“This way!” Gem ran south and leapt the gap to the next roof, Loren hot on his heels. Behind them she heard Bern’s furious bellow.
On they ran, across another two roofs. Finally, Loren seized Gem’s arm and stopped him, looking back for a moment. Several men had made the climb far behind them.
“They do not share our skill,” Loren said, exulting. “Look at how they scramble to—”
She heard the hiss a second before an arrow whizzed by her face, so close it nearly passed through her hair.
“They mean to kill us!” screamed Gem. All the boy’s bravado vanished in an instant, and he turned to flee.
Loren followed. “We must regain the street! We are easy targets!”
Gem heard her through his panic and slid to the roof’s edge, launching into empty space. He bounced off the opposite wall before coming to a hard landing on the street. Loren descended more carefully, gripping the roof’s edge before falling to the ground.
They landed on a narrow street filled with people, some beggars staking a claim on the wealthy area, others men of questionable purpose moving about under cover of darkness. At least a half dozen stared at Loren as she helped Gem to his feet. But the pair must not have been an unusual sight because all eyes soon turned away.
Loren’s gaze fixed on one man in particular. He seemed unaware of their presence, face mostly buried by his cowl, shoulders stooped as if great age had claimed them. But Loren spied his face and the long dark curls hanging from atop his head, and her heart nearly stopped.
“Come!” She seized Gem and pulled him along.
The man ducked into the back door of an inn, closing it behind him. But before it shut, Loren jammed her boot into the gap. She flung it open and launched herself into the back room. The man recoiled in surprise as Loren turned to close the door behind her.
She turned to face the man, smiling in grim triumph. “Well met again, wizard.”
Xain straightened, dragging the cowl back from his head, scowling.
twenty-one
They stood in a small storeroom filled with the odds and ends required by any inn. A broom leaned in the corner, several buckets and washcloths stacked haphazardly beside it. Loren’s nose caught the pungent odor of wood polish from shelved bottles above.
Xain scowled down at her, his grey-brown eyes flashing beneath dark eyebrows drawn in anger. His glance slipped to Gem for a moment and then, dismissing the boy, focused on Loren again.
“What are you doing here?” he growled.
“Fleeing the constables and the cell they hold ready for me. I might ask you the same. Prudence would have sent you from Cabrus days ago.”
“Prudence and convenience are not often bedfellows. Now, be off with you. I cannot risk your company, nor should you be eager for mine.”
Muffled shouts came through the heavy wooden door. Loren glanced over her shoulder. The wizard’s eyes flashed with fear as they followed her gaze.
“That’ll be them,” murmured Gem.
“Who?” said Xain.
“Constables,” said Loren. “They are in pursuit. You must hide us.”
“I cannot be involved!” said Xain, his voice low and urgent. He looked toward the storeroom’s opposite door, the one Loren knew must lead to the inn proper. “It is a hard enough task avoiding their clutches without caring for a pair of saplings.”
“Mayhap I could have helped, had you not stolen away in the night like a craven.”
“You were better off without me,” said Xain. “I am hardly safe company.”
Loren pointed toward the back door. “Yet I find myself beset regardless. Did you think if you left me, they would not hunt me down for information? I aided your escape!”
Xain’s lips pressed tightly together, but Loren saw his eyes shift to guilt. His shoulders hunched as if in resistance, fighting the thought she could see creeping into his mind.
The shouts outside grew louder, and Loren heard the heavy tramping of boots. “Loren,” whispered Gem. “Let us flee. This man will not help us.”
“He will,” said Loren, folding her arms as she glared at Xain. “Or I will open that door right now and throw him to the mercy of the King’s law.”
“You would not dare. They would take you as well.”
“They will take me regardless! But if I give you to them, they may grant me leniency. Let us find out.”
Loren turned and put a hand on the door as if to push it. She heard a sharp crack behind her, and heat tickled the back of her neck. Slowly, she rounded toward Xain.
