Dog in the Dark

Chapter Twelve

Brot’ân’duivé was standing on deck when a short while later Léshil and Magiere appeared out of the nearest aftcastle door. Léshil was overburdened with baggage.

“We don’t need both packs,” Magiere admonished. “We’re staying three nights at most.”

“It could be longer,” Léshil countered with hope in his voice.

Leanâlhâm cautiously crept behind them out of the aftcastle door. She hung back upon spotting human sailors rushing about to moor the ship. Several waited around the cargo hatch as another above rigged the boom and tackle for whatever goods would be exchanged in port.

In spite of all the hectic activity, Brot’ân’duivé still dwelled upon what little Magiere had told him. Obviously she had kept back something burdensome that Chap knew as well. Some of what she had said, from the guardian with minions, both potent enough to trouble Magiere and Chap, to the initial resting place of another orb amid a cavern of ice, hung in Brot’ân’duivé’s mind. That device they all knew now was the orb or anchor of Fire. Yet Brot’ân’duivé was no closer to anything more useful.

Forewarned, perhaps, about what dangers might wait with the next orb, he still had gained nothing about the function of these devices or how they were once used in service to the Ancient Enemy. And what danger did they pose, should Most Aged Father claim even one of them?

There was little relief in the fact that the patriarch knew of only the first orb and had even less knowledge of it than Brot’ân’duivé did. Why had the Enemy scattered the five orbs so far and placed such guardians upon them a thousand years ago? Why were those guardians the most potent of the humans’ undead?

Brot’ân’duivé needed to know more, including what had happened for Magiere to change in not-so-subtle ways since she had left his homeland. He could hardly force the issue if he wished for her—if not Léshil or Chap—to believe he was here to protect her. Asking outright about the orbs’ ultimate purpose, if she even knew, would only put her on guard. Besides, in truth, if any of them did know, it was most likely the majay-hì.

Chap was a source of information far beyond Brot’ân’duivé’s reach.

The sailors finished mooring the vessel, and he watched a team of four prepare to lower the ramp as his traveling companions drew near. Leanâlhâm, her breaths quickening, stared at the city beyond the waterfront.

“Are we going into ... into that?” she whispered.

The port of Chathburh was large, perhaps as much as Calm Seatt. While its waterfront was more spread out than the one on the Isle of Wrêdelyd, it was as busy, if not more.

Crowded piers did not appeal to Brot’ân’duivé, either, but the sight of Leanâlhâm’s nervous eyes left him surprisingly worried over her state of mind—and her future. For better or worse, she had become his responsibility.

She could not be in true mourning over Osha, as he was not her mate. That sadness would pass, but she was failing to adjust here. She had no wish to return to her people and, considering her association with him, there was possible danger if she did. Soon he would be embroiled in a desperate and uncertain purpose in trailing Magiere to another orb. Judging by what little he had learned so far, Leanâlhâm should not be there if—when—that happened.

Magiere stepped onto the ramp’s head, tugging along a reluctant Leanâlhâm.

“Hold on!” Léshil called, dropping all three packs and crouching to dig through one. “We’re at Chathburh, right? I think I remember Wynn giving me something to help us here.”

At mention of the young sage, Leanâlhâm hurried back to hover over Léshil.

Magiere raised an eyebrow. “From Wynn? Such as what?”

“Hang on.... Here it is.” Léshil drew out a folded paper and shook it open.

“It’s a list of places to stay along the way, cheap or free,” he muttered, scanning the sheet and squinting as if it was hard to read. “Here it is—Chathburh. She says there’s an ‘annex’ for the guild ... three streets inland from the northernmost pier, then one street north beyond the waterfront.” With a frown, Léshil looked up to Magiere. “What’s an annex?” She shrugged, and he turned back to Wynn’s notes. “She says to ‘tell the sages there that Premin Hawes sent you.’” Léshil paused at that. “It seems they’ll give us free rooms and meals, but ...”

He scowled as he read on. “‘ ... But whatever you do, don’t mention my name.’”

“What did she do now?” Magiere asked sharply.

“I don’t know!” he snapped back.

“So, we lie about knowing a guild authority ... who helped throw us out.” Magiere’s voice turned more heated with every word. “But not mention Wynn, who, it seems, is actually known here?”

