Barb Hendee - In Shade and Shadow

The main street was slightly more populated with shopkeepers and wanderers heading home for the night, and he might blend in more easily. He glanced aside as a man struggled to calm a slender horse pulling a tarp-covered cart. The horse stomped and snorted. But the sages hurried onward, the girl tightly clutching her folio in both arms.

And the sound of screaming cats exploded on Chane's left. He turned on instinct.

Two large felines spun out of an alley, hissing and swiping at each other. The horse behind him screamed.

"Look out!"

Chane dodged at the shout, but as the panicked horse raced by, the cart clipped his side. He spun and stumbled, but didn't fall. Everyone around stopped to gawk.

"Are you all right?" the vegetable man asked, running up.

Chane didn't answer. Both sages had stopped, and the tall male stared straight at him. Recognition dawned on the journeyor's face. Had he been seen back near the Inkwell?

"I am fine," Chane answered in a hoarse whisper. "Go catch your horse." He slipped back down the side street, cursing himself.

Wynn emerged in the main hall, tired, hungry, and disoriented by how quickly time had passed in the catacombs. Only a few others were still about, talking, reading, or sipping tea at the tables.

Domin il'Sänke sat reading by the fire.

"Wynn?" someone called anxiously from her right.

She turned to find Nikolas awkwardly waving her over. Two covered bowls and slices of buttered bread sat on the table in front of him.

"I waited for you," he said.

Domin il'Sänke glanced up from his book.

Wynn offered him a tired smile and went to join Nikolas. His robe was slightly disheveled, and his straight hair still hung into his eyes, but she couldn't recall the last time someone had waited supper on her.

"I had research to do," she said, her journal, lamp, and quill still in hand. "Keep the bowls covered a little longer. I'll run these things up to my room and be back."

Her answer brought an odd relief to his face. She knew how it felt to be lonely, or just alone, and when company mattered more than food.

"The lentils will keep," he said. "I'll put our bowls by the hearth."

Wynn headed for the hall's main archway. A chill breeze rolled in as she approached, as if someone had opened the keep's doors. She heard someone heave up from a chair too quickly behind her, and she glanced back. Il'Sänke strode straight toward her with a hard gaze, and then Miriam's frightened voice echoed from the entryway.

Wynn hadn't made out the girl's words, and il'Sänke rushed by in a trot, his robes swishing around his feet. She waved to Nikolas, and they hurried after the domin.

Around the corner beyond the main archway, Wynn spotted a panting Miriam standing before il'Sänke halfway down the hall to the front doors. The girl was clutching a folio to her chest, and Dâgmund stood behind her, lowering his cowl.

Miriam's hood was thrown back, and her face glistened as if she'd been running. For once she didn't cringe in il'Sänke's presence.

"Domin…" she breathed. "We were followed! Someone followed us!"

Dâgmund looked less frightened than Miriam, but he was clearly troubled.

Wynn pursed her lips. Why had Domin High-Tower sent a journeyor metaologer out with Miriam? A few more initiates and apprentices from the main hall began gathering in the passage behind her.

Il'Sänke turned stern eyes on Dâgmund. "Is this true?"

The young man nodded once. "A tall man in a long dark cloak. I saw him twice. He had to be the one."

Il'Sänke held out his hand. "Give me the folio."

Miriam shoved it at him without hesitation and exhaled loudly in relief.

To Wynn's surprise, il'Sänke stepped past the pair of couriers to the empty entryway. Beyond anyone's reach, he opened the leather flap and pulled out the short stack of pages. The domin scanned their contents once, and then placed them back inside.

Wynn would've given anything to peek over his shoulder.

In that instant il'Sänke glanced at her.

Without a word he strode silently past Miriam and her companion—and Wynn. The cluster of gathered initiates and apprentices scattered to the passage walls to let him through. Wynn quickly followed him back into the common hall, but Domin il'Sänke never paused. He headed straight for the narrow side archway. Wynn sneaked after him, all the way to the turn, and watched him head straight for the door to the north tower—and Domin High-Tower's study.

What had he seen in those pages?

"Come have supper," Nikolas said softly.

Wynn had forgotten about him standing right behind her.

"Put your things away later," he added. "Just come and eat."

She simply nodded and followed him back to the table in the common hall. But Wynn's thoughts were locked on the folio, and the frustration of watching il'Sänke scan those pages right in front of her.

Chane was seething as he stalked back toward the Graylands Empire. He had come so close and then lost the folio through clumsiness. And he was hungry, as if anger made his need that much worse.

In the past, the beast within him had reveled in the hunt, in the smell of fear in his prey, and relished their attempts to fight back. He had fed indiscriminately, taking whoever pleased him in the moment.

Some things had changed since he had last spoken with Wynn.

His choices had become more particular, and the beast within whimpered in suppression or howled in rage at his self-denial. Chane struggled with his longing for the euphoria of a true hunt and a kill.

He had been in Calm Seatt for just over a moon, but he had learned its districts quite well. When he needed—rather than wanted—to feed, he headed into the southern reaches of the Graylands Empire. Tonight he walked shabby and dim byways, listening and watching. Most people here were squalid and wretched, but those were not the criteria of his choices.

An old woman with no teeth shuffled by, muttering to herself, but he ignored her. Finally he passed a shack set between a faded tavern and what might be a candle shop on the corner. Muffled shouting escaped one shutterless window, and Chane slipped into the shadow of the candle shop's awnings.

"You put that back!" a woman shouted. "That's for milk and bread. Wager your boots at dice, if that's all you care about!"

A loud crash followed, and the sound of a woman weeping. The shack's front door burst open as a large man stepped halfway out. He had not shaved in days.

"Leave me be!" he snarled back through the doorway. "I'm going to the Blue Boar to ask about… to find some work. I'll get the milk and bread myself, so stop sniveling!"

So obsessed was he with maintaining control, Chane was startled by a familiar, uncomfortable tickle at the back of his mind. And the beast within rumbled in warning, bringing him to awareness.

The man was lying. He turned down the street, leaving the door wide-open.

Chane slipped out to follow. This worthless creature was an acceptable choice—a liar, a wastrel, and a waste of human flesh. He was no loss to this world, just another head in the cattle of humanity. Three streets down, Chane halted short of the next alley's mouth.

"Sir," he rasped in Numanese, knowing that both his voice and his accent might cause suspicion. "I could not help overhearing a mention of dice."

The filthy man stopped and turned, eyes squinting.

For this part of the city, Chane was well dressed in hard boots and a dark wool cloak hiding all but the hilt of a longsword.

The man blinked in indecision. "You lookin' for a game?"

Chane took a step and pulled out his pouch, allowing the coins to clink.

"Depends on the price to get in."

He stepped only as far as the alley mouth's other side, and noted that the closest passerby was two cross streets to the west. The large man's eyes fixed on the pouch, and he smiled, perhaps seeing some witless foreigner to take in among his regular companions. He strolled back toward Chane.