Between Their Worlds

Chapter 10

PAWL A’SEATT DIDN’T often go to his shop during the day. Uncomfortable as sunlight was, this was not the reason. In truth, his ability to walk in daylight remained a mystery to him.

He understood why the undead chose populated places in which to settle and hunt; he had done so, as well. Unlike them, a thriving city fed him to a degree, merely by his presence among so many. Though hunting was no longer a necessity for him, unlike other undeads, the longer he remained in close proximity to the living, the weaker and more listless they became.

In his earliest days—or, rather, nights—it had not been so. He’d once had to feed and exist only in the darkness.

He never discovered what had changed for him. It had happened gradually, over hundreds of years, though he did not always consider it a blessing. He now had to take great care in monitoring how much time he lingered in close company with others—especially the few people with which he interacted regularly. There were times when necessity, need, desire, or something else dictated otherwise.

Today, he had already made his habitual dawn visit to open the shop. When he entered a second time for this morning, this time through the back door, his late reappearance caused an immediate stir in the workroom. Perhaps his employees interpreted this as a harbinger of reprimand for not completing Premin Renäld’s contracted project the day before.

Gangly and bony, Tavishaw took several furtive glances over the slanted top of his scribing desk, the rhythm of his scripting breaking each time like a stutter in the scratching upon the paper.

Even old Teagan glowered openly at being disturbed while inspecting Tavishaw’s work. The scribe master was accustomed to running things his way during the days. Scrawny, shriveled, and half-bald, he peered at Pawl through round, thick-lensed glasses. His amplified pupils above his extended nose gave him the look of a gaunt hound spotting another canine sniffing about his yard.

And Liam began working so hastily that Pawl feared for the quality of the script.

Only Imaret appeared untroubled. Her pace never altered. She rarely even glanced at the content reference sheet beside her, as if the page was already imprinted in her young mind. Hers was a rare gift or talent possessed by only one other person Pawl had ever met. She quietly and efficiently scribed the index for the transcribed copy of the journeyor’s journal submitted by Premin Renäld.

“How is it proceeding?” Pawl asked the girl, though this wasn’t really why he’d returned.

“Almost done,” Imaret answered without looking up. She was likely still cross that he’d been unable to tell her anything about Nikolas or what was happening inside the guild.

The tinkle of the front door’s bell carried into the back room. Pawl grew mildly relieved at the prospect of anything that might distract him from his state of unrest. Master Teagan automatically headed for the front room, but paused at finding Pawl close on his heels.

“I’ll see to it,” Pawl said, ignoring Teagan’s scowl.

Teagan followed him, anyway. But before they reached the door out into the shop’s front, it swung inward, and there stood Nikolas Columsarn in his usual anxious state.

“Nikolas!”

Pawl stiffened at Imaret’s outcry. He’d barely glanced back when she dropped her quill, and he frowned at the possible ruin of the index page. Imaret nearly knocked fragile old Teagan into the wall as she wormed through the short passage, past Pawl.

“Are you all right? Is the guild still locked up?” she asked, her voice too loud. “Why were the city guards called? Are they still there? How did you get out?”

Nikolas flinched repeatedly, as if every question were her little fist poking him in the arm. Pawl heard only silence behind him, and when he looked, Tavishaw and Liam were both staring.

“The guild is closed?” Tavishaw asked in surprise.

Pawl immediately placed a hand on Imaret’s back and herded her and Nikolas into the shop’s outer room. He would never get Imaret back to work while Nikolas was here.

“How did you know about the guild?” Nikolas asked.

“I was there last night,” Imaret said. “I was worried for you.”

“Why?”

“Why?” she echoed indignantly. “Because you were locked inside!”

Since the deaths of Elias and Jeremy in a nearby alley, Imaret grew frantic whenever she didn’t know the whereabouts of the remaining few she cared about. On a more practical consideration, Pawl was concerned by how this affected her work. The only way to stabilize that was to allow this meeting to play out—and perhaps gain some insight for himself.

Nikolas frowned. “Imaret, I’m fine in there. No one even notices me.”

At this evasion, Pawl seized control.

“What has happened?” he asked pointedly. “Why were the Shyldfälches summoned?”

Nikolas looked up at him. A sudden desperation turned the young sage pale just before he looked away.

“I don’t know,” he said quietly.

