Between Their Worlds Page 34

  CHAPTER 18

  Chane gauged his speed to stay just in sight of the guards. He needed to give Leesil time to slip through and hopefully find Wynn, while keeping these guards out of the way. It was galling to find himself actually helping that half-blood, but there was no other option where Wynn was concerned.

  “Stop!” a guard shouted somewhere behind him. “By order of the Shyldfälches!”

  Did they really think that was going to work?

  Beyond the common hall’s front archway, he rounded the passage’s corner and took off at full speed. He raced by the common hall’s narrower side arch and the kitchen entrance across from it.

  Much as he was tempted, he could not duck into the kitchens just yet. The guards were too close, and he had to lure them farther away from the main entrance. Some parts of the main building were familiar to him; other parts were less so. Stuck with what little he knew, he was already growing frantic.

  Chane skidded to a stop where the passage turned left before the library’s northern entrance. Down that turn lay the north tower, where High-Tower had his study. Short of that was the door leading to the inner bailey’s backside. That was likely locked up due to Rodian’s security measures. No doubt the same had been done for the tower’s door or even the archive’s stairwell to its left.

  He noticed the kitchen’s side door across from the rear exit into the bailey. Then he heard the guards round the previous corner.

  Chane bolted off, running for the kitchen’s side door, a place he knew little about. But if he kept the guards busy long enough, perhaps he might still find a way through the kitchen into the storage building.

  He still needed a look across the courtyard to see if Wynn was trapped in her room.

  Wynn pocketed her crystal before rushing out into the dark passage. Ore-Locks pushed past her, and this time she didn’t argue. There was little to see in the dark except the dim glow of the entrance’s cold lamp, hidden from view.

  “The shout came from up there,” Ore-Locks whispered.

  Wynn barely made out his chin jutting northward along the main passage.

  “We have to find Chane quickly,” she whispered back, “before he—”

  Ore-Locks leveled his iron staff, and Wynn backed up. She had to duck left as he suddenly twisted the staff into a swing before grabbing it with his other hand. She heard a sharp clang of steel against the staff’s iron.

  Wynn caught a glimpse of a dark figure stumbling into the passage wall beyond Ore-Locks. Almost instantly, a taller figure rushed forward out of the darkness at the dwarf. She didn’t have time to moan as she dug for her crystal. If these were guards, hopefully Ore-Locks could knock them unconscious without serious harm.

  As the iron staff recoiled from the first strike, Ore-Locks arced it straight down in the tall one’s path. That one hopped into a midair crouch that made Wynn’s eyes widen. The staff struck where its feet had been.

  Small bits of stone went flying from the impact, but Wynn’s gaze was still fixed on the tall form appearing to hover for an instant in the air. He was just too tall to have moved so quickly, and between wraps of black cloth covering his lower face and hair were large amber eyes. One of those eyes glowed out through a set of four parallel scars.

  Wynn recognized his half-hidden face.

  The front end of Ore-Locks’s iron staff recoiled off the floor. He turned its momentum sideways across the passage, and Wynn had to duck the staff’s back end once more.

  The staff struck the left wall. Like a controlled ricochet in Ore-Locks’s great hands, its tip bounced off, arcing back across the passage, and then down at the first figure trying to push off the right wall.

  “Valhachkasej’â!” that one snarled, raising his arms to block at the last instant.

  Wynn saw two white metal winged blades on his arms.

  “Ah no!” she breathed.

  The staff struck the blades and slammed Leesil into the passage wall.

  “No . . . no! No!” Wynn cried.

  She tried to grab Ore-Locks, but he swung the staff back at Brot’an. Wynn ducked the staff’s butt again, and when it passed, she threw herself atop Ore-Locks’s broad back, trying to grip with her legs as she fumbled to cover his eyes with her hands.

  “Stop!” Wynn shouted. “Everyone . . . stop it now!”

  Rodian was still calculating which guards to move where when Lúcan had reappeared out of the northeast storage building. Since that ugly night, when the young corporal had been left so marred, he rarely expressed any open emotion. Now his hair was disheveled and his tabard was slightly askew, as if he’d been running. He looked distraught.

  Rodian trotted across the courtyard, meeting Lúcan halfway.

  “What’s happened?” he asked, slowing to a stop.

  “The premin is gone!”

  “What? How?”

  “I showed her into the study and shut the door. Then one of those other handleless iron doors down there opened. Two dark-robed sages took one look at me, glanced at the premin’s door, and then ducked back inside before I could question them. Something wasn’t right, and I opened the study door to check on the premin. She wasn’t there anymore.”

  Lúcan shook his head, dropping his gaze.

  “I don’t know how, sir,” he continued. “Believe me, she couldn’t have snuck by me, and there’s no other way out of there.”

  Rodian wasn’t going to blame his corporal, and he guessed that someone like Hawes was in little danger on her own. But he wanted to throw up his hands in frustration.

