Dänvârfij closed her eyes. “Brot’ân’duivé now protects the woman and her companions. He has taken Wy’lanvi and Owain from us. Counting Fréthfâre, we are now six. I have allowed the others only a quarter day or night of sleep between search or watch duty. But we are spread thin in a human city of such size.”
She did not wish to sound as if she were making excuses for their lack of success. She simply wished him to know the true situation. No immediate response came, though she had not expected one. The loss of two more at the hands of the traitor would strike him hard. Even the thought of a greimasg’äh killing other anmaglâhk was so unthinkable.
So he is still there, in the city?
“And another,” she answered, though this part was not something easy to tell him. “The faltering one, Osha, is with him. There is also the last survivor of Sgäilsheilleache’s family ... Leanâlhâm.”
Osha ... and Leanâlhâm ... in a land of humans? What are they doing with the traitor?
His tone was so shocked that Dänvârfij wished she had not been the one to deliver such news. The rent in her caste was deepening. It had become more than just a few among the people sympathizing with dissidents both inside or outside of the caste. Osha was no longer anmaglâhk, and Leanâlhâm was just an orphan, and yet both had stepped into this civil war.
Dänvârfij ached, thinking of her people and wondering how much worse things had become since she had left home. She could not ask.
Do you have a plan?
The abrupt shift caught her off guard but was welcome.
“Of a kind. Our quarry has been trying to reach the sage, Wynn Hygeorht. That woman may hold something of importance. She has been imprisoned by her own kind, and it is my hope that Magiere and Brot’ân’duivé will try to free her before fleeing the city. When they come for the sage, above all else, Brot’ân’duivé will die, and we will capture the others.”
You have sentries on all city exits?
“No, only on the port and the guild’s castle. The others are sweeping the city, trying to gain a location.”
Pull in everyone. Focus on the guild and all ways out of the city. You will not find Brot’ân’duivé until he chooses to show himself. Wait, and take your quarry in the open, once they are encumbered with too many to protect. This is the only way to keep the traitor from slipping away.
“Yes, Father.”
His guidance made her settle at ease once more. Perhaps now was a chance to ask how he was, how efforts at home progressed ... but a shadow shifted among the branches around her arm.
Dänvârfij’s heart hammered as a shimmering white stiletto thrust through the branches for her heart. She twisted out of its path at the last instant. A booted foot shattered the branches and smashed the side of her head.
She rolled blindly away, trying to regain her feet. In her blurred sight, she saw a glint and kicked out as she rose on one knee. Her foot never connected, though that spark on white metal vanished.
Lunging backward and up to her feet, she reached for her own blades. She knew whom she faced even before her sight cleared, and she could not help being afraid. The very shadows of the fir’s branches appeared to cling and glide over a tall, broad form like a second cloak as it—he—stepped out from between the trees.
Brot’ân’duivé, the traitor, stood fully in the dawn’s light.
This was the first time in the long, dark journey from Dänvârfij’s homeland that she had seen him face-to-face, seen those scars that skipped over his right eye. She was no match for him. Another greimasg’äh might not have taken him.
Brot’ân’duivé took another silent step, not even disturbing the leaves and needles on the earth.
She jerked out her stilettos and almost instantly realized her failure. As much as the traitor had been killing her brethren, killing her was not truly why he had come, for she held a stiletto in both hands.
Dänvârfij had dropped her word-wood at the tree. That was what he had come for.
Her life would be only a secondary gain next to that. She had lost even before she had a chance to strike at him. Her thoughts raced to scavenge anything from this moment.
Dänvârfij did not fear death; she feared failure of purpose, of her people ... of her beloved patriarch, Most Aged Father. What was life to her other than service in silence and in shadow?
She quickly backed all the way to the open road and stood there in plain sight of any guards at the city gate. Even dull-witted humans would fix on a fight on the open road. Brot’ân’duivé would never call such attention to himself.
The greimasg’äh followed only to the last tree off the road and came no farther into the open.
Dänvârfij grew sick inside for her loss but sheathed her weapons, jerked off her face scarf, and pulled her hood back. With her face fully exposed, like any other visitor to the city, she turned and walked slowly toward the gates.
For a moment, she almost expected to hear a blade spinning through air.
It never came, and one military guard merely smiled at her as she passed through, into the city.
Now there was only Fréthfâre’s word-wood, and it had to be guarded. Without it, they would be cut off from Most Aged Father and lost alone in this foreign land far from home.
Brot’ân’duivé watched through a tree’s branches as Dänvârfij slipped back into the city. Killing her would have been an additional advantage. He did not admire her wisdom of retreat. He noted only that she was after all an anmaglâhk; she knew when, where, and how to cut her losses.
Turning back through the trees, he crouched beneath the branches of that one fir. There upon the needle-coated ground at its base lay the tawny oval of word-wood. He picked it up, prepared to destroy it, and then hesitated. There had been too many times in the past year when he had failed within himself, as he did so now when his spite and fury rose.
Brot’ân’duivé pressed the word-wood against the fir’s trunk.
“Do you hear me, old worm in the wood of my people?” he whispered. “One day, I will come for you ... again!”
No voice entered his thoughts, and after the longest moment, he was about to pull the word-wood from the bark and crack it.
Unlikely ... but if ever, then I will be waiting again, dog ... in the dark.
Chapter 22
TWO MORNINGS LATER, before the sun had risen, Wynn knelt by the back door of Nattie’s inn and fastened a note to Shade’s collar. Chane stood right behind both of them.
“Remember, give it only to Rodian,” she said, and stroked Shade’s neck as she drew up memories of the captain and the second castle of Calm Seatt. “Try to find him at the barracks first.”
She wished Shade didn’t have to be the one to put events in motion. Hopefully the dog could locate the captain somewhere other than the guild, as that place was likely watched by anmaglâhk.
Shade huffed and scratched the door.
With reluctance, Wynn cracked it open, and Shade slipped out and took off up the alley. When Wynn turned about, Chane looked troubled.
Dawn was close, and he needed to get back to their room.
Chane had a cloak—provided earlier by Brot’an—draped over his arm. It was not the drab cloak that the master anmaglâhk had been wearing as his traveler’s disguise, but instead, it was the forest gray cloak of an anmaglâhk. Wynn didn’t want to know where Brot’an had gotten it.
“Is everything else set?” Chane asked. “The trunks, the wagons ... the inserts for the boots?”
“Yes, yes,” she answered, nervous now that the first step had been taken. “Ore-Locks arranged everything and kept me out of sight. I wish he was coming with us tonight, but he can’t risk being seen in the middle of all this. There can be no oddities to put off the anmaglâhk.”