“You don’t know?” Imaret asked.

Pawl raised one finger at her, and she fell silent. His centuries of experience with people told him that the young man was dying to speak, to pour out his personal troubles. When Imaret was about to go at Nikolas again, Pawl rested his hand on her fragile shoulder. She looked up at him, possibly annoyed, but remained quiet.

“Journeyor Hygeorht has been confined,” Nikolas finally offered.

“Why?” Pawl asked.

“I don’t know.”

Pawl’s frustration began to match Imaret’s, but this time the truth of Nikolas’s answer was plain on his troubled face. The young sage was at a loss.

“Why did you come here?” Pawl asked.

Nikolas still wouldn’t look at him. “I thought to check and see if Premin Renäld’s project was finished, maybe bring it back, and ... I just needed to get out for a while.”

Pawl could see this was not true. Why would Nikolas lie?

“The transcription is not quite finished,” he said. “I’ll have it delivered late this afternoon.”

His words appeared to make Nikolas only more miserable. He was tempted to use intimidation to force Nikolas to talk, but he resisted. Whatever had happened with Wynn Hygeorht, Nikolas—if he knew anything more—would eventually tell Imaret something. And Pawl would hear of it.

“All right,” Nikolas replied, turning away, but he stopped briefly to look at Imaret. “I have to get back, but I’ll try to see you—both of you—as soon as I can.” He attempted a weak smile. “If nothing else, Captain Rodian won’t last much longer. He’s been at it with one or another premin since last night and looks like he’s eaten nothing but raw lemons for days.”

Nikolas slipped out the front door.

“Bye, Nikolas,” Imaret called after him.

“Back to work,” Pawl ordered.

She shuffled through the opened counter section and into the back room.

Pawl walked to a front window and watched Nikolas head south along the street. Once the sage was out of the line of sight, Pawl stepped out the shop’s front door. He spotted Nikolas’s gray robe a block down and followed until the young sage turned the corner. When Pawl reached that intersection and peered around the candle shop there, he stopped.

A dark shadow emerged from the mouth of an alley running behind the shops. Pawl watched a long-legged black wolf, taller than any he’d seen, fall in beside Nikolas.

It was the same animal that had been with Wynn on the night she’d faced that black-robed undead outside his shop. Another undead had been there with her, one that Pawl should’ve dispatched for invading his city. But doing so with Journeyor Hygeorht present would have raised questions from her about him.

Pausing there in the street, Pawl let his thoughts turn.

Wynn Hygeorht had been confined. The guild had been locked down by the city guard, likely at the request of the Premin Council. All work on the translation project had ceased. Nikolas was full of something he was dying to speak of and yet would not. Now Wynn’s black wolf escorted the nervous young sage out and about the city.

Wynn was the source, though not the cause, for both Pawl’s reignited anger and his determination for its remedy, to seek answers regarding the white woman, his murderer and maker. Wynn had been the one to return with those ancient texts from afar. Whatever was happening—whatever had halted the translation project—it was somehow all wrapped around her. And she was beyond reach inside the guild’s keep.

Pawl walked back toward his shop in silent, cold tension.

Chap and Leanâlhâm lingered by a street corner one block up the mainway from the guild’s bailey gate, and he was itching all over.

Leesil was going to pay for this, one way or another.

Chap dropped on his haunches and pulled up one rear leg to scratch himself again.

“Bârtva’na!” Leanâlhâm whispered in panic, slipping into her own tongue. “Do not!”

A little cloud of black dust rose as Chap scratched. He tried to rub his itching face with a forepaw. All that did was raise a puff of soot around his face, and he sneezed.

“Please, Ch—majay-hì,” Leanâlhâm insisted. “You will rub it off and be noticed.”

Like her people, Leanâlhâm had an aversion to anyone imposing a name upon one of the sacred guardians of her homeland. She reached for his face, perhaps to stop his paw, but then paused. Whether she thought it irreverent to touch him or that he was just filthy, he did not know.

Chap was covered in soot. Or at least his back, tail, head, and most of his face were.

Disguise or not, it was wholly uncomfortable, and it was all Leesil’s doing. Chap grumbled under his breath, unable to stop fidgeting and scratching. He was going to get Leesil back for this.

