Between Their Worlds Page 20

  “To where?”

  Nikolas blinked and took on a very poorly constructed demeanor of being affronted. “To Master a’Seatt’s scribe shop . . . to check on some work.”

  “A’Seatt?” Rodian repeated.

  “At the Upright Quill,” Nikolas added.

  Rodian knew the shop quite well. Pawl a’Seatt had been involved in that mess last autumn regarding stolen guild transcriptions and dead sages. Garrogh had died right outside that shop, and Lúcan had been marred for life. And a’Seatt’s scriptorium and scribes were regularly employed by the guild.

  Still pondering what this connection meant for recent events, Rodian nodded to Jonah.

  “Let him through.”

  “Open up!” Jonah called above, and the clanking began.

  The young sage slipped under as soon as the portcullis was halfway up.

  Rodian only watched and didn’t follow. Whatever was happening here on the guild grounds was somehow wrapped around Wynn—again. He would not miss any chance to uncover it.

  Magiere stirred and opened her eyes to find herself stretched out on the narrow bed. Leesil’s legs were pressed up beside her.

  He was sleeping upright, his back against the wall at the head of the bed. At her movement, his eyes opened, and he looked farther down the bed. She was covered by a blanket with no way for him to see her wound—or, rather, where it had been.

  “How are you?” Leesil asked, his tone cautious.

  Magiere wasn’t sure how to answer. She didn’t remember much—other than doing what she had to. She couldn’t remain incapacitated now that they were being hunted. Pulling back the blanket, she revealed her torn and bloodstained pant leg. All of the blood had been cleaned from her pale skin. Her thigh was stiff and aching, but there was no wound, not even a scar.

  Leesil bent forward, reaching over the bedside. When his hand came up, it held a bowl of biscuits and half of a roasted capon.

  “Here,” he said, setting the bowl on his lap.

  His cautious tone hadn’t changed, but Magiere felt suddenly, wildly ravenous. She grabbed a biscuit, shoving half of it into her mouth as she elbowed up to lean over the bowl.

  Vague memories came to her of having tried to eat last night. She couldn’t remember if she’d succeeded. The half capon looked torn off rather than cleanly cut, so perhaps she had. She knew Leesil wouldn’t mention anything about last night. They never talked about any of it, about what had happened to her in the Wastes . . . about what she’d become.

  Looking around, Magiere spotted Leanâlhâm sleeping on the floor at the bed’s other side. Beyond the girl, Chap lay nearest the door. Osha was awake, sitting beyond the bed’s foot by the window. Magiere sat up to take in the rest of the room and look for one more person.

  “He’s on the roof,” Leesil said quietly, placing the bowl in her lap.

  Magiere shoved the other half of the biscuit into her mouth, though she hadn’t finished swallowing the first half. She still couldn’t believe Brot’an had brought Leanâlhâm halfway across the world to a foreign land. At that thought, she remembered something more.

  Last night, Leanâlhâm had told them Gleann was dead. Had he contracted a sickness from one of his patients? The thought made Magiere sad, for she’d truly liked that old healer. They all had.

  With Sgäile gone, as well, perhaps Brot’an saw no choice but to take Leanâlhâm into his own care. Magiere would never say so aloud, but Nein’a, Leesil’s mother, wasn’t exactly the mothering kind . . . not like her son. Magiere would never trust Brot’an, but she didn’t hate him as did Leesil and Chap. No matter what Brot’an’s own motives, he’d once defended her, fought for her, and risked his own life when she’d been dragged on trial before the an’Cróan elders.

  Magiere briefly stopped chewing. It was so unreal that she, Leesil, and Chap should be hiding out on a foreign continent with Osha, Leanâlhâm . . . and Brot’an. After swallowing hard, she gulped from the water pitcher Leesil offered her.

  “You’d better call him in,” she said. “We need to talk.”

  “Good luck with that,” Leesil muttered.

  Before he could get up, Osha rose and opened the window to utter a strange birdlike chirp. Magiere downed the rest of the water pitcher, which was only half full. Leanâlhâm stirred and sat up, but after glancing at Magiere and then Leesil, she quickly dropped her gaze.

  Magiere could only imagine how last night had looked to Leanâlhâm. Frightening, at least. She wished she knew what to say, but no words came.

  A large, gloved hand wrapped over the window’s upper edge.

  Brot’an dropped into the room, landing too lightly on the floor for someone of his size. He was so large that his body seemed to fill the room, and his gaze locked immediately on Magiere’s leg—with its missing wound.

  She jerked the blanket over her legs again as she swung them over the bedside. Leanâlhâm shifted out of her way. The movement hurt, but Magiere tried to ignore it. She needed the spare pants out of her pack, but there was little privacy to be had at the moment.

  Chap was on his feet. Though he hadn’t growled, he paced over to the bed’s foot, sitting between it and Brot’an.

  With everyone assembled, Magiere suddenly felt lost for how to begin. They all had questions full of fear and suspicion for each other. But if a team of anmaglâhk was here in the city—sent by Most Aged Father—she wasn’t about to turn down help from Brot’an or even Osha. But their first concern was Wynn.

