A Play of Shadow (72 page)

And he heard thunder.

He didn’t doubt her resolve or power, but this she couldn’t do. The truthseer covered her hand with his. “It’s beyond the edge, Dearest Heart. Where you—” where she didn’t exist. Throat tight, he finished, “You could wait. There’s the house the sect had for us.”

The air fell still, mist unmoving.

“Jenn?”

“I’ll wait,” she agreed, when she might have protested, and he took an easier breath. “But—” this in a tone so like Peggs’ he almost smiled, “—I’ll come with you as far as I can, first, to see you safely there.”

He kissed her. “Thank you.”

His ease vanished in the next instant. Their faces still close, Jenn whispered, “Just be prepared, Dearest Heart. When you leave the edge, Lila may forget me.”

“She dreamed of you—of the dragon. The Verge. Her gift—” He stopped. His hadn’t saved him. They’d been within the edge when Lila’d spoken of Jenn.

He’d had no letter from his sister since Jenn had become turn-born, becoming part of the magic others forgot. Leaving no way to know except one. Leaving the edge.

Heart sinking, Bannan touched noses with his wise and gentle love. “Then I’ll remember for both of us,” he vowed.

~We could help,~ the kruar insisted with brutal enthusiasm. ~Tasty!~

“Tasty” referring to a person who’d followed her moths and come to her—who’d been lost, and stayed so—Jenn had to swallow twice before uttering a meek, “No, thank you.”

She felt queasy as it was, watching Lila and her brother handle the matter with capable and—horrible as the thought—practiced ease. Having stripped any valuables to make the death seem a robbery, they heaved the body over the side of the roof and out, to land with a splash in the canal.

Where the nyims, the little cousin unnecessarily assured her, would do the rest.

Jenn eyed the toad, who eyed her back. It had gobbled Dutton’s blood-soaked tunic while Lila and Bannan had been busy, using its front feet to shove the last section of fabric into its mouth. It didn’t appear to be making
anything from the garment.

Yet.

A tidy creature, the toad, and helpful. That being said, she would not, under any circumstances, ask what it found “tasty.”

When the Larmensus came to where she stood, both looked for the tunic and Jenn nodded at the toad. Bannan grinned. “Don’t ask, sister mine,” he suggested, unwittingly agreeing with her. “Some things must be seen.”

Lila nodded. As they prepared to leave, Jenn caught her giving the toad quick looks as if to surprise it in action. The toad, meanwhile, let Jenn lift it to its favored spot before the saddle where it flattened, claws in the kruar’s hide, eyes intent. The kruar swung its head around, glaring, but didn’t try to shed the little cousin this time.

The great beasts approved of Lila; Jenn’s would carry both women. She went to mount first.

“Wait,” Lila said quietly, stopping her. “Soldiers know. Their bones rarely go home.”

Something Aunt Sybb might say, meant to comfort, but Bannan’s sister wasn’t like Aunt Sybb, not in this, so Jenn waited for the rest.

“You aren’t a soldier,” Lila said then. “What’s happened here—you need take part in no more of it. Please, Jenn, don’t come with us.”

Bannan, already mounted, gazed down. “Waste of breath, Dear Heart.”

Lila hadn’t taken her eyes away. At this moment, she couldn’t be sure of their color, Jenn realized, nor was the other woman’s face easy to read. “You doubt me,” she decided suddenly. “You think I put the two of you in danger.”

An eyebrow curved. “Am I wrong?”

Bannan’s chuckle had a grim sound. “If we’re ever in danger because of Jenn Nalynn,” he assured Lila, “so is Channen.”

“I wouldn’t,” Jenn said quickly, not wanting Lila afraid of her.

But Lila’s lips formed a silent “Oh,” at this, and her eyes held a new and alarming consideration.

Jenn turned and swung herself atop the kruar, determined to avoid whatever that “Oh” might mean. She offered Lila a hand to mount behind her. Accepted the other woman’s hold around her waist.

Accepting what had just happened—how Lila could so easily lie to her family, force her brother to do what he hated, a friend kill another, toss a body aside—?

What sort of person could do all that?

A callous person. Unfeeling. Bloodthirsty as a kruar. She mustn’t—couldn’t—judge, Jenn told herself. All she knew of Lila came from Bannan’s stories.

Until tonight.

The kruar sped away. They’d go by rooftop until the next canal. Jenn watched numbly as chimneys and spires flashed by, held on as the great beasts leapt down and down again.

The house toad rode along, seeming to relish the speed.

All at once, despite having no neck worth mentioning, somehow it turned to gaze back at her with one limpid eye.

~Elder sister.~ Filled with foreboding. ~Was the truthseer’s sister wounded?~

Why would it think so? Jenn dared let go of the saddle to feel Lila’s hands. Like ice, they were, and trembling.

And it wasn’t the rooftop ride.

It was all that a soldier saw and a soldier did and understood, being a soldier, they might do again and see.

It was a mother, desperate for her sons. A sister, leading a brother back into terrible danger. A woman, having left her lover to do the same.

Callous? Say brave and not even then plumb the depths of courage that rode behind her.

Jenn gripped Lila’s hands in hers, held tight.

