Clandestine Circle

Chapter Twenty-One

The moon hung low in the western sky and shed its light through the open loading door and ventilation windows in silvery beams that barred the velvet darkness of the hayloft. In the patch of light that gleamed on the hay-strewn floor, Linsha spread out a blanket and settled down to wait for Varia to return.

Although the night was waning, Linsha was still pent up and agitated from her time with Lord Bight. She had wanted to leave him in peace and instead he left irritated and affronted by her presumptuous behavior. At least she guessed that is what had forced him to withdraw from her. Since he hadn’t explained, she could only assume he was displeased by her conduct, and yet if he didn’t want to participate in such horseplay, why had he started it? There were other possibilities, of course, but none that seemed likely. Perhaps the tensions of the day had caught up with him and haltered his exuberant play. She hoped he would eventually accept her apology, for she couldn’t stand the thought of his rejection.

There was just enough illumination in the stable loft to see what she was doing, so Linsha pulled out her leather juggling balls. Often the disciplined spin of the balls helped her put her thoughts in order, and tonight she needed all the help she could get. She sent the juggling balls sailing in a slow circle from hand to hand and up and down. As the balls traveled through her hands, she turned her focus inward to the people who occupied her thoughts the most.

“Lord Bight,” Linsha said quietly as one ball smacked her palm. “Mica,” she said to the second. “Ian Durne,” for the third. In rhythm with the balls, she listed more names. “Captain Dewald… Lady Karine… the Circle… Solamnics… Dark Knights… the Legion… Sailors’ Scourge… pirates… Sable…volcanoes…” There was a pattern to all these names. Everything had a place in the complicated pattern of Sanction, she just hadn’t found them all yet. She could feel a sense of urgency building like the dome on the volcano. Time was slipping away from her. The Clandestine Circle would be expecting action, yet she didn’t have all the answers to make the right decisions.

“Lord Bight,” she murmured again. Even after days in his personal guard, she was no closer to knowing the truth of his power or his origins. If he was a trained sorcerer, he must have taught himself, for he had never set foot in her father’s academy and had been using sorcery long before Palin founded the school. So where did he learn to use. the power? Only a handful of people understood and practiced the ancient magic as well as he.

“Ian Durne.” Now, there was a conundrum. Cool, efficient, capable. Yet Lord Bight left him in charge while he went to see Sable, and everything went from bad to worse. Did he botch the job, or were things simply beyond anyone’s control? Now his aide was dead and the night’s raid was a disaster. What was happening here?

“The Circle.” They wanted Lord Bight discredited and removed from his position of power. Were they working under orders from the Solamnic Council or from their own secret agenda? Did Sir Liam condone their desire to be rid of Lord Bight? Why couldn’t she convince the Circle that Hogan Bight was the best leader for this complicated, temperamental city?

She murmured the names again, around and around in her mind like the balls in her hand. “How do they fit together?”

“How does who fit together? You and me?” asked a man from the darkness.

The balls fell from Linsha’s hands as she spun around to face the ladder, her dagger already in her grip.

“It’s all right, Lynn,” said Ian Durne. “It’s just me. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

By all the absent gods of Krynn, she thought, slowly dropping her blade. How long had he been out there? She slid her dagger back in place and, still keeping an eye on him, knelt to retrieve the balls.

The commander walked between the stacks of hay to stand at the edge of the moonlight. “I didn’t know you could juggle. Where did you learn to do that?”

“I taught myself. It helps me think,” she replied in soft tones. She noticed he carried a bottle of wine and two stemmed cups.

He held up the wine like a peace offering. His eyes were like glass in the moonlight, his face stern and sad. His usually immaculate uniform was dusty and rather disheveled, and his weapons were nowhere in sight. Linsha thought she had never seen him look so weary and forlorn.

That warm flutter started again in the pit of her stomach. She tried to ignore it, to remember Varia’s advice. He was a stranger. What did she really know about him? “What are you doing here?”

“I saw you cross the courtyard, and I thought I’d join you.”

She stood up, uncertain how she felt about that. “Can’t sleep?”

“No.” He looked up at the roof wrapped in darkness, at the timbers and the piles of hay. “So, why are you up here?”

“It’s peaceful. I like the animals.”

“It helps you think,” he finished for her. “Ah, may I sit down?”

She nodded and smoothed out a corner of her blanket with a bare foot.

He lowered himself to the blanket in stiff, slow movements, then he uncorked the wine and poured a generous measure in both glasses. Sampling it, he sighed with pleasure. “A nice red. One of the new local vintages. It’s pleasantly soft, with a fine, lingering finish.” He glanced up at Linsha, still standing by the edge of the blanket. “Oh, please, sit down. I hurt my neck tonight and I don’t want to look up.”