  “Is Wynn . . . prisoner?” Osha asked, breaking the silence.

  It was almost a relief that he’d spoken up first. Osha’s Belaskian wasn’t perfect, but it was better than Leesil’s bumbling Elvish. Osha always got straight to the point where anyone who mattered was concerned.

  “That’s what we need to find out,” Magiere answered.

  “Then someone has to get inside,” Brot’an said.

  Leesil climbed off the bed, crouching down beside Chap. “Not by breaking in . . . at least not yet. We don’t even know where Wynn is, specifically.”

  “Then what do you suggest?” Brot’an returned.

  In watching him, Magiere wasn’t certain the master anmaglâhk was all that interested in the answer.

  “We ask the sages,” Leesil said flatly. “We simply ask to speak with her. If they refuse, we’ll know she’s in trouble. If not . . . then we find out what’s happening.”

  Magiere opened her mouth and then closed it, grinding her teeth. She knew Leesil had more in mind than this.

  “Watching the guild castle is most likely how your enemies picked up your trail,” Brot’an responded. “They will continue to do so, with no other leads to find you. The sages have seen you. Reappearance will only raise suspicion if the little one is in trouble.”

  Magiere felt exhausted again. All this talk seemed pointless. She much preferred to just break in and find the “little one,” as Brot’an often called Wynn. But Wynn herself was the one who’d wanted to stay, and Magiere still wasn’t fully certain why.

  “Asking to see her is a foolish approach,” Brot’an emphasized. “Any of you will be recognized.”

  As much as this rankled Magiere, she couldn’t argue.

  “Not all of us,” Leesil countered. “Not all of us . . . present here and now.”

  Magiere grew suddenly wary, for Leesil was up to something again. Just before the memories rose in her head, she saw the back of his head turn just a little, as if he’d glanced to his right. There was one person he could’ve looked at. And worse, apparently Chap agreed with him.

  Image after image of Leanâlhâm raced through Magiere’s mind as Chap continued to call up more memories. She rolled out of bed to stand protectively in front of the girl at the same instant that Osha shouted at Leesil.

  “No!”

  Chap did not react to either Magiere or Osha’s outbursts.

  “It’s the only way,” Leesil said, for Chap had suggested it to him just before informing Magiere.

 
“She’s the only one who . . . looks innocent enough,” Leesil went on. “And no one there has seen her.”

  “Leanâlhâm? That is his idea?” Magiere asked, pointing at Chap. “She doesn’t know this place, these people, or anything outside her own world.”

  No one appeared to question how Magiere knew Chap was the one who had started this. But he could not have cared less about her anger, nor the bitter argument that followed. He merely waited as everyone vented on each other—everyone except Leanâlhâm, who kept watching the others in a worried state of bafflement.

  Leesil had clearly stated the problem regarding anyone else going. Brot’an and possibly Osha were known to the other anmaglâhk and might be spotted by any such watching the guild. The only one who remained potentially unknown to all was the girl.

  That Brot’an went quiet halfway through this loud debate was the only other element that gave Chap pause. But Chap had never intended to send Leanâlhâm out alone.

  “Why are you talking about me?” Leanâlhâm finally asked.

  Her words were so soft that perhaps only Chap heard her above the others. Of course he had expected a fight with Magiere, but it was Osha who turned the most vehement.

  “Magiere right!” he shouted into Leesil’s face and then bent over above Chap. “No Leanâlhâm!”

  Chap ignored him, as did Leesil.

  Brot’an’s eyes narrowed as he looked down at Chap.

  Still, Chap waited. This needed to reach a head before he would put an end to it, as what came next would only bring more for them to argue about. They needed to understand who was making the decisions here, should the girl agree.

  “It’s settled,” Magiere stated flatly, and Osha came up, taking position behind her. “It doesn’t matter who’s seen. Leanâlhâm isn’t going. I’ll do it myself.”

  That was exactly what Chap had waited for—another ultimatum from Magiere.

  Perhaps it was unwise to do this now, or unfair to use the girl. But Magiere’s judgment and changes had too often pushed them into further peril at every turn. She was going to listen to him from now on.

  No one but him, and especially not Brot’an, was making the choices anymore.

  Chap wheeled with a grating snarl and bit Magiere’s ankle.

  It wasn’t enough to break the boot’s leather, but it had to hurt. Magiere toppled on the bed and rolled away in startled anger. She never had a chance to say a word.

  Chap went straight at Osha, snapping and snarling. A wolf doing so would have been frightening enough, and majay-hì were all bigger than wolves. Unfortunately, Leanâlhâm was too close and scrambled away to the bedside in terror. Chap did not stop snarling until wide-eyed Osha was pinned in the corner beyond the room’s door. Only then did Chap slowly turn around upon the others.

  There was Brot’an in the middle of the room, half-crouched.

  Chap took a moment’s pleasure at the shadow-gripper’s tension. He glanced toward Leesil, calling up Leesil’s memories of Leanâlhâm in the cutway last night—fully cloaked and hooded. He added a cascade of every single memory in Leesil that showed Chap himself ranging city streets at night.

