Erin Evans - The God Catcher

"So," Mardin said. "Your first adventure didn't quite turn out."

"No."

"Doesn't usually. My first try I ended up walking in on some old lord, his wife, and their page." He shook his head. "Losing a few trinkets is one thing. Losing your privacy like that, well, I had to get out of there fast and lie low. Not much compared to upsetting a dragon, but there you are."

Tennora knew she was supposed to laugh, but she couldn't. "It's not all gnolls and saving fair maidens, then?"

"Never was," Mardin said. "Shouldn't have let you think it was. I'm sorry she never told you the truth, petal. And I'm sorry I didn't either. But you're not her, you know. You're your own person, and you don't have to follow your mother to know that. Go back to your books. That's your place."

"No," she said. "Master Halnian's let me go."

A moment of silence. "Ah," Mardin said.

Tennora set her mug on the floorboards beside her. "I don't feel like talking just now," she said. "What I'd really like…" She paused, very deliberately, feeling guilty at playing Mardin like her aunt and uncle. "I just want to wash all of this away. I'd really like to visit the baths for an hour or so-do you think you could see if Veron would follow me, in case they do come back? I'd ask, but… I don't want to give the wrong idea." "Of course, petal," Mardin said, giving her a kiss on the forehead. "Nothing simpler."

"I'll just get my things together."

Once Mardin had gone, Tennora quickly stood and opened her mother's trunk.

The smell of beeswax and tallow rose up in a cloud as she removed the tray and one by one withdrew the leathers and laid them in an open apron. She tied the apron into a bundle and tucked it under her arm. She picked up her carvestars and tucked them into her pouch, then slipped the dagger into its sheath and took up her staff.

Outside the storm clouds grew darker and heavier with the rain. Despite being hardly past tharsun, it looked as if the sun had retreated for the evening.

It would be dangerous-but that thought rose up and fell away, leaving no mark on her decision. She left the God Catcher.

Veron seemed to sense she was in no mood for conversation and walked silently several paces behind her. It gave her a chance to think.

There was no chance she could find Nestrix and rescue her alone without a little leverage. The only connection she knew of was the antiquary's shop, and the woman had said flat out they wouldn't be there.

"A greedy, sloppy dragon," Nestrix had said. Tennora thought of the treasures, so many amazing things stacked up in that antechamber. Perhaps she could offer a trade? Her mother's keepsakes for Nestrix's life.

No-he was too angry. A few trinkets wouldn't do it.

The key is the singer's collar, the statue had said. The lodestone is the first lord's gift.

"The singer's collar," Tennora said aloud. The back of her neck prickled. The Songdragon's gorget. Invaluable, beautiful-and he would take it because of its powers and never ask questions. She felt dizzy with success. She could save Nestrix.

But first she needed to get away. First she needed to look like someone who could make such a bold offer.

At the Queen of Hearts bathhouse, Tennora turned to face Veron. "Will you wait here?" she asked.

He looked along the street and pointed with his chin at a nearby tavern. "I'll draw less notice there. How long will you be?"

Tennora shrugged. "An hour." Let him wait, she thought.

He started to say something, then seemed to take stock of her expression. He nodded and headed for the tavern. Tennora entered the marble building, paid her donation to the heartwarder at the door, and found herself a dressing alcove. She unwrapped the pieces of armor.

Black, soft, and tooled with graceful curls and whorls-time had hardly touched them. Tennora unwrapped the bracers and the greaves, flexing the material in her hands. Still pliable.

She stripped down to her smallclothes and pulled on the pieces one by one.

The boots were loose and the vambraces snug. The high-collared cuirass fit smoothly over her torso, laced tight around her neck, and buckled with only a little trouble to the harness and the leggings. Each piece, each step, she felt as if she were donning another person's skin, another person's self. She wasn't a thief. She wasn't the Shadow Wind. But in her mother's leather armor, she might be something close. She bound her hair back in a tight braid.

She took the belt she had worn over her skirts-a dusty brown, heavily stitched piece of fabric that dripped with loops and pouches for components-and found places for her picks and carvestars and her mother's dagger, before tying it around her waist. She slid the staff through the back harness meant for a short sword and adjusted it so she could move easily.

Wrapping herself in her stormcloak and pulling up the hood, she slipped back out the door. She didn't dare look up to see if Veron had spotted her, but when his voice didn't call down the street, her shoulders relaxed a little and she pushed back the hood.

As she passed the window of a shop, she caught a glimpse of herself. The stormy sky beyond made her reflection clear as a looking glass, and she was surprised at what she saw.

She looked as if she knew what she was doing.

All the shops along Jembril Street were shut for evenfeast, the lamps turned low, the clerks all shut away in their back rooms. On the door of the antiquary's shop, a small hand-lettered sign had been pasted.

Closed, the sign said, for a family emergency. Please call again in a tenday.

Tennora cracked the lock much more quickly than the previous time. They'd reset it, but not replaced it, and the cylinders moved just as they had before. She slipped inside and shut the door behind her.

Not a body stirred in the seed hoard. Not a sound came from the rooms beyond. Fine, she thought. If they aren't here, I'll bring them here.

The heavy iron urn she'd knocked off the cabinet still rested on the floor. She kicked it over onto its side once more and then rolled it onto the pressure plate with another kick. As it hit the plate, the acid bursts spattered down on it, as expected, and she felt the rush of the alarm triggering-quiet as a breeze, but somewhere, for someone, the alarm was screaming that the treasure was no longer safe.

She sat down on a chest and waited for that someone to turn up.

It took little time. There was a rustle in the shadows at the far end of the building, as if a door had opened, and the man she'd mistaken for an antiquary appeared at the edge of the light from the glowballs, knives out. He eyed her for a moment and, satisfied she didn't present an immediate threat, stepped closer.

"Robbing my shop?" He looked her over once more and frowned. "Again." "You work for Dareun," she said. "Lovac. I assume you're Ferremo. Do you have a proper name?"

The man's eyes narrowed, but he didn't throw the knife. If Dareun thought Nestrix was a player, he had to think Tennora was one of her minions. Perhaps, like the man with the knives, her chief minion. Her lovac.

"It's Magli," he said. "Ferremo Magli. You?"

"You know my name," she said with a smile.

"Why are you here?"

"He has my mistress," she said. "And I'd like her back. But you and I both know he won't listen to a nothing like me. So I came to make you an offer. An offer he might prefer, if he heard it from the right source."

He smiled. "Does your mistress give up her gains so easily? He'll not give her back without a fight."

"I have something he'd like very much."

"What? Alina? Between you and me, he's better off without her."

Tennora smiled back. "You mean you're better off without her." She'd seen the way he'd sneered at the half-elf as he dropped the token. "I can get him something much better."