“Gustav! I have missed you!”
“Bardin has treated you well, I trust?” Gustav replied, his gaze flicking to the man who had stayed by the founder’s side.
“Yes, yes, very well.” The founder echoed Gustav’s glance, his lips curling with mischief. “But he is not you.”
To Marsh’s surprise, Gustav colored at the remark.
“I am honored to be back, Monsieur.”
“As am I. Please, come and sit.” This time the founder extended the invitation to everyone. “I look forward to hearing what the Master of Shadows has to say.”
“He agrees,” Roeglin told him, and Monsieur raised his eyebrows.
“He does? What, to all of it?”
“With some modifications.”
Gravine smiled at that.
“Of course, with modifications. How could it be otherwise?” He paused as a door at the other end of the room opened and several stewards entered, bringing food and drink. “I assume you have not eaten recently?”
“Thank you, and no, founder, we have not eaten.”
Marsh noticed that Roeglin did not say they had not eaten for much of the day, the excitement of meeting with Master Envermet’s security force followed by their rapid journey to Ruins Hall having made them forget. Either the founder could read their silence or he’d had experience with envoys before because he waved the stewards forward.
“I hope you do not mind talking while we eat,” he said. “I worked through the evening meal and am hungry. I’d be honored if you’d share this with me.”
“Founder, the honor is ours.”
If Roeglin’s words hid a smile, his face hid it better. Monsieur Gravine waited until the stewards had served them each a thick, meat-filled sandwich, and heavy glass containing a dark liquid. Judging from the light-colored froth at the top of each glass, it was one of the local brews, and rather than speaking immediately, the founder concentrated on eating. They followed his example until their plates were cleared and their glasses emptied, the stewards appearing as soon as they were done to refill their glasses and take their plates.
“Now,” the founder said, sitting back in his chair, “tell me what the Master of Shadows said in response to my request.
Roeglin cleared his throat and glanced at Gustav. The bodyguard waved for him to relay the message.
“The Master of Shadows greets you and agrees to your proposal to build a force to protect the Four Settlements, starting with the Ruins Hall cavern. He agrees to provide a place of security for your troops and their families, just as he would extend such hospitality to any in the caverns. He also suggests that eligible adults be trained within the ranks of your forces, while younger talents serve their apprenticeships at the academy.”
“Agreed,” the founder said, “but what did he have to say about patrolling and protecting the caverns?”
“He said he would send a contingent of shadow guards and mages to be divided between your patrols, and to man the waystations the rock wizards are building on the trade routes so that the caravans have a safe place to rest. He also agrees to his mages being accompanied by your men when they recruit.”
Monsieur Gravine gave Roeglin a long and steady look.
“May I speak with him?”
“Yes, Monsieur,” Roeglin replied and shifted his seat so that the founder could look him directly in the eye. “When you are ready.”
His eyes flared white, as Roeglin relayed the Master of Shadow’s words, and the two leaders finalized their understanding.
“I will send you the parchment by courier,” Monsieur Gravine said as they concluded their business, and Roeglin dipped his chin in a very Shadow-Master-like nod.
“I look forward to seeing it.”
When the white faded from Roeglin’s eyes, Monsieur Gravine nudged the shadow mage’s glass closer.
“Thank you, Shadow Master.”
With that, the founder sat back in his chair, running his gaze over them as though he were contemplating what he might say next. In the end, it was another request for information.
“Tell me what you found between here and the shadow monastery.”
Roeglin obliged, pulling information from each of them. The founder seemed most disturbed by the depopulated claim and farm and sighed.
“It is the same here,” he said. “We are losing the outlying settlements, to the point that I am on the verge of pulling the outermost people closer to the center.”
“You will need to do that anyway,” Roeglin added. “They have assembled a force in Leon’s Deep and intend to attack Ruins Hall.”
He shifted uneasily in his chair as though he’d just remembered how urgent that part of his message was.
