This night, after more debating with Fréthfâre, Dänvârfij had surrounded the guild with her people. Rhysís was covering the northwest, Owain the back, and Eywodan on the southeast. Tavithê had gone to watch the port, in case Én’nish was wrong and their quarry tried to flee the city without the sage.
“What could they be doing?” Én’nish wondered aloud.
Dänvârfij had no idea. The human and dwarf certainly could not scale the wall there without being spotted. If they did, they would simply find themselves trapped in the inner bailey when a guard came along the wall’s top, into view. She had half expected to see Léshil, Magiere, and even Brot’ân’duivé come this night, but not two strangers. How many in this city took covert interest in the guild ... or the little sage?
Én’nish gasped. “Look!”
Dänvârfij already saw and straightened to her feet as the human below gripped the hand of the dwarf. And the dwarf thrust his other hand through the bailey wall’s stone.
It was hard to be certain of what she saw next. It happened quickly in the wall’s night shadows, out of reach of the great braziers on the gatehouse’s front. But the color of the wall’s stone appeared to flow up the dwarf’s arm and over his body.
He stepped through the wall, pulling the pale human after him. Both disappeared into stone and were gone.
A moment of silence passed before Én’nish asked, “Do we move?”
Dänvârfij hesitated. What they had witnessed was disturbing, impossible. She had heard talk of mages among the humans, but had never imagined anything like this. The nature of the dwarves was still unfamiliar to her, as those people did not exist in her part of the world. But the two men were not their quarry, and they could not risk missing Magiere and Leesil.
“No,” Dänvârfij answered. “We do not know what they are after. Should they be here for the sage or not, we can take them either way when they come out. We hold our positions ... for now.”
She was less certain than she sounded.
Panic rushed through Chane as Ore-Locks pulled him into the bailey wall. He did not struggle and focused only on gripping Ore-Locks’s hand as darkness and cold enveloped him. The sensation of suffocation—though he did not require air—and the pressure all over him were no easier than the first time ... when Ore-Locks had dragged him through a cave-in on their way to Bäalâle Seatt.
This time, the discomfort did not last as long. Almost before Chane knew it, he stood within the inner bailey among a narrow band of trees, looking at the keep’s own taller wall. Still disoriented, he stumbled and then righted himself.
Passing through stone was never easy, even for an undead. Ore-Locks was not as skilled as some of his brethren, the keepers of the honored dead in the depths below Dhredze Seatt. He could not take anything living with him through stone, which was a pity, because that would have made getting Wynn out far easier.
“Are you well?” Ore-Locks asked.
“I am fine. Go on.”
He was not fine, but Shade would be on the move soon. The sands in the glass were still falling, and they had to be ready. Ore-Locks took off down the bailey, and Chane followed to where the keep’s wall met the southern corner tower.
“This one is thicker,” Ore-Locks warned again.
“Just go.”
Ore-Locks took hold of Chane’s arm and stepped into the wall.
The world went black and cold again, and Chane choked down rising panic.
Stone pressed in over every part of him, as if to crush him. Time froze in the longest of moments. Then, suddenly, the pressure vanished and air surrounded him again.
Chane heard the soft crackle of braziers somewhere nearby on the gatehouse tower, and the chill night felt almost warm compared to the cold of stone. He opened his eyes and looked up as Ore-Locks let go of his arm.
Below the night sky’s stars, Chane looked over the end of the two-story stone barracks. Wynn’s room was at the top near corner, but there was no window on the end of the building.
He dropped low and scurried to the building’s corner, crouching with Ore-Locks near the old cistern. They were inside the courtyard, hidden in the shadows. Now the waiting continued as Chane peeked around the corner and across the keep’s broad inner courtyard.
No guards were in sight, but that did not mean they were not there. From his present position across to the courtyard’s northern corner, he could see only half the space. He could see the main keep’s double doors, but not the opening to the gatehouse tunnel or the courtyard’s western corner beyond that.
Chane possessed a decent internal sense of time, but the moments passed too slowly as he imagined sand trickling away before Shade’s eyes.
“Any moment now,” Ore-Locks whispered.
Leesil flattened against the side of a warehouse on Norgate Road near where it met the back of Old Bailey Road, which encircled the guild’s castle. Brot’an leaned out slightly from behind him, and they both gazed on the back of the keep’s bailey wall.
“Any time now,” Leesil whispered.
Their next move had to be timed just right.
A guard in a red tabard finally appeared, walking the bailey wall around the eastern tower. The man kept on along the back wall, heading for the rear central barbican.
Leesil and Brot’an had chosen to approach from the rear because it was the only place where any part of the keep met the bailey wall. A large building had been built inside the bailey for some reason. They had no idea what was inside it, but its upper-floor windows were just within reach of the wall’s top ... with a short climb. The bailey wall itself, a good twenty feet high, at a guess, was another matter.
Leesil crouched, getting ready to run, and both he and Brot’an waited for the right moment.
Tonight, neither of them wore cloaks, and Leesil had even forgone his hauberk. They both wore long scarves that wrapped up and hid light-colored hair and the lower half of their faces. Only their eyes were left exposed.
Leesil’s winged punching blades were strapped tight on his thighs, but he was uncomfortable with the two new weapons sheathed inside his shirtsleeves—an anmaglâhk’s hook-bladed bone knife and stiletto. Brot’an had offered them to him, and Leesil knew they would be necessary, so he’d taken them. He was uncomfortably aware of only one possible source for the spares Brot’an had been carrying: the body of a dead anmaglâhk.
After all the questionable things Leesil had done in his life, it shouldn’t bother him to use a dead man’s weapons, but it did. He’d once possessed his own anmaglâhk stilettos and bone knife, at the time unaware what they’d meant or where his mother had gotten them. He’d traded one intact stiletto and a broken one to a blacksmith for his first set of winged blades.
He’d left his bone knife buried to the hilt in the throat of Lord Darmouth.
Losing those assassin’s weapons had been no loss; there were always more weapons to be had. Losing his had been a relief. Now he wore them again ... like an anmaglâhk.
The guard reached the large barbican jutting out from the center of the bailey’s rear wall. He paused there, surveying the keep and the inner bailey, and then turned to look out at the quiet night city around the guild.
Leesil flattened against the wall in the dark.
The guard finally turned away, heading back the way he’d come in his half circuit around the wall’s northern half. It would be some 130 paces before the guard walking the wall’s southern half came into sight.