Leanâlhâm glanced back and forth between them with worried eyes.

“Oh, stop being a pain,” Léshil grumbled at Magiere.

Brot’ân’duivé slowly shook his head. Three nights—and, he hoped, more—in some more secluded room would be a welcome respite from all of this.

Magiere leaned in on Léshil. “I’ll say it again: you are—were a bad influence on her.”

Léshil rose to his feet in indignation, but before he could counter, he flinched and spun about. There stood Chap, though no one had seen him come up. Léshil leaned down into the majay-hì’s face.

“Nobody asked you!”

Chap eyed Léshil with as much disapproval as Magiere did, but Leanâlhâm tugged on Magiere’s sleeve.

“We will stay with sages like Wynn?” she asked. “We will meet other sages like her?”

Léshil blinked at the girl’s sudden change. “I guess. If it’s a guild place, it’ll probably be crawling with them.”

Leanâlhâm drew back at his words. “Crawling ... with them?”

“No, no,” Léshil quickly corrected, “just a figure of speech ... Probably a lot fewer of them than in Calm Seatt.”

Brot’ân’duivé wanted to sigh but did not. Even in the girl’s wish to learn more of the sages, she still feared being among too many humans. But why did Leanâlhâm take an interest in sages like Wynn Hygeorht? He hoped it was not an adolescent need to attract Osha’s attention.

Before Magiere could go at Léshil again, Chap growled softly and stalked past her onto the ramp. Leanâlhâm hurried after but paused at the ramp’s top at the sight of the busy piers.

For the moment Magiere appeared to be more herself, merely irritable at any opportunity. She, as well, paused behind Leanâlhâm to look over the city awaiting them. Then she urged the girl ahead, and the two followed Chap.

Brot’ân’duivé knew better than to offer Léshil assistance with the packs. He waited until the half-blood disembarked, and then followed. Even Brot’ân’duivé could not help wondering at the prospect of spending a few days among sages.

“This can’t be it,” Magiere said.

Chap stopped, looking the place over, and agreed with a single huff. After working their way through the streets, as Wynn had instructed, this was not what he’d expected.

The building hardly appeared a fit haven for scholars. Nondescript and only two stories high, it had been hastily stained years ago without the boards being properly stripped or cleaned.

“Why not?” Leesil asked, shrugging as he looked over the paper again. “The sages back in Bela set up in an old decommissioned barracks. Wynn says the place used to be an inn for rich patrons. When the owner died, no one bought it, so it became city property, left for years. The guild purchased it for almost nothing.”

Chap felt like grumbling this time. Wynn even rambled on paper, with more information than anyone needed to know.

The walk from the harbor had been quick, but amid dodging passersby and wagons and hawkers’ carts, Leanâlhâm had kept ducking around everyone and alternately clinging to either Magiere or Brot’an. Once, when she could not reach either, she had panicked and grabbed Chap’s tail. She quickly let go, turning red faced despite her fright and averting her eyes.

Chap considered reassuring her that they were in no danger. But talking to the girl with memory-words would startle her even more, and possibly bring on another motherly retort from Magiere or even Leesil.

“Who’s doing the talking?” Leesil asked.

Not him, as far as Chap was concerned. They did not need another bit of bumbling from Leesil’s poor language skills.

“I will,” Magiere answered, stepping up to the door and knocking before anyone agreed.

A moment later the door opened. A short, middle-aged woman in a teal robe looked out with a pleasant expression on her round face. Hesitation and surprise set in as her gaze flitted from one strange visitor to the next on the porch.

Chap couldn’t blame her.

Leesil and Magiere both looked like mercenaries out of the wild, and as to Brot’an, the less said about his appearance, the better. Then there was a frightened green-eyed elven girl half hiding behind Magiere. Not to mention an oversized wolf just visible behind everyone.

The poor sage blinked twice and frowned. In her place Chap would have hesitated as well.

“Can I ...” the sage began. “How may I ... ?”

Magiere tried to smile. “We’re carrying a message south for Premin Hawes of the Calm Seatt branch. She ... We were told we might stay here, if you have room?”

Relief flooded the woman’s features.