Linsha hesitated, torn between being discourteous and on guard, or polite and vulnerable. Did she really want to put herself in this position? She could just take her leather balls and go. Varia would find her. She wouldn’t have to stay here, alone with this man who awakened such an attraction in her. She could say “thank you” and “no” and leave him to the blanket and the wine and the darkness.

“It is said, ‘In delay there lies no plenty,’ ” he murmured.

“It is also said, ‘If you leap too soon, you can lose all,’ ” she quickly retorted.

He grinned. “Ever the cautious alley cat. Always sniffing around corners before you enter the street.”

“Of course. A cat can never be too cautious when there are big toms around.”

As if on cue, a large orange tomcat strolled out of the darkness, his tail held high. “Where did you come from?” Linsha asked. The cat twined around her legs and purred, but when Ian reached for him, his ears flattened on his skull and he hissed at him.

The commander grumbled, “That’s why I don’t like cats.”

A laugh welled up in Linsha’s heart. She scooped up the cat and sat cross-legged on the blanket across from Ian, the cat curled up in her lap.

“You are so beautiful when you smile,” Ian said, his voice a haunting whisper. He poured a glass of wine, black-red in the moonlight, and handed it to her.

She saw him wince from the movement. “Tell me what happened tonight.”

He passed a hand over his eyes and stayed silent for a long while before he spoke. “It was a fiasco. We were ambushed by the Dark Knights on a farm in the northern vale.”

Linsha sucked in a breath. “How?”

He gulped his wine and poured another measure. “Lord Bight’s informer betrayed us. Instead of catching the Knights off guard, we were attacked by a full company of their horsemen lying in wait for us. We lost five men, and ten more were wounded before we could fight our way out.”

“Ye gods,” Linsha breathed. “No wonder Lord Bight was so upset.” The orange cat bumped his head against her hand to be petted, and she automatically began to stroke his soft fur and rub his ears. “Then to lose Captain Dewald to murder…” Her voice faded.

“It hasn’t been a good night,” he groaned in understatement. He finished his second helping of wine, poured a third, then pointed to her cup, still untouched in her hand. “You haven’t tried the wine.”

She sampled the wine, letting it trickle down the back of her throat. He was right; it was very good. “What happened to the informer?” she asked.

“We haven’t found him yet. If I have my way, he’ll be drawn and quartered.”

“How did you get hurt?”

His smile flashed again in the pale light. “Some big Knight sideswiped me with a short lance and knocked me out of the saddle. I nearly snapped my neck.” Switching his cup to his right hand, he gingerly reached out and touched Linsha’s shoulder.

To her astonishment, the orange cat snarled at him and lashed at his hand with a clawed paw.

Ian jerked back. “All right, all right, you stupid cat. Lynn, tell your guardian there to relax. I just wanted to know if your injury was doing well.”

She stroked the cat until he subsided, but she made no effort to move him. She glanced up at Ian from under her dark brows. “It aches and burns at times. Other than that, it’s fine.”

Ian’s third cup of wine disappeared and was replaced.

Linsha watched him worriedly while she sipped her own wine. She had never seen his control slip like this before.

“I’m sorry you were the one to find Captain Dewald in the woods,” the commander said apologetically. His words were coming out slower than normal and a little rough around the edges.

“Do you have any idea who would want him dead?”

Ian swept his free hand through the air. “Any number of people. Solamnic Knights. Dark Knights. A jealous competitor. A jealous husband. The captain was my right hand. Maybe he was killed to strike a blow at me.”

“I’m sorry. I know he was your friend.”

“He was a good man.” Suddenly he started chortling. “You know, he used to tell this awful joke about an elf, a kender, and a draconian.” He fell back in the hay, laughing so hard he spilled wine over his tunic. He tried to tell the joke to Linsha and lost the punch line somewhere in his hilarity. His laughter gradually subsided, but his verbosity did not. He talked to Linsha about Dewald and his exploits, about the men in his command who died that night. He told her funny stories about Sanction and told more jokes than Linsha could ever remember while she listened and laughed and tried not to yawn too much. Through it all, he drank steadily, first from the wine bottle then from a flask he brought out of his tunic.

After nearly an hour, to judge from the lengthening angle of moonlight, Ian sagged back into the hay. He fell quiet so quickly that Linsha stared at him, wondering if he was ill. She lifted the protesting cat from her lap and crawled across the blanket to his side. He was lying on his back with his eyes wide open and staring at the roof. Slowly they slid from the roof and fastened on her.

