Барб Хенди - Dog in the Dark

Priorities had changed.

Dänvârfij found the others expectantly watching her, not Fréthfâre. This brought some relief, followed by brief shame at her own reaction.

“There is a slim chance our quarry may still be here,” she began quietly in their own tongue. “But more likely they are already gone. If so, we must learn what ship they took and their direction of travel, if not their destination. We need food and lodgings, if we stay more than a day, and diversified clothing to blend in.”

The others listened carefully, and Rhysís nodded once.

“If we buy passage on a ship,” she continued, “we will need local currency.”

“This is what you wish us to acquire first?” Tavithê asked. “Money, clothing, supplies?”

“Yes, but one of us will accompany Fréthfâre to procure lodging.” Dänvârfij looked to her crippled partner. “If you think this the wisest way to begin.”

Fréthfâre was clearly in great pain. To her credit, she behaved as if Dänvârfij’s plan had been her own as she addressed the others. “Én’nish accompanies me. Tavithê, Rhysís, and Eywodan will attend to acquiring local coin first. Fulfilling the other needs will be better served in that.”

“No killing,” Dänvârfij put in quickly. “We want no undue attention.”

She glanced again at Fréthfâre, who did not countermand her.

“I will begin tracking our quarry,” Dänvârfij continued, donning her cloak and pulling up her hood. “I will stand out less if I am alone. Én’nish, once you aid Fréthfâre in finding lodging, meet the rest of us in this spot, past dusk, to show us the location.”

Without a word, Tavithê, Rhysís, and Eywodan split off in separate directions and vanished into the port city. Dänvârfij had no doubt they would succeed in their tasks. But as she began to turn back toward the waterfront, Fréthfâre spoke again.

“I hope you will not squander this second chance given by Most Aged Father,” she said pointedly. “You have not striven hard enough in what is necessary to obtain the artifact.”

Dänvârfij neither stopped nor argued.

Fréthfâre could not begin to understand how hard she had striven to obtain the artifact.

This current expedition consisted of the second team, and the second attempt, that Most Aged Father had launched to take the artifact from Magiere. Dänvârfij had been the sole survivor of the first attempt, sent to the icy mountains of the Pock Peaks.

Fréthfâre had no idea what Dänvârfij had done so far at Most Aged Father’s bidding in those eternally white-capped mountains. Fréthfâre had no notion of what Dänvârfij herself had lost in that attempt.

Uncertain where to go amid the constant blur of human faces around her, Dänvârfij strode down the waterfront walkway. Blinking repeatedly, perhaps she tried to shut them out. In the flashes of darkness on the backs of her eyelids was a weathered face with sharp features and hair cut so short that it bristled upon his head.

Hkuan’duv—the Blackened Sea—had been her jeóin, her assentor, mentoring her for five years as his last student. She had come to love him as more than a teacher, regardless of the difference in their ages. Only after he had given her his assent, and she had been at labors among their caste, did she understand he loved her in turn.

Neither of them acted upon this, for the Anmaglâhk lived lives of service. They were not forbidden from bonding, but it was rarely done, and even more rarely with another caste member. They were wed to the guardianship of their people—in silence and in shadow.

Dänvârfij never revealed her awareness of Hkuan’duv’s true heart or hers to him. In the following years, they occasionally shared purpose in a mission. She found quiet contentment and simple joy in knowing she might again spend such times with him.

It was enough, for it had to be enough.

But two years ago Most Aged Father had given her and Hkuan’duv the initial purpose of tracking the monster, Magiere. The pale one had led them to a six-towered castle in the Pock Peaks. Their orders had been to wait and watch until she acquired what she sought there ... an artifact left in hiding by the Ancient Enemy. They were to take it from Magiere and her companions by any means.

They soon discovered, to their near disbelief, that one of the most honorable of their caste—Sgäilsheilleache, Willow’s Shade—had sworn to protect Magiere and hers. It had all ended in horror beyond Dänvârfij’s imagining amid the wetlands of the Everfen.

Hkuan’duv and Sgäilsheilleache had pulled their blades, going at each other. It was an unthinkable act among their caste. They killed each other in the same instant. And a young anmaglâhk named Osha, with Dänvârfij’s own horror mirrored in his eyes, had witnessed this event.

Sgäilsheilleache had been Osha’s jeóin, his assentor. Osha had watched his teacher die at the hands of a greimasg’äh. Something in their world fractured in that moment for both him and Dänvârfij. Ever since, she had felt the crack widening, threatening a collapse.

In the aftermath, outnumbered and in failure, Dänvârfij had fled in grief. She would never forget stumbling alone through the marshlands of the Everfen, half-aware that she somehow must reach her people....

A seagull’s screech overhead jerked Dänvârfij from her pain-filled memories and brought the port of the isle back into focus. She slowed, studying the people coming toward her. An old woman pulling a cart filled with live, wriggling crabs caught her attention. The woman was bent and weary, but her eyes were sharp, strong, and alive. Seemingly content in her labor, she bore a smile, for whatever reasons.

Dänvârfij stepped closer. “Pardon.”

Of her team, Eywodan spoke Numanese the best. He picked up spoken languages faster than anyone she had ever known. But she had mastered most of the important words and basic syntax of Numanese.

“Harbormaster?” she asked. “Help me find?”

The old woman squinted up through milky blue eyes. If Dänvârfij’s foreign appearance surprised her, she did not show it. Instead she straightened and pointed to a faded wooden building down the way, nestled between two warehouses.

“There ya are, deary,” she answered kindly. “Best hurry. He don’t stay long after dusk.”

Dänvârfij nodded with a feigned smile. “My thanks.”

Moving quickly, she tried to forget the old woman, who was only a human. Something about that wrinkled face and cracking voice made Dänvârfij miss her land ... her people. Even as she neared the small building, weatherworn with peeling paint and smudged windows, she could not stop the nagging memories.

The last time she had longed for home was after Hkuan’duv’s death.

She had not been able to bring him or his ashes home to the ancestors. She had simply run through muck and moss-laden trees until she dropped in exhaustion and her knees splashed down in greenish standing water. Unaware of anything but the image of Hkuan’duv’s body burned into her mind, she did not notice the tree nearby until a pattern of drops from its wet branches fell upon her hood and shoulders.

Removing the tawny oval of word-wood from her tunic, she pressed it against the tree to contact Most Aged Father ... to tell him what had happened ... to cause him great pain with her news. Two of their finest, one of virtue and one of skill, had died by each other’s hand.

The long night she’d spent afterward, kneeling in the muck and shivering alone, was the second-worst memory she would carry. When she contacted Most Aged Father again the following dawn, he told her of a coming an’Cróan vessel already slipping silently through human waters.

Run for the coast, he told her.