“For Premin Hawes? Of course!” she replied, moving aside to usher them in. “I’m Domin Tamira. We have few visitors at present, but the annex is rarely even half full. You can have your pick of rooms on the top floor. Have you had supper?”

At this warm welcome, all five travelers stepped in while Domin Tamira chattered so much that Chap lost interest. They passed through a wide foyer, which must have been the reception area in past times, for there was still a worn counter off to the left. A comfortable sitting room to the right was filled with old, overpatched armchairs and small couches. Bookcases stuffed with volumes, some as old and worn as the building, filled nearly all of its narrow walls. Perhaps this collection was what passed for the library here.

“You all go up and choose some rooms,” the domin finally concluded. “Any room with an open door is available. I’ll make certain the cooks prepare enough for dinner.”

Chap did not wait for the others and took to the stairs, feeling almost guilty for his earlier thoughts about Wynn. Her penchant for giving too much information had gained them comfortable, free lodgings.

Most doors on the top floor were open, and he walked over to peer inside a large room with a window overlooking the front street. When he went to the window, he could just make out a few masts in the port between the tall warehouses.

A faded four-poster bed was draped with a soft, thick quilt, and old velvet curtains graced the windows. He was tempted to settle down and rest on a washed-out braided rug at the bed’s foot.

“Magiere, come look,” Leesil said, stepping inside.

She followed and looked about the room. Though the furnishings had lost their former glory, this was by far the nicest place in which Chap and his two charges had stayed since leaving their Sea Lion tavern on the eastern continent.

“I hope the captain gets delayed for a week,” Leesil said. Dropping the packs, he turned about and, with arms outstretched, he toppled backward onto the bed with one of his overly dramatic sighs of relief.

Magiere said nothing. She might appreciate the room for a night or two at best. But Chap knew she was obsessed with getting to the Suman coast and il’Dha’ab Najuum as soon as possible. Though it was still a long way off, there was only one thing on Magiere’s mind ... and on Chap’s.

They had to learn the whereabouts of the orb of Air.

Chap looked over to see whether Leanâlhâm had followed them in, but only Brot’an stood in the doorway. Magiere suddenly appeared to realize the same.

“Where’s Leanâlhâm?” she asked.

If Chap hadn’t known better, he’d have thought Brot’an looked strained.

“She is looking over books in the front room below,” he answered. “As she seemed settled, I did not force her away.”

Magiere nodded and started for the door. “I’ll go check on her.”

—No— ... —Let me—

Magiere stopped and glanced his way. When Chap met her gaze, she didn’t argue. He slipped out as Brot’an stepped aside.

He heard Magiere say behind him, “Chap is—”

“Yes, I see,” Brot’an cut in.

“Don’t worry—he’d never force her away from a book.”

Wondering about this unexpected interest of Leanâlhâm’s regarding sages and books, Chap made his way downstairs. Thankfully, he discovered that any sages about had left her alone—as he peeked in through the open archway and found the girl peering about at the patched, overstuffed chairs and the old, worn bookcases.

Leanâlhâm slowly approached a case at the far wall nearer the front window and traced the bookbindings with her slender fingers.

Chap remained half-hidden beyond the archway and simply watched her. Deceptive as it was, he would not miss a chance to dip into her memories while she was unaware of him.

The girl everyone called Leanâlhâm relished quiet and solitude in the strange and alien little room filled with books. Even while she hid herself away in the ship’s cabin, Brot’ân’duivé could always return there at any moment. Here in this very human place filled with old furnishings and so quiet for the moment, she could breathe.

Books were not unknown among the an’Cróan, though they were rarely made with hide coverings. Rolled sheaves and scrolls in cylindrical cases of seamless wood were more familiar to her. She could not make out most of the words on the outer side of the books, for though written mostly with Numanese letters, the languages were often ones she did not know, had never seen, let alone heard. When she stumbled upon a spine with one poorly, incorrectly rendered word in what she thought was her own language, she pulled out that book.

It was not just oddly formed Elvish, but a word she had heard only since coming to Wynn Hygeorht’s land.

“... Lhoin’na ...”

