Hinterland

A RUMOR OF DAEMONS

“Welcome to Tashijan,” the warden said.

Tylar gripped Argent’s hand across the threshold to the new accommodations granted him at Tashijan.

“I assume these rooms will meet with your satisfaction,” Argent ser Fields said. His fingers tightened on Tylar’s, not in a friendly manner.

Tylar matched his grip and kept his gaze fixed on the warden’s one eye. The plate of bone over the other reflected the firelight from the chamber behind Tylar’s shoulder.

“You are most generous,” Tylar responded. “Any of the rooms in the knights’ quarters would have sufficed.”

“Ah, but you come with all your Hands in tow,” Argent said, still holding tight. “It wouldn’t be right to allow someone who arrives like a god to be housed in so low a manner.”

Tylar’s jaw ached from biting back harsher words. The past bell had been a chaotic flurry of high-blown flattery and barely contained resentment, most of it voiced by the warden himself. But Tylar kept his tongue civil. Especially since beyond the warden stood representatives of all of Tashijan: Master Hesharian of the Council of Masters, various leaders of the shadowknights’ castes, even Keeper Ryngold, who oversaw the house staff and underfolk. They had all escorted Tylar’s party down to their rooms, which took up almost all of this level, an embarrassing generosity in such overcrowded conditions. Tylar was sure the warden had let it be known to all how well the regent was being accommodated.

“A private feast is scheduled at the next bell,” Argent finished, relinquishing his hand. “After you’ve all had a chance to refresh yourselves, I’ll send my man to escort you and your Hands down to the dining hall.”

“Most generous again,” Tylar choked out.

Argent turned with a nod of his head and waved the escort down the hall ahead of him. The remainder of the party from Chrismferry had already retired into their respective rooms. Delia had come close to slamming her door in her haste to escape her father’s stiff and false affection.

The only one left in the hall was Tylar’s ever-present shadow, the Wyr-mistress Eylan. She stood stoically, almost bored.

“Keep any ears from this door,” he instructed.

She gave him a barely perceptible nod.

Tylar closed the door behind him and leaned against it, glad for a moment’s peace. But he wasn’t alone. He turned to find four people arrayed near the back of the room, three maids and a manservant, resplendent in fine liveries. Their dress was a match to the room itself, as if their clothes had been cut from the heavy draperies. The remainder of the main chamber was equally grand, appointed in rich silks, tapestries, padded chairs, and a hearth tall enough to walk into upright, presently ablaze with a cheery fire.

The switch-thin servant bowed deeply, then straightened. “Welcome, your lordship. We’ve already discharged your bags. If you’ll show me which dress you’d like to wear to the feast, I shall do my best to freshen and brush them.”

Tylar waved them off. “That won’t be necessary. I’d prefer a few moments of solitude. If I need anything, I will send for you.”

“Ser, your bath has not been-”

“Not necessary,” he said with a bit of a snap. He was immediately ashamed at his harshness. He knew better than to vent his anger upon those who sought only to fulfill their duties. He calmed his voice. “Most welcome, but that will be all.”

With another bow, the manservant herded the maids amid much curtsying out a narrow door that led down to the staff quarters. A silk-wrapped pull-rope hung beside it, ready to summon assistance when needed. Tylar had no intention of tugging on it while here.

Once alone, Tylar sighed. Though his empty stomach growled, he had no great desire to attend the feast. His nose, though, did note the platter of hard cheeses and steaming bread set atop a table by the hearth, along with a silver flagon of spiced wine. Maybe there was some small gain in being a visiting regent.

He stepped toward the platter.

A knock on the door stopped him. He closed his eyes against yet another interruption. What now? Rubbing at the stubble on his chin, he turned from the hearth and crossed back to the door. Eylan surely would have blocked any stranger from disturbing him. Perhaps it was Delia, reappearing now that her father had vacated the halls.

He pulled open the door and found himself mistaken.

A knight in a damp shadowcloak stood at his threshold. “Tylar.”

He stepped back. “Kathryn.”

The castellan had been notably missing from the formalized greetings after the hard landing atop Stormwatch. And while Tylar had wondered at her absence, he was pleased at the exasperation it had caused in the warden. He lifted an arm, inviting her inside.

She brushed through the doorway, barely meeting his eye.

Tylar closed the door. He studied her as she crossed to the hearth. She looked paler than usual, but maybe it was the cold. She lifted both palms toward the fire. He noted meltwater dripping from the edge of her cloak. A few wet hairs had worked free from her riding braid and were pasted to her cheeks.

She spoke to the flames. “I have Gerrod and two of his fellow masters examining your flippercraft’s mekanicals. If there was any sabotage or misdeed, they should be able to discern it before you return to Chrismferry.”

