by Barb Hendee
No.
Wynn gasped in frustration and grabbed for his fingers, struggling to get the charcoal. It took no effort for Chane to jerk his hand free. He lifted the charcoal up, beyond her reach, and mouthed no again, this time with an incensed glower. Rather than make a futile jump to snatch the charcoal, Wynn smacked him in the chest.
Chane’s eyes widened as Wynn jerked her hand back with a gasp of pain. A brief snarl filled the quiet room, and both of them froze at the sudden noise.
Shade sat up on the bed with her ears flattened and her jowls pulled back. But she wasn’t snarling at Chane this time. Shade’s memory-words rose sharply in Wynn’s head—in Wynn’s own voice.
—Wynn . . . quiet—
The last word had probably been stolen from some memory of Wynn’s in which she’d admonished the dog.
Shade glanced meaningfully at the closed door, where Dorian must be standing just outside. Even Chane paused at that, glancing the same way as his hand dropped lower.
Wynn grabbed the end of the charcoal stick and snapped it off before Chane could pull it away again. She went at the journal, scrawling rapidly, and then shoved the journal at his face.
Get the scroll out of the keep!
The scroll—Chane’s scroll—held the only hope of clues to finding the two remaining orbs. Wynn had repeatedly learned the hard way that anything she recorded or acquired might be taken from her. As for her journals, burned and beyond anyone’s reach, she’d read everything they had contained to Shade, until the dog had memorized their entire contents. No one could take anything from the powerful memory skills of a majay-hì like Shade.
That wasn’t possible with the scroll.
Its inner writing, in an ancient Sumanese dialect, had been scribed in the black fluids of a long-gone Noble Dead, and then the scroll’s entire surface had been covered in dark ink, thus hiding the poem beneath. Only by calling upon mantic, elemental sight could Wynn alone see the script beneath the coating. Until she could translate the entire poem, they couldn’t lose that scroll.
It could not be discovered here.
Hurrying to her bed, she pulled the scroll case from under her mattress. Chane had left it with her for safekeeping before his trip to Dhredze Seatt. She thrust it at him. Looking down, his features flattened as he took it from her and slipped it into the back of his belt, beneath his cloak.
Wynn rushed back to her desk and began writing again. If Chane got in the council’s way, he could be in actual trouble. He could be arrested by city authorities, if not dealt with directly by Sykion or even Hawes. As an undead, no one could see him fall dormant at sunrise, should they manage to put him in captivity. The only problem was that the keep’s outer portcullis was now closed. She’d heard the gears creaking and clanking while Dorian dragged her up to her room.
Chane would have to sneak out through the library’s upper window, the same way Wynn had snuck him in when he’d first arrived in Calm Seatt. Of course, that meant they’d have to use a ploy to get Dorian away from the door and beyond sight of the courtyard.
By the time Wynn finished writing, Chane had already drawn near and read every word over her shoulder. He straightened up as he stared out the room’s one narrow window. There wasn’t time to ponder his stubborn reluctance; that would only give him another chance to argue.
Wynn crouched to dig through the gear tucked in her pack from their last trip, looking for a flint. She couldn’t find it, and when she rose, she tore all the pages with their written conversation out of the journal, writing one last line on the top sheet.
Take these with you and burn them.
She didn’t care if he thought she was paranoid. Even a hastily written conversation held bits and pieces she didn’t want found.
Chane took the torn pages with a nod, but he dropped them on the stone floor. Wynn froze in puzzlement as his eyes closed halfway, focusing on the sheets. She realized too late what he was doing. It had been a long time since she’d seen him do it.
Before Wynn could grab Chane’s arm or even risk a whisper, a glow brightened beneath—through—the stack of torn pages. Almost instantly, a small flame sprang from one corner. Another sheet’s corner and then another on the stack caught, as well. As the pages burned, so did Wynn’s temper, until the whole stack was eaten away to black ash.
Wynn glared up at Chane.