“We had an assassin come after Marsh. Something she was carrying for delivery was of some importance to them.”
The founder leaned forward.
“Did they get it?”
“No. We have secured it.”
“I don’t suppose…”
Roeglin shook his head and held up his hand, and the founder sat back, his lips twisting in a wry smile. “I thought not. Please. Continue.”
“The Master of Shadows is repairing the glows between here and the monastery, and the road to Kerrenin’s Ledge will be next. He does not believe we have the time to delay. That team is on its way, along with a security team to ensure its safety. Please let your patrols know. I do not think Master Envermet will be either as cooperative or understanding as we were.”
Monsieur Gravine nodded.
“It shall be so. Continue.”
“Master Envermet’s security team will join you in defending this cavern, and in helping us secure and repair the route to the Ledge. His mages will bolster your forces immediately afterward until his replacements arrive. Recruiting needs to occur soon, or you will run out of mages to distribute between your forces.”
Roeglin looked at Marsh.
“Is there anything I missed?”
“I need to see Madame Monetti.”
This brought raised eyebrows from both Roeglin and the founder.
“Why?”
“I believe she is working with the raiders. She is the only one who could have told them who had the artifact since she was the one slated to receive it.”
“She’s the addressee?”
“Oui, Monsieur.”
The founder sat back in his chair, his expression clouded as he thought about what she had said. Finally, he straightened up and looked at her.
“Madame Monetti lives a little farther back in the cavern, not far from the tunnel leading to Leon’s Deep.” He drew back as Marsh got out of her chair. “I will send an escort with you.”
“Thank you, Monsieur.”
Marsh pushed back her chair and had stepped around it to head for the door when Monsieur Gravine raised his voice.
“In the morning,” he finished in a tone that said his decision was final.
Marsh hesitated, tempted to continue walking, but she stopped. When she turned slowly around, Monsieur Gravine and Roeglin were staring at her.
“Tomorrow might be too late,” she said. “We need to go tonight.”
This time it was Roeglin who denied her request.
“Tomorrow will be soon enough,” he told her. “She doesn’t know we’ve arrived, and she certainly doesn’t know what happened to Mikel. We have to be the first to reach the Hall since then.”
He waited, and, when Marsh did not resume her seat, he sighed, putting a sense of uncompromising steel in his next two words.
“Tomorrow, Trainee.”
Use rank on her, would he? Marsh gritted her teeth.
“She could get word tonight. The raiders used gates to navigate the shadow, remember? They don’t need to follow the trails. She could be being briefed right now, and we’d never know it.” She paused. “Shadow’s Deep! She could already have been briefed, and we wouldn’t know. We have to go, now. Tomorrow—”
“Will be time enough!” Roeglin snapped
, glancing at Monsieur Gravine. “Now, return to your seat.”
“You need to wait for your shadow guard,” Monsieur Gravine said, picking up where Roeglin had left off. “The six men you have with you will not be enough to deal with the guards I would expect at that lady’s mansion. I must insist you wait.”
“Marsh,” Roeglin’s voice was softer, now, almost pleading, “Master Envermet will be here in the morning. At least wait for him.”
Marsh sighed, catching the subtle shift of the guards as they moved to block the door leading out of Monsieur Gravine’s office. To her surprise, the founder spoke again, doing his best to convince her of the wisdom of waiting instead of giving her a direct order.
“The cavern is not safe by night,” he added. “With the glows down, packs of joffra have moved in, some from the direction of Leon’s Deep and some from other tunnels. We’re working on blocking those, but we’re a long way from done, and the Seekers won’t be happy.”
Marsh couldn’t imagine they would be. The secrets of the tunnels were their bread and butter, roads to wealth or oblivion for the ones who dared to walk them. Blocking the tunnels meant less access to the very routes that gave the seekers a livelihood. Monsieur Gravine carried on, oblivious of the direction of her thoughts.