The wizard’s eyes glowed white in their sockets, the corners of his mouth sank into his cheeks as words of power spilled from his lips. Azure magefire burned in his palms.
“Do not touch that door,” he said.
“Hide us, then. Do not fear that your presence might burn us. I have had ample time to make other enemies and would suffer your fire before theirs under any sun or moons.”
Xain blinked. The glow in his eyes vanished, and the fire died. “Very well, then. For now. Come! Quickly!”
He whirled, his heavy brown cloak whipping out to slap against Loren’s shins. She needed no further urging, throwing her cowl down to hide her face as she followed him farther into the inn. Gem pressed close beside her. She drew the edge of her cloak about the boy, walking with her arm over his shoulders.
The door swung open to the murmur of voices in hushed conversation. A fire burned in the common room’s far wall, throwing smoky orange light upon the floor. Loren saw the dark shapes of patrons within the glow. Eyes flashed toward them, but then drifted away without interest.
Xain led them along the wall to a staircase and up to a landing that wound down a short hallway with many doors. Xain showed them to the third one on the left and from his pocket produced a key. Again, he let them go first, closing the door behind them.
A large window spanned the opposite wall, and several candles burned along tables within the room. Xain darted down the line, dousing flames with his fingers one at a time. Loren followed, proceeding in the other direction and licking her fingers to snuff each wick. The wizard left only one, moving it to the center of the floor. He drew the curtains and sat before the small, flickering flame.
“That should be sufficient. Come, sit away from the window. They may walk the roofs.”
But Loren did not immediately obey. Instead, she went to the window and drew back the curtain’s edge. Two men in red leather armor walked the street, but she saw no sign of Bern. The roofs, too, looked empty, but in night’s shadow Loren could not have said for certain. Satisfied, she went to sit opposite Xain on the floor. Gem took his place beside her, folding his legs beneath him and placing a hand on each knee.
Now with a moment to think, she looked at the urchin in wonder. “You nearly threw away your life for mine tonight. What madness spurred you to attack the constable that way?”
Gem ducked his head suddenly, unwilling to meet her eyes. Voice sullen, he said, “I didn’t want to see them take you. Would you rather I had?”
“Of course not. Only . . . I took you for Auntie’s boy.”
“Man,” he corrected her. “And yes, I am. But I’m beholden to no one, for I’m no one’s lackey. Auntie has helped keep me alive a long while, and yet never provided much beyond.”
“You said she called you her favorite.”
Gem looked askance out the window. “Oh, she has. And then at other times she calls me other things, things I might boast on less readily. When I saw how she betrayed you, it somehow struck me as wrong. I hardly thought at all.”
“Why did you not tell me she was a weremage?”
“A what?” snapped Xain, who had contented himself with listening. His eyes snapped to sharp focus, and Loren found them piercing her.
“A weremage,” said Loren, thinking he had not understood. “A skinchanger. A—”
“I know the word, girl, though you do not; they are called therianthropes. How have you run afoul of another wizard i
n the span of only a few short days?”
“Mayhap you would know if you had not been so quick to abandon my company,” said Loren, feeling her blood boil with anger.
Xain rolled his eyes and looked away. “Yet I must do the same again. I will keep you here for the night. Then you must be on your way. Hardly could I overstate the danger if you remain with me.”
“It cannot be greater than what I have faced upon the road to reach you,” said Loren.
“I’m hungry,” said Gem.
Xain’s lip curled, but he leaned over to snatch a bowl from the table beside his bed. He pushed it into Gem’s eager hands, and the urchin eagerly dug in with bare fingers.
“What happened upon the road?” said Xain.
“The constables pursued me east, where I hid within a merchant’s caravan. Afterward, I fell into their company.”
“A merchant’s caravan? I came upon one such as you say, and bought from them a horse.”
