Wynn closed her eyes and bit down on the tip of her tongue. No matter which way she worked it, there was no good outcome. And the moments just kept creeping along.
She opened her eyes, peering toward the door to the courtyard . . . and it was closed again.
Wynn just kept staring at it, waiting. She finally got up, hesitantly creeping back up the passage. When she reached the door, she pressed her ear to it and listened, but she heard nothing at all . . . except a shift on stone behind her.
A hand dropped heavily on her shoulder.
She inhaled in fright and whirled about with a clenched fist. A thick hand clamped over her mouth as another one caught her punch.
“Shush. It is me, you fool,” Ore-Locks whispered into her face.
Wynn pulled his hand from her face, her heart still racing.
“Was that really necessary?” she hissed at him.
He rolled his eyes in a glower and pushed her out of the way. Reaching for the door, he cracked it open and peeked out.
“Is he gone?” she whispered, thinking that hardly likely. Once Rodian took after something, he was impossible to shake off.
Ore-Locks shot her an annoyed glance and cocked his head, motioning for her to follow. She was still shaking as she followed him out into the courtyard, but she was both astonished and relieved to find it empty.
It was not the time to question good luck, and she stayed right on Ore-Locks’s heels as they inched along the barracks to the courtyard’s corner. Chane must be wondering where they were by now, but Wynn was wondering something else.
Where has Rodian gone now?
Rodian walked his half of the front passage, past the common hall’s main arch, and rounded the right-hand turn toward the library’s north entrance. He passed the common hall’s small side arch on his right and the kitchen’s entrance across on the left. He peered into both, and both were empty, though he hadn’t expected to find anyone there. When he reached the left-hand passage leading to the northern tower, he paused to check the library door at the turn.
It was locked, as it should be. He shook his head, wondering what Hawes was up to with this nonsense errand. Something was clearly happening here. And still, while he was here . . .
He glanced down the way toward the door to the northern tower. The cold lamp above him at the library’s north entrance didn’t cast enough light that far, so he walked past the kitchen’s rear entrance and stopped to check the door across the way into the bailey’s rear.
It was locked, as were the tower door and the door next to that for the archives below.
Rodian had had enough of this and exhaled in exasperation as he headed back. It was time to get some answers out of Hawes.
CHAPTER 16
Waiting alone in the alley with Chap, Magiere found that she had too much time to think. Much too much. Of all that she might’ve wished for tonight, the last was abundant time to think—especially while suffering in ignorance over what was happening with her companions.
She assumed that Osha and Leanâlhâm were on the way back. It depended on how long it had taken to unload that wagon. Leesil and Brot’an must have breached the keep by now. But every time Magiere blinked, she saw flashes of what she’d done in the northern white wastes to find and secure the second orb, to get Leesil and Chap out of that frigid land alive.
To return here and learn there were yet more orbs, that more of the Ancient Enemy’s minions were on the move, searching as well, was too much. And the one person besides Chap who might have real answers was locked up beyond reach.
Magiere had such a burning urge to go after Wynn herself, and she glanced down. Chap was watching the street, his ears pricked up. She wondered if he’d caught any of these brief memories of hers. She didn’t ask him or warn him to stay out of her head.
In truth, she wasn’t worried about Chap. He’d had his own agenda from the beginning of all this and would see it through to the end. Neither was she worried about herself—at least not about her purpose for the future.
Leesil was another matter. There was nothing Magiere wouldn’t do to keep him safe, even when he tried to stop her from doing so. All his life, he’d been either a slave assassin to a warlord or a slave to the open road or a slave to fates they couldn’t shake, especially hers. All he really wanted now was to go home to their tavern, the Sea Lion, in the little coastal town of Miiska.
That had once been Magiere’s strongest desire, next to him.
Over and over, the warm image of hearth and home had wavered like a mirage, just out of reach. Over and over, it had vanished more quickly as each seemingly insurmountable task had fallen on them. In the beginning, it had been him who’d kept her going, held her up in the face of it all.
How much had changed . . . and now there were two more orbs to find.
Chap suddenly rumbled, just once. Magiere found him watching her with his crystalline blue eyes.
She’d never told him, but she’d come to see him as the strong one among the three of them. Chap would face anything as long as the purpose was clear, and if it wasn’t, he would hold everything in place until it was. He’d been the one to take the two orbs into hiding, so that no one but him knew where they were. How he’d accomplished that in the end he’d never said, but she remembered the way he returned to meet up with her and Leesil.
Chap had padded back into their sight as if he carried some internal burden that gave him unbearable shame. He would take whatever fate threw at him and snarl in its face, but upon his return, he’d been silent. He’d ignored any attempt Leesil made to get him to use the talking hide.
Magiere ran her hand down Chap’s neck.
