the interior grounds.
And he had only one lead to what had become of Léshil or Magiere.
On the day those two were arrested with Wayfarer and the errant majay-hì called Chap, he had followed them unseen to the imperial grounds. Among their captors of armed guards were two of Most Aged Father’s loyalists.
Dänvârfij and Rhysís were dressed in poorly cut human clothing; both wore swords of a strange make. The very idea was anathema, as by the caste’s creed they worked “in silence and in shadow.” But sight of them did not surprise him, for they had been hunting Magiere across the world.
He had waited outside all that first day, but only Dänvârfij and Rhysís had emerged. His initial instinct had been to follow and eliminate them, as he had done one by one with their team ever since leaving his homeland after being branded a traitor.
That urge was quickly abandoned. This pair was his only link to what had become of his lost companions. His second instinct had been to capture one of his enemies and extract information by any means. This was rejected as well. It was doubtful that even he could break a seasoned anmaglâhk.
And now his only way to know that Léshil and the others still lived was because three times Dänvârfij had gained access directly through the imperial grounds’ main gate. When she left, she looked close to angry and frustrated.
An unguarded emotion—let alone expression—was rare for a true anmaglâhk.
Given that Dänvârfij would have surveyed the grounds’ wall as well, the only reason that she continued diplomatic attempts was that her quarry still lived. By her expression, she had not gained access or learned where they were kept.
Eight days had passed since Dänvârfij last appeared at the main gate. What did her long period of inactivity mean?
Frustration, like regret, was another emotion Brot’ân’duivé rarely felt.
Movement at the gate drew his attention.
He watched as Dänvârfij exited between two dozen guards standing post at the gate.
She still wore her poorly cut human clothing and the sword on her hip, but over the distance it was too dark to see her expression. He had been on the rooftop since late afternoon but had not seen her enter, and he wondered how long she had been inside the grounds.
Brot’ân’duivé flattened upon the rooftop’s edge to watch her walk past below. He knew the route she would likely take, as he had tracked her twice before. Both times she had lost him before reaching her final destination. Somewhere in the capital hid the remainder of her team.
Counting her, only four of the eleven remained alive.
Slipping his right hand to his left wrist, he pulled the cord on the sheath up his sleeve and slightly tilted his left forearm. A stiletto slid out hilt first to settle in his left palm. He spun the blade outward as he rolled back from the rooftop’s edge and to his feet without a sound.
Brot’ân’duivé’s patience was gone.
He leaped silently to the next rooftop to get ahead of his prey before scaling down into an alley. At the mouth of that dark path, he watched the street less than seven strides to his right.
Dänvârfij appeared and headed onward at a quick and quiet pace.
The instant she slipped from sight along the street’s next block, Brot’ân’duivé stepped out to follow. When he rounded the corner closely, prepared to disable and capture her in the dark, another tall figure dropped from above to land beside her.
Brot’ân’duivé swerved silently in against a shop with its awning tied shut. Both figures headed onward without pause. When they passed beyond a lantern at the next intersection, he recognized the newcomer by his movement and the color of his clothing.
In the last season, Rhysís often wore a dark blue cloak with the hood up.
Two anmaglâhk—loyalists—walked apace in silent purpose.
Brot’ân’duivé shadowed them block after block and deeper into the city’s northern side. He had never tracked any of them this far before, and when they turned into a cutway beside a three-story inn, he turned up a side street to reach the alley that would run along the inn’s rear. There they were, and he watched as they scaled the inn’s back side and slipped into a window.
Brot’ân’duivé slipped his stiletto back up his sleeve and tied it in place with a single twirl of his fingers.
Dänvârfij and Rhysís had not come to this city alone, and he had now found the remainder of his enemies . . . his targets. Two others inside the inn might make easier prey for interrogation, but now was not the time, with all his enemies together.
And if Dänvârfij had gone back to the imperial grounds, then Magiere and perhaps the others were likely still alive.
Brot’ân’duivé regained patience as he waited and watched.
* * *
Dänvârfij—“Fated Music”—slipped through the window of their current hiding place with Rhysís directly behind her. The single room they had paid for was small, with only two rickety beds, a bleached wooden table, a cracked washbasin, and two candle lanterns. It served its purpose.
The other two members of what remained of her team waited therein.
She waited before the window, but Rhysís quickly approached the two women sitting on the same bed. Like her, they were anmaglâhk in status, though not so in function anymore.
Én’nish, the youngest of the team, was nearly as tan and white-blond as all an’Cróan. She was also smaller and slighter of build than most. Her size was a deception she used to advantage in combat. She also was—had been—reckless. More than this, or perhaps the cause of it, she was poisoned by their people’s grief madness in having lost her mate-to-be to Léshil’s blade.
Dänvârfij had opposed Én’nish’s inclusion in their purpose from the start.