She gazed down at him from his broad forehead down along the line of his cheek and jaw to his full lips and the small cleft on his chin. Her appraisal offered an invitation, and he took it.

His fingers touched her nose, her eyelids, and caressed the side of her face. They slid through her curls, curved around the back of her neck, and pulled her head down to him. Softly, gently his lips curved over hers, and he kissed her long and deep and passionately.

Linsha’s will to resist lasted perhaps two heartbeats before her resolution melted like an old candle. It had been too long since she felt this way. He woke in her a need she thought long dormant, one she could not honestly call love. Perhaps what she felt for him was just lust or infatuation. She didn’t know—not yet. But at that moment, she didn’t care. All that mattered was his closeness and their need for each other.

Smiling, she traced his hairline with a finger that curled sensuously along his ear and across his strong neck. She delighted in the warm, masculine feel of his skin, in the musky wine-splashed scent of his body. She kissed him again.

He buried his face in her neck; his arms wrapped around her. As soft as an owl wing, she heard him mumble, “I love you.” Then his body went slack and his breathing slowed. His arm dropped away. He slipped beyond consciousness into a sleep induced by too much wine and too much weariness.

Linsha leaned away, her heart sore and her body disappointed. Only her common-sense mind seemed to heave a sigh of relief. It was then she became aware of the orange cat crouched on the blanket, uttering a most obnoxious noise somewhere between a growl and a yowl. The moment she moved away from Durne, he stopped, making his point obvious even to Linsha’s tired mind. For some cat reason, this tom did not approve of the commander. Linsha pushed herself up to a sitting position and sighed a long, heartfelt breath.

“Who are you, cat, to question my judgment? What are you doing up here, anyway?”

The cat merely blinked his yellow eyes in the darkness and watched her every move.

Linsha sat back on her heels and found she was swaying with exhaustion. The events of the long day had caught up with her at last and wore away every trace of strength she had left. Yawning hugely, she straightened Ian’s limbs to a more comfortable position. He looked boyish in his sleep and so helpless lying there. His vulnerability touched her.

But it did not erase her professional sense of an opportunity to be had. While the cat watched, she laid her fingers on Durne’s temples and summoned her power from the core of her soul. With a deft touch, she extended it around the man and the telltale colors of his aura. As she hoped, his outward nature was a decent blue, tinged only with small red taints of evil. It was when she probed deeper into his mind that she touched a barrier that resisted her even through a wine-induced sleep.

“Varia was right,” she muttered to the cat, who studied her intently. “He is strongly shielded. Why does he feel the need to do so?”

Her power faded and the ensorcellment was broken. Ian stirred in his sleep until Linsha brushed a kiss over his mouth.

“I am such a fool,” she muttered to herself. “I am living a lie that I hate. I have fallen for a man I do not trust, and I am deceiving another man I count as a friend. Every day that he calls me Lynn, I pray that one day he will call me Linsha and not hate me.”

The cat meowed softly.

“I live for honor and yet I have none. What am I going to do?”

Perhaps in response to the sadness in her voice, the cat padded over beside her, rose on his hind legs, and patted her cheek with a delicate paw. The unexpected gesture comforted her. She scooped him up and carried him to the other side of the blanket. She could go no farther. She sagged down onto the hay and stretched out in the warm darkness. Sleep took her in moments.

The orange cat did not settle down at once. He circled her twice, sniffed her face and hair, and gently nosed her hands. One paw found the chain and the hard edge of the dragon scale still tucked beneath her tunic. Satisfied, he curled up against her, putting himself between her and the man who slept nearby. Soundlessly the cat watched through the remainder of the night.

At dawn, a newborn light worked its way into the barn and eventually woke the commander on his bed of hay. He groaned and rubbed his face. Painfully he pushed himself upright. His head was a leaden weight, his side was sore, and his neck felt as if someone had replaced the bones with a hot iron rod. And what was he doing in this hayloft?

A small, angry sound caused him to turn around, and he saw Linsha asleep on the blanket, curled on her side, her back to him. Memory returned, blurred and reluctant. What had he done? More to the point, seeing a fully clothed woman sleeping close by, what hadn’t he done? The noise, he realized, came from the large orange cat crouched at Linsha’s back. He was staring at the man with undisguised dislike.