Loren nodded. “They told me. And you were fortunate to leave when you did. Though I enjoyed their hospitality for a time, it soon became . . . less than sincere.”
Xain cocked his head, so Loren told him everything: Damaris and Gregor and the constable’s men, the black rocks Annis had flung at the constables’ feet. Xain sucked a sharp breath through his teeth. Loren watched them turn from a light brown-grey to pale orange.
“You know of these stones?” she said. “Tell me, what are they?”
“Nothing you would understand. A matter for wizards. Go on.”
Loren told him of her capture but paused before speaking of her dagger and Corin. She could not have said why but thought it better to remain a secret. She said that when Corin had her alone, she tripped him and sent him into a gutter, whereupon she fled.
Xain grunted and raised his eyebrows. “You are full of more fight than you look.”
She glanced at him, wondering if he knew more than he said. But his eyes settled on the flame burning brightly before them.
When she had finished recounting her adventures, Loren pressed Xain for his own. “What have you found since your arrival in Cabrus? And why have you not left? The constables seek you, and not for conversation.”
“And there we find the problem. Heavy guard lies upon all the city’s exits. I had to find a way of slipping through undetected.”
Gem, silent while Loren spoke of her journey, piped up now. “But you’re a wizard. Why don’t you snap your fingers and fly over the wall?”
Xain glared at the boy. “Magic is not what you have heard in fairy tales, child. I could not fly so much as a chair over a city wall.”
“What, then, do you plan?” said Loren.
“I have an associate. She has found a way out, but it does not leave until tomorrow night. Until then, I must remain out of sight.”
“Take us with you,” said Loren.
Xain shook his head. “My associate procured passage for one. I can do nothing more. My pockets have bottoms, you know.” Loren noticed for the first time that his sizable coin purse no longer hung from his belt.
“The carriage leaves regardless,” said Loren. “What matter if you board alone or with companions?”
“When one traffics outside the King’s law, one gets nothing for free,” said Xain, shaking his head. “If you wish to board, you must pay your way, and I doubt you can fetch the price.”
Fear gripped Loren’s chest. Now that the constables sought her as well as the wizard, how could she think to leave the city without his help? And with Auntie out for her blood, how could she think to stay?
“Wizard, hear me. Were it not for you, I would still walk beneath the boughs of the Birchwood. I am grateful for your help, and I do not mean to return. But if you abandon me here, I will suffer a fate far worse than my father’s cruel hands. As well you might have left me there to take my daily bruises, to live my life alone and beaten. Do not leave me to this wicked fate. Have you never known what it is to wander the world in solitude?”
She played a risky game by throwing herself upon the wizard’s mercy, but well did Loren remember Xain’s face within the Birchwood when he saw the bruises upon her arms. If asked to wager, she would have said he once knew a life much like Loren’s.
Something in his eyes relaxed, an admission of defeat.
“I will stow you aboard my carriage. But only if I have your word that you will leave me at the next city. No,” he raised a hand to forestall her protest. “That is my only offer. You refuse to see the danger you court in my company. The constables do not seek to jail me. They will kill me if they can, and any standing beside me.”
Loren swallowed. “Bern has tried that with me already. I will risk it.”
“Not while your life sits in my pocket. Promise me you will leave me in the next city, and I will vow to take you there.”
Loren’s shoulders sagged. But when one path led to a bottomless pit and the other a dangerous cliff, one must brave the climb. “Very well. I give you my word.”
Only time will tell if I keep it.
Thieves had earned no great reputation for honesty.
“Then on the morrow I must speak to my associate once more. She will not be pleased with another two passengers.”
Loren grimaced. “You had best make that three.”
Xain’s face went stony. “I can count, girl, and you overestimate your number.”
Xain would never agree to take the merchant’s daughter if he thought her mother might pursue them. Mind racing, she said, “I met another within the city. A distant cousin whose family I thought to stay with when I arrived. But her parents had perished from plague, and now she wanders the streets alone. I lost her in flight but cannot leave her. For we are kin.”