He hated being relegated to the “distraction” as much as she did. Like her, he hadn’t been able to fault Leesil’s plan or come up with anything better.
“Shouldn’t be much longer,” she said.
Chap’s shoulders stiffened under her hand. An instant later, she heard the creak and clatter of wagon wheels on cobble.
Drawing her falchion, she rested it against her thigh as Chap shot across the alley’s mouth to lurk at its other side. They were ready, for even when Osha and Leanâlhâm arrived, the “distraction” was far from over.
Én’nish flitted among the street’s darkest shadows beside Rhysís as they followed the strange pair driving the wagon away from the castle. She let them get far enough away that not even a quiet disturbance would be heard or seen by the red tabard guards on the castle’s bailey walls.
Rhysís pulled the pieces of his short bow out of the back of his tunic and assembled the two arms into their white metal handle. He and Én’nish paused once around a street corner. She waited while he strung the bow and pulled aside the shoulder of his tied-up cloak to reveal his quiver of short arrows. She had always found his skill set to be strange.
He was equally skilled—above sufficient—in everything an anmaglâhk valued: hand-to-hand, weapons, languages, subterfuge, interrogation, and tracking. But he had no skill of excellence. For some reason, this bothered her.
Most anmaglâhk were sufficient in most skills but excelled at one or two. She excelled in hand-to-hand, with blades or not, and her small size had more than once drawn an opponent into overconfidence. Rhysís also spoke less than any anmaglâhk she’d ever known—though he seemed to know Dänvârfij well. As a result, Én’nish didn’t care much for him, though he was a sound partner on a hunt like this. At the moment, that was all that mattered.
She glanced back along the way they had come. The small castle was no longer in sight. As she looked down the street to the wagon now a block ahead, she raised one hand and brushed her thumb across her first two fingers.
At the signal, Rhysís notched an arrow, and Én’nish drew her stilettos.
The wagon suddenly turned a corner and passed out of sight.
Én’nish let out a grating breath. But as soon as they regained a line of sight, Rhysís would put down the driver. They could easily take the disguised sage to Fr
éthfâre, and then Rhysís could go to notify Dänvârfij.
This was not a difficult purpose to fulfill.
Én’nish broke into an open run along the empty street, with Rhysís close behind her. When she neared that corner, she swerved in under the last shop’s awning. Then as she crept toward the corner, she made another silent gesture.
Rhysís ran wide in the street, raising his bow to aim down the alley, and Én’nish readied to duck around the corner.
An arrow’s quick hiss broke the silence.
In the side of Én’nish’s view, Rhysís suddenly twisted away, and he had not fired his bow. A vicious snarl erupted in the alley as she saw an arrow sticking through the fabric of Rhysís’s hood. Its black feathers protruded next to his cloth-wrapped jaw.
Rhysís himself was unhurt.
Something glinted on Én’nish’s other side, rushing at her head. She ducked and spun out before the alley’s mouth.
The nearer pillar of the shop shattered, making the whole awning above begin to buckle. As she looked atop the wagon’s bed in the side alley, the driver stood there with a long, curved, elven bow raised and readied.
There was no sign of the disguised sage.
Én’nish barely made out a face in the shadowed hood pulled forward over the driver’s head. His amber eyes and dark skin with too-long features and . . .
It was Osha, the failure, and onetime student of Sgäilsheilleache. He must have been the one on the rooftops nights ago, the archer to whom Brot’ân’duivé had called out. Osha swung his aim toward her, another arrow already notched and pulled.
“No!” someone growled in the alley’s dark. “Take the other. . . . This one is mine.”
Out of the dark alley came the monster, stepping around the shattered remains of the shop column.
Magiere’s sickening white skin caught the dim light of a street lantern up the way. She raised her heavy, one-edged sword, gripped it with both hands, and charged. The silver majay-hì bolted straight at Rhysís from the alley’s other side.
It had all been a decoy, a trap. That was all that Én’nish had time to realize as she heard Osha’s bowstring release and saw Magiere’s sword coming fast at a downward angle.
Én’nish ducked and spun, hearing the sword pass too close to her head.
Magiere’s falchion tip clipped the street’s cobble, and she reversed her hands instantly to bring the blade back in a waist-high slash. This anmaglâhk seemed too small to be one of the an’Cróan, but that only confirmed what she guessed.
It had to be Én’nish beneath that hood and face wrap. The same who’d wanted Leesil dead when they’d entered the Elven Territories of the Farlands. The one who’d wrapped a garrote around his throat only a few nights ago.
Magiere was sick of these murderers coming at her—at Leesil—and she didn’t resist when hunger boiled from her stomach into her throat.
The night lit up, searing her eyes as her sight fully widened. All she saw was the one who’d tried to kill her husband. Even a notion of capturing one of these assassins, forcing one to tell everything of Most Aged Father’s plans, vanished from her thoughts as she swung.