Before he and Leanâlhâm had left the inn, a plan had been made. Once again, Chap let the others proceed without interrupting. It gave them a sense of control, though he had his preparation in mind for how to contact Wynn. That deception was especially necessary for Magiere and Osha, who were the most worried about Leanâlhâm.

Their basic plan was sensible. He and Leanâlhâm would approach the gatehouse portcullis. If no one recognized Chap or reacted to him, Leanâlhâm would present herself as a visitor seeking Wynn.

Unlike Osha, Leanâlhâm had been taught Belaskian, the Farlands dominant language, by her deceased uncle and grandfather. Brot’an had tutored her in some basic Numanese, although how the old butcher had learned the tongue so quickly still bothered Chap. Leanâlhâm’s heavy Elvish accent would simply support her guise as an acquaintance from afar, here to visit Wynn.

If she was refused entry, then it could be assumed that Wynn was indeed a prisoner—but her location would be in question. If Leanâlhâm was let in by guards but then refused by the sages, at least they would know Wynn was still on guild grounds. And in that event, hopefully, Chap could at least gain the inner courtyard in order to try what he wanted to accomplish.

That mattered the most. Somehow, they had to at least reach the courtyard.

Leanâlhâm had been ordered—both by Brot’an and Magiere—that at the first sign of trouble, she was to get out any way possible; Chap would take care of himself. The girl had promised this. Magiere had also instructed her to pay attention to any unsought memories that suddenly surfaced in her mind. This confused Leanâlhâm quite a bit, and even more when she was told why, for it was the only way Chap could warn or instruct her.

The problem, of course, was that Chap had not spent enough time watching for Leanâlhâm’s memories. He could only call back a person’s own memories that he had already seen in that same person’s mind. Leanâlhâm was instructed that if she suddenly remembered—for no reason—their flight in secret from the attack of the anmaglâhk, she was to turn and flee. She had so badly wanted to be useful that she would have promised anything.

However, the prospect of this task and the reality were two very different things. Now Leanâlhâm glanced down nervously at Chap.

She was fully cloaked with her hood pulled up, and he could not help feeling humiliated by the piece of cord around his neck as a makeshift leash. Yes, it had been his idea, and with the other end clenched in the girl’s hand, he had led her and not the other way around. Still, his discomfort got the best of him, and he disliked even the illusion of being anyone’s pet.

Chap was well aware Sgäile and Gleann had protected Leanâlhâm from the world with a vengeance. Then Brot’an and Osha had taken up that role. This entire endeavor was outside the girl’s experience. He wished he could reassure her, even if it was another lie.

She seemed to read his expression and said, “I am not afraid.”

He could see that was not true.

“It is all right,” she insisted. “I am ready.”

Stepping out, Chap pulled on the leash cord until she stepped in beside him. When they finally passed through the bailey gate and approached the closed portcullis, he craned his head, peering through its broad beams. He saw only one guard standing inside, but he could not see much of the courtyard down the gatehouse tunnel.

Leanâlhâm came within arm’s reach of the portcullis, and then Chap spotted another guard stepping into view at the tunnel’s far end. Both guards wore red tabards over chain vests, and the nearer one had a helmet with a nose guard. The one pacing beyond the tunnel’s far end had sandy-colored hair and a close-trimmed beard across only his jaw above a clean-shaven throat. His boots clopped softly on the courtyard’s stone as he passed beyond sight.

“May ... enter?” Leanâlhâm asked in broken Numanese.

“What’s your business?” the closer guard questioned, glancing once at Chap.

“I am here ... visit friend ... Wynn Hygeorht.”

The following silence left Chap tense. He was uncertain why until he realized the boots on the inner courtyard’s stones had stopped echoing down the tunnel.

“No visitors today, miss,” the guard said politely. “I’m sorry.”

“Please ... I come long way.”

The sound of footsteps resumed. Chap spotted the guard with the close-trimmed beard turn into the tunnel’s far end and head for the portcullis.

Rodian couldn’t yet see who was outside the portcullis, but he was almost sure he’d heard the name of Wynn Hygeorht. As he approached the gatehouse tunnel’s outer mouth, he was surprised to see a slender girl—perhaps a young woman—in a full cloak with her hood pulled forward. Beside her was a very tall, mottled black and gray dog ... or was it a wolf?