Tylar relaxed the slight stiffness to his shoulders. So that was why she had been missing earlier. He had feared a part of her absence might be some discomfit with his arrival.

Relieved, he approached her. “The captain believed it was the stress of burning too much blood,” he said. “Or perhaps some weakness in the alchemies. Either way, the failure was most likely happenstance and not anything malicious-but it does warrant investigation.”

She nodded.

Tylar reached her side. The heat of the hearth finally drove her back a step. Or maybe it was his own nearness. She moved to one of the chairs and examined the platter of small fare with a bit too much intensity.

“Kathryn…?” he started softly.

She picked up a piece of cheese, then returned it to the plate. “I assume you know Rogger arrived two days ago. With the god’s skull.”

“I got your raven,” he confirmed, not pressing her. It seemed such topics were easier for the moment.

“Gerrod’s been examining it in secret and has already come up with some answers.”

“So soon?”

Kathryn frowned, as if the question somehow rankled her. “He has a mind like no other.”

“I have no doubt,” he said softly. “What has he discerned?”

Kathryn slowly outlined all that the master had discovered, sketching out his speculations. As she continued, Tylar’s interest drew him nearer to her, brows pinched in concern.

“Seersong?” he asked as she finished.

Kathryn glanced at him, meeting his eyes for the first time, as if testing an icy stream before jumping in. She spoke with a firmer voice. “That is what Gerrod suspects. An echo of some curse still trapped in the bone.”

“And Krevan came looking for the skull, too. Strange.”

“I suspect he’ll be back. But whatever has driven him here, he seemed reluctant to talk openly about it.”

Tylar shrugged. “Well, Krevan was never known to be garrulous.”

His words drew the faintest of smiles from her. It always amazed him how her entire face could soften with just the smallest of movements. He found himself staring a bit too long at her lips, reminded of a different life. It was now his turn to glance away.

“We’ll simply have to outwait Krevan,” he mumbled.

Remembering his empty stomach, he plucked up a bit of dry hardcrust and chewed an edge.

Kathryn studied the room as if seeing it for the first time. “Your Hands? They are settled into their rooms?”

“Indeed. Argent has given practically this entire level to house all of us. Why do you ask?”

Kathryn waved away his words, a bit brusquely. “No reason. It’s just…I’m sure Dart will be thrilled to see her friend Laurelle again. She’s still your Hand of tears, correct?”

Tylar nodded. “The girl practically filled the flippercraft’s hold with gifts and sweets for Dart. Insisted that her arrival be a surprise.” He shrugged a shoulder. “Where is the child, by the way? I thought she’d be at your side.”

“Off to class-though by now she might have returned to her garret off my hermitage. I should be returning to my rooms myself. To change for the feast.” She shook her head sourly and stepped toward the door. “This game we must play…”

Tylar suspected the game she referred to involved more than just the feast to come. He noted a trace of anger directed at him, but he was unsure how to assuage it. Sometimes women were as impenetrable as the most complex of alchemies.

Before Kathryn could reach the door, a knock sounded.

Kathryn glanced at him.

He shrugged. He was not expecting anyone. “It might just be Delia,” he offered.

Kathryn’s face closed up, eyes tightening. “Then I’d certainly best be going,” she said stiffly and strode more quickly toward the door.

Tylar suddenly understood. Kathryn’s discomfort and veiled antagonism-maybe the alchemies involved here weren’t that complex. He recalled her tentative question about the Hands, inquiring about the rooming arrangements. She must have somehow gained word of how close he and Delia had grown over the past year.

“Kathryn-”

A gruff voice called through the door. “Is anyone going to open this door or do I have to pound my knuckles raw?”

It was not Delia.

“Rogger,” Kathryn said, half-irritated, half-relieved. She stepped to the latch and pulled open the door.

The thief barged in. He was dressed in a servant’s livery, though it fit poorly, being too large and bagging hugely over his lean form. He must have been in some hurry to wear such a makeshift costume.

“So you’re both here! If I’d a known that, I could’ve saved a thousand stairs at least.”

“What’s wrong?” Tylar asked, responding to the man’s anxiety.

“It’s that godling child!” Rogger practically shouted.

“Hush,” Tylar said. “Hold your voice.”

Kathryn touched Rogger’s elbow. “What about Dart?”

“Maybe the two of you had better stop holing up in here-as it is, people will be chattering about the regent and the castellan. Ballads will be written…odes sung…”

Tylar felt his cheeks heat up while Kathryn grew even paler.

“Out with it, Rogger!” he said.

“What is happening?” Kathryn echoed.

