Dog in the Dark

Chapter Two

Not long after, Magiere strode beside Brot’an along the waterfront between the dock and the main city of the isle. She grew even more daunted, never expecting a place quite this big.

Warehouses and shops, most piled three stories high, were a wild mix of weathered log and lumber buildings of all makes and colors mashed together along narrow streets rising up the sharp slope above the open ocean. A forest of smoke trails curled into the sky from chimneys of clay and tile and brick. The air was tainted with tangled smells of fish and oiled wood amid the noise of people, livestock, carts, and wagons tightly milling about.

Brot’an was silent, towering over everyone. More than a few people looked up at him, and Magiere started to feel self-conscious. A young sailor came toward them while whistling a tune. On instinct Magiere held up a hand to stop him.

“Harbormaster?” she said in her broken Numanese. “Tell us where to find?”

He stumbled, and she nearly sighed again—which she’d been doing a lot today. Though her hauberk and sword might have made her intimidating, his gaze fixed on her face and hair.

She knew her appearance affected some men, both attracting and unsettling them, whether she wanted it to or not. She was tall and slender, and her long black hair with its strange bloodred tints swung across her back when she moved. Her skin was too pale and perfect, and her eyes were deep, dark brown ... when they were normal.

She couldn’t help any of this, but on occasion it was useful.

Brot’an stood waiting.

“Harbormaster?” Magiere repeated.

The young sailor blinked, swallowed, and cleared his throat, and Magiere wondered whether she’d used the correct words for what she was after. Brot’an hadn’t bothered correcting her, and his Numanese was better than hers. The sailor finally pointed to a faded wooden building nestled between two warehouses down the way he’d come.

“There,” he said, and blinked as he glanced over—and up—at Brot’an.

From what little Magiere knew, this continent boasted an elven people called the Lhoin’na. She didn’t know whether they looked different from the an’Cróan, and Brot’an was tall even for one of his kind. When his face wasn’t covered and his hood wasn’t up, his scars drew all the more attention.

“Thanks,” Magiere said, and quickly hurried on.

She led the way to the building the sailor had pointed out and found the door wide open. Loud voices carried from inside as she stepped in. Brot’an had to duck slightly to follow. They found themselves in a room with two large desks, a brass telescope of some kind aimed out the front window, and countless maps covering the walls.

Two men—one on either side of a desk—were shouting at each other. A stocky man in a bright blue vest in front of the desk huffed and puffed; his forehead and bloated cheeks were flushing red.

“You can’t deny my ship moorage! I want to speak to the harbormaster—now!”

“You’ll get the same from him,” snapped a spindly man in a yellowed muslin shirt behind the desk. His hair was unkempt, and he pushed his billowing sleeves up, left and then right, as if ready to go at his adversary with his bony fists. Instead he planted those fists on the desktop as he leaned forward. “Your ship’s too big!”

“I’ve docked at smaller piers than these,” the stocky one shot back.

“Well, you won’t get to here. Unload it by skiff or let your cargo rot!”

“That’ll take days, and you know it!”

“Better than your fat hull taking out one of our piers.” The slender clerk straightened, dropped into his chair, and began ruffling papers. “Good day, Captain.”

The stocky captain’s reddened coloring shifted to something like a plum.

“We’ll see about this! I’ll be back when your master is here.” He turned and strode out past Magiere and Brot’an without seeming to notice them.

“Won’t do you any good,” the slender man muttered.

Magiere followed spoken Numanese a little better than she spoke it. Apparently the harbormaster wasn’t in, and the muttering young clerk at the desk had ink stains on all of his fingers, as if he normally worked with quill and paper. Arguing with captains was probably not part of his daily duties.

“Can you help us?” she asked.

“With what?” the man answered sharply, not even looking up.

“We need passage on ... a ship ... to south,” she said, or tried to say, “leaving ... soon.”

“Do I look like a purser to you?” he returned.

Magiere didn’t catch that one Numanese word, but his tone hit her the wrong way. She took an angry step in toward the desk.

Brot’an instantly shifted in, and when she glanced his way, his narrowed eyes were fixed on her.