The girl was definitely no sage by her attire, but Rodian’s guardsman partially blocked his view of the dog.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“Just a girl ... an elven girl,” Guardsman Wickham answered with a nod. “Here to visit, she says.”

As Wickham turned, he exposed the dog to Rodian’s full view. The animal was indeed wolflike but taller, nearly as tall as the dogs used to hunt them.

“Who are you here to see?” he asked, stepping up to look through the portcullis beams.

The girl, or rather young woman, by her height, backstepped and dropped her head. Her face wasn’t clear to his view, with the hood hanging to hide her eyes, but the dog was plain to see. Its strange blue eyes, tall ears, and tapered muzzle reminded Rodian of ... Shade. Wynn’s animal could be of the same breed, although he’d never before seen another like her.

The young woman hadn’t answered his question.

Rodian worried he might frighten her off, and he wanted to know more about this odd pair. If she ran, he wouldn’t have time to catch her with the portcullis down.

“Wynn Hygeorht,” the young woman finally confirmed.

Rodian’s first instinct was to arrest her on the spot and question her, though he’d still have to get her to stay put until the portcullis opened. Perhaps he might learn even more by letting this visitor actually see Wynn ... with him present, of course.

“Open up!” he called above.

The young woman inched backward again, though the dog didn’t, and the cord leashing the dog pulled taut and stopped her. The portcullis ground upward, and before it had even cleared Rodian’s head, he ducked under.

“I’ll take you to her,” he said. Now he could see inside her hood.

She was pretty, even beautiful, with the large, slanted eyes of a Lhoin’na, though her skin appeared slightly darker than most of those people. She was indeed young, though that didn’t always mean much with an elf. Pretty women did not affect Rodian, but what struck him the most was the way her green eyes shifted nervously about, always watching everything, always watching ...

Rodian tensed. All Lhoin’na had amber-colored eyes, not green. Wynn Hygeorht had a penchant for the strangest of companions.

He took care with his manner, yet she still appeared afraid, and this raised his suspicions more. What was she hiding? He gestured down the tunnel with one hand.

“This way.”

Turning his back on her, he walked up the tunnel but listened for the sound of her steps. What he heard first was the click of claws on stone. So the dog had immediately followed, and only then came the young woman’s footfalls. When Rodian emerged into the courtyard, he barely had a chance to glance back and make certain she was there.

“Captain, what are you doing?”

Rodian looked ahead to find Domin High-Tower stomping toward him out of the keep’s main doors. He let out a deep, slow breath and went to cut off the domin before the dwarf frightened Wynn’s strange visitor even more.

Chap had gotten what he needed in entering the courtyard, but when he spotted the stout dwarven sage, he knew he might have only moments. He hoped what he was about to try would work, though he tried it only once before.

On the way to the Pock Peaks in search of the first orb, Wynn had been cut off from everyone and lost in a blizzard. He had searched hard for her, but without a line of sight, he had no way to speak into her thoughts. He had tried, anyway, and it had worked for one instance.

Leanâlhâm froze beside Chap as he looked to the right, to where Wynn had been hauled off the night before. There was no sign of her in any of the windows of the two-level building flush against the keep’s southeast wall. Chap tried calling to her, anyway.

Wynn, I am here.

The captain sidestepped into the dwarven sage’s path. “Can I help you, Domin?”

“I was passing the entry hall and heard the portcullis gears,” the dwarf answered, not at all politely.

Chap scanned the courtyard’s left side. The building there had no windows, just three doors along its length spanning the whole courtyard’s side. A pair of double bay doors in the left half had been set high at its second level.

He tried again. Wynn ... are you here? Where are you?

Unless he actually saw her, this whole attempt could be pointless. Even if she heard him, as she had in the blizzard, she would not be able to answer if she were locked away. She could hear his voice in her thoughts, but he could only hear her true voice. However, if he could at least see her, he would know where she was, and he could tell her they would come for her.

His anxiety grew. What if she was no longer here? Had they been lured inside ... into a trap?

“Why have you raised the gate?” the dwarf demanded. “I see no sages coming or going. Supplies do not arrive at this time!”

Chap looked beyond the dwarf and the captain to the main keep ahead. A few narrow window slits marked its two upper floors. No one looked out of their panes, no one from whom he might glimpse any memories in the hope of stumbling on Wynn’s exact location. He felt Leanâlhâm’s small hand drop on his neck, and her fingers clenched his sooty fur. Perhaps in fear she’d finally overcome her reluctance to touch him. He glanced up, wondering what had caused this.