At best it meant something like “of the glade,” in reference to the elves of this continent that, until recently, she had not even known existed. She could not make out the other words in the title, and upon opening it, she could follow only about every third word.

Even those were so oddly—badly—written for what humans called Elvish, or the language of the an’Cróan. There were many hand-drawn illustrations, some tinted with faded colors, depicting vases, bowls, cups, and such things. The more she worked out this poor Elvish, the more she saw the “mistakes” happening over and over. The text began to make a little sense.

This was not some human who could not speak the tongue well enough to write it. It was, as Wynn had once said, another “dialect.” Why would “elves,” no matter what they called themselves, speak some other language or form of it?

The more she picked at the words, she realized the book was a history of pottery ... the craft work of a people like her own but so very different from them. It was hard to imagine a whole people like but not like the an’Cróan—“[those] of the Blood.” She had grown up believing that her people were the people that humans called elves.

She sank into a faded embroidered chair and turned page after page, finally stumbling upon what seemed part of a story about a beloved set of five finely crafted urns once stolen from this continent’s elven....

She stopped, peering more closely at the next two words. They did not make sense at all.

The vases had been stolen from the elven ... the Lhoin’na ... “guild branch” by human thieves.

Leanâlhâm looked up at all the books. There was a sages’ guild—or branch—for elves rather than humans?

She looked back to the story, working it out. Apparently a group of the Lhoin’na’s guardians, called “Shé’ith,” went after the thieves to retrieve the vases. That one term was halfway familiar.

In her tongue, true Elvish, the root word séthiv meant “tranquility,” or perhaps “serenity,” or at least by what she knew of Wynn’s Numanese and Leanâlhâm’s more fluent Belaskian, which her uncle had taught her. If so, that word for the Lhoin’na’s guardians was strange compared to “anmaglâhk,” which meant “the stealers of life.” That was what those guardians did: they took back from any who would steal the people’s way of life.

She turned another page and paused at a strange illustration.

Three elves in foreign attire were riding horses like humans did. Smaller still, in the image’s background, was what had to be the band of thieves fleeing from pursuit. The riders must be Shé’ith, and their leader looked impressive though disturbing. He carried a sword—again, like a human.

How could any of her people have fallen so far from their ways?

Anmaglâhk did not ride horses or carry openly exposed weapons. They were as swift as a breath but as silent as a shadow. These Shé’ith appeared to be anything but that. Lifting the book nearer to her face, she studied the illustration more closely.

Compared against the rider’s grip on the sword’s handle, the blade was as broad as three of his fingers. It was nearly straight, until the last third swept back in a shallow arc that she guessed was sharp on the back edge as well. But two-thirds down the blade’s back, a forward-leaning barb protruded slightly.

The narrow hilt was twice as long as the width of the hand that gripped it, and it curved slightly forward and then downward at its end. The wedged crossguard appeared to have a design on it, but she could not make that out. The crossguard’s upward protrusion arced forward to match the back barb’s lean, while the bottom one swept slightly back toward the hilt.

Like the lead male elf in the illustration, the sword seemed larger than life. It was almost unbelievable that one of her kind would carry such a strange, human thing.

Suddenly more lost than ever, she closed the book. Even so far from the land that had rejected her, even in learning there were others like her beyond the borders of her home ... she was alone, cast adrift. Those others, the Lhoin’na and their Shé’ith, were as foreign to her as any human.

No an’Cróan would put a creature of the wild into forced servitude. None of her people would carry a heavy tool ... a weapon ... made purely for war. The knife, the staff, perhaps a spear, and the bow were all they needed. She closed the book, staring at its cover and thinking of a lost home and her own people ... and the anmaglâhk. No one would write stories about them.

Well, no elves would write stories about them. She had seen a book once in which Wynn had written of Osha and Sgäilsheilleache.

That book had caused nothing but grief and sorrow.

Closing her eyes, Leanâlhâm fingered the book’s spine and thought back to the day, the terrible day, when she had first seen Wynn’s journal....

Leanâlhâm hummed softly as she pulled a loaf of wild grain bread from the communal ovens in the Coilehkrotall clan’s central enclave—her home. She enjoyed baking bread for her grandfather Gleannéohkân’thva, and at least in the early morning, there was no one else about.