“The entire Citadel is riled with talk of daemons. Daemons summoned by the castellan’s page. It seems someone has seen Dart’s little bronze friend.”

“Oh, no,” Kathryn said.

“Oh, yes,” Rogger said. “The entire Order is being roused to search for her.”

Kathryn headed toward the door. “I must return to my hermitage.”

“I’ll go with you,” Tylar said.

“No. Argent will use such talk and rumors to discredit me. He has been seeking some way to shift attention from his own dark deeds with that cursed sword last spring. You must stay clear of all of this. Not just for your sake, but for the peace of Myrillia.”

Tylar watched her storm from the room.

Rogger had already discovered the spiced wine and was pouring himself a generous helping.

“Is there any word where Dart might be?”

Rogger shrugged. “Vanished. Like her bronze beastie.” He took a deep draught of the wine, then wiped his beard and lips on his sleeve. “But she’d best stay low. Them’s that are looking for her the hardest are those with those handsome crosses stitched on their vests.”

Argent’s men.

Tylar paced back to the hearth. “And what am I to do? Just stand here and wait?”

Rogger lifted an eyebrow. “Best leave the matter to the castellan’s skill. Kathryn has the pace and breadth of the place better than you. And besides, don’t you have a feast to dress for? And you could use a bit of a shave-getting as scraggly as me.”

Tylar scowled.

“Or…” Rogger dangled it before Tylar.

“Or what?”

“I’m certain your fine feast will be delayed while Argent does his best to bend talk of daemons to his favor. Until then, there was another rumor that was being bantered about before the talk of daemons arose. Something about the storm that blew your flippercraft to port.”

“What about it?”

“As the storm struck, it drove all the rats out of the sewers throughout the village surrounding Tashijan. Boiled up, they did. Then they all fled and scurried into our towers and battlements.”

Tylar shook his head at the strangeness.

“It is said that beasts of the fields have better senses-if not sense-than any man. Something in that storm set them afoot. And you know what they say about rats. They’re the first to flee a fire.”

Tylar nodded. “Perhaps such activity might warrant a trip beyond Tashijan’s walls.” And it would be good to be moving…to test the mettle of things here.

A twinkle shone in the thief’s eye. “I thought you might feel that way.” Rogger tugged up the hem of his baggy shirt and pulled free what was hidden beneath its looseness. He shook out a hooded cloak that had been snugged around his bony waist.

“You stole someone’s shadowcloak?” Tylar could not keep the shock from his voice.

“ Borrowed. Besides, you’re getting your own cloak in the morning if all goes well. A cloak to match those triple stripes on your face. In the meantime, a bit of black cloth will turn a god-regent back into a shadowknight. And with all the searching going on for a child and her daemon dog, it shouldn’t be hard for a knight and his manservant to slip out the main gates.”

Tylar pulled the cloak over his shoulders, sensing the Grace flowing through the cloth. “We’d best be quick.”

Rogger filled his cheeks with bread and mumbled through the mouthful. “Aye to that. The storm grows more fierce as we stand here jawing.”

Tylar headed toward the door, still ajar after Kathryn’s sudden flight. He wondered how she would fare with the warden-and wondered even more where the godling child had gone to hide. With all of Tashijan alerted, there would be few safe harbors.

Brant kept to Dart’s shoulder. On her other side, she rested one hand on the haunch of the massive bullhound. The twin giants leaned against the wall, eyes half-closed, exhausted but refusing to turn back until the cubbies were secured.

They all waited while the two wyld trackers-one young, one old-sniffed through a room thick with dust and rotted furniture, long unswept and forgotten. Brant smelled the musk of rat droppings and heard the skitter of beetles.

He kept his arms crossed, little satisfied with the pace of the search. So far, they had traversed three levels beneath the houndskeep, trailing the trickle of musky alchemies. Dart had already explained how these subterranean floors were Tashijan’s famed Masterlevels, the domain of the learned alchemists and scholars. But the hole into which the two wolf cubbies had fled apparently emptied into spaces beyond the normal lay of this subterranean warren, into crawlways and tunnels that wormed through these levels, walled away ages ago.

“Possibly forgotten sections of the original human keep that once stood here,” Dart had explained. “Like the houndskeep itself was once a dungeon.”

Brant considered that possibility as he waited yet again for the trackers. If Dart’s story were true, what dark purpose might the hole in the wall have once served? Currently it drained away the filth and biles and tiny gnawed bones of the houndskeep’s denizens. But before that? They had all heard tales of the barbarous human kings who had once ruled Myrillia…before the coming of the gods. How much blood had been spilled down that same stone throat from the dungeons, echoing with screams?