All he did was frown, briefly raising his hands as if dumbfounded, and then Shade sneezed. The dog backed up along the bed, snorting the whole way.
Wynn swatted trails of smoke in the air. She pointed at her nose and then at the door, where a journeyor still waited within hearing—and smelling.
Chane rolled his eyes and went for his packs. When he flattened against the wall on the door’s nearer side, Wynn hurried to Shade, passing memories as quickly as she could. Thankfully, Shade understood and didn’t argue this time. With all of them ready, Wynn went for the door. And then she faltered, thinking of that one moment when Chane had looked out the window.
Before she’d come out of the keep’s main doors, she’d peered at the last window of the barrack’s upper floor—her window. No one was there and no light shone from within her room. She’d been gone so long, certainly he couldn’t have been standing at the window all that time. Had Chane been simply waiting, perhaps lost in reading one of his own books, or . . .
How much had he seen?
Wynn opened the door to her room, and Dorian immediately spun into view from its left side.
“What?” he asked sharply.
“How much longer?” she demanded. “I thought Premin Sykion wanted to see me.”
“However long it takes,” he answered. “You’ll stay put until then.”
Dorian’s gaze drifted beyond Wynn, perhaps to Shade. Then he squinted, wrinkling his nose. Dorian sniffed and snorted, and Wynn could’ve punched Chane right then.
“Very well,” Wynn countered, taking a forward step. “Come on, Shade.”
Dorian blocked her way. “As I said, you will wait.”
This wasn’t the way Wynn had wanted things. If she went with Shade, the two of them could have stalled Dorian longer together. There was nothing to be done about it, and her plan changed.
“Shade needs to go out and that can’t wait,” Wynn said flatly. “Unless you want her doing her business in the passage. If so, you can clean it up, because she’s not doing it in my room.”
Dorian faltered in silence.
Wynn glanced back, but Shade hadn’t moved. With her back to Dorian, she glared at Shade and mouthed, Get going.
Shade looked at Dorian and then Wynn. With a curl of jowl, she hopped off the bed and trotted for the doorway. Dorian quickly backed up, bumping into the passage’s far wall. Shade just turned down the passage toward the stairs.
“She prefers the grove in the bailey’s back,” Wynn instructed, “below the northern tower.”
Dorian stood there, his lips barely parted, caught between a stray “wolf” wandering in the keep and his instructions. Wynn folded her arms and waited, daring him not to go after Shade. Dorian pushed Wynn back and grabbed the door’s handle.
Wynn had to shift aside when he jerked the door with a slam. She exhaled in relief and scurried to the window, waiting to see Shade lead the annoying “guard” off and out of sight.
Magiere still fumed as she passed the bailey gate and kept on toward the castle’s southern corner. She looked for any way to get in that wasn’t in plain sight. The bailey wall was at least twenty feet high in most places. Leesil might be able to scale it and then throw down a rope to haul her and Chap up. But this wide street, comprised of the backs of shops and other buildings, not to mention the keep towers themselves, some of their windows glowing from lights within, was all too exposed.
How could they possibly get over the wall without being spotted? Late at night, later than now, perhaps, though she still hadn’t seen what lay around the castle’s grounds along its three other sides.
“We can’t j
ust wander about out here,” Leesil warned. “This isn’t some sages’ barracks in Bela, tucked into a forgotten corner of that city. Look around you!”
She had, and he knew it, but her guilt wouldn’t let her stop. They’d left Wynn behind again, and this time it wasn’t due to Chap’s insistence that the sage would be safer here.
Magiere was sick of complications inevitably falling on everyone who passed through her life. At least if she kept those who mattered close to her, she might have a chance to stand between them and whatever came, until she found a way to put an end to all of this. Leesil had to understand what that meant; they were not leaving Wynn behind again.
If she couldn’t find a way into this keep, a way to Wynn, she’d make one.