She knew her own eyes had probably darkened, as the room had brightened in her sight, burning her eyes. Her irises must have widened, swallowing some of their dark brown into black—as they did when she was on the edge of losing control.

Brot’an slipped in front of her and up to the desk.

“Could you direct us to a ship?” he asked the clerk, who was still hunched over the papers. “Or perhaps the best area of the port to find one heading south ... and willing to take passengers?”

For the first time, the man looked up at them—up at Brot’an—and he blinked a few times in silence. They both stood out too much, but maybe their appearance was intimidating enough to warrant an answer.

“Forgive me,” the clerk returned. “It’s been a long ... What did you need?”

“A ship,” Magiere repeated, “heading south, leaving today.”

He shook his head. “I’d have no knowledge of captains willing to take on passengers. But most southbounders dock at the south end, so when they leave port they don’t cross paths with those headed to Beranklifer Bay, Dhredze Seatt, or up the Northlander coast.” He looked back down at his paperwork. “Try down there. Best I can offer.”

Feeling anger rise again, Magiere was tempted to grab him and jerk him over the desk.

“Thank you,” Brot’an said and turned right into Magiere, murmuring, “That is all we will get from him. We try the southern docks on our own.”

Magiere backed away, blinking repeatedly until the room’s brightness faded and no longer stung her eyes. She spun out of the harbormaster’s office, pausing barely long enough for Brot’an to catch up. Her temper did not improve.

Why was it so hard to control that hunger-driven rage and lock it away anymore?

Then she noted that Brot’an appeared almost worried as he gazed south along the waterfront. This was strange compared to his usual passive expression, and somehow she doubted that it had to do with all the docks they’d have to wander. Then she remembered Leanâlhâm’s mention of Brot’an speaking with their last ship’s crew.

Magiere was determined to leave this place as quickly as possible to evade any pursuit, and Brot’an had started on that even before they’d reached port. He seemed almost as driven as she was; yet he knew far less than she did about where to go after they reached their destination.

Her anger toward the less-than-helpful clerk shifted to Brot’an, so full of secrets he guarded like treasures. He evaded every question about his real purpose, and she was sick of it.

“What are you thinking?” she asked, trying to be coy.

Lost in his own concerns, Brot’ân’duivé—the Dog in the Dark—had almost forgotten Magiere’s unstable state as he moved swiftly along the waterfront.

They needed to get off this isle. The others might be worried about pursuit, but he was certain of it—as he had ensured it. He did not want the anmaglâhk team remaining behind in Calm Seatt. They would plague Wynn Hygeorht in her efforts to locate the final orb. And only he was capable of dealing with members of his own caste.

He wanted them following him.

“What are you thinking?”

The question—too quiet and pointed—caught him off guard. He had slipped into introspection. When he slowed, he found that Magiere had stopped two paces behind and stood there, studying him.

Had he been careless, let his thoughts show on his face? No, she was simply suspicious by nature—and that was useful.

“I was thinking of our pressing need of a ship,” he replied.

“More than Leesil or me, you’ve been rushing,” she answered coolly. “Even to questioning the ship’s crew before we arrived. What haven’t you shared with the rest of us?”

He had underestimated her, but he had no response, so he walked on. She surprised him again, stepping ahead into his path and forcing him to halt.

On the passage here, she had tried to force answers from him: any information concerning what had brought him all this way and why he was protecting her from his own caste. He would eventually have to tell her something, perhaps even part of the truth, but he had been waiting for a moment when they were alone.

They were alone now.

Without a word, Magiere turned away, but not down the waterfront. She walked into a cutway between two front warehouses that led to an alley behind them. Halting halfway down near a stack of crates, she looked back at him, waiting. He closed on her, stepping into the shadows between the buildings.

“What is it you wish me to say?” he asked.

Tilting her pale face, she raised one dark eyebrow. “Answer the questions I’ve been asking since the night you showed up in Calm Seatt. Why did you drag Leanâlhâm—let alone Osha—all the way here and into the middle of this? What made you take the girl from her own home? And why are she and Osha both so ... different now?”

