“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.