“Only the Protectors move freely during the night, and that because they go so heavily armed and in squads of eight to twelve. Even the joffra prefer easier prey. You can leave when Master Envermet arrives. In the meantime, while you were gone, I had my clerk search the records in Ruins Hall pertaining to the Danet family. As you can imagine, there were very few, and the ones we do have suggest there might be documents pertaining to the Danets in Kerrenin’s Ledge.”
Marsh walked slowly back to her seat, noticing that Roeglin relaxed just a little as she sat beside him. Still, Monsieur Gravine wasn’t finished.
“I will speak with your Master of Shadows regarding the importance of you traveling with the repair teams when they leave for the Ledge. We should do our best to connect the children with their loved ones.”
From what Tamlin had said, there hadn’t been a lot of love shared between his parents and their relatives, but Marsh kept that to herself. No doubt it would come out in the wash, and there was no need to air it here.
“Thank you, Monsieur Gravine.”
She couldn’t think of anything else to say. In fact, she was trying hard not to think of anything, what with Roeglin sitting right beside her. With his propensity to go walking through her head, she didn’t want to think of visiting Madame Monetti before Master Envermet could arrive with the shadow mages everyone thought she needed to keep her safe.
It was enough to make her blood boil, being treated as though she didn’t know her side of the business. If she were Kearick, she’d have had someone waiting for Mikel outside the monastery, and if that artifact was as important as they seemed to think it was, she’d have had a mage or two standing by to open a gateway directly from the monastery’s cavern to as close to Madame Monetti’s mansion as she could.
They could be that precise, couldn’t they?
I think so, Roeglin intruded. It wouldn’t make any sense otherwise.
And there was the reason she was trying not to think of what she needed to do next.
And what is that? Roeglin wanted to know, and Marsh turned her head to scowl at him, completely ignoring the sudden interest on Monsieur Gravine’s face.
“Sleep!” she murmured, and it wasn’t far from the truth.
The founder responded as though she had spoken to him.
“An excellent idea, Mademoiselle Leclerc. We all need to rest. Tomorrow is going to be a very long day, and with an early start, if I’m not mistaken. I will have the stewards escort you to your quarters.”
Marsh blushed.
“I’m sorry, Monsieur; I did not mean to be rude.”
He waved her apology aside.
“No need to apologize. You raised a good point.” He made a show of stifling a yawn. “And I am tired too. I will see you all in the morning.”
Whether that last was a polite farewell or firm order, Marsh couldn’t tell, but she’d treat it as the latter. She would make sure to meet him again in the morning.
Good to know, Roeglin told her as he rose from his seat, following Monsieur Gravine’s gesture to where the stewards were waiting.
“Sleep well,” he said, and Marsh joined in with the murmured replies wishing him equal fortune in finding rest.
11
Slipping the Leash
Marsh ended up sharing a room with Izmay, but she didn’t complain. The female shadow guard seemed friendly enough behind the veneer of distance she maintained. She lounged against the door as Marsh washed up, catching the trainee’s look of unease with a slight upward quirk of her lips.
“I’m supposed to watch you until you’re asleep,” she admitted. “Roeglin said so.”
“Nice.” It wasn’t hard for Marsh to sound disgusted at the idea.
Marsh decided wringing Roeglin’s neck might not be out of the question. She didn’t say so, though. Instead, she raised her hands in mock surrender, then shucked her armor, boots, and blades and slid between the clean sheets of the lower bunk.
“Night, Mama.”
Izmay flashed her a smile and crossed over to lean on the top bunk and look into Marsh’s face.
“If you were any kid of mine, I’da tanned your hide by now.”
Marsh pulled a face and rolled over on her side, putting her back to the room.
“It’s a good thing I’m not, then, isn’t it?” she muttered, feeling childishly defiant.
I wonder if this is what it’s like for Aisha, she thought, closing her eyes and letting her breathing even out. She also wondered how Mordanlenoowar was faring. The big kat had vanished into the shrooms and shadows when the squad had taken them in tow on the other side of Ruins Hall, and Marsh hadn’t seen her since.