Still humming, she wrapped the loaf in cloth to carry it back to the tree dwelling that she shared with her grandfather along with an astonishing houseguest almost too beautiful to be real.

Cuirin’nên’a—daughter of great Eillean, a greimasg’äh like Brot’ân’duivé—was the mother of Léshil. A few like Leanâlhâm’s uncle, Sgäilsheilleache, said he should be called Leshiârelaohk, but Léshil did not like that name, given or taught by the ancestors. For Leanâlhâm, Cuirin’nên’a’s presence was a constant reminder that Léshil had left.

It had been a long while since Leanâlhâm had seen him, for Sgäilsheilleache and Osha had gone to guide him on a great journey. Yes, that woman called Magiere went as well, and the odd majay-hì who followed them.

Magiere was a human like Leanâlhâm had always imagined, barbarous and violent. But for as much as Leanâlhâm would have preferred her gone at first—leaving only Léshil—there was more to Magiere. She was fierce in word, and as with Sgäilsheilleache, her word was her oath. If she gave her word on anything, it was as hard, fast, and unyielding as the gruesome sword she carried.

At first Leanâlhâm had not cared much for Magiere, beloved of Léshil.

Before he came, Leanâlhâm believed she was the only one of mixed blood among her kind. Then Léshil, knowing almost nothing of his mother’s people, walked in from the outer world. He could not even speak the language. Well, he could speak it very badly. But otherwise, to Leanâlhâm, he appeared completely unburdened by the human taint in his blood. He was funny in an odd way, and he was kind ... and handsome.

There was not a day since Léshil left that Leanâlhâm did not think of him. He was like her, and in thinking of him, those were moments that she did not feel so tainted.

Today at least the sun shone brightly through the trees, and even in missing him and her uncle, Sgäilsheilleache, she felt a rare contentment. So long as Sgäilsheilleache watched over Léshil, no harm would come to him.

Leanâlhâm turned across the enclave’s central green and then slowed to look hesitantly beyond the tree dwellings. She spotted no eyes watching her from the forest. No majay-hì had come to stare at her as she hurried off for home.

The dwelling she shared with her grandfather was on the enclave’s outskirts. As she approached, movement among the outer trees made her freeze. She backed up, hoping it was not a majay-hì peering out at her and reminding her that she did not belong here.

Instead the great Brot’ân’duivé stepped out into sight.

Leanâlhâm’s contentment did not return.

She did not exactly fear him, but like Cuirin’nên’a, he had eyes that pierced her and tried to peel her open to see all that lay within. His rare jests always seemed to mask something darker. He was anmaglâhk—and a greimasg’äh to be revered, and rightly so. But she did not enjoy his visits the way her grandfather did.

Another figure stepped from the trees, and Leanâlhâm tensed all over.

It was Osha, and she immediately searched for a sign of anyone else following the greimasg’äh. Osha had gone with Sgäilsheilleache, so where was Léshil? Had he come back?

Feeling herself flush, she could not help calling out, “Osha!”

It was an unseemly display, but again she looked out into the forest. No one else stepped from the trees as Brot’ân’duivé glanced her way. Perhaps her uncle and Léshil had fallen behind.

She did not know Osha well, though she liked him. While he was not handsome, there was kindness in his eyes, which were a bit widely set in his plain, long face. Best of all, he never stared—or frowned—at her oddly colored hair and eyes. He did not even seem to notice such things.

Osha only nodded once to her without a smile as he followed the greimasg’äh toward Leanâlhâm’s home. She waited several breaths, but neither Sgäilsheilleache nor Léshil appeared out of the forest. And Osha looked awful.

His forest gray cloak was dirty and tattered. He looked thin and exhausted and ... forlorn. Fear rose inside Leanâlhâm, and another unwanted word escaped her mouth.

“Grandfather!”

Before Brot’ân’duivé reached the entrance of her home, its front drape whipped aside, and there was Gleannéohkân’thva. His owlish face wrinkled even more under a wary frown, for she seldom called out like this.

At the sight of Brot’ân’duivé and Osha, he exhaled, “Oh, my girl, it is only ...”

His eyes narrowed as he trailed off. She knew she should not pester the greimasg’äh, but she could not stop.

