Барб Хенди - Dog in the Dark

He carefully repeated checks as he walked, but the figure in dark blue did not rise any higher. He briefly lost sight of it until his angle improved when he reached the waterfront’s southern end. The figure still had not moved, which meant whoever was there had not left to report in.

He had not been spotted as yet.

Brot’ân’duivé slowed amid the dodging masses of dockworkers, the finely dressed, and those selling goods off their backs or begging on the boardwalks. Among the flowing crowds, he drifted to the waterfront’s edge and stepped down along the stairs to below.

The Bell Tower was docked at the third pier’s end. He needed a place to vanish with a decent vantage point. Once on a floating walkway, he quickened his pace and then stopped among the shoreward pilings of the fourth pier. With a good view of the third pier above, he unrolled his dun-colored cloak and pulled it over the cerulean one.

He swung around a tall pier post and onto a low beam between it and the next one outward in the water. Flattening against that support, he looked to the massive ship marked as the Bell Tower . It was a good distance away, but he saw all movement along its rail, its ramp, and the pier.

Brot’ân’duivé stilled mind and body and let shadow take him once he had set his purpose deep within himself. With his gaze locked upon that vessel, all that he would see and hear would fall into the back of his mind, beyond conscious thought.

Sometime during the morning, a dog wandered down the walkway and passed into the periphery of his sight. He did not look directly at it ... did not move ... did not think. The dog never paused, and the click of its claws continued until even that faded from his stilled awareness. He continued taking in all movements and changes upon the Bell Tower until a thought rose to break him loose from shadow.

He refocused his gaze.

Dänvârfij descended the ramp of a much smaller ship on the second pier and stood brazenly in the open, staring toward ... the Cloud Queen . Dressed in breeches and a dark vest, she no longer wore the forest gray of the anmaglâhk, but it was she.

This could be no coincidence. She and her team not only knew the vessel on which Magiere traveled, but their own ship had docked only a few vessels away. He could not have anticipated this last detail.

Dänvârfij turned and walked toward the waterfront.

Brot’ân’duivé decided to keep this information to himself, as he was uncertain how he would use it. Though he pretended to assist in Léshil’s foolish pursuit, he still hoped to put an end to it.

There were four to five armed men always walking the deck of the Bell Tower . Separate from the other crew, those appeared to have no other purpose but the vessel’s—the cargo’s—safekeeping. Léshil and Magiere would not be able to board by the ship’s ramp, not even under a ruse. The moment they tried, they would be stopped and unable to fight their way past.

Skiffs had come and gone below the piers. Some were tied off nearer the lower walkway. He had seen a few other ways to board the vessel, but he would not suggest such. He had enough—more than he would tell—to make the chance of infiltration sound rationally hopeless.

Stepping back onto the walkway, he stripped off the dun cloak to wrap it around his boots again. Up the stairs, he slipped in among the shifting, noisy masses, but he paused a final time upon the waterfront. He looked from the Cloud Queen to the Bell Tower ... and to the smaller ship that Dänvârfij had left.

A new strategy, wrapped around Léshil’s present fixation, began to form.

Most Aged Father’s team of loyalists and fanatics were far from home. Brot’ân’duivé saw a way to add to the number who would not return.

The fewer the better, and as he followed Magiere to an orb, he could then freely watch for the time and place to put Léshil to his destined purpose. That purpose had been foreseen by lost Eillean, prepared through a mother’s sacrifice by Cuirin’nên’a, and marked by the ancestors with a name.

Leshiârelaohk.

Dänvârfij wasted no time in hurrying back toward the three-story hotel with barred windows. After contacting Rhysís and Eywodan, she had been relieved, though troubled, that no one had spotted the traitor. Perhaps he had been playing decoy. A similar ruse had been used to steal away Magiere and her companions in Calm Seatt. By the time Dänvârfij reached a vantage point to look up at the hotel, her anxiety faded.

If Magiere and hers had booked passage on a ship all the way to the Suman Empire, she would not likely travel by land in leaving Drist. No, when she left this place, she would intend to board the Cloud Queen . So wherever else she or Léshil went in this city, to whatever purpose, did not matter ... except if it put them in easy reach.

Crouched on the roof, Dänvârfij noticed someone tall, but perhaps not tall enough, dressed in a bright cerulean cloak. The man stepped straight between the front guards and to the front door without challenge. In the last instant as the door closed, something changed, as if the man looked taller next to the door’s closing edge. Then he was gone from sight.

Dänvârfij knew such tricks of posture. She had no certainty, but if what she had glimpsed was true ...

She could never forget that the treacherous greimasg’äh was among the best of her caste. Where had he gone, if that had been he who had entered a moment ago? If he had slipped to the waterfront, then for what reason?

Dänvârfij lingered a moment in indecision before she fled back toward the filthy inn to speak with Fréthfâre. Contingencies needed to be prepared.

In the inn’s room, Én’nish sat listening to Dänvârfij report on Brot’ân’duivé’s possible deception.

Dänvârfij, for all her disrespect of Fréthfâre, seemed certain of her assumptions, and she was not given to groundless speculations. In this, excitement built within Én’nish as she listened.

“I agree this is a temporary stop for our quarry,” Fréthfâre said, sitting bent over in her chair. “They will not continue via land but—”

“They will return to the Cloud Queen ,” Dänvârfij finished.

“From what you and Én’nish have described, this hotel where they stay is unbreachable.”

“It is.”

“Then the only option is to abandon the Bashair and take the Cloud Queen . We lay our trap for when our quarry returns to leave port.”

Dänvârfij hesitated, and then nodded. “Agreed, but that ship has a larger crew. Taking it may not—will not—be as certain or clean as taking the Bashair .”

“Of course,” Fréthfâre confirmed flatly. “And?”

After another long pause, Dänvârfij answered with equal coldness. “I will need Én’nish.”

“When do we move?” Én’nish asked too quickly.

“Near mid of night, when most of the crew is asleep,” Dänvârfij answered. “Though waiting that long troubles me. We do not know when the vessel’s captain plans to depart. The others must watch that ship as well for any sign.”

“Agreed,” Fréthfâre said.

For once she did not sound bitter in dealing with Dänvârfij’s overly cautious ways, not that Én’nish blamed the rightful, true Covârleasa for her bitterness. But she sounded pensive, as if she wished to take part in the night’s task.

“Go now,” Fréthfâre continued. “Prepare Rhysís, Eywodan, and Tavithê for infiltration. Tonight, kill the Bashair ’s remaining crew, dispose of the bodies, and take the Cloud Queen .”

Anticipation of nightfall, and what would come, quickened Én’nish’s breaths.