Leanâlhâm was looking up to the building on the courtyard’s right side. In the last window on the second level, Wynn stood wide-eyed, looking down at them with her hands flattened against the panes.

Chap almost sagged in relief, and then Wynn’s brow furrowed. A clear memory rose in his awareness as he watched her.

To his surprise, he became lost in it. He saw through her eyes as if he were she in a long-past moment. She—he—was locked up in Lord Darmouth’s keep in a small room.

The memory flickered, though the setting remained the same. She—he—was now closer to the room’s door. Light from one narrow window had changed, suggesting it was a different time of day. The door opened, and one of Darmouth’s armed men stood in the passage outside.

“I do not tell you how to run your affairs,” the captain retorted to the dwarf. “I fulfill my responsibilities as I see fit.”

In the window above, Wynn’s eyes closed, scrunching tight. The previous image went black in Chap’s mind, and something more rose out of that darkness. He began to see a face—no, several faces—of armed men. They were dressed like the guards here in the keep.

One last flash of memory in Wynn came to Chap—that of Darmouth’s guard coming to the other room’s door.

And Chap had his answer.

Wynn’s situation was more than some dispute with her superiors. She was indeed a prisoner, and these guards—this captain in the red tabard—now controlled her confinement.

Chap’s relief at finding her faded. The situation was more complicated than he had hoped.

We are coming ... soon. Do nothing to make them move you elsewhere.

With her hands pressed against the glass, Wynn nodded, looking so hopeful that he hated to leave her.

Only moments had passed since the dwarven sage had first called out. Chap was fully aware the exchange with the captain could end quickly. Then the creaking sound of the portcullis beginning its descent echoed out of the gatehouse tunnel.

With a last look at Wynn, Chap backed toward the tunnel’s mouth, and Leanâlhâm followed without a sound.

Rodian cursed inwardly, wondering how he could explain a visitor being allowed inside. If he even mentioned the young woman was here to see Wynn, it would incite High-Tower all the more, perhaps enough to send him charging to Sykion.

How many more times could he play his authority as trump against whatever challenge these sages cast in his way? Reiterating that he was in charge and would handle things his way would soon wear thin, and the royal family would step in again.

High-Tower shifted to the left more quickly than his bulk suggested possible. His head tilted, and his slash of a mouth opened. The domin was surprisingly silent as he looked around Rodian.

Rodian couldn’t help but look back ... to find the girl and the wolf-dog gone as the outer portcullis thudded closed.

“Who was that?” High-Tower demanded.

Rodian didn’t answer and bolted into the gatehouse tunnel. There was no sign of the pair beyond the portcullis, and he grabbed the shoulder of Wickham’s tabard.

“Where is she?” he barked.

Guardsman Wickham blinked in alarm. “She left. I thought you sent her off.”

Rodian clutched the portcullis’s broad, upright beams, peering out to the bailey gate. As far as he could see over its top and up Old Procession Road, there was no sign of the elven woman with the strange eyes.

“Captain!” High-Tower shouted, and the crack of his voice echoed down the tunnel. “What is going on here?”

Rodian only cursed under his breath again.

A block down the main road from the bailey gate, Chap ducked around a corner with Leanâlhâm and peered back toward the sages’ small castle.

“Something is wrong in there,” Leanâlhâm whispered in Elvish as she leaned out above him. “We should return to tell the others.”

But Chap lingered. With guards inside the keep and the place locked down, he wanted more time to look for any other security measures. In only a moment, he spotted one.

Another guard came into view, walking the top of the bailey wall’s south half. The man paused on reaching the right-side small barbican, one of two framing the bailey gate. He leaned away, likely conversing with his comrade inside the portcullis, and then turned back the way he had come.

Chap hung his head. Of course there would be more guards than just the captain, one man inside the portcullis, and at least one in the gatehouse tower. Likely more than one walked the bailey wall, but he suddenly wondered about Wynn’s trick of memory.

Where—how and why—had she learned to willfully recall and hold a memory as she had for him to see? In all their lost days together, Wynn had never done this. She did not need to, considering he could always speak into her thoughts and she had a voice. The meaning in those memories she had shown him could not have been clearer. And for her to so vividly reexperience a past moment with such clarity, and then overlay others like it ...