Magiere stopped and turned about, abandoning her search of the castle’s bailey wall and high towers.
“What now?” Leesil asked.
Chap hopped out of Magiere’s way as she stalked past Leesil and back toward the bailey gate.
Leesil faltered, watching as Magiere strode back along the bailey wall. At a loss, he looked at Chap, who just stood there, as well.
“Do something, you mangy mutt!” Leesil whispered. “Aren’t you supposed to be the all-knowing big guide and guardian here?”
Chap curled a jowl in reply and took off at a trot, and Leesil bit back sudden shame for his outburst. He knew he hadn’t been fair, and he broke into a jog to follow. Getting Magiere to listen had become just as hard for Chap.
They caught up as Magiere grabbed the handle of one side of the bailey gate.
Chap bolted in around her as the gate cracked open, and he lunged, slamming it shut with his forepaws. Leesil dropped the travel chest without a thought and snatched Magiere’s upper arm, jerking her around to face him.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
“I’m going to get their attention,” she answered coldly.
“Then what? Wait to see if any of them are stupid enough to raise the portcullis?”
He had always been the one to find them a way through whenever the path was blocked by something she couldn’t get around.
“Oh, they will . . .” Magiere answered too quietly. “If just one of them gets close enough to the bars.”
Leesil went cold as the chill in her voice washed over him. This wasn’t his Magiere. He’d done terrible things in his youth, serving a warlord who kept him, his mother, or his father hostage while one of them was out following orders. How many had he killed in those days?
Most of his victims died quietly and quickly in the night. They never suffered, if he could help it, especially those who’d done nothing but pit themselves against the tyrant who held him and his parents captive for blood work. But they weren’t the only ones he’d harmed.
As Leesil stared at Magiere, he barely heard Chap’s growl begin to grow in his ears.
There had been fathers, mothers, sons and daughters, and friends of his targets left behind. The living had suffered tenfold more than the dead for what he’d done in those days.
And Magiere wanted to use whatever sage she could get her hands on . . . to get her way.
Before Leesil uttered a word, he flinched at the clack of Chap’s jaws, but neither of them looked toward the dog. Magiere suddenly clenched her eyes shut and hunched as if some pain grew in her head. In less than a breath, she tried to push Leesil aside as she hissed at Chap.
“Stay out of my head!”
Chap lunged at her.
Leesil got between them and slammed Magiere back against the bailey gate. He pinned her there, his forearm barred across her upper chest.
“Look at me,” he ordered.
When she did, he saw her irises had flooded completely black. He shriveled inside and could’ve wept at the sight of her.
Her pallid face was covered in a sheen that was not quite an open sweat. Her short, rapid breaths shuddered under the vibration of fury in her body. How many times would he have to be the only one to keep her at bay when she lost herself to her other half?
She could’ve thrown him off, with her dhampir nature on the edge of cutting loose. She didn’t, though tears began rolling from her eyes. He couldn’t tell whether they came from the strain of her change or from the night growing too bright before her eyes, or from realizing she’d almost lost control again.
How many more times before that one time when she wouldn’t hear or see him? As always, it was just as bad to watch her come back to him.
Magiere’s muscles slackened, and she went limp against the gate. The lustrous brown began returning to her eyes as her irises contracted. She clenched her eyes shut, turning her head away, as if she couldn’t bear to face him. She’d stopped saying “sorry” a long while back, as if that only made the next time even worse.
Leesil leaned in, with his lips close to her ear, and whispered softly, “Look at me.”
She wouldn’t. He carefully took Magiere’s jaw with his free hand and turned her face toward himself. She still wouldn’t meet his gaze.
“We’ll get to Wynn,” he whispered, and leaned his forehead against hers. “But not like this. If anything, they’d expect that now. We can’t make things worse for her . . . or for us.”
Her breath still came in shudders, her face so close he could feel it. Then her hands slid around him, up his back, and clamped on his shoulders. Her tight grip made him stiffen, because he worried she might try to fight him. But her mouth suddenly pressed hard against his.