  Leesil flinched sharply, rubbing the side of his head. “Ah, seven hells. Knock that off! I get the point!”

  “What point?” Magiere demanded, rising on the bed’s far side next to him.

  Chap grew still and quiet, and looked at Leanâlhâm, who was cowering at the near side of the bed. He shook himself all over and padded to the pile of gear in the corner. He jerked a rope loose from one of the packs, shaking it apart and wriggling his head through a loop of it. Taking up the stray end in his teeth, he padded back to the girl.

  Leanâlhâm looked around at everyone with great worry. As Chap neared, head up, she had to look up to stare at him. But all he did was drop the end of the rope in her lap.

  Brot’an said, “This is not going to work.” Clearly, he understood and did not care for the idea.

  Chap did not care whether Brot’an liked it or not as he waited for Leanâlhâm’s understanding and her consent.

  “You stay out of it,” Leesil warned Brot’an.

  But the elder elf would not yield. “Chap will be almost as obvious as you or Magiere out there. And he has already been seen at the guild.”

  “So we’ll disguise him somehow. But it’s not your decision,” Leesil snapped. “It’s his . . . and hers.”

  Chap stood absolutely still within reach of Leanâlhâm. He waited until some of the fright and confusion in her green eyes gave way to wonder and curiosity.

  “It’s your choice, Leanâlhâm,” Leesil said. “You don’t have to do this, but if so, he’ll go with you.”

  Chap caught memories rising in Leanâlhâm of the majay-hì who protected her own homeland.

  “He understands what you—we—say?” she whispered, still watching him. “Do all majay-hì?”

  “No, just him,” Leesil let out in a grumble. “And trust me . . . it’s not always a good thing.”

  Chap waited until the last of Leanâlhâm’s fear faded. In some ways, with her mixed heritage and bloodlines, she was so much like himself, like Leesil and Magiere—trapped between two worlds.

  For every memory of the majay-hì that came to her, Chap held it there, crisp and clear, until the next rose. From the way they ran in her forests, sometimes in and out of the an’Cróan’s enclaves, to those who occasionally gave birth to their young among the girl’s people.

  It was the way that Chap himself had been born, also trapped between worlds—a majay-hì and yet not.

  Leanâlhâm leaned forward a little, perhaps wondering if he really did understand her.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  He poked his nose into hers, lapped his tongue over her face, and she started slightly in shock.

  “Stupid,” Osha spit out. “This stupid, stupid!”

  “It’s insane,” Magiere added, and turned on Leesil. “How can you go along with this?”

  “Both of you, put a cork in it,” Leesil said. “It’s settled.”

  Brot’an frowned, but his expression was more thoughtful than doubtful. “If the majay-hì is to play a . . . pet, as I assume, the guards may not give him notice, but the Anmaglâhk watching the castle will. They know him. So . . . how do we make a majay-hì look like a pet dog?”

  Leanâlhâm slowly raised one hand and reached out. Chap tucked his head under the girl’s fingers until they slid between his ears.

  “Well, I’ve got one small notion,” Leesil said.

  Chap’s ears went straight up. When he glanced away from Leanâlhâm, Leesil was smiling at him.

  “After all,” Leesil added, “Wynn’s always said you’re a filthy pig.”

  Chap did not like the sound of that . . . whatever it meant.

  Chane sat on his bed, fighting the urge to claw off his own skin. He had taken a draft of the violet concoction—both a blessing and a curse—and dormancy did not come for him.

  He watched the window, now covered with an old blanket. Even so, a glow filtered around the worn wool fabric from the sun outside, creating a bar of sharp light on the floor. He kept waiting for that bar on the scuffed planks to creep toward him.

  Chane twitched hard, fighting for self-control, and clenched his hands on the bed’s edge until he felt the straw mattress begin to tear under his hardening fingernails. Shade raised her head from where she lay on the floor, looked at him, and then dropped her muzzle back on her forepaws again. They both sat silently, waiting.

  Neither was prepared for the too-soft knock at the door.

  As Shade jumped to her feet, Chane flinched again and rose. He glanced uncertainly at her, and the knock came again. One of them had to do something.

  Chane grabbed his dwarven sword, still in its sheath, from the bedside, and approached the door.

  “Yes?” he rasped without opening it.

  No one answered at first, but then a soft, wavering voice replied, “Umm . . . I . . . umm, have a message.”


  Chane flipped up the simple latch hook and jerked the door open. Vague recognition dawned when he saw a young man standing outside and staring up in fear. The unexpected visitor was slender and nervous, with his shoulders hunched inside his gray sage’s robe. There were streaks of white in his unruly brown hair. When he glanced at the sword in Chane’s hand, his eyes froze without a blink.

  Chane leaned the sword against the wall next to the door. He had seen this one speaking with Wynn a few times at the guild. Usually he could not help bristling at Wynn’s befriending any other man, but this young sage inspired no such jealousy.