If, for the briefest moment, a head rested on her shoulder?

It’d be their secret.

The dead of night, they called it on patrol, when eyelids grew heavy and bodies ached with the effort to stay upright, let alone alert.

Riding a kruar across a slanted roof—of damp and moss-slimed tile, no less, so even those sure feet slipped, especially when lunging for ill-fated pigeons—was the best remedy Bannan could recall offhand. He refused to give any credit to the “nap” Glammis had imposed.

Though he’d very much like to know what had happened to Jenn, during that time. She’d different clothing and had lost her boots, but the change he sensed was far deeper and profound. He’d have tried his gift, if he wasn’t hanging on for dear life. Of all the times for them to be caught up in one of Lila’s schemes . . .

Not that there was, in his experience, a good time for that. Unless beer was involved. Jenn had seen for herself. Lila was a force of—imagination failed him. A force, she was. As for her being a truedreamer?

Ancestors Skinned and Gutted. He’d be doing more with his eyes closed, that’s what he’d be doing. Or in the dark. Especially that. The dark would be fine.

Recognizing where they were, Bannan bent over the kruar’s neck. “We must cross this canal, my friend. Down to the next bridge.”

~We need no bridge.~ With some scorn.

Heart’s Blood. The truthseer tightened his grip, hoping Jenn and Lila—and the toad—did the same as the body beneath him ran for the roof’s edge, pulled in like a spring, then soared—

—over walkways and canal and, yes, several trees, to land like a feather on a roof on the other side.

~Across.~ Pride, that was.

And deserved. After a glance to be sure the second kruar, and riders, had joined them, Bannan gave his mount a firm pat. “Well done!”

A snarl answered, but he was used to that.

The truthseer looked down, then ahead. “The end of this row, if you please.”

Hopefully with no more doomed pigeons.

Once on the walkway, shadows shifted and flowed around them, drawn by coils of thickening mist. The night cooled, Bannan told himself, and refused to look deeper in case he was wrong and something was curious. Bad enough small disks of light dotted the darkness of the canal. Turtles—nyim, Jenn called them—watched, no doubt hopeful he could be fooled twice.

The meeting place of the shadow lords might be a grand manor, but it sat amid rows of warehouses sure to be noisy and bustling by day. An odd choice for a group who traded in magic and valued secrecy, unless it wasn’t from people they chose to hide.

Disquieting notion, that the Shadow Sect who claimed to serve the turn-born conducted their affairs beyond the edge, where none could reach them.

Not their business. “Do we have a plan?” Bannan asked his sister as he dismounted.

Lila grinned. “Go in; get him.” She slipped from the kruar’s back, landing lightly.

The truthseer rolled his eyes. “That is not a plan.” It was, however, what he’d expected. “See what I had to put up with as a child?” he complained to Jenn as he helped her down.

“If you wish, the little cousin will ask the yling to scout ahead,” the miller’s daughter proposed calmly.

“What is a—” Lila stopped, eyes almost crossed as she stared at the tiny creature now hovering in front of her nose, light sparkling in his hair and glinting from the tip of the spear.

“Poisoned, that,” Bannan said proudly. “Did in my guard.”

“Explaining how you managed before I arrived,” Lila countered. She stretched out her hand.

With an offended trill, the yling dove back into Bannan’s hair.

Jenn took a few steps, then stopped, looking around. Mist wrapped her shoulders and stroked her arms. “How much farther?”

They joined her. “Past the next building, there’s a servants’ staircase,” Lila pointed. “Once at street level, we cross the canal and it’s but a few blocks to the river.”

“The river.” Jenn looked into the distance. “Is it the Mila?”

He understood the longing in her voice. Another name from her map, so close. “No. The Sarra,” Bannan informed her. “Here it’s split in two, but joins again beyond the city to flow into the Clairr at Essa. That goes south, along the border, to meet the Mila.”

She glanced back, her face alight with wonder. “Then to Avyo where all rivers blend with the Kotor and go to the Sweet Sea!”

“I suggest the manor first,” Lila commented dryly and Jenn nodded, growing serious again.

He hadn’t told his sister about the edge. And wouldn’t, Bannan decided, until he knew Lila could remember beyond it.

They took the route Lila’d discovered while following Glammis, to improve their chance of an encounter. When it was time to leave the walkway, the kruar agreed to wait near the canal, there being, apparently, good hunting in the bushes lining the wall above it.

And being still within the edge.

The little cousin, as the only one of them who could understand the yling, came with them, tucked under Jenn’s arm. The truthseer, catching Lila giving it another close look, couldn’t help himself. “They make eggs. Best you’ve ever eaten.”

The toad, noticed, stretched out a leg, clawed foot flexing.

His sister made a face.

“Would I lie?”

“Whenever you could get away with it, brother mine,” she commented, then stopped where a thick growth of vines tumbled to their feet. With one hand, she swept the greenery to the side, revealing a rise of stone stairs, cleaner than most and well lit. “We’re here.”

With no way to see what—or who—lay at the top. After climbing the first couple of steps, Bannan stopped and turned to Jenn. “A good time for our small friend to take a look.”

She nodded and looked down at the toad. “Ask for us, if you would, little cousin.”