A Play of Shadow (63 page)

The young truthseer drew the covers to his chin, golden eyes wide and afraid, and his brother moved to put an arm around him.

“Worry more about those who would threaten them,” Wisp assured the children, thinking of Jenn Nalynn with a rush of dragonish pride. All of Channen would be at risk, should his turn-born chose to act. He wished he was there to see it.

“Give me the necklace, Weed.” Semyn took it, putting it around his unmagical neck. “Back to sleep now.”

The dragon yawned. At long last.

“Might we have a drink first?”

“I am a little hungry.”

As Wisp sighed, the moth left the bedpost, fluttering past the house toad, sinking through the opening and away.

Had it written a word?

Or simply listened.

A
S IF TO
remind them of the passage of time, when Jenn and Bannan came out, the crowd had noticeably altered, family groups replaced by those more interested in wine and dancing. To every side, stalls were closing, artisans packing away their work. Opposite them, the doors of inns and halls were flung wide, music pouring from each. Night in the Shadow District was full of life.

Life they now hurried past. Jenn looked wistfully at a group of dancers. Bannan noticed. “We could come again, Dearest Heart. Under better circumstances.”

She tucked her hand into his elbow, there being other couples doing the same. “You mean when we aren’t about a rescue?”

A glow in his apple butter eyes. “Exactly.”

“I’d like that.” But she wouldn’t, Jenn told herself, put Bannan at risk from both Verge and Shadow Sect simply to dance, when they could do it in Marrowdell.

Though the music here flowed with a lively complicated beat and she found her feet, despite the boots, keeping time.

According to Plevna, the only jail in the Shadow District with cells of the stone Bannan’d described was the Distal Hold. The token dealer had used a shaky finger in the ash on the floor to sketch where they were to go: a distance from the Artisans’ Market and across one of the larger canals. The ’Hold was within the main constabulary building, which to Jenn sounded both immense and daunting. Bannan, well used to tall buildings, had pressed their guide further, discovering the cells were restricted to the bottom five floors.

Which she still thought immense, given Marrowdell’s mill had two floors and climbing between those was a task if carrying a filled bag of flour.

The floors at street level and above were for petty offenses or those accused possessed of sufficient wealth and influence to demand better treatment. The lower two floors were reserved for those felons considered a greater risk. Foreigners, be they drunken sailors or smugglers. Local Naalish, be they murderers, extortionists, or those who’d misused magic.

The view from Lila’s window meant a lower floor. Bannan’d said either the local authorities had been tipped as to how dangerous she was, or someone was missing a head.

Jenn wasn’t quite sure he was teasing.

They’d know soon. She looked up at him. “You’re sure the knife was Emon’s?”

Bannan had tucked the wrapped blade through his belt, beneath the back of his jacket. She supposed that was where its owner kept it on his person, knives of that sort forbidden in public places. “The hilt’s Emon’s design,” the truthseer replied. “I don’t know how many he had made. He gave them to his most trusted companions—which means I should have accosted our watcher,” this with a rueful shrug. “Here’s hoping he escaped the Shadow Sect unharmed.”

Had it been her magic, Jenn wondered, drawing close someone connected to those she sought? If so, it hadn’t been at all helpful, not if the man was hurt. She noticed Bannan’s frown. “What is it?”

“The hilt’s empty. There’d be gems for a bribe inside, or a written message, or both.” His face lightened. “Emon’s delivery was made, successfully.”

Or someone had stolen the knife, Jenn thought, and managed to open it, taking what they’d found. They’d no evidence Emon was alive or even free, and knew nothing of his companions beyond the knife. Doubts she kept to herself, for Bannan, who had his own, chose to be hopeful.

So would she. “I’d like to come back,” she told her love, twirling as they passed yet another outburst of lovely music. “To dance with you.”

And was pleased to see him smile.

The Artisans’ Market ended as abruptly as it started, the ever-present stone walkway continuing along the canal. Though there were still lamps set high on the walls, they were dimmer than those behind. Bannan found himself tensing whenever they approached an opening. Those were fewer and more narrow, the stairs within steeper and more utilitarian than those to welcome customers.

Jenn pointed at the canal. “Did you see?”

“See what?”

Here the stone walkway had no rail or raised edge, so Bannan bit back a protest when Jenn walked closer to dark water. “There was . . . it’s gone again. I must have frightened it.”

Or “it” hid from sight. Bannan’s skin crawled.

He gave himself a shake. The water, whatever its makeup, was no deeper than a horse’s belly. Hardly the place for a monster.

Why had he thought monster? Ancestors Rattled and Ridiculous, when had his nerves got the better of him . . .

. . . oft as not, when the danger was real. “Stay close,” Bannan said quietly. He gripped his staff, wishing for Horst’s sword. “Let’s pick up the pace. Not too fast. We’re hard-working folk, eager for home.”

Jenn nodded.

The canal bent—buildings and stone walls between them and the music of the market—leading them into a hushed sweep of closed doors and shuttered windows. Either this section of the city slept.

Or was abandoned.

Not liking either option, Bannan walked briskly, Jenn beside him, glad their boots were soft-soled.