It wasn’t the time or place for this, but it had been a while. Leesil couldn’t bring himself to stop her—until he heard the grind of gears and clank of massive chains.
Chap huffed and his claws scrabbled on cobblestone as he took off. Before Magiere tried something rash, Leesil grabbed the travel chest’s nearest handle and jerked his wife along the bailey wall.
“Run!”
Chap raced along the street close to the wall, looking for any quick way out of sight. But whoever might come out of the keep would easily spot them if they tried to cross the open street and dash for any alley along its far side.
Once again, events had almost gotten beyond reason because of Magiere. That had grown slowly worse along the journey back out of the northern wastes.
After what had happened to her up in that realm of ice, after what she had done to gain the second orb, she was more often losing control of her dhampir nature. How long before it controlled her? Chap could not yet face what he would have to do when that happened.
When he reached the curve around the bailey wall’s southern corner, he halted and turned, hiding just around the bend. Magiere had barely raced by him, ducking around, when the bailey gate swung open. Leesil joined them, crouching down, as the first figure ran out of the gate.
In too little time, too many strange events kept happening this night.
Chap watched as that one and then a second sage, both wearing dark blue robes, ran out into the night. To his frustration, the two split up, running in separate directions. The first ran straight away from the gate along the main road, but the second turned left. That one came running down the road toward the keep’s southern corner.
Chap spun with a huff and bolted around Leesil and Magiere. He ducked in against the bailey wall’s base and dropped to his belly. As Magiere and Leesil crouched behind him, he heard the rapid footfalls on cobble drawing nearer.
To Chap’s relief, the sage did not even glance their way and kept running, soon vanishing southward into the city. In spite of not being spotted, he realized their position was still far too open. Leesil must have been thinking the same thing, for he pointed to an alley across the street.
“We can watch the gate from there,” he whispered.
Magiere did not move. “Why would the guild send two sages running off into the night?”
Chap had no idea.
Leesil shook his head, hefted the chest over one shoulder as he rose, and then reached down for Magiere.
“I don’t know. Now come on.”<
br />
To Chap’s further relief, Magiere relented, took Leesil’s hand, and stood up. At least they could all get out of sight for the moment. But, in truth, Chap had no idea what would happen after that.
CHAPTER 4
CHANE STOOD NEAR THE door of Wynn’s room, listening to the sound of fading footsteps as he waited for the metaologer to follow Shade out into the courtyard. He glanced back to find Wynn still watching out the window, her back to the room and half bent over, with her elbows braced on the deep stone sill.
Moonlight or torch braziers on the gatehouse glinted off the top of her soft brown hair. Anyone’s eyes but Chane’s might not have caught this. Her locks shimmered as her head tilted to one side, perhaps in trying to look down to the barracks’ outer door. And not a word had passed between them concerning her three visitors to the keep.
Did she even know he had seen them?
“Not yet,” Wynn whispered.
Confused, Chane quickly realized she was referring to Shade leading off the guardian sage. Then he heard a muted, rhythmic clanking from somewhere outside, beyond the window.
Wynn stiffened upright. She leaned into the window’s deep recess and craned her head, looking all ways through the panes.
“Is that the portcullis?” Chane asked. The clanking ceased. “What’s happening?”
She shook her head, peering toward the gatehouse. In only a moment, the heavy clanking rhythm began again.
“I think it’s closing now,” she said. “They must have opened it briefly, though I wonder why.” Her focus suddenly pivoted down and to the right. “Finally! Shade is trotting for the main doors, and Dorian is rushing to keep up. They’ll be out of sight in a moment.”
Wynn began to turn.
Chane stalled again at the thought of leaving her. Of course, he was concerned about the safety of the scroll, but once he was outside these walls, the prospect of reentry was doubtful. He was reluctant to leave before the council had finished with Wynn. How could he even check on her to know what had happened?
