—I . . . understand . . . too—
Shade ignored her father, watching only Wynn.
“I know you do,” Wynn whispered.
At that, Chap looked between them, and his ears stiffened. Know what? Was . . . is she. . . . talking to you?
Wynn hung there, still gripping the door’s handle. Shade was talking to her—in a way. It was only by having learned to isolate certain sounds—spoken words—from memories seen inside of Wynn, and also by Shade’s learning what they meant. On the other hand, Wynn could only hear Chap, as a true Fay, in her head because of the taint left in her from a failed thaumaturgical ritual.
Wynn’s eyes widened at a notion. Aside from being a Fay, Chap had been born into a majay-hì body the same as his mate Lily . . . and his daughter, Shade.
“Oh . . . have I got a useful trick for you,” Wynn whispered, and then smiled.
Chap’s ears fell, flattening in apprehension.
Wynn only giggled. “And it’s going to drive Leesil to fits!”
Back inside the room, as Chap sat with Wynn before the sketched map on the floor, Leesil finally looked up from the map’s other side at everyone.
“Is that clear enough?” he asked. “Any last doubts?”
Chap knew there were—he had plenty himself. Yet no one, not even Brot’an, had offered anything better. Leesil looked at Wynn kneeling beside Chap.
“Can you and Ore-Locks take care of what we need?” he asked.
She, in turn, looked up at the dwarf standing behind her, but when Chap glanced back it was at his daughter.
Shade lay removed from everyone, especially him, lying in the far corner next to the pile of gear Osha had stored there.
“It can be done,” Ore-Locks said with a nod.
“Then it is time,” Brot’an cut in. “I will escort you back to your inn.”
As Wynn rose, Chap got up, as well, turning about for the door. Brot’an was already there.
“No,” he said, shaking his head once. “I alone will take them.”
Chap snarled, stalking straight at Brot’an, and Wynn’s hand dropped on his shoulders. He looked up at her, his jowls still curled back.
You are not to be alone with him.
Wynn frowned at him.
“Dawn will come soon,” Brot’an said, drawing Chap’s attention. “And . . . respectfully, you are the hardest to move through the streets without being spotted.”
Chap merely stared in Brot’an’s eyes until Wynn closed her little fingers in his scruff.
“Don’t you have something to say to them?” she asked, and glanced over her shoulder.
Chap knew Wynn was looking at Leesil and Magiere.
“What now?” Leesil grouched.
Chap was not looking forward to this. After the last additional thing that Wynn—and Shade—had shown him outside the room, he already felt shamed . . . and stupid. And Wynn had been right.
Once Chap showed—told—Leesil, he was going to throw a fit. Probably a big one.
The instant Brot’an opened the door, Shade hopped to her feet and scurried through. Wynn scratched her fingertips quickly on Chap’s scalp and whispered, “Get it over with.” She followed Ore-Locks out, and the last to leave was Brot’an.
“Chap?” Magiere called. “What’s going on?”
He slumped, hanging his head, and finally turned about. First, without looking at Magiere or Leesil, he snatched up the talking hide in his teeth and dropped it on top of the sketched map. He might need it to help clarify what he was about to do.
Leesil looked at the hide with a frown, but Chap did not start pawing the letters. Instead, he began messing about, as Leesil would say, with all of the memories he had ever dipped from within his lifetime companion. It was not easy to find all that he sought, and Leesil flinched more than once.
“Will you get to the point already!” Leesil snapped, and then suddenly he went flat-faced and held his breath.
Magiere was watching Leesil. As he stiffened all over, she grabbed him and shook him. Still, he just stared back at Chap. Before Magiere could speak, Leesil’s left eye twitched.
“What was that?” he whispered.
Chap did not know if Leesil asked if he had heard right or at all. It was one thing for Chap to call up a series of memory fragments inside Leesil or Magiere to make his intention clear as a communication. It was entirely another matter to call only the sound of voices from those long past moments—and, again, even harder to pick out and raise particular words or phrases arranged in the right order.
Chap was the one who had the headache this time. It went all the way into his eyes and ears. But it appeared he would not need the talking hide after all, and he repeated those fragmented spoken words gleaned from Leesil’s memories.
—not—remember—only hear—my—words—from the—past—voices— . . . —I—can . . . speak—and you—hear—me—now—
How Shade had figured out how to do this left Chap in dismay. Then again, she had grown up with her own kind, unlike him. She knew only memory-speak, as Wynn called it, from the very beginning. She never had to deal with spoken language until finding Wynn, while he was still not as skilled at memory-speak as other majay-hì.
This new trick with memory-words would be useful, but it was not easy to do.
Leesil’s expression began to darken.
“All of this time,” he whispered, “before we even knew what you were . . . could do. . . . You’ve been messing around in my head.”
Osha finally spoke up. “Why Léshil be angry to Chap?”