Magiere waited, though Brot’ân’duivé remained silent, calculating his options.

“What have you done?” she demanded.

Brot’ân’duivé looked back out the cutway’s mouth at all of the ships in the bay. Which one might hold a way out of this place? And which one, either present or coming, held those he wanted close enough to kill?

One more ... and then another ... until the last.

Magiere wanted simple answers to seemingly simple questions. Nothing in all of this was simple.

“For what little I understand of Osha’s or Leanâlhâm’s transformations,” he began, “I must go back to your story, to how this all started ... because of Wynn Hygeorht.”

Magiere studied him for a long moment. “Wynn? It’s over two years since she came to your territory with Leesil, Chap, and me.”

Yet the inquisitive young sage had been the unwitting catalyst for everything, just the same. After Magiere, Léshil, Chap, and Wynn had left the an’Cróan territories, under the guardianship of Osha and the most honorable anmaglâhk, Sgäilsheilleache, they had managed to procure what Brot’ân’duivé now knew as the anchor—the orb—of Water. They had found it hidden away in an icebound castle amid the Pock Peaks, the highest point of that continent. But the orb’s retrieval had not ended that venture.

A select team of anmaglâhk had followed Magiere and her companions even as they fled that forgotten castle for their own homeland. Before they reached home, a direct conflict and one—no, two—tragic deaths had occurred.

Sgäilsheilleache and another anmaglâhk, a greimasg’äh—a shadow-gripper named Hkuan’duv—had killed each other over Magiere and that unknown recovered “artifact.”

In the end Magiere, Wynn, Chap, and Léshil had reached the coast in hope of catching a ship to this central continent, likely to take the orb beyond the reach of Aoishenis-Ahâre—Most Aged Father. But before they had left on this new journey, Osha had departed to return to his own people, bearing the ashes of his teacher, Sgäilsheilleache.

At the dawn on which Osha departed, Wynn Hygeorht had followed him. She had given him a journal of her writings to deliver himself to Brot’ân’duivé.

That journal had started everything. After a thousand years of safe seclusion, it had brought war among the an’Cróan.

The weight of the past year and a half’s events drove Brot’ân’duivé into weariness. He longed to close his eyes, but Magiere stood watching him. As his thoughts wandered into the past, he carefully kept his expression unreadable. Of course back then he had known nothing of the tragic events surrounding that first orb. While those had played out, he had been unwittingly ignorant within the northern reaches of his people’s land.

When had the upturning of his world begun? Did he remember the exact day?

Yes.

As he stood there with Magiere, his thoughts rolled back in time ... to several moons after Sgäilsheilleache and Osha had left with Magiere and her companions to locate what he now knew as the first orb. He had heard nothing of the orbs then, knew nothing, as he had walked through his people’s forest toward the central enclave of the Coilehkrotall clan....

Sunlight broke through the forest canopy in scattered rays as Brot’ân’duivé headed silently toward the home of Sgäilsheilleache, Leanâlhâm, and his old friend Gleannéohkân’thva. It was a moment of rare peace until one subtle rustle of leaves above him did not match those made by the light breeze.

Brot’ân’duivé’s soft gait did not falter. He turned in between the branches of a fir tree and became one with its shadows. All conscious thought vanished, his mind as empty and hidden as his flesh, while he slipped one hand up an opposing sleeve for a stiletto.

Most Aged Father’s spies moved everywhere in these days. The ancient patriarch’s suspicions had grown since the day Brot’ân’duivé had defended Magiere in a trial to the death before the people’s council of clan elders. But as he gazed upward, searching the canopy for a single leaf or needle that moved the wrong way against the breeze, he found no sign of his own kind perched above.

There was only a glimpse of white feathers. Something small but much too large to be a mere bird hid between the leaves.

It—she—had arms and legs. A leafy branch pushed aside, and she flexed her long, folded wings as she peered down, perhaps looking for where he had vanished from sight.