“No hope here,” the elder tracker said. “Naught but a few cracks in the mortar. But we’re on the trail. I can catch a whiff or two of the musk through those cracks. Another level or two-”

“Tracker Lorr,” the younger tracker called from another corner of the room. He held up his leech-oil lamp.

“What is it, Kytt?”

“The scent is strong here. And I’ve found a loose brick.”

Curiosity drew Dart and Brant inside. The bullhound tried to push after them, tongue lolling, but Dart stopped him with a palm on his wide nose.

“Stay, Barrin. That’s a good boy.”

He harrumphed and settled to a squat, filling the doorway. The giants looked equally discontented to be left in the hall, but the room was too low and cramped for their large forms.

Brant and Dart followed Tracker Lorr to the corner. Kytt squatted, wide-kneed, and pointed to the bottom stone in the wall. “The block here is loose from its mortar. If we worked, we might push it free.”

Lorr examined the stone and found that it rocked easily, like a rotten tooth. “Give me both your shoulders, lads,” he said with a nod to the young tracker and Brant.

Brant and Kytt supported Lorr as he sat on the floor and shoved the block with his feet. As they strained, Brant found himself nose to muzzle with the black-haired young tracker. The boy had the amber eyes of his ilk. Brant found himself holding his breath, not wishing to breathe this one’s corrupted air.

Kytt must have sensed Brant’s distaste, for he glanced away.

Brant felt a twinge of shame, but he could not fault his upbringing. In Saysh Mal, it was considered wrong to misshape man’s natural form with Grace, whether for good or ill. Such men were forbidden from the Huntress’s forests. And, Brant believed, rightly so. Especially when it came to wyld trackers. It went against the Way to turn man into beast, then to turn around and use those same blessed senses to hunt more beasts of the field. It was a cycle of corruption that had no place in Saysh Mal-or anywhere in Myrillia.

Out in the hallway, Malthumalbaen called to them. “Ock! Do you need an extra bit of muscle?”

“Not yet,” Lorr said with a groan as he shoved again, edging the stone farther into its socket.

Brant heard Dral mumble something to his brother.

Malthumalbaen answered, “No, I don’t know what bullhound tastes like.”

Brant found his eyes again on Kytt’s form. He remembered feeling a similar discomfort when he had first encountered the pair of Oldenbrook guards. Like wyld trackers, loam-giants were also forbidden from the cloud forests of Saysh Mal. Yet, Brant had found Multhumalbaen and Dralmarfillneer to be as big of heart as they were of limb. And hadn’t their strength saved his life in the storm? Did he not even consider them friends?

Kytt’s eyes flashed to his, stuck a moment, then glanced away.

Despite the contradiction, Brant found himself still bristling. Loam-giants were one matter. Trackers were another. They were an offense in both form and purpose to the Way. He felt this in his bones and blood.

“Hold tight!” Lorr called. “Almost there!”

Kytt and Brant braced Lorr’s back as he shoved one last time. Brant felt the tremble of the tracker’s strain. Stone scraped stone-then suddenly the block fell free, toppling into an empty space beyond.

A wash of stale air wafted out. Even Brant caught the taint of musk that came with it.

“There we go,” Lorr said, gaining his feet. He supported his lower back and kneaded out a kink. “The hard part’s over. All’s left is to fetch that pair of cubbies out of their stone burrow.”

Kytt had lowered to his belly and leaned his lamp through the opening. “I think I see some steps back there. An old stair. Looks like they may go down some ways.”

Confirming this, a faint animal whimper echoed up to them. It sounded as if lost down a deep well.

Lorr shook his head. “So it’s not going to be as easy as I’d hoped. But no matter, it must be done.” He squatted down again, and with a slight grimace, rubbed one of his knees. “It’ll be a narrow squeeze, but Kytt and I will flush them out.”

“I’m going with you,” Brant said.

Lorr shrugged, but his manner was unwelcoming. The old wyld tracker had recognized Brant from his clothes and skin as someone from Saysh Mal. He knew what folks from that god-realm thought of trackers. Brant suspected the only reason he was getting any cooperation from Lorr was because of Dart’s good word on his behalf.

So be it.

They didn’t have to like each other to work together. Brant had learned that well enough from Liannora in Oldenbrook.

Voices reached them from the outer hall.

Malthumalbaen hissed toward them, “Someone’s coming. Looks like a pair of shadowknights.”

Brant eyed Dart, who had already begun surreptitiously shooing something toward the opening in the wall.

Pupp, no doubt.

“I think it might be good if Dart came with us,” Brant said.

“And perhaps we should move quickly,” she added.

Dart matched gazes with Lorr.