“Where are Sgäilsheilleache and ... and Léshil?”

Brot’ân’duivé stood looking at her grandfather. But Gleannéohkân’thva chose not to start the jibes with which they often greeted each other. This frightened Leanâlhâm even more. Osha stood silently behind the greimasg’äh and looked at no one.

Brot’ân’duivé did not meet Leanâlhâm’s eyes. “We can talk inside,” he said.

“No!” she cried. “Where are they?”

Grandfather held out a hand to her. “Shush ... now come.”

The hint of sharpness in his voice made her feel cold. Fear turned to panic as she took his hand.

“Osha?” she asked.

He did not answer, and then her grandfather ushered her inside. While Osha and Brot’ân’duivé entered, Grandfather pulled her down beside him.

Cuirin’nên’a appeared from the back room with her shining hair hanging loose. At the sight of Brot’ân’duivé and Osha, she halted where she was, watching them cautiously.

“You have bad news,” Grandfather said calmly. “Best tell us before we imagine even worse.”

“There is nothing worse,” Osha whispered.

Leanâlhâm pulled her hand from her grandfather’s grip, set both hands in her lap, and stared at her fingers. Whatever Osha had to say, she did not want to hear it, and she wished he had not come.

“I should—” Brot’ân’duivé began.

“No,” Osha cut him off. “This is my task.”

As Brot’ân’duivé fell silent, Leanâlhâm glanced between those two. No one but her grandfather dared speak that way to the greimasg’äh. She became so afraid that pain filled her chest before Osha even spoke.

“Sgäilsheilleache is lost to us,” he said, his voice shaking. “He died honorably, serving his oath of guardianship without wavering. I ... I performed burial rites myself, with Léshil and Magiere’s help. And I have brought my jeóin back to our ancestors.”

He dropped to his knees upon the moss-covered floor. Taking a bottle from inside his cloak, he set it before himself.

Knowing it contained a small amount of her uncle’s ashes, Leanâlhâm stared at the bottle.

“Where is my son?”

Cuirin’nên’a’s sharp demand made Osha look up as well as Leanâlhâm. She thought she might die if Osha answered that question. She dropped her gaze again and the floor appeared to waver in her sight, though the room around her seemed to roar.

She choked and could not breathe. But if Léshil was ...

“He is well,” Osha whispered.

But that respite did nothing for Leanâlhâm now.

Whether at home or away to fulfill some necessary purpose, Sgäilsheilleache was the wall between her and almost everyone else. He was gone. How could it be?

The room fell silent, and all she did was sit there, seeing nothing, even when Osha suddenly appeared beside her on one knee. He did not touch her, but his face was close to her ear.

“I am sorry.... I am so ...”

He was close enough that she could feel pain emanating from him, and for a moment she clung to it. Focused on his loss, she might not have to feel her own, but the lull did not last.

“What do you mean, he has left the continent?” Cuirin’nên’a asked quietly.

Something had passed in conversation that Leanâlhâm had missed, and she heard Brot’ân’duivé continue.

“Léshil and Magiere, and the majay-hì and the sage, have sailed for the eastern continent to hide the ...” He dropped silent for a moment. “Or this is what Osha reports.”

“It is true,” Osha whispered.

“Most Aged Father will not let them go,” Cuirin’nên’a countered. “He will twist the truth of Sgäilsheilleache’s death into an aberration of loyalties, to a betrayal of the caste.”

Leanâlhâm finally raised her head; there was more she had missed moments ago. Everyone spoke as if they all knew something that she did not.

Osha rose suddenly, pointing at Brot’ân’duivé as he spoke to Cuirin’nên’a.

“No! We have proof. Wynn Hygeorht recorded what happened. The council of clan elders have seen her ... heard of her. By her knowledge of us, and even our language, they will believe her.”

“An account?” Cuirin’nên’a asked. “Let me see it.”

As of yet, Grandfather had not said a word. He sat silent and stricken, barely noting all that took place around him. Leanâlhâm longed to grab him, to curl up in his arms for comfort—and to give comfort.

“Enough!” Brot’ân’duivé barked, and Leanâlhâm flinched, looking up.