She tugged at the shadows close by, asking them for news of the kat, but not a single one of them trembled. It was like none of the shadows around her connected with the cavern outside the walls. Marsh sighed and tried to use her ability to sense life forces to detect where the kat might be, but all she got was a sense of thick walls and muffled flames, then nothing.
The very density of the walls interfered, similar to the way the cavern walls divided the outside world into compartments. Marsh sighed, thinking she shouldn’t have been surprised that Monsieur Gravine’s mansion walls acted in the same way. Forcing herself to relax, she listened as Izmay finished her evening’s ablutions and climbed into the bunk above.
Then Marsh waited some more.
She was tired from the long day’s run, but she knew she had to reach Madame Monetti while the woman was unprepared…if the woman was ever unprepared. Marsh’s mind flitted back to her time working for Kearick. She doubted there’d ever been a time when the wily old businessman had been unprepared.
Ever.
It made it hard to stay relaxed. It should have made it impossible to sleep.
But it didn’t.
Marsh woke to the sound of Izmay pulling her armor on as quietly as she could. The woman started when Marsh rolled over.
“Oh, you’re awake.”
“Merde!”
Izmay grinned.
“What? Slept in?”
Marsh scowled at her and swung her feet over the edge of the bed.
“You could say that,” she grumbled, and set about getting dressed.
Izmay laughed.
“The master said you’d be unimpressed.”
“Roeglin?”
What did he know about her sleeping in?
“Yeah, but he also said you needed the sleep.”
He had? Wait, what had he done?
Marsh rammed her arm through her sleeve and jerked her boots onto her feet.
If that dirty mind-crawling pain-in-the-ass had tampered with her head, she was going to take large, hairy pieces out of his hide!
A polite knock at the door interrupted her thoughts, and Izmay gave her a cursory glance before answering it.
Good thing I’m dressed, Marsh thought.
“I’m to take you to the dining hall.”
The child standing at their doorway couldn’t have been any older than Aisha, and her dark eyes were wide with awe as she took in their armor and swords. Marsh could almost see the thought crossing her fuzzy little head: When I grow up, I’m going to be just like them!
Oh, no, kid, she thought. Not like me. Be something better.
But she didn’t say it out loud. Instead, she focused on finishing getting herself armored and then exchanging kit checks with Izmay, aware of the child’s intense scrutiny the entire while. She let Izmay lead the way out of the room and followed, ignoring the woman’s glance back to verify that she hadn’t tried to go elsewhere.
Marchant pulled the door to their room closed behind her and walked after the guard, letting herself drop back a little bit at a time. By the time she was ready to take a side passage, Izmay had stopped looking over her shoulder. Mourning the loss of breakfast, Marsh stepped away, taking partial cover behind a man carrying a tray laden with dirty dishes.
With any luck, he’d be heading for the kitchen, and the kitchen would have some sort of way out that would be connected with an exit to the caverns beyond the mansion. Marsh just had to move fast enough that Izmay didn’t realize she’d ducked away, and Roeglin couldn’t catch up with her before she made it out the gates. Maybe he’d be late for breakfast…
Marsh shook her head.
Nah. No hope for that—but he might be too busy with breakfast to realize she hadn’t arrived with the rest, and the same might go for Izmay and Gustav.
Gustav.
Now, there was a more likely problem.
Marsh hurried her steps, discovering she had guessed right about where the man was heading. She found herself in the kitchen. Snatching a couple of crescent-shaped shroom pastries from one tray and a shroom roll from another, Marsh looked around, searching for another door.
One clearly led to the pantry, and she couldn’t resist lifting an uncut slab of bacon from another sideboard as she passed —Mordan would be hungry—and went through another in the wake of a boy carrying a bag of vegetable scraps. Those had to go outside, right?
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