The tracker nodded at some silent message passed between them. “Then why don’t you both go first,” he said. “I’ll make sure Barrin acts the good watchdog, along with your two giants. We’d best not have any strangers spooking the cubbies while we work.”

Dart pulled up the hood of her cloak and hurried toward the opening. She dropped to her belly and squirmed through. Brant waited until she was clear, then followed.

Once on his feet, he found Dart a step below him. The lamplight in the far room offered scant illumination. The narrow stairs spiraled quickly into an inky darkness. Spider threads whispered overhead, disturbed by their arrival. Underfoot, the steps were well-worn into raw stone, dry and dusty as old grave bones.

Kytt came next, brightening the stair with his oil lamp. He proceeded down a few steps, away from Brant. He busied himself with inspecting the stairs. Lorr came last with a bit of grunting.

He passed the second lamp to Dart.

“Tracker Lorr,” Kytt said, “come see this.”

Lorr squeezed past Brant to join the younger tracker.

Kytt lowered his lamp and pointed a finger. In the dust of the steps, a tiny paw print had been pressed.

Lorr nodded and moved slowly down a few more steps.

“They continue to flee deeper.”

“Wolf whelpings are always snugged in the darkest hole in their warren,” Brant said. “It’s where they feel safest.”

Lorr stood with a slight shake of his head. “ Safe is not a word I would use to describe this passage.” He huffed the air, nose high for a moment. “Something…something scents wrong here.”

Brant tested the air, but he could discern nothing but a bit of musk and an echo of bile, most likely coming from the houndskeep far overhead. Brant remembered his thoughts about its former use as a dungeon. Had the blood of the tortured once drained down these same steps? Did it still taint the passage?

Lorr lowered his muzzle. “Mayhap we’d best wait.”

Brant balked at this. If the whelpings’ trail grew any colder, they’d never be found. Who knew where this stair led or how much of a maze it might empty into? The best chance to secure the wolf cubbies was to keep as close on their tails as possible.

Muffled voices reached them from the outer chamber. The knights had reached the room and were questioning the giants.

Dart whispered, “It wouldn’t hurt to explore a bit farther.”

Lorr reluctantly agreed. “I will go first with Kytt. But only a few more levels. No one’s walked this passage in centuries. It could all come crashing atop us.”

Brant followed with Dart. At some point, he had offered Dart his hand to help her over a scrabble of broken steps, and she had yet to let go as they wound down into the depths below Tashijan.

Lorr paused every few turns to inspect the steps, watching for signs of the cubbies. But Brant noted how he kept one ear cocked and sniffed the air with growing frequency. Something had raised the hackles on the wyld tracker.

And now it had crept into him. Brant’s hairs prickled along his arms. For the moment, he wished he could borrow the trackers’ senses. He felt blind and deaf. Perhaps he should have bowed to the tracker’s earlier wariness.

The stairs slowly tightened in their spiral. It now took only three steps to lose sight of the person ahead.

Finally Lorr stopped. Brant suspected that the tracker could not be uprooted to proceed any deeper. This time Brant was not going to argue. The whelpings were wild creatures. Perhaps they would eventually find their way out on their own. And maybe that was for the best. Better than being caged.

Lorr hissed at them, silently signaled Kytt, and both trackers dimmed their lamps and shaded them with the edges of their cloaks.

Brant crouched down with Dart as if the falling darkness had crushed them to the stairs.

“Lorr?” Dart breathed out softly.

“Hush.”

Brant’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, discovering it was not as complete as he had first imagined. The lower stairs were slightly less murky than the deep blackness above.

Faint words reached them, rising from below, too muffled by distance to discern.

Someone was down there.

“I would question this squire myself,” Kathryn said.

She stood in the middle of her hermitage. She let her outrage at the violation of her private spaces ring in her voice. Half a bell ago, she had arrived in the high hall to discover an upended beehive of confusion. Men and women, knights and masters, all scurrying about or standing dazed. The word daemon echoed all around.

Worst of all, the door to her hermitage had been standing wide open.

She had discovered Warden Fields already in her rooms, fists on hips, ordering the place searched from niche to cranny. By the time Kathryn had shouldered through his guards, she had been red-faced and barely able to speak. She had stopped it all with a resounding command to desist.

Though Argent might rule Tashijan, all knew the hermitage was the sole domain of the castellan.

“I understand your consternation, Castellan Vail,” Argent said calmly as his men cleared from her spaces. “But I have already summoned soothmancers to examine the young men, to test the veracity of their claims.”