He glared at Osha with an open anger that she had never before seen him display. Had he not wanted Osha to mention this account of Wynn’s? Leanâlhâm also wanted to know exactly what had happened, but Brot’ân’duivé glanced down at her once.

Grandfather reached over and grasped her hand. “The book,” was all he said.

Brot’ân’duivé hesitated and then reached inside his tunic and pulled out a small book. Its blue cover was worn and creased, and it did look like something Leanâlhâm had seen the human sage carry.

Brot’ân’duivé held it out to Cuirin’nên’a. In one firm step, she took it from him, turned away, and began leafing through its pages.

Leanâlhâm was left to suffer in ignorance. It did not matter, for Sgäilsheilleache was gone. She looked to the glass bottle that Osha had left upon the moss, and then buckled with her hands over her face and cried in silence.

Outside the archway Chap stood paralyzed by all he experienced in Leanâlhâm’s memories. It was like reliving the mourning of Sgäile’s death all over again. He hung his head but forced himself to focus on what he had learned.

Brot’an had returned with Osha to Sgäile’s home. Cuirin’nên’a had spoken of Most Aged Father with venom in her voice and had no reason to feel otherwise for all the years that he had imprisoned her. Leesil still believed that Brot’an had gotten his mother “mixed up” with the dissidents, but Chap was not so certain. From what he now pieced together, it seemed that both Gleann and Cuirin’nên’a were participants from the very beginning in whatever Brot’an had attempted.

Leanâlhâm had not been and perhaps was not even now. She had been allowed to remain that day only because Gleann was in too much grief to be without her. And poor Osha appeared to have been as much an ignorant victim as she was.

Not so for Brot’an.

The old assassin had been forced by Osha’s naïve but honorable intentions into exposing the journal to the others. If Osha had not done so, would Brot’an have even shared Wynn’s journal with Gleann and Leesil’s mother? Perhaps—or not—but he had hinted earlier to Magiere that this journal was the crux of all that followed.

Chap still did not see how, not completely.

Leanâlhâm suddenly sat up, turned her head toward the archway, and looked right at him.

Chap froze. He’d not made a sound, not a move that could have alerted her. Yet, half-startled, she gazed at him as if she’d heard something and turned to find him watching her.

Leanâlhâm swallowed once and turned away.

Chap backed up, still distracted by what he had learned and what he had not. As he walked up the stairs, he paused once to look behind him.

Leanâlhâm didn’t appear, though he lingered there a moment longer, watching for her and feeling unsettled.

The girl everyone called Leanâlhâm did not mind Chap’s presence anymore. He had not tried to disturb her, tried to make her interact with anyone, or told her to make a better effort to “adjust”—as the greimasg’äh so often did.

Still, she had felt watched, like the moments in the enclave when those eyes appeared in the forest. This time, it was not quite the same.

It was as if she had been talking out loud to herself, only to find someone was listening whom she had not noticed at first. No one had come into the room, but when she had looked, Chap had been there. She hesitantly turned her head again, leaning a little to peer around the armchair’s side.

Chap was gone, and she heaved a long breath in relief without knowing why.

Gripping the book tightly to her chest, she thought on that day when Osha had come to her home with that horrible news. She thought of the days that followed, some of which had slid by so slowly and yet had become dull and blurred and so hard to remember. She and Grandfather had struggled through the earliest, hardest part of mourning.

Osha, in his own grief, had been there for them. They understood his loss as well. There were strange moments she did remember. Three times she had come upon Grandfather sitting alone with the greimasg’äh, and the two had been whispering to each other. Brot’ân’duivé did not appear to be offering comfort, and Grandfather, though grieved, appeared more intense than Leanâlhâm could ever remember.

At that time, she had not thought much of this. She had been in a daze, aching from the loss and fearing a future without her uncle. And she had Osha constantly attending her. That Grandfather had his old friend to distract him with other things was a blessing she would not begrudge him. She should have paid more attention, but that time was long past.

With another deep breath she rose from her chair in the little front library and headed for the stairs. The greimasg’äh would expect her to choose a room before dinner. It was not until she was halfway up the stairs that she realized she still carried the book.

She almost turned back to put it away, then changed her mind and held on to it as she climbed the stairs to find the others.