When unfurled, her wingspan would have been about five times her height, though she could not have been even half as tall as he was. Those wings remained folded behind a narrow, slight-boned torso of subtle curves akin to a young girl’s. From pinion feathers to the downy covering on her body and face, she was a mottled gray-white. Instead of hair, larger feathers were combed back as if part of a headdress, matched by the same on her forearms and lower legs.

Brot’ân’duivé returned the stiletto to its sheath and stepped from the shadows.

She flinched, lurching backward into hiding in the tree. Then her head tentatively pushed out through the leaves. She looked down at him, as if perhaps she knew him but was still uncertain.

Her two huge oval eyes were like black river stones at first. When she wriggled farther out of the leaves above, cocking her head like a crow, a streak of sunlight washed her face. Her eyes sparked with red like those of a dove.

The séyilf—one of the “wind-blown”—stared fixedly at Brot’ân’duivé.

Despite the thinness of the branch on which she perched, it barely bent under her weight. Her mouth suddenly opened wide, and something fell from it to the forest floor.

Brot’ân’duivé was seldom startled. He glanced down in reflex and then quickly up again.

The séyilf was gone. When he lowered his eyes to what she had dropped, he saw a round dark stone and crouched to retrieve it.

Smooth like her eyes and still glistening with her spittle, its whole oblong was covered in etchings. He wiped it dry on the pants of his forest gray attire and rolled it in his hand.

These were not the scratches of delicate séyilf talons, such as he had seen on the cave walls of their high mountain aeries. These deeper, short marks were made by harder and smaller claws—made by the fingertips of the Chein’âs, the Burning Ones.

The stone was a summons.

The Chein’âs lived in the lava-heated depths of the mountains that bordered his people’s southern territories. By an ancient alliance, they made all Anmaglâhk weapons and equipment requiring the rare white metal only they could find and shape in the earth’s hottest depths. Once a young anmaglâhk initiate completed basic training and received approval by a caste elder, word was sent to the Chein’âs, and when the new weapons were completed, they would send a stone—a summons—to the caste. A caste elder would accompany the initiate on a journey to the fiery caves to receive those precious gifts. Upon returning, the initiate had to find a jeóin—“assentor” and mentor—among the caste who agreed to complete final training.

Few had ever seen such a stone with markings. Even fewer ever learned to read them—only greimasg’äh and caste elders. Brot’ân’duivé found one discernable Chein’âs word on the stone. In his own tongue, it meant “a sudden breeze.”

All of his people’s names, those given at birth and the true ones chosen during name-taking before their ancestors’ spirits, had a meaning.

The Chein’âs had summoned Osha—the Sudden Breeze—a second time.

“Are you just going to stand there?”

Brot’ân’duivé rose from the memory without a twitch.

Magiere stood watching him with her arms folded, half sitting upon a stack of crates in the alley between the warehouses.

“Or are you going to tell me what you meant about Wynn?” she added.

Brot’ân’duivé would certainly not tell her of the séyilf, the stone, or what it had done to Osha. That matter had yet to be settled, even after so much time. He did not fully understand what had come of it so far, but Magiere would not be put off much longer.

“It began before I knew anything of Wynn’s ... interference with Osha,” he finally answered. “Do you remember an enclave among the Coilehkrotall clan?”

“You mean Gleann and Leanâlhâm’s home village?” Magiere frowned, exhaling with impatience. “Of course. We were guests there.”

“Yes, you were,” Brot’an answered, and he nearly shook his head at her cutting of Gleannéohkân’thva’s true name. Humans were so inadequate with any language but their own. He held up a hand as she was about to speak—likely to demand that he get to the point.

“My part began after you left your homeland for this continent,” he said. “Osha had already departed to return to his people. Events were in motion from that moment, though I was unaware at the time. Some things only became known to me the day I arrived at Gleannéohkân’thva’s home.”

And with that he began to tell Magiere a part of his story....

Brot’ân’duivé stepped on through the dense trees toward the central enclave of Coilehkrotall. Wild brush grew higher than his head in places, but there were more oaks and cedars here due to the great width of their trunks. Those trunks bulged in unusual ways and grew more immense along the way.