Off to the side, Master Hesharian stood with Keeper Ryngold. The rotund master kept his hands folded across his robed belly, looking serenely dispassionate about it all, but Kathryn read the glint of amusement in his eyes. Contrarily, the head of the house, Keeper Ryngold, shared none of the master’s amusement. He stood beside Kathryn’s maid, Penni, who still had her face covered with her hands, sobbing silently into her palms. The shoulder of her dress had been ripped. Apparently Argent’s men had manhandled her upon breaking in here. Keeper Ryngold was not pleased, almost as angry as Kathryn. Penni was one of his charges.

Kathryn stepped closer to Argent. “Perhaps you should have tested their stories before breaking my latch and entering my inviolate spaces. My hermitage is as sacrosanct as your Eyrie. To break that threshold upon the rantings of an injured boy is an affront beyond measure.”

Before he could respond, a figure stepped out of Dart’s garret and back into the main room. His face and hands were caked in black, reeking of black bile. A bloodnuller. Kathryn gaped at him. She had not known anyone was still in there. Men of his caste were imbued with alchemies of bile, able to nullify Grace with a smear of their fouled hands.

“Nothinggg,” the man slurred with a bow toward Argent.

Kathryn shoved her arm toward her door. “Begone from my rooms!”

The man hesitated until Argent gave him a slight nod to obey. He shuffled out, trailing his stench behind him.

Kathryn glowered at Argent. “I hope such a discovery will temper your unseemly haste until you’ve had the squires properly soothed. As I understand it, one of your squires had already confessed to attacking my page. Yet it is upon the word of such dishonorable young men that you break the peace of my private rooms.”

She said this last loudly enough to be heard out in the hall, where she was sure many ears were listening. Let that rumor be spread, too-to counter the talk of daemons.

Argent’s face grew a shade more red. “That is all well said,” he forced out grudgingly. “I certainly owe you my sincere apologies. But in such dark and trying times, it seems that an overly officious attention to protocol might not serve us well. Remember, we have many high personages from around Myrillia under our roofs and have a responsibility for their security. Do we not? Is it proper to sit on our swords when word arises of daemons among us?”

“Better to sit on our swords than panic,” Kathryn said, loudly yet again. “There are reasons for protocol, for rules of conduct…lest in haste someone get accidentally stabbed with a cursed sword again.”

Argent’s one eye flared. He flushed as if she had slapped him.

Off to the side, she noted Master Hesharian backing toward the door. This was a tender point that even the master wanted to avoid.

Argent glared a moment more. “Then we’d best begin the soothing this very night. I find it strange, though, that your page remains missing.” He let this question linger, tying guilt to her absence.

Kathryn refused to let it hang unaddressed. “Is it truly any wonder? After being attacked by three squires twice her size? She must wonder whom to trust after such a violation.”

“I assume she trusts you well enough,” Argent said, heading at last toward the door. “And I’m sure you’ll present her to be soothed when she comes out of hiding.”

Kathryn followed him, ushering everyone from her rooms. “Most certainly. And the first question I will ask will be concerning her attack. I wonder if it was a random act of malice or if some other hand might have directed them. I understand that all three bore the sigil of the Fiery Cross. And that a branding iron with your symbol was found in the room where the attack took place.”

Argent glanced back to her. His eyes narrowed, more with concern than anger this time. Kathryn doubted the warden had had any hand in the attack. At least not directly. Members of his Fiery Cross had grown more emboldened of late, stoked by Argent’s fiery speeches. Still, it didn’t hurt to plant a seed of doubt in his mind. It would be a blight on his image if it was found that the Cross had planned the attack as some affront against the castellan. It could turn the tide against him.

Kathryn suspected that to assuage such suspicions, Argent would spend a fair stretch of the night doing his own private investigations. The distraction would allow her additional room to maneuver, to find some way to circumvent Dart’s exposure.

With nothing else to be said, Argent sailed out of her room with a flourish of his cloak. He was followed by a cadre of his men, a flock of black geese headed to warmer climes after the cold greeting they’d received here.

Master Hesharian bowed, almost mockingly, and left, collecting another robed master with him-Master Orquell, the one who had come here from Ghazal. His milky eyes glanced over Kathryn’s face as he turned. Though he appeared to be nearly blind, she suspected he saw more than most ordinary men.

At the door, Keeper Ryngold promised to console Penni. “A bit of honeyed mead and a warm fire will settle her. If there is anything you need in the meantime…”

“I’ll be fine. Thank you.”

He set off, and the hallway slowly emptied out beyond her door. As the flow of robes and cloaks drained away, a single figure remained, a bronze boulder in the waning stream.

He forded toward her through the last of the onlookers.

“Gerrod…” Kathryn sighed with relief. She stepped aside to invite him into her rooms.