“Majay-hì!” Leanâlhâm whispered. “We must go.”

Pulled from his thoughts, Chap huffed once and turned up the road. If only there had been more time with Wynn. Perhaps she could have shown him even more with this new memory skill of hers. As he walked ahead of Leanâlhâm, he glanced back toward the keep.

A movement like a black shadow skulked along the bailey wall’s base.

Chap wheeled and tensed as another form came into view behind that black shadow walking on all fours. Someone in a gray robe trotted toward the bailey gate, passing that shadow, that ... tall, black, wolfish form. He lunged a step back toward the castle.

The rope in Leanâlhâm’s grip snapped tight around Chap’s neck. He heard her stumble, but he fixated on that dark form. The black wolf hung back, out of sight of the portcullis, as the sage in gray opened the bailey gate.

Shade lingered close to the bailey wall as the sage paused, looking back at her. She opened her jaws and snapped them shut. Perhaps she had barked at the sage, but no sound carried to Chap. The sage hesitated an instant longer and then hurried through, closing the gate.

Chap watched as his daughter crept toward the gate, but she did not reach it. Her ears pricked, as if she listened. From a distance, Chap heard the grinding and loud clanks of the portcullis being raised.

What was Shade doing out here escorting a sage to the guild? Why was she not with Wynn, where she should be?

“What is wrong?” Leanâlhâm whispered. “What are you looking ... ?” and then she gasped. “Majay-hì! Another majay-hì ... here?”

Shade’s head twisted as she looked up the mainway.

Chap panicked, forgetting all that he had come here to do as his daughter stared up the mainway at him. The only thing left in his thoughts was the drive to make her understand how he could have done this to a daughter he had never seen before a night ago. A father she had never met had banished her from the world she knew to cross an ocean and a continent to serve a purpose that he could not.

He had suffered for two nights before going to beg Lily to do this for him ... to do this to one of their unborn children. Even thinking back, he knew he would have made the same request. But here and now, all he wanted was to beg his daughter’s forgiveness, to help her to understand why he had done this to her.

Chap clamped his teeth on the leash cord and pulled sharply.

Leanâlhâm stumbled. “What are we doing?”

He kept jerking on the cord until the last of it ripped from her hand.

“No, no!” she called frantically. “We must go back to the others.”

There was so little time in this moment. Chap only hoped Leanâlhâm would remember what Magiere had told her. He called up the girl’s brief memory from last night of Magiere and Leesil. He recalled these two images over and over. Then he butted Leanâlhâm’s leg.

Her eyes widened as she almost fell. Instead of shock at the memories suddenly assaulting her, she shouted at him.

“No! You must come, too.”

Chap huffed twice, and when she opened her mouth to argue, he lost his self-control. He snarled and snapped at her, again raising that memory of the inn’s room. Her young face twisted with so much fright that he stopped. He wanted to rush after Shade, but he crept slowly forward and licked Leanâlhâm’s hand.

Confusion flooded her expression. She was still too unfamiliar with his ways. He shoved her with his head more gently this time. She knew what he wanted; he simply had to make her do it.

When he started to back up, to his relief, she didn’t follow. She turned halfway, still watching him retreat. He did not turn around until she finally headed up the street. Only then did he wheel about to race up the road.

Chap stumbled to a halt. Shade was nowhere in sight.

Perhaps like the night they had met in the catacomb archives, she wanted nothing to do with him. Why else would she leave after seeing him again? He broke into a lope, heading up the mainway, but he did not make it far.

A woman screamed out.

He stalled amid an intersection a full block from the bailey gate as a woman in a shimmering cloak and white fur gloves grabbed her toddling little daughter out of his way. Other people drew away from him in alarm. He retreated, trying not to startle anyone else, but there were people in every branch of the streets around him.

“Wolf!” someone cried out, and two men with long staves in hand turned and looked Chap’s way.

So much for soot and ashes and Leesil’s idiotic disguise!

It did not matter that he still had a rope dangling from his neck. Or maybe that just made it worse, as if he had broken from captivity.

All Chap could think of was his daughter, and why she was not with Wynn.