Even Leanâlhâm was staring in worry.
Leesil lunged from where he sat, shouting, “Come here, you mangy mutt!”
Chap tried to retreat, but his back paws did not catch. He ended up on his rump as Leesil dived for him with one outstretched hand. Magiere jumped on top of Leesil’s back, pinning him to the floor, as Leanâlhâm scrambled on hands and knees to shield Chap.
“Do not touch him . . . speak to him that way!” the girl shouted at Leesil. “You will treat majay-hì with respect!”
“Respect?” Leesil echoed amid frantic breaths. “That deceitful, conniving—”
Leanâlhâm swatted him across the top of his head. “I not warn you again,” she added emphatically.
“Leesil, what’s this about?” Magiere demanded, still holding him down.
Leesil glared at Chap beyond a surprisingly angry Leanâlhâm, and he whispered, “It’s him . . . talking at me . . . in my head.”
“Well, what did he show you?” Magiere asked.
“Not memories . . . words!” Leesil barked, and tried again, unsuccessfully, to get out from under her. “He’s putting words in my head.”
Chap cowered behind Leanâlhâm, even as the girl looked back at him over her shoulder. Puzzled astonishment spread over her face. Osha, too, looked completely dumbstruck.
“Chap talk now?” he asked.
Magiere was watching Leesil, but she glanced sidelong at Chap in suspicion. So far, only Leesil truly understood what was going on, and Chap swallowed hard, waiting for Magiere to catch up.
“Why didn’t you figure this out years ago . . . oh, great and wise Fay?” Leesil asked.
That brought back Chap’s spite. He called up Leesil’s own memory of a Chap covered in soot, scratching himself raw, and then added in broken memory words.
—You—not—think of it—either—
Leesil just glared at him.
“Wait,” Magiere said too quietly. “He can talk . . . in our heads?”
“Yes,” Leesil hissed.
And Magiere leaned forward atop Leesil, peering down at him. “So he can yammer at us, order us about, anytime he wants?”
Leesil let out a groan, or maybe it was a deep whine. He dropped his forehead against the floor. Magiere let out a sigh as she dropped on her butt beside him.
Chap rumbled and flicked his tongue up over his nose at both of them.
Just before dawn, Brot’ân’duivé to
ok Wynn and her two companions, Shade and Ore-Locks, back to their inn. It was a long, slow process of moving the sage, the majay-hì, and the dwarf from one hiding point to the next as the city began to awaken for the day. But when he left them at their inn, he did not return to where Magiere and the others hid.
There was a task he needed to complete, and best done without the others knowing. He slipped through the shadowed alleys and cutways toward the guild’s small castle.
Although Brot’ân’duivé would not say so, he thought Léshil’s escape plan was as sound as any he could have formulated himself. The half-blood’s mind worked well, likely from his mother’s training, when he was not distracted. He possessed an innate ability to see what others might do and build upon those possible reactions. In spite of this, there was one long-term risk that Brot’ân’duivé wanted removed.
Any contact the anmaglâhk in this city had with Most Aged Father could easily lead to other teams being sent out into the world. In addition, the ones already here might split up if they had the means to remain in contact and coordinate with each other.
At least one of those options had to be removed—especially the second one. And there was a step to add to the plan that the others could not know about.
He wanted all of his enemies following Magiere and Léshil . . . and himself. Undead or not, Wynn’s vampire would be a poor match for even a few trained members of Brot’ân’duivé’s cast, though this was not his only reason.
Dawn and dusk were the most common times for agents abroad to check in with Most Aged Father or with others out scouting or on watch. With their numbers dwindling, Dänvârfij would be the one to do both.
A few streets from the guild, Brot’ân’duivé scaled the back of a small shop and slipped from roof to roof, out of sight of those below. He paralleled Old Procession Road from two blocks south, pausing often to watch the city’s skyline. Something moved on a rooftop two blocks north, where Old Procession Road met Old Bailey Road, right across from the castle’s bailey gate.
Brot’ân’duivé shook his head once. They must be spread thin, and have grown desperate, to put a scout in such an obvious position. It would be so easy to eliminate one more of them.
From his crouched position, at first he could not identify the one. He did not know all who traveled with Dänvârfij and Fréthfâre, even after following them for a year. The one suddenly scuttled to the roof’s edge and hung its head over.
Brot’ân’duivé rose a little, wary of betraying his own presence against the city’s skyline. Almost immediately, the one on the roof returned to the side facing the castle. Brot’ân’duivé did not need to know more. He took off north across the roofs, running in plain sight.
Someone else had passed by in the street below, checking in with the watcher on the roof. When he reached the last roof’s side over Old Procession Road, he flattened as he peered over the edge.
A slender, tall form walked away in the early dawn. It wore a plain cloak, but that hid nothing from him. He saw its soft leather boots, dyed forest gray, and pant legs that matched. The way the figure moved, each step planted in a silent, flat step, was unmistakable.