From stone to steel went the wizard’s eyes. “Already you make me regret my decision. I cannot drag a gaggle of wayward geese across the nine lands.”
“She will be no trouble,” Loren said quickly. “As quiet as a mouse, she is, and timid as well.” No description could have been further from the truth, but it would buy time.
“Very well,” said Xain. “Where is she? You would do well to fetch her, for if the carriage arrives early I mean to take it.”
Loren looked at Gem.
“I never even saw her,” said the urchin, shrugging. “I know not where she might wander.”
“I cannot be seen on the streets looking for her. Too many eyes now know me within the walls.” Loren turned to Xain. “How have you moved about the city, when you have had need to leave the inn?”
“I wrapped myself in rags and took the manner of a leper. Stumble in just the right way, and no one seeks to peer closely under your hood.”
“Then we must do the same.” Loren’s eyes were drawn with longing to the soft wool rug on the floor, but she forced her eyes away. “Come, Gem. Our night has yet to finish with us.”
twenty-two
Loren sent Gem to fetch some of the washcloths from the storeroom, and they wrapped their arms and hands so that their skin barely showed. Loren winced at the musty, moldy stench of the cloth as they covered their faces.
She had to leave her cloak, which pained her greatly. But the fine black cloth would be easily recognized, whether by the constables or Auntie’s urchins. Instead, she took Xain’s dark brown mantle. It sat too large on her shoulders and hung nearly to her feet, but that only concealed her better. She tucked her dagger under the cloak. She carefully studied the wizard’s face, anxious to see any reaction, something she had missed when they met. But he spared the blade no second glance. Loren sighed, folding her black cloak up and reverently placed it under his bed.
“Take care of that,” she said solemnly, her green eyes meeting his grey ones.
Xain only snorted. “What will happen to it in here? Do you expect someone to come and steal it?”
They left the inn through the same back door where they entered, and Xain showed them how to trip the latch from outside. As they walked away, Loren thought to turn and see
the inn’s name: the Elf’s Purse. It sounded vaguely familiar, though she could not recall why.
Gem stumbled beside her, and she moved to catch him. He batted her hands away. “No, you fool. We’re lepers, or have you forgotten?”
Loren flushed, glad he could not see it through her rags. She adopted Gem’s shuffle, even dragging one foot slightly to heighten the effect. They kept to the street’s edges, leaning against buildings as if for support. It worked. Not many prowled the lanes so late at night, but any man or woman who saw them turned in fear, walking on the other side of the street or turning to head in the other direction.
“All goes well so far,” whispered Gem.
“Boastful words tempt fate. Passersby will grow less discerning in the slums.”
Loren panicked the first time they saw a constable, but the woman avoided them just like anyone else. She walked with less fear after that. Gem led her down streets, avoiding alleys where they might catch a knife. Streets seemed almost well lit, for even when torchlight did not illuminate their way, both moons glowed full in the sky. At first, Loren had feared to roam the city at night, but now it seemed no worse than the forest.
“Hold.” Gem stepped back and pressed her into a doorway.
“What?”
But then Loren saw them. Four large figures in armor, walking heavily down the street toward them. They stood tall and broad, their eyes searching every corner.
One of the figures was Gregor.
Her blood chilled, Loren ducked to avoid his gaze. Part of her knew she need not have worried; Gregor could not have found her green eyes by moonslight alone. Still, she quaked within her rags as he passed with his guards.
They had to be hunting for Annis, same as Loren. She could think of no other reason for Damaris’s guards to wander the streets in darkness. That made tonight’s mission more urgent than ever.
She readied herself to step out of the doorway and hurry down the street, away from Gregor, when she heard a soothing voice in the darkness—too close, just by her ear.
“Can you not find your own place to stand? I find myself overcrowded.”
Nightblade: A Book of Underrealm (The Nightblade Epic 1) Page 13