He touched her on the elbow as he passed, a silent approval of her handling of Argent.

She closed the door after him.

He stood a moment, glancing around.

“We’re alone,” she assured him.

Satisfied, he pivoted a switch at his neck and his helmet peeled back, revealing his bald pate and tattooed sigils-and also the wry amusement in his eyes. “Argent will not be sleeping this night.”

Kathryn smiled.

“And I’ve heard he had to cancel his grand feast.”

“Small favors there.” Kathryn motioned him to a seat. “At least Tylar will be happy to hear about that.”

“Yes, but he might not be so happy to hear about what we discovered about his flippercraft.” He ignored her offer to sit and crossed toward her draped windows.

Kathryn followed him, noting a slight complaint that rose from his mekanicals. “What did you find?”

He pulled aside the heavy woolen drape. The hearth’s firelight cast the glass into a mirror. She read the worry in her friend’s expression.

“The ship’s apparatus appeared fine-at least what we could tell from the burnt slag. But it was the reserve of blood alchemies that seemed to be the source of the trouble. We tested the level of Grace and found it almost drained. Only a few dregs of power remained. The ship was lucky to land at all.”

“So what do you think happened?”

“The Grace must have been drained from the alchemies while it was in flight.”

Kathryn sat straighter. “How? A saboteur? Did someone pour black bile into the mekanicals?”

“No, I spoke with several of the crew. The problems all started when the ship was caught in the front edge of the storm that besets us now.”

“The storm?”

Gerrod nodded to the window. Kathryn stepped closer, sharing the opening in the drapes.

The world beyond the panes was misted with a swirl of snow. The branches of the wyrmwood tree that shaded her balcony were heavy with white shoulders. And the snowfall grew thicker.

“I don’t understand it,” Gerrod mumbled. “But I mistrust this storm. Even my own mekanicals grew stiff when I was out there. At first I blamed it on the cold and dampness, but even once inside, out of the ice and snow, the sluggishness persisted.”

He moved an arm, and she heard the wheezing struggle.

“And your armor is driven by air alchemies.”

He nodded. “Along with fire, too. I suspect the remaining fire alchemies are the only reason I’m still able to move at all. I plan on testing the flows within my armor once I return to my study.”

Kathryn pondered all he had described. “So then what are you saying? You believe the storm is somehow siphoning air alchemies unto itself?”

He shrugged. “It is air that drives every storm. And as strange as the weather has been of late, perhaps this odd blizzard may offer some answer as to why. Maybe some wild Grace is loose upon the winds, born out of this prolonged winter. Either way, until the storm blows out to sea, it will be death to fly into or out of Tashijan. And I’m not even sure it’s safe to travel afoot through the blizzard.”

Kathryn watched the blanketing fall. “So no one should come or go?”

Gerrod nodded. “I’m sorry to add another burden.”

Kathryn rubbed a finger along her cheek’s lowermost stripe. “No matter. Better to know this now and proceed with caution. I will spread the word to the outer village and lock down our gates until we know more.”

She had begun to turn away from the window when she noted something else in his eyes, a deep-set worry reflected in the pane.

“What?”

“The timing of this storm…” He shook his head. “Tylar’s knighting…everyone gathered here.”

“Surely you don’t think it was planned. Not even a god can control the path of a storm.”

He continued to stare through the window.

“Gerrod?”

He shook his head-agreeing, disagreeing, she couldn’t tell.

She finally turned away, trusting Gerrod’s judgment enough to lock everything down until this storm blew itself out. But she refused to believe worse. There were limits to even a god’s reach.

Gerrod spoke, as if reading her thoughts. “But what if it were more than one god?”

She had no answer. All she could do was take precautions and hope Gerrod was wrong in this last regard. All she knew for certain was that no one should be out in this storm.

“Colder than a witch’s teat,” Rogger grumbled.

“And I’m sure you’ve had the necessary experience to make that observation,” Tylar said as he passed under the spiked portcullis and exited Tashijan.

Rogger considered Tylar’s words. “That be true. But that Nevering blood witch was at least warm everywhere else. There’s nothing toasty beyond these gates.”

The thief was buried under rabbit furs, a woolen scarf over his face. Behind him strode the Wyr-mistress, Eylan, in a heavy greatcoat with a collared hood. Tylar had tried to encourage her to remain behind, to guard their rooms, but Sergeant Kyllan had already secured the wing after all the talk of daemons.

So as a group they crossed the bridge that spanned the frozen moat and entered the boarded-up bazaar that lay between the village and the thick walls of Tashijan. Normally it was a raucous strip of alehouses, inns, trading booths, and makeshift tents, brimming with the drunken, the slatternly, the wily, and the quick. It continually rang with shouts and screams and song.

