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.”