While foliage remained lush and thick overhead, in the spaces between trees the underbrush gave way to open areas carpeted in lime-colored moss. Someone stepped out and turned away as if emerging like a spirit from the bloated trunk of a cedar.

Brot’ân’duivé did not bother to see who had emerged and barely glanced at thickened ivy hanging from branches overhead. The vines shaped an entryway into the tree’s wide opening between the ridges of its earthbound roots—the an’Cróan lived inside massive trees.

He passed more such dwellings with openings and flora-marked entryways, and then a large clay dome of an oven in an open lawn; smoke was rising from its top. Several women and two men stopped, touched their companions, and turned one by one to stare. They nodded to him politely with warm smiles.

Nodding back, Brot’ân’duivé did not pause and continued to the enclave’s western outskirts and one large tree almost apart from the others. It was the familiar home of an old friend, a healer among their people, and one of the few in this world whom Brot’ân’duivé trusted. He pushed aside the canvas curtain over the entrance to peer into the main chamber.

“I am here,” he said.

Moss from outside flowed inward across the chamber’s floor. The tree’s interior had grown into a large rounded room with natural ovals for doorways. Curving walls were bark-covered like the tree’s outside, though some bare, glistening wood was exposed, not as if the bark had been stripped but rather that the oak had grown this way with purpose. Tawny-grained wood of natural curves shaped the archways to other curtained spaces, as well as the steps rising upward around the left wall to another level through an opening in the low ceiling.

Bare wood ledges at the height of seating places were graced with saffron-colored cushions of floral patterns in light yellow. Brot’ân’duivé saw a smaller chamber through one archway with a curtain tied aside. Stuffed mattresses were laid out upon the moss-carpeted floor, along with soft pillows and green wool blankets. But the three people who occupied the main chamber all turned their heads at his greeting.

“By the ancestors,” Gleannéohkân’thva said. “Did your mother teach you no manners?”

“She taught me,” Brot’ân’duivé answered, ducking inside. “But I did not listen.”

The old healer scoffed, suppressing a smile. He was dressed in a quilted russet shirt, and his unruly hair was shot with gray.

In spite of his poor manners, Brot’ân’duivé nodded to the others present.

Young Leanâlhâm sat on the moss carpet with a needle in hand as she worked upon an embroidered pillow slip. She was dressed much as any other girl who had not yet gone for her name-taking. A plain cotton skirt of amber color spread around her folded legs, and her pullover of soft goat’s wool looked a bit too small for her frame.

Leanâlhâm was three years past the time when she should have gone for name-taking. Gleannéohkân’thva and Sgäilsheilleache had their reasons for delaying her ... because of her mixed blood. She did not speak and dropped her gaze. Brot’ân’duivé’s presence always daunted her, but he gave it no thought as he fixed on the third occupant.

“Welcome,” she said evenly.

Cuirin’nên’a, mother of Léshil and daughter of great Eillean, stood near the stairs.

She wore a simple tawny gown with a russet wrap around her shoulders. Such plain clothing did nothing to diminish her or what she was. Her hair fell like corn silk all the way to her lower back—she must have cut it recently. Her face was triangular like those of all an’Cróan, though its long angles swept in soft curves down to a narrow jaw and chin. Her caramel skin was flawless, and a long narrow nose of delicate nostrils ended above a small mouth of full lips a shade darker than her skin.

Cuirin’nên’a’s almond-shaped eyes were large, even for her people. One could become lost in them, if one was careless.

To Brot’ân’duivé, she sometimes did not seem quite real. Dressed so unlike the anmaglâhk that she was, her seemingly fragile beauty had been—was—a tool she wielded like any other. It made her deadly.

“Greetings,” he returned, stepping farther in.

“To what do we owe the honor of your presence?” Gleannéohkân’thva asked wryly.

“Perhaps I missed your company.”

Brot’ân’duivé had come to speak to his old friend and to Léshil’s mother, though he found it difficult to look at Cuirin’nên’a. It was not her dangerous beauty that affected him, but rather the fact that she was the living reminder of someone else.