But no longer.

Snow fell in a heavy hush. Even the winds had died down, though they could be heard whispering farther out, beyond the village, as if a great sea rolled and churned upon a beachhead. Closer at hand, the world had been drained of color and depth, leaving only a half-finished landscape, an etching of charcoal on white parchment.

“Stay close,” Tylar warned as they trod through the ankle-deep snow.

He lifted the lamp he held and opened its shutters to reveal a tiny flame, flickering like a frightened bird in its cage. The glow cast by the lamp hardly reached past his outstretched arm.

He led them past the bazaar and into the narrow streets of the village. Here there were at least a few signs of life: the filtered glow through a shuttered window, the lone minstrel strumming a lyre from behind a barred door, the scent of woodsmoke from a few stone chimneys. But as they moved farther from the great shield wall of Tashijan, even these faded into darkness, cold hearths, and held breaths.

“I don’t see anything untoward,” Tylar said, stopping and stamping his boots to clear the snow. But even he kept his voice to a whisper, suddenly wary of being overheard.

Rogger shivered beneath his furs. “I’ve never felt a late-winter storm carry a chill like this one. Perhaps the rats merely had enough sense to flee to the warmth of our halls and cellars.”

Tylar noted that Eylan had her face raised, nose to the air. She lowered her chin and matched gazes with him. Framed by the lynx-furred hood, her beauty warmed through the cold, a pretty trap intended to catch his seed when he was ready to bow to his oath. But beyond her high cheekbones, narrow flare of nose, generous lips, there remained something icy in her eyes, a reflection of the winter storm, reminding him yet again that she was of the Wyr, birthed under strange alchemies in an unending quest to instill godhood into human flesh.

But at this moment he read something beyond the ice in her eyes.

Fear.

“What is it?” he asked.

“We should not be here,” she answered and turned to search beyond the last of the village homes. “The storm…the snow…it smells wrong.”

Tylar tested the air, drawing a fuller breath through his nose. He scented nothing unusual in the crisp air. Just ice. His body, though, shuddered in its haste to warm the cold from his chest. And something else noted the chill, stirring away from it.

Tylar rubbed at his chest, momentarily unmoored. Ever since the death of Meeryn, it had lurked inside him-Meeryn’s naethryn, her undergod-hidden behind the black palm print burnt into his chest, trapped in the bony cage that was his body. He had not summoned the shadowy creature since the Battle of Myrrwood, preferring to leave it undisturbed, perhaps even forgotten. But as it stirred now, the movement stripped Tylar of his delusions. All that was not skin or bone shifted inside him, illustrating again how little of his flesh was his own, leaving him feeling hollowed and empty.

It took three more shallow breaths to resettle and moor himself.

Rogger watched him, eyes narrowing as if sensing his unease. Then he merely shrugged. “We can always turn back. A warm fire and a nip of wine is more inviting than all this skaggin’ snow and wind.”

Tylar shook his head. They had come this far. He wanted to see the true face of this storm. Its low moan swept to them through the remaining crooked streets. These last homes, farthest from the walls, were built less stout. Some were plainly abandoned long ago, while others leaned toward each other, as if sheltering against the cold.

He led them again. The drifts grew between the streets. A wind kicked up, scattering dry snow that stung the face like sharp pebbles. They made a final turn between a set of abandoned stables. Gusts had already peeled away the roofs’ thatching and now tugged at the doors, rattling and banging them, like a dog worrying a bone.

Past the last buildings, the view opened up.

“Sweet gods above,” Rogger gasped. “Who stole the world?”

He was not far wrong.

Beyond the village, the storm swirled in a solid wall. The winds whipped straight across the hills, east to west, seemingly endless, with the force of a gale. Yet where they stood, only the occasional fierce gust snapped at them, warning them to keep back.

“Looks like we’re stuck in the eye of a whirlwind,” Rogger commented.

With Tashijan at its heart. Tylar risked another step out, searching, studying. “Why does the storm just hold out there like that?”

Eylan answered. “It grows. Gathers strength to itself. If you listen, you can hear its hunger.”

The storm’s moan stretched toward a wail.

“No wonder the rats fled,” Rogger mumbled. “Mayhap we’d best do the same.”

Tylar nodded slowly. He needed to alert Kathryn.

“Too late,” Eylan said.

Tylar had started to turn back toward Tashijan, but the Wyr-mistress’s words drew his eyes back to the storm. The perpetual white wall had developed dark streaks, like black ink dripped into swirling milk.

“Something is coming,” Eylan said.

Tylar even felt it. A sudden weight to the air.

But