The young one had proven to be a survivor when others had not, but she had taken a wound in her abdomen during the last battle with their quarry. And again, it had been Léshil who had done this to her.
Én’nish had not healed well and was less than capable for combat. Rhysís stood towering over her, his hair even lighter than hers, which he always wore loose.
None of them now wore the forest gray clothing of anmaglâhk, as they traveled disguised in human attire. Dänvârfij still could not fathom Rhysís’s new affinity for blue clothing. In addition to his pants and shirt, even the cloak he wore was a dark shade of that color.
Her gaze shifted to the final surviving member of their team.
Fréthfâre—“Watcher of the Woods”—sat hunched forward on the bed’s edge. She could no longer sit straight without support at her back, and sometimes not even then.
“Well?” she demanded. “Did you learn anything new . . . or useful?”
Fréthfâre held status as shared leader of the team, but she was fit in neither body nor mind and perhaps not even in spirit. Her wheat-gold hair, so uncommon for an an’Cróan, hung in waves instead of properly silky and straight. In youth, she had been viewed as supple and graceful. She was now brittle in approaching a mere fifty years—barely beyond half of what most anmaglâhk lived and notably less than half of any other an’Cróan. The human dress of vibrant red that she wore made her appear all the more fragile.
Once covârleasa—“trusted advisor”—to Most Aged Father, Fréthfâre was nearly useless now. More than two years before, the monster Magiere had run a sword through her abdomen. The wound should have killed her, but a great an’Cróan healer had tended to her. Even so, she had barely survived, and the damage would never be wholly undone.
Dänvârfij, ever respectful in dealing with the ex-covârleasa, had no new information to share this night. She shook her head once in answering another of Fréthfâre’s spiteful questions.
“The commander of the imperial guard made it clear that I should not return,” she added.
Fréthfâre said nothing and her thin lips pursed. What could she say? What could any of them say?
These three anmaglâhk were all that Dänvârfij had left with which to hunt the monster Magiere, her mate Léshil, the deviant called Chap . . . and the traitor greimasg’äh, Brot’ân’duivé.
A year and a half before, when Most Aged Father had asked her to prepare a team and sail to this foreign continent, she had not hesitated. Their purpose had been direct and clear. They were to locate Magiere, her half-blood consort, and the tainted majay-hì who ran with the pair. Magiere and Léshil were to be captured, tortured if necessary concerning the “artifact” they had carried off from the Pock Peaks, and then eliminated—along with the majay-hì, if possible.
Fréthfâre had not blinked at the last of that, though her team, including bloody Én’nish, had balked. Killing a majay-hì—a “sacred one” of their land—even a deviant one, had never been asked, let alone done. And never before had so many of the Anmaglâhk jointly taken up the same purpose.
Most Aged Father feared any device of the Ancient Enemy remaining in human hands.
Eleven anmaglâhk had left together, but one more had shadowed them across the world.
After the first and second deaths among them and before they knew for certain, Dänvârfij could not believe who that one had to be. Only on a night when she had glimpsed his unmistakable shadow had she acknowledged the truth.
Brot’ân’duivé had been stealing their lives, one by one, ever since.
Out of eleven, four remained, yet they could not stop or turn back. Dänvârfij could not fail Most Aged
Father, and in the last port, called Soráno, she had devised a new plan.
She had killed two of the Lhoin’na guardians called the Shé’ith and took their swords and emblems for Rhysís and her to assume their identities. Racing against time, they had beaten Magiere to the Suman capital and used their false authority to have her and the others arrested for murdering the crew of a Sumanese ship.
Dänvârfij had been certain her quarry would be locked away in some constabulary. In such an easily infiltrated location, they could be taken unarmed. Everything had gone terribly wrong.
Magiere and Léshil, along with the majay-hì and the mixed-blood girl, had been taken directly to the imperial castle. At the sight of Magiere, the reaction of the imperial prince, the leaders of the Suman sages, and the imperial counselor had been immediate. All of the prisoners were dragged off and locked away somewhere in the immense imperial grounds.
Dänvârfij had been denied access to or knowledge of their whereabouts.
She had gone back several times with various reasons for speaking to them, only to be denied. Worse, the traitor had escaped being arrested. Nothing had gone as planned, and Brot’ân’duivé now moved freely somewhere in this city.
“Do you think our quarry still lives?”
Dänvârfij regained awareness at Én’nish’s question. Not long in the past, the young one had questioned her every decision. Én’nish had become hesitant and too easily stalled by uncertainty.
“I do not know,” she answered flatly.
“That is the first thing we must learn,” Rhysís countered.
“How?” Fréthfâre asked.
He shook his head, almost impatiently. “If the Suman government will not assist us, and we are certain that path is barred, then we return to proven methods. Capture and extract information from someone who does know.”
Dänvârfij grew wary. “None of the local guards will possess such information.”
“The imperial guards took our quarry away,” he countered.