“Blasted cat,” Ian muttered. He thought of waking Lynn and perhaps continuing what he apparently missed last night. Then he decided to let her sleep. His body was battered, in pain, and in need of a healer’s touch. He wouldn’t be much good to her like this. He scratched the stubble on his chin. A shave would help, too. Besides, he could hear the horses stirring below and knew the grooms would be along soon. It wouldn’t be appropriate for the governor’s Commander of the Guard to be found in a hayloft with the newest squire.

He shook his head to help clear the cobwebs in his brain and climbed to his feet. He should never have had so much wine. “Sleep well, fair lady,” he said to her supine form. Gathering up the empty wine bottle and the cups, he paused to glare at the cat. “Begone, or I will deal with you later.”

The cat curled his lips and hissed an angry, defiant warning.

Hurrying now, Commander Durne climbed down the ladder and left the stables.

Only after the stable door closed and the sound of his footsteps faded away did the owl step out of the shadows in the roof and come drifting down on open wings. She came to rest on Linsha’s hip and peered down at the cat. “You’re here again? Have you been here long?” The cat meowed in response. Long enough.

“Good,” chirped the owl. “I just wish you’d show up in your other form and dispose of that cad before he hurts her.”

Not yet. She can hold her own with him for a while. He flicked a piece of hay off his paw and yawned. I must go. Long day ahead.

“Come back anytime,” Varia hooted, her moon eyes bright with amusement. “Not that I heartily approve of you, but you’re an improvement over that other man. He’s dangerous. I just wish Linsha would see that.”

“See what?” The lady Knight stirred and stretched sleepily, forcing the owl to hop off to the loft floor. “Would see her way to waking up. I have news,” Varia trilled.

Linsha yawned and stretched again and threw an arm up over her eyes. “I’m awake now, so tell me. Did you see—”

“Yes,” the owl interrupted abruptly. “And I followed Lady Karine when she told Annian. The news upset her as I expected. The captain was supposed to meet her yesterday to give her some important piece of information.”

“But he never showed.”

“No.”

Her memory of the night before belatedly returned, and Linsha sat up, looking around for Durne.

“He left,” the owl told her, the disapproval plain in her musical voice. Her statement was seconded by a meow from the cat.

Linsha frowned at them both. First the cat, now the owl. She found their joint dislike of the man she loved very irritating. What did they know? Then she grew annoyed with herself for even caring what two animals thought about Ian Durne. Oh, gods of all, she was tired. She rubbed her temples and tried to recall what Varia had been talking about. “What information did the captain have that was so important someone killed him?” She asked rhetorically.

The owl eyed the cat thoughtfully before she continued. “There’s more. Mica did not go back to the temple last night. He stayed in town.”

Linsha’s interest piqued. “Where?”

“I don’t know. He met someone, and they went in the direction of the refugee camp. I lost them near the wall.”

“Could he have been going somewhere in his capacity as a healer?”

“Perhaps. If he was, he was going armed. He wore a sword.”

Linsha was amazed. “Mica?” She couldn’t remember seeing the dwarf bearing any kind of weapon besides his surly personality. “Is he still there?”

“I have been watching the temple. He has not returned.”

“Perhaps I can find him. I would like to know what he is up to,” Linsha said, thoughtfully chewing on a piece of hay.

The owl stared at her, unblinking. “May you leave the palace?”

“I was ordered to attend him with his work.”

“That was yesterday,” Varia pointed out.

“Maybe the guards won’t know that. I’ll tell them I am going to the temple.”

Varia tilted her head and fixed a yellow eye on the cat. They stared at each other for so long that Linsha wondered petulantly what they were plotting. She knew Varia was telepathic at short ranges if she wanted to be; were cats, too?

“Fine,” said the owl, breaking the silence. “You may try that. But if you go to the camp, be careful. The plague has hit hard there.”

“Are you speaking to me or the cat?” Linsha said, her voice peevish.

“You,” the owl responded, as if to a small owlet. “The cat has other places to go.”

Linsha’s brow furrowed in perplexity, but she didn’t ask for an explanation. Varia often spoke of things Linsha didn’t understand, and while she could have used her mystic abilities to talk to the cat, talking to animals was something she did only when she had time and a great deal of patience. This morning she had neither.

She yanked her blanket off the floor, upsetting the cat, and jumped to her feet. “I’m going to change. I’ll leave you two to your private chat.” Shaking her head, she climbed down from the hayloft.

Cat and owl watched her leave. A growling purr, almost like laughter, rumbled from the cat’s chest.

“Yes, she is stubborn,” Varia agreed. “And she gets mean as a gorgon when she hasn’t had enough sleep.”

Still rumbling to himself, the cat left the way he came. Varia preened for a minute or two, then flew silently from the stable to keep an unobtrusive eye on Linsha.