Барб Хенди - A Wind in the Night

“Left now, and out of sight,” Leesil whispered.

The armed men up the pier were already advancing. As Magiere turned back, she spotted the ones ahead clearing the archway ... and then clusters of more to the left and right, pushing through the crowds.

She reached for her sword as she looked for the best position to protect Wayfarer, and something more made her panic sharpen.

Someone was missing, though he couldn’t have slipped around her.

Brot’an had vanished.

Wynn knelt beside Shade, who still lay silently on a small, rickety bed at the inn in Oléron. It had taken the previous night, the following day, and until well past dusk before they reached the small port where they’d first hired the team and wagon. Osha and Chane had traded off in driving during their onward rush—in which Chane had lain dormant during the day under a cover of canvas in the wagon’s back. Osha stopped them only briefly during the past day to rest the horses.

And even now Shade hadn’t regained consciousness.

“Please, wake up,” Wynn whispered far too many times to count.

She took a soaked rag from a bowl of freshwater she’d gotten from the innkeeper. Again she tried to squeeze a bit of water into Shade’s mouth. If Shade didn’t revive soon to drink or eat ...

Wynn shuddered and pushed aside the rest of that thought.

Along the journey she’d forced Chane to tell her everything that had happened—including everything he hadn’t planned to tell her. She still wondered how the wraith could have taken Karl Beáumie’s body. At that, she glanced at the trunk sitting beyond Shade’s bed in the room’s rear corner.

Everything Wynn learned of the orbs only made their true purpose more uncertain and the need to hide them forever that much greater. But hiding one wasn’t so easy.

Once they’d gained room at the inn, Osha and Chane had started arguing about how and where to hide the orb of Spirit. Perhaps their bickering was aggravated in part by frustration, for none of them knew how to help Shade. Wynn had carefully cleaned Shade up as much as possible and then used the last of any healing salve she still possessed to tend the minor and more visible wounds. The dog never even flinched in pain.

Of course Chane wanted to turn over the additional orb to Ore-Locks and the Stonewalkers. Osha vehemently countered that Aupsha had already discovered that there was an “artifact” hidden in the dwarven underworld. Even when Chane pointed out that Aupsha couldn’t get anywhere near that orb, Osha remained unconvinced—and so was Wynn. Their incessant arguing finally drove her to push them both out of the room, and they’d left in silence.

Wynn again tried to squeeze a little water between Shade’s jaws, but most of it ran out to soak the bedding. She collapsed on the bed’s edge and stared at Shade until she finally closed her eyes and reached out blindly to slip her fingers in Shade’s neck fur.

So many had been hurt or lost along her way; yet losing someone dear wasn’t something she’d been prepared to face. And not Shade—never Shade—and not so slowly and cruelly.

And nothing was finished yet.

Magiere, Leesil, and Chap—and Brot’an and Leanâlhâm—were searching for the last orb. If they found it on their own, would that even be the end? Worse, Wynn now had a device made from an orb key that might make finding the last orb easier.

But it was now dormant ... useless ... and she couldn’t go back to the keep to speak with Jausiff.

There was no telling what had happened there after the keep guards returned. Chane seemed certain that Nikolas was safe with the duchess and his father until the young sage found his own way back to the guild. Even then there would be questions from his—and Wynn’s—superiors.

And what of Aupsha? Where had she gone? There was too much risk of her coming after the device and the orb if Wynn tried to go back.

Even returning to Calm Seatt and the guild was now a severe risk. Eventually the duke’s body would be found. If by chance she arrived before word of all that had happened, sooner or later her superiors would hear of the death of a nobleman in an allied nation. Then there was more of her “meddling,” all under of the guise of a sage in the wrong order, in critical affairs and secrets of a war to come. Without any proof of what had really happened concerning the orb and Sau’ilahk—without revealing the orb itself—what could she possibly say in her own defense?

The last time she’d gone afoul of her superiors would pale by comparison. The best of outcomes would end with her being cast out once and for all. Even Premin Hawes, if she were still at the Numan branch, wouldn’t be able to circumvent that. And more likely Wynn would end up in a cell under the rule of the city guard, if High Premin Sykion had her way. More and more it seemed that perhaps turning the orb over to Ore-Locks was the only option to keep it safe ... before Wynn faced anything else.

She shouldn’t have wept anymore, but she did, clenching her fingers in Shade’s fur.

—Remember—

Wynn flinched. She didn’t want to think about one more orb to hide ... one more to find. All she wanted was for Shade to come back to her.

—Remember ... device—

Wynn flinched again, blinking the tears out of her eyes. She barely lifted her head, wondering ... what? One long breath with an awful smell ran warmly over her face.

Wynn slapped the tears off her cheeks and stared into half-opened crystal-blue eyes ... and they blinked once.

She almost lunged in as Shade groaned, the first real sound the dog had made since her injuries.

—Remember ... whispers—

“Don’t!” Wynn exhaled, quickly putting her hand over Shade’s eyes, and then she added more softly, “Don’t talk; don’t move. Just ... just rest.”

Shade tried weakly to move her head. Wynn was caught between stopping this and fearing she’d caused more harm to an unknown wound. One of Shade’s eyes peeked around her fingers to gain a line of sight. More memory-words rose in Wynn’s mind.

—Remember ... device ... whispers ... Jausiff—

Wynn tried to understand. Shade was obviously struggling to tell her something important, though she shouldn’t be straining herself this way.

The only thing that came to mind that matched up with those isolated words ...

Wynn thought back on the moment in Jausiff’s chambers when the elderly master sage had first displayed the device. He had whispered something over it, and she tried to remember anything more. Whatever he had said had been too soft for her to hear as he’d stood there behind his desk and ...

Suddenly the whole memory shifted dizzily in Wynn’s head. Her perspective changed, dropping low until she just barely saw over the desk. That angle of view blurred into and over her own as the one moment began again from its start.

The whispers suddenly magnified, more distinct, until she heard the old sage’s words. That second memory overlying the first vanished suddenly and left Wynn’s head spinning. As she clamped a hand over her mouth, she was thankful that she hadn’t even eaten yet this night.

“Don’t ... do that again ... please,” she barely got out.

Shade’s eyes were already closed again, and Wynn leaned in quickly in returned fright.

The dog snorted once in half sleep, and Wynn relaxed a little in quick, shaky breaths, as she hoped such effort hadn’t harmed Shade any further. But Shade had heard the words Jausiff had spoken and, between the two memories, somehow made them clear to Wynn.

The only problem was that she didn’t understand one word that she had heard.

She sat there, waiting and listening to Shade’s even breaths, and then finally reached inside her robe. She took out the center third of the orb key and stared at it. What she’d heard sounded something like Sumanese, but it wasn’t any dialect she recognized.