Departed Eillean, Léshil’s grandmother, was always there in Brot’ân’duivé’s thoughts when he faced Cuirin’nên’a. The loss of her had been terrible for his people, as was the loss of any greimasg’äh. Yet his loss of Eillean was one that he had never been able to put aside, though they had never truly bonded.

He did so now, for there was much he needed from the old healer and Léshil’s mother.

The three of them had long been involved in the dissident movement among their people.

Brot’ân’duivé had been the newest of them to join that faction. That too had been the doing of Eillean, who had also brought her daughter, Cuirin’nên’a, among them. Most dissidents were not anmaglâhk, but there were a few. All had come to realize that Most Aged Father was no longer fit to lead their caste, and that the old one’s view of how to protect their people had in itself become a threat to them.

Gleannéohkân’thva would never speak of such things in front of Leanâlhâm. She was an innocent, not one of them, and Brot’ân’duivé was in no hurry. They could talk later tonight. As he dropped cross-legged on the moss, something did distract him.

A warmth grew suddenly in one spot inside his tunic, between the outer and inner folds of the fabric on his front left side.

There he had stored one of two word-wood devices used for communication. The other was on his right side. All fully acknowledged anmaglâhk carried one of those, as grown and made by the people’s Shapers from Most Aged Father’s own tree home. Through this device, any full anmaglâhk could speak with the patriarch through any tree in existence.

But the word-wood on Brot’ân’duivé’s left side was far different.

Gleannéohkân’thva as a healer was also a Shaper and had made that one in secret. Only dissidents carried such a word-wood. And one of them had just called out to this tree—and the old healer.

Brot’ân’duivé exchanged a glance with Gleannéohkân’thva, who stiffened slightly with a scowl of his wrinkled owlish face.

“Leanâlhâm,” he said gently. “Would you go to the communal ovens and see what is cooking for dinner? If there is no fresh grain bread, perhaps find some from yesterday to steam and soften. I have a craving, little one.”

“Of course,” the girl answered, setting aside her sewing to rise. “If there is none, I will make you some myself.”

“Thank you, dear,” Gleannéohkân’thva said with a great grin, watching the girl hurry out through the canvas-covered doorway.

Strictly speaking, he was not her grandfather, but rather the brother of her grandmother. The term for this relationship was much too long for common conversation. But the old healer had raised the girl like his only daughter. She loved him as if he were her own father, in place of the one who had abandoned her. It often appeared she would do anything for him.

That was why the old healer protected her from the truth of his secret activities—and why he now sent her away.

The doorway’s tapestry still fluttered from the girl’s departure as Gleannéohkân’thva’s warm grin vanished. Cuirin’nên’a rose straight from the floor and reached the doorway in one fluid moment. She peered out before looking back and nodding to the old healer.

Gleannéohkân’thva knee-walked to the nearest wall of his home, from which were made all secret word-woods he created. He flattened his hand against that wall, for the tree itself was all he needed to communicate with any word-wood he had grown and shaped from it.

Brot’ân’duivé quickly took out his own wood-word given to him by the healer and pressed it against the wall. Cuirin’nên’a crouched beside him, placing one slender finger between Brot’ân’duivé’s and against the smooth oval of wood. And they listened.

“I am here,” Gleannéohkân’thva said without identifying himself.

It is Tar’kash.... Are you alone?

Hearing the voice of their compatriot inside his thoughts, Brot’ân’duivé answered first. “No. I, Brot’ân’duivé, am here as well, as is Cuirin’nên’a. Speak freely.”

Tar’kash was a trusted member of their own dissident cell and currently in Crijheäiche—Origin-Heart—the home of Most Aged Father and the main settlement of the Anmaglâhk. Tar’kash took a dangerous risk in even carrying a non-anmaglâhk word-wood in such a place, much less in using it while there.

Gleannéohkân’thva’s tense expression reflected that concern. “What has happened?”

I overheard that Osha was picked up north of the human city of Bela and is being returned home even now. I know that he was off with Sgäilsheilleache, and that the greimasg’äh would wish to know of this....

“What of my son,” Cuirin’nên’a interrupted, “or his consort?”

“And Sgäilsheilleache,” Brot’ân’duivé added.