While alongside, in the canal, v-shaped ripples began to keep pace. First one, then many. Whatever made them stayed below the water.

Jenn grinned and pointed. “Do you think people here feed the fish as they do in Avyo? Aunt Sybb says schools gather when anyone is on shore.”

“A bonus for those with nets,” Bannan commented, keeping a wary eye on the ripples. He couldn’t tell what made them.

Except it wasn’t fish.

Plunk. Plunkity. Plunk. Plunk.

At the first raindrops, Bannan took Jenn’s hand and together they ran to the shelter of the next arched bridge. Just in time, for with no other warning, the clouds seemed to burst open, mimrol falling in great sheets. To his deeper sight, the canal was transformed by silver splashes and rings crisscrossed and spread, overlapping the ripples.

Ripples disturbed anew as the magic rain was greedily snapped up by pale yellow beaks that rose from the water then sank again. Dozens. More.

While an appetite for mimrol was unexpected, the beaks were as familiar as home. Bannan laughed with relief. “Turtles!”

~Mine!~Catch!~Catchyourown!!~Don’tpush~Catch!~Catch!~Mineminemine!~Catch!~ Cold little voices, speaking all at once as if they never listened to one another. She’d not heard the like before. They sounded a bit like raindrops themselves.

“‘Turtles?’” Dogs and a chicken were exotic enough. Turtles? They didn’t live so far north as Marrowdell, or even Weken, according to Uncle Horst, though she’d seen them depicted in books. Along with tortoises, who lived on the land, and terrapins, found in brackish water, oh, and sea turtles rumored large enough to use as ships, but Bannan sounded certain in his naming.

Here were turtles. Since she could hear them as she did the toads, Jenn suspected they were something else as well. She couldn’t see more than blunt little faces, with jaws of yellow and scaled skin, for they seemed loath to be above the water. As for the rain, it looked like any rain she’d seen, though smelled older, which might have more to do with the canal not being a free-flowing river than the Verge.

She’d kept Bannan’s hand. About to let go, Jenn hesitated, her eye caught by something white, near the top of the arch overhead. “Is that—what do you see?”

He looked up. “Nothing. What did you?”

“It can’t be—” she started to say, then stopped, for it could. Hadn’t one of Marrowdell’s moths shown up in the Verge—to meet an unfortunate, if useful, end—so what was to prevent them being here? “It could be,” Jenn announced worriedly, “a moth.”

“Mellynne has moths. And bats, you know. As well as turtles.” And didn’t her love sound perfectly serious? Jenn suspected he found her amazement at what he took for granted highly entertaining. “Come. We’d best hurry.”

She stuck a hand beyond their shelter. She’d been in harder rains, but not many. “Shouldn’t we wait for it to end?” Was it ever the way she’d ruin new clothes? Not to mention her fine boots.

“On the contrary,” he informed her gleefully. “Rain like this will empty the walkways and disguise us. Here’s hoping it lasts till we’re done and away.”

With Lila rescued. Her heart pounding, Jenn nodded. Bannan bent to give her a quick kiss. She took hold of his jacket and made it a better one.

~Elder sister, the yling asks you let him finish his work.~

Jenn told Bannan, who raised a brow. “What work is that?”

She shrugged, even as the yling swept around their heads, his many hands filled with what appeared a thick mass of cobwebs. Easy to come by from any lamp, but why?

Even as she thought the question, she saw the answer. With a complex flip, what had been cobweb opened into two cloaks, one that drifted down to settle over her head and shoulders, the other over Bannan’s. The moment they touched, what had been dust-coated silk transformed into a garment of soft shimmering gray to her knees. Warm, on her shoulders.

She’d missed warm shoulders. “Ancestors Clever and Kind. Please thank our friend, little cousin.”

~The yling apologizes, but they will not last, elder sister, for he is but one.~

“Then we’ll move quickly,” Bannan said when he’d heard this, and led the way.

Jenn followed, admiring their yling cloaks. Like dew on a spiderweb, glistening beads caught along the hems, but nowhere else did the rain seem to touch.

This was what it must be like, she decided, to hurry down a romantic castle hallway late at night. Though in those stories, something with teeth or spears or dark magic waited at the end of the hall, but before that dire turning point came wonderful descriptions of how gowns brushed over rich carpets woven in the deserts of Eldad, and how silent, empty armor lined the walls, and torches.

There were always torches, though lamps were superior and cleaner. Come to think of it, why did castles have torches . . .?

Jenn stepped in a puddle, jolting herself out of a train of nervous thought that had as much to do with not thinking as anything else. Every step took them closer to Bannan’s sister, as they’d planned. It wasn’t important that she’d not had time to prepare for that meeting or thought of what to say or—

“Lila will love you too.”

“How did you—I wasn’t—” She tried to frown at him. “So now you read thoughts as well as faces?”

A flash of white teeth in the gloom. “An accusation Tir makes, from time to time. Wholly unfounded, might I add. In this case, Dearest Heart?” His head tipped in a bow. “I guessed.

“Not—” Bannan went on with a grin as she pushed him, “—without some understanding of the ladies involved.”