  May the Blessed Trinity of Sentience take pity on him—just once—trapped again among sages!

  “Watch the portcullis,” he ordered Lúcan. “I’ll handle this.”

  Finding Hawes was unlikely, though he wondered where she’d gone and how. The premin had been doing something inside the main building, besides a faked search for a nonexistent initiate.

  Rodian strode off for the keep’s main doors.

  Wynn saw Brot’an freeze to stare back at her.

  “Get off me,” Ore-Locks growled.

  She looked at Leesil and then Brot’an again as the tall elder elf pulled down his face wrap. It was the only time Wynn could remember seeing the master anmaglâhk astonished, at least as much as she was.

  “What are you doing here?” she breathed in shock. “Leesil, what’s going on?

  Ore-Locks pulled her hands off his eyes. “You know these two?”

  Leesil righted himself, wobbling. He shook out one arm and rolled a shoulder. When he jerked his face wrap down, Wynn melted in relief at the sight of his familiar features.

  “Will you get off . . . now?” Ore-Locks repeated.

  Wynn slid off Ore-Locks’s back and ducked around him, and then her relief wavered. “Leesil?”

  He didn’t make an inappropriate joke or come to give her a quick hug. He didn’t even look at Ore-Locks after being slammed against the wall twice.

  Leesil stood there, eyeing her coldly.

  Wynn’s stomach knotted up again. Something was terribly wrong.

  He stepped toward her, making Ore-Locks tense up, and then passed right by her. He headed down the passage, away from the main doors.

  “Come on,” he said without looking back.

  “But Leesil—” Wynn began.

  “Now!” he snapped, never breaking stride.

  “Who are these two?” Ore-Locks demanded.

  “Friends come to free her,” Brot’an answered. “As have you, it appears. Introductions can wait.”

  Brot’an tucked his stilettos back up his sleeves and waved Wynn after Leesil, who’d paused halfway down the passage but hadn’t looked back.

  Wynn’s thoughts cleared enough to race in another direction. Chane had to be in trouble, and she turned to Ore-Locks.

  “I’m safe with these two, so you need to—”

  “What? No! I will not just leave you with—”

  “Yes, you will,” she cut in. “You have to go find him . . .
help him!”

  Ore-Locks’s glare drifted from her to Brot’an and back again. Then they all heard a door handle ratchet up near the entryway up the passage.

  Brot’an snatched Wynn by the arm and dragged her after Leesil. When Ore-Locks tried to intervene, Wynn waved him off.

  “I’m safe,” she whispered. “Now find him and get him out of here!”

  She tried to look back and see if Ore-Locks did as she asked, but she kept stumbling as Brot’an dragged her in his longer strides. They rounded the corner toward the library’s southernmost entrance, and Ore-Locks was gone from sight.

  Wynn pulled away from Brot’an and ran after Leesil. When she caught up, he kept on. He didn’t even acknowledge her presence until they reached the first door to the library—which was open. With barely a glance, Leesil grabbed Wynn’s wrist and pulled her after him down that narrower passage to the second door.

  Wynn had no idea how he knew where to go, and his grip was too tight. What could she possibly have done to make him so angry?

  This no longer felt like a rescue.

  Rodian stepped through the keep’s main doors into the entryway and heard a distant, faint shout. He thought it was Jonah’s voice, and then pounding footfalls carried faintly from somewhere up the main passage’s northern half. As he was about to head off that way, something caught his eye.

  He pivoted in the other direction and peered down the passage’s southern half. Had he seen a glimmer of light down there? Had something moved in the dark between him and that brief glow?

  He squinted but saw nothing, yet he was certain he hadn’t imagined it. Then came the heavy scrape of a boot.

  Pulling his sword, he turned south down the main passage. His steps quickened the farther he went, and still he saw nothing in the dark. When he reached the first left-hand turn into the passage to the library’s southeast end, again there was that soft, brief glow.

  The library’s southeast door was open, and the glow had come from beyond it and the passage to the second door. How could both doors be unlocked?

  Rodian broke into a run for the library door.

  Chane ducked through the kitchen’s side door and around the long butcher-block table. He heard the guards coming nearer and quickly looked about.

  Wynn had once mentioned leaving kitchen duty by way of a back door to the storage building. Footsteps suddenly pounded right by the kitchen’s side door. Chane ducked low, for the guards had caught up quicker than he had hoped.

  “Do you see him?” one guard called.

  “No. He’s fast. . . . Check the doors at the end while I check this one.”

  Chane heard one set of footsteps hurry off along the passage toward the north tower. Likely the other had turned to check the rear door into the bailey. Once they found all doors locked, they would have only one route that he could have taken—into this kitchen. He was growing very tired of this and glanced quickly along the kitchen’s back.