Leesil had told her to just run decoy and get away. But he wasn’t here.
Én’nish dropped and rolled under Magiere’s arcing falchion. The vicious little killer rose to her feet without a stall and ran for the tilted awning above the broken column.
Magiere lost all self-control. She let the falchion spin out of her hands, clattering across the cobble, and she lunged after her prey.
Én’nish leaped upward. Her forward foot landed halfway up the awning’s remaining support post. She twisted her torso back toward the street.
Even functioning on instinct, Magiere knew what to do. She rushed in before Én’nish planted her other foot and seized the woman’s trailing calf before she could push off into the air. She pulled Én’nish off balance and heaved the small woman overhead toward the open street.
Én’nish shrieked and tumbled through the air as Magiere charged after her.
The small, forest gray form fell and tumbled across the cobble to slam against a wall at the street’s far side. Magiere didn’t slow to snatch up her falchion as her target clawed up to her feet.
Magiere didn’t even think of a weapon. All she felt was a need to end anything that tried to harm her mate. All that remained was hunger and the drive to tear her prey apart with her hands . . . with her teeth.
Chap rushed the male anmaglâhk as he tried again to fire an arrow. An instant before he leaped, the bowstring released. He heard the arrow hiss away behind him as his forepaws caught his target square in the chest.
There was no time to look back and see if Osha had been hit.
Chap did not even have an instant for surprise that the anmaglâhk had not tried to evade him. They both slammed down on the cobble in a tangle.
He snapped and snarled, trying first for the man’s face. The anmaglâhk took a swipe with his bow. Its thick center struck Chap’s muzzle, and the pain briefly stunned him. Then he felt the elf’s free hand push at his face. He snapped blindly at it, hoping to maim that bowstring hand. Instead, his teeth closed on a forearm, and he thrashed his head, tearing at it. Beneath the anmaglâhk’s sudden outcry, Chap heard Osha’s shout.
“Chap, move!”
But he did not—not until the anmaglâhk brought a knee up into his side.
Chap gasped and tumbled away as forest gray fabric shredded in his teeth. Somewhere nearby came a shriek that smothered the clatter of metal across cobblestones. When he rolled to his feet, trying to catch his breath, the anmaglâhk was already standing again.
The man’s sleeve behind his draw hand was shredded and blood-soaked. Still, he held the bow steady, aimed in Osha’s direction. He began to sidestep, his eyes shifting right just once, likely looking for his companion.
Chap took a quick step at that opening and then faltered.
Magiere’s falchion lay in the middle of the street, and he raised his eyes and spotted her. He panicked at the sight of her twisted features. A raised memory of hearth and home would not reach through to her now, and Leesil was not here. There was only one other thing that might make Magiere respond.
Chap had to end this fouled exploit.
Still dazed, Én’nish tried to twist away as a blurry hand came for her throat. She barely whipped her head aside, for her opponent was now too fast and so impossibly strong.
The hand latched onto her shoulder and crushed its grip closed. Én’nish cried out in pain that made her sight darken, and she lashed out with a foot.
It connected with the inside of a knee. Her assailant instantly began to topple, but the grip held. It did not break until Én’nish’s back hit the street. Those fingers bruised her shoulder muscles before she rolled away.
She rose, shaking her head to clear her senses amid pain. Then fear overrode anguish, anger, and hate. She looked into the face of a monster not three paces before her.
The white face beneath stray tendrils of black hair was covered in a sheen like a quick sweat. Tears rolled from narrowed eyes that were completely black, with no whites. Features twisted in rage and madness. An open mouth exposed the teeth, the fangs, of some animal.
This was the true face of the monster called Magiere.
Rhysís came into Én’nish’s peripheral view, backing up the street’s far side. “Break off!” he shouted in their own tongue. “Now!”
All the anger came back to Én’nish, but horror overwhelmed it again when the monster took a lunging step.
Magiere stalled at an eerie wail that pierced Én’nish’s ears.
It was like the mewl of a large cat, but so loud in warning, as if rising from the throat of a dog. As that sound seemed to vibrate through Én’nish’s bones, she shivered, and Magiere turned in its direction.
Én’nish spotted Chap lowering his head, and her spite resurfaced again. She held out a stiletto, pointing it at Magiere as she shouted in Elvish, and R
hysís instantly leveled his aim on the majay-hì.
* * *
“Think of your misbegotten mate and the love he took from me! I will suffer that for a lifetime . . . but I will see you suffer the same an instant before you die.”
Chap caught every word of the smaller anmaglâhk’s shout in Elvish, even as his wail to Magiere had left his throat raw. There was no mistaking Én’nish’s voice.
Magiere twisted back at the woman’s vicious voice, but she could not have understood those words. The anmaglâhk archer swung his aim toward Chap.
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