Charging straight at the staff-wielding men in his way, he had to clip one of their legs to get through. At the crack of a staff on cobble behind him, he swerved and bolted on at full speed. When he reached where the mainway met the loop around the sages’ castle, he slowed long enough to sniff the cobblestones nearest to the bailey wall. If sight would not help him, perhaps scent would.

Then he heard the running feet coming after him.

Én’nish had taken the day’s watch over the guild castle. Perched on a rooftop along Wall Shop Row near the castle’s front, she hadn’t known quite what to think when a filthy majay-hì, its fur smudged and smeared black, walked up to the portcullis beside a slender, cloaked figure. The cloaked woman was too small to be the monster Magiere, but all the filth upon the majay-hì did not hide who he was. Én’nish knew on sight the one that the humans called Chap.

When the pair had come out again only moments later, Én’nish had been prepared to follow them. Something unexpected stalled her.

A black majay-hì appeared, apparently escorting a young male sage in gray. This majay-hì did not follow the sage into the keep, and Én’nish knew this one, as well. It had been seen by one of her comrades in the company of Wynn Hygeorht upon the sage’s return to the city.

Én’nish could not fathom what any majay-hì would be doing this far from her homeland, let alone in the company of humans. She almost followed it, but only the one called Chap might lead her to the hiding place of the monster. About to pick up that abomination’s trail, she was startled again.

Chap returned, only a city block ahead of two shouting men carrying staves. The majay-hì paused at the bailey wall where the black one had been moments before. Then Chap took off at a run, following the black one’s trail.

To follow, Én’nish took a running leap and landed lightly on the next rooftop.

Still at the window, Wynn’s stomach churned with mixed relief and worry.

Chap had come and now he knew where she was. He’d told her they’d be coming for her. It made her feel more secure than she could’ve imagined, but she’d already sent a message to Chane giving him two days. After that, she knew he’d be coming for her, and Chane was not always patient. He might not listen—might even try sooner.

Leesil was a master of infiltration; it was part of what he’d done in his youth. Now that Chap could tell Leesil where Wynn was, Leesil as well might not wait too long.

And if Leesil and Chane crossed paths ...

Wynn’s stomach knotted. All of her relief drained away. She had to get another message to Chane, and quickly. The midday bell had passed, so likely Nikolas would come with her next meal. She spun around, grabbing a sheet of paper from her little desk table.

“What are you doing?”

Startled, Wynn turned at the harsh challenge she heard in the passage outside her room. She’d almost not recognized that voice at first, for she’d never heard Nikolas sound hostile before.

“None of your concern.”

Wynn froze at Dorian’s cold reply.

“That is my duty,” Nikolas almost shouted.

Wynn ran for the door and jerked it open. The first person she saw was the guard as he instinctively reached for the hilt of his sword. It wasn’t Lúcan, and she didn’t recognize him, but at the sight of her, he relaxed and turned his wary eyes back on the two sages.

Dorian stood in the passage, holding a tray with a bowl of soup and pot of tea. Nikolas stood a few paces beyond, nearer the stairs, his mouth tight and his hands clenched on a similar tray. Dorian eyed the Shyldfälche guard.

“Premin Sykion has instructed that I bring the journeyor’s meals from now on,” Dorian commanded. “No one but me.”

The guard did not appear impressed. “I take my orders from Captain Rodian or Corporal Lúcan, and I’ve heard of no such change.”

“Then you’d best check with your superiors,” Dorian answered. “The instruction has already been given.”

Without another word, Dorian pushed past the guard and came straight at Wynn. He didn’t even pause, forcing her to back up into the room. When he entered, he went to the desk without even looking at her and set down the tray. The last thing Wynn saw was Nikolas’s desperate face as he stood outside in the passage, and then Dorian quickly left, closing the door.

Wynn sank onto her bed’s edge, with no way to get a message to Chane.

Chane sat leaning against the passage wall at the back of Nattie’s inn, hoping he had done right in sending Shade off with the young sage. Too much time had passed. Or perhaps it just felt so as he quivered and itched, wanting to scratch off his skin and imagining the burning sun just outside the inn’s back door. He hated this and longed for the oblivion of dormancy.

A wild, eager scratching outside the door was followed by a loud huff.

Chane quickly rolled to one knee, pulled his hood low, and shoved open the back door. Shade rushed inside and passed him, and he pulled the door shut. But as he turned about, he saw only her tail as she bolted up the stairs, huffing and panting in agitation.