  There was a door, but it faced rearward instead of to the left, in the direction of the storage building. If he took that door and stepped into some scullery, he would be trapped.

  The frustration was too much. He wavered at the decision between ducking out the kitchen’s main entrance to outdistance the guards in reaching the keep’s main doors and finding somewhere else to hide. That would put him in a bad place, as well. The guards might even hear him and turn back toward the main entryway, and into Wynn’s way if she and Ore-Locks came in.

  There was one option that might keep the guards searching here a little longer. He half crawled between the kitchen’s preparation tables.

  “Everything’s locked up,” one guard called.

  “Same here,” the other replied. “And so . . .”

  Chane rose and bolted through the kitchen’s main doors. He slipped across the passage through the common hall’s side arch and flattened against the inner wall to listen.

  Wynn couldn’t help feeling sick as Leesil dragged her up the stairs to the library’s top floor. He hadn’t spoken or even looked at her. What could have happened to make him treat her like this?

  Leesil never let things fester. If he didn’t like something, he spoke up—or he got devious in manipulating things to his own liking. Here and now wasn’t the time, but Wynn knew the moment would come once they got out of here. Still, she didn’t care for the waiting.

  When they stepped onto the top floor, Leesil picked up the pace, and Wynn was a little surprised to find herself hauled along the library’s south wall. It was the same route to the same window by which she’d once brought Chane into the guild . . . the same route Chane was supposed to check for her and Ore-Locks.

  With little choice, she hurried after Leesil with Brot’an behind her.

  “Psst.”

  At that cut-off hiss behind Wynn, Leesil stopped and turned to look, as did she.

  Brot’an had halted and turned in the path between the wall and rows of casements. With his back to Wynn, she saw stilettos already in his hands as he set himself. She shifted, trying to peer around Brot’an toward the stairs they’d come up.

  “Out of sight!” Leesil hissed and grabbed the back of her cloak and tunic.

  He tried to thrust Wynn between the book casements, but she caught a glimpse of red rising up the stairwell beneath the cold lamp above the steps. She grabbed the casement’s end to hold herself in place.

  Captain Rodian stepped out onto the floor, sword in hand and his gaze fixed on Brot’an.

  “No!” Wynn shouted.

  The captain’s eyes widened at the sight of her, though Brot’an didn’t even flinch. Leesil again tried to shove her between the casements. She stomped on his foot, and as he stumbled with a curse, she grabbed the back of Brot’an’s belt.

  “Don’t!” she begged.

  Brot’an didn’t turn, and Wynn looked at Rodian and shook her head. The captain’s gaze shifted once to her, his sword still poised, and he fixed on Brot’an once more.

  “This isn’t what it looks like,” Wynn said quickly. “I have got to get out of here. . . . That’s all they’re trying to do . . . to get me out.”

  Rodian didn’t speak.

  He studied her for a long moment and then shifted a little leftward. Perhaps he was trying to get a better look at Leesil, and Wynn tightened her grip upon Brot’an’s belt. This was so bad that she couldn’t even imagine the repercussions, no matter who won out in this moment.

  Rodian slowly straightened and lowered his sword. She watched the captain’s brow furrow and his mouth close tightly. He exhaled through his nose. Finally, he just shook his head—and he turned away.

  The last Wynn saw of him, he descended the stairs, casually slipping his sword back into its sheath. He was gone almost as quickly as he’d appeared.

  Wynn stared after the captain as Brot’an straightened before her. She was jarred into a flinch at Leesil’s caustic whisper behind her.

  “How many people in here tonight are trying to get you out of your own mess?”

  “This is not the time or place,” Brot’an whispered.

  But Wynn spun around to eye Leesil, not really catching all that was hidden in his comment.

  “Me?” she shot back. “You think all of this is just about me?”

  Her voice shook with anger, but it felt better than misery. None of them had the slightest idea what all of this was really about—none but her. They would understand soon enough, and then maybe they’d see the scope of things, and how much worse it might all become.

  “It’s always about you,” Leesil said flatly. “Every time we turn around, you’re doing something . . . with someone . . . to get—”

  “Oh, shut up, Leesil,” she cut in, “and get me out of here!”

  Relieved by her own anger, for it did wonders to shut out the fear, she didn’t even wait for Leesil’s shocked reply. Wynn pushed past him, heading for the library’s rear window.

  “What are you doing in here?”

  If Chane had had a h
eartbeat, it would have skipped at that whisper. His whole body clenched as he whipped his head back to look across the common hall.

  There, beyond the tables and benches, stood Ore-Locks, frowning at him. The dwarf’s face was reddened, as if he had recently made some strenuous exertion.

  Chane put a finger across his lips in warning. As Ore-Locks hurried between the tables, a dozen questions flooded Chane’s thoughts. One stood out above the others as he motioned Ore-Locks toward the other side of the archway.