None of them were mentioned—only Osha. He returns by ship under the watch of Dänvârfij.

“Dänvârfij ... Hkuan’duv’s last student?” Brot’ân’duivé asked. “What is she doing on that side of the continent? What purpose was she given by Most Aged Father?”

Hkuan’duv—the Blackened Sea—was one of four remaining greimasg’äh, the “shadow-grippers” among the Anmaglâhk. It unsettled Brot’ân’duivé that Most Aged Father would send Hkuan’duv’s finest student to retrieve one insignificant young anmaglâhk, who still had not completed final tutelage under his jeóin, Sgäilsheilleache.

Unknown, Tar’kash answered. She has not been seen in Crijheäiche for moons. But I learned she was already onboard when the ship intercepted Osha on the western coast.

“And my son?” Cuirin’nên’a demanded sharply. “Something must have been said, for Osha left with him.”

Nothing concerning Léshil—my apologies. Tar’kash’s voice then grew rushed with urgency. I must go! I am alone on the forest outskirts, but I cannot risk being seen. Use this information as best you can.

The word-wood began to cool beneath Brot’ân’duivé’s hand. His thoughts were already turning, trying to calculate what was missing. Sgäilsheilleache and Osha had undertaken to protect Magiere and Léshil wherever they wished to go, south along the coast below his people’s lands. But why was Dänvârfij aboard one of their ships on the continent’s far side? And what was Osha doing there ... alone?

Cuirin’nên’a pulled her hand from the wall as if that contact were something to be wary of.

“This is not right,” she said quietly, almost to herself. “Why does Osha return without the others, especially Sgäilsheilleache? Why would Most Aged Father send a loyalist of our caste to ‘intercept’ him?”

Brot’ân’duivé could not construct an answer as he pocketed his word-wood. “I will go and learn for myself.”

“I am coming,” she said flatly.

“No, your presence would cause suspicion,” Brot’ân’duivé warned, “or at least undue attention. You have not been that long out of imprisonment for suspected treason. I will send word as soon as I learn anything.” He turned to Gleannéohkân’thva. “Send word of this to anyone carrying your word-wood who is near the port. Have them watch for ships ... and Osha or Dänvârfij.”

Gleannéohkân’thva had neither spoken nor taken his hand from the wall. The wrinkles around his eyes deepened. “I do not like this. Osha would never tolerate being separated from Sgäilsheilleache.”

Brot’ân’duivé understood the old healer’s concern. Whenever Sgäilsheilleache was not away fulfilling a purpose given by Most Aged Father, he returned to this place, his chosen home. He was like a son to Gleannéohkân’thva—and somewhere between a beloved cousin and an uncle to Leanâlhâm, though their blood relations were not that simple.

Such personal concerns had no place here. Their cell, and all dissidents, had much larger issues now. In Most Aged Father’s paranoia, he did his best to set the human nations upon each other. He believed that if the enemies of his people, all humans, were constantly at each other’s throats, they would never look toward the land of the an’Cróan. They would continue to weaken one another, becoming a lesser threat as a whole ... or so the patriarch believed.

Most Aged Father did nothing by accident. If he indeed had Osha retrieved and “watched,” then something had happened ... perhaps beyond his control. This was either a new concern or an advantage Brot’ân’duivé could exploit, or both.

He turned to the others. “I will contact you as soon as I—”

Leanâlhâm, looking to Gleannéohkân’thva, ducked through the doorway’s hanging.

“New bread in the ovens, Grandfather,” she said, her long, loose hair tucked behind her ears. “It will not be long.”

“Ah, bless you, my girl,” Gleannéohkân’thva answered with an instant grin and a clap of his wrinkled hands.

Leanâlhâm plopped down with a satisfied sigh to return to working on the pillowcase.

Brot’ân’duivé rose, heading for the doorway. “I will speak to you again soon.”

He did not look back, though he felt the others, especially Cuirin’nên’a, watching his sudden departure. His thoughts still turning, he was barely into the trees beyond the enclave when he broke into a jog.

If he hurried, he might still intercept Osha before the young one was brought before Most Aged Father.