Something had gone wrong.

Chane did not hesitate and followed Shade quickly, taking two steps at a time to where she sat panting and whining at their room’s door. He opened it, only to have her rush into the room. Quickly stepping inside, he latched the door and crouched before her.

“What is wrong?” he rasped. “What happened?”

Shade rumbled and then whined again, and Chane’s alarm grew. Without warning her, he slipped off the brass ring. She did not even snarl, but instead fixed her crystal blue eyes on his.

A memory rose in Chane’s awareness.

He saw the moment when he had looked down from Wynn’s window into the courtyard that first night back at the guild. He had seen Magiere, Leesil, and Chap step out of the keep’s main doors with Wynn and Shade. Then he saw a flash of them being “escorted” out. The jumbled flashes made him dizzy until the memory seemed to narrow in scope and focus only on parts of the images ... on Chap. This repeated and repeated until Chane jumped to his feet again.

“Chap?” he asked. “You saw Chap?”

Shade let out a sharp huff. She raced to the small, dingy window and rose, setting her forepaws on the sill. Chane joined her, though he flattened against the wall to one side when she pushed her nose around the canvas curtain’s edge to peer down outside. He had no idea what she was trying to tell him.

Shade pulled her head back and looked up at Chane, and the same dizzying flash of memories came to him again. He glanced at the curtained window in alarm.

“Chap ... is here?” he rasped.

She huffed once.

Chane quickly slid the brass ring on as Shade dropped and backed away from the window.

Chap scrambled after Shade’s trail through streets, cutways, and alleys, stopping only when he could to test for her scent. He caught sight of her twice, but each time she somehow outdistanced him. Every time he took to an open street to catch up, he heard someone shouting near or far behind him. When he trailed her all the way into a seedy district, some of what he saw seemed familiar.

He was somewhere else in the very district in which Magiere and Leesil still hid. Then Shade’s trail took another change.

Chap entered a long strip of worn buildings where the next cross street was too far off for Shade to have reached it so quickly. He backtracked, sniffing along the buildings’ side walls until he picked up her trail in an alley. He followed it, until it ended at the back door of a bleached gray, wooden inn with two stories and a high-peaked roof.

He dug his claws into the rear door’s gap.

No matter how hard he levered and pulled, it would not open. Shade could not have gotten in this way, and he doubled-checked that her trail did not continue farther along the alley. The stench of the alley’s center gutter made it hard to be certain, but he could find no scent of her beyond that one building. His daughter had to have gotten through that door.

Shame at what Chap had done to his daughter began to wane. Anger began mixing with his bafflement. If Wynn was locked in a room at the guild, with city guards at the portcullis, what in the world was Shade doing out here alone?

He looked up and down the alley, prepared to slip around the block for a peek at the building’s front. A stinging chill ran over him, making his fur stand on end. Instinctual fury followed, running through his flesh. His hackles rose and he snarled before he even realized why.

Choking in rage, Chap was almost overcome by the sudden, overwhelming presence of an undead.

It was somewhere nearby, and he turned a full circle to peer up and down the alley. Nothing moved in his sight, not even rats scurrying among the refuse and ash cans. He looked again to the locked rear door and up across the windows above it.

Chap swallowed down the need to cut loose a howl. It was inside the place where Shade had gone! Had she been hunting?

He charged and rammed the rear door. It bucked and crackled but did not give way. With his head ringing, he backed up for another run at it.

Then the sickening presence that heated him within suddenly vanished ... as if it had never been there at all.

Chap froze where he stood, trembling with lingering fury, almost unable to think.

The door swung out so hard it knocked over an old crate for collecting kitchen scraps. A corpulent, middle-aged woman in an age-faded apron waddled out, wielding an upturned broom like a club.

“What in the Trinity of Sentience is goin’ on out ...”

She faltered, her angry scowl vanishing as she spotted Chap.

“Wolf!” she screamed.

Chap came to his senses as a large, old man burst out behind the woman.

“It’s a wolf, wolf, wolf!” the woman screamed, ducking behind the old man. The sound of running feet and further shouts carried out the open door from behind the couple.

A snarl turned to a whine in Chap’s throat as he wheeled and raced off down the alley.

All because of Leesil and his stupid, worthless disguise.