Brot’ân’duivé watched Dänvârfij slip along the northwest run of Old Bailey Road, heading for some side street. She peered up toward the other one still on top of the roof.
Brot’ân’duivé could now see that the other figure was male. When that anmaglâhk shifted on the roof’s edge, on hands and knees, the male kept his right knee off the roof’s shakes.
Brot’ân’duivé realized it was Eywodan, likely the oldest member of the anmaglâhk here in this city. Years ago, Eywodan had assisted flood victims of Brot’ân’duivé’s own clan. Eywodan’s knee had been broken by rushing debris when he had waded into the swelling river. Brot’ân’duivé had carried him to a healer.
Brot’ân’duivé pushed away that memory and any sickness it brought. Eywodan was now the enemy, as well as Dänvârfij, Fréthfâre, and all of Most Aged Father’s loyalists. Any who still followed that twisted, maddened patriarch could no longer be seen in any other way. But Brot’ân’duivé lingered, for an enemy was sometimes made so by the actions of another—by his action. One mistake made in fury and hatred had led to all of this, though it had been spurred by Most Aged Father’s fanaticism.
Brot’ân’duivé had made that mistake. There was no changing it now, and he would not succumb to regret.
He watched until Eywodan looked the other way in scanning the guild’s castle and the loop of street around it. With the street below clear and empty, Brot’ân’duivé dropped over the edge to land silently upon the cobblestones. He ran through the alleys and cutways, searching for a vantage point to catch sight of Dänvârfij. When he spotted her around a street corner in the early, dim dawn, he stalled.
She had doubled back beyond the castle and was heading south.
In scouting ventures with Léshil, Brot’ân’duivé had discovered there were not many inns or way houses in the southern district. That area did hold one of the city’s landside exits. Could Dänvârfij simply be checking on another sentry? Had she placed someone to watch that exit?
It seemed unlikely, unwise, to spread their numbers so thin and still search for Magiere. Or had they given up the search and now merely waited and watched?
The sun had fully crested the rooftops in the east when Brot’ân’duivé finally watched Dänvârfij walk along a city thoroughfare and out the city’s southern exit. He waited but a few moments and then followed, lingering inside the great gate’s arch.
She only traveled a short way before stepping off the road into a grove of fir and pine trees.
This was what Brot’ân’duivé had hoped for. He waited until she was out of sight for three breaths, and then he walked out of the city before drawing his blades, keeping them under the folds of his dangling cloak.
Dänvârfij sank to her knees before a tall fir tree, its lowest branches high enough to hang above her bent head. She dreaded making this report, and yet she longed for guidance. Reaching inside the front of her forest gray tunic, she withdrew an elongated oval of smooth, tawny wood no bigger than her palm. She reached out and pressed the word-wood against the tree’s trunk and whispered.
“Father?”
I am here, daughter.
Most Aged Father’s voice filled her mind with welcome calm. She should have reported sooner and not let shame keep her from him.
“I have much to report,” she said. “The white woman is here. We have seen her, and she has seen us, but we have not captured her yet.”
What is the delay?
Dänvârfij closed her eyes. “Brot’ân’duivé now protects the woman and her companions. He has taken Wy’lanvi and Owain from us. Counting Fréthfâre, we are now six. I have allowed the others only a quarter day or night of sleep between search or watch duty. But we are spread thin in a human city of such size.”
She did not wish to sound as if she were making excuses for their lack of success. She simply wished him to know the true situation. No immediate response came, though she had not expected one. The loss of two more at the hands of the traitor would strike him hard. Even the thought of a greimasg’äh killing other anmaglâhk was so unthinkable.
So he is still there, in the city?
“And another,” she answered, though this part was not something easy to tell him. “The faltering one, Osha, is with him. There is also the last survivor of Sgäilsheilleache’s family . . . Leanâlhâm.”
Osha . . . and Leanâlhâm . . . in a land of humans? What are they doing with the traitor?
His tone was so shocked that Dänvârfij wished she had not been the one to deliver such news. The rent in her caste was deepening. It had become more than just a few among the people sympathizing with dissidents both inside or outside of the caste. Osha was no longer anmaglâhk, and Leanâlhâm was just an orphan, and yet both had stepped into this civil war.
Dänvârfij ached, thinking of her people and wonderi
ng how much worse things had become since she had left home. She could not ask.
Do you have a plan?
The abrupt shift caught her off guard but was welcome.
“Of a kind. Our quarry has been trying to reach the sage, Wynn Hygeorht. That woman may hold something of importance. She has been imprisoned by her own kind, and it is my hope that Magiere and Brot’ân’duivé will try to free her before fleeing the city. When they come for the sage, above all else, Brot’ân’duivé will die, and we will capture the others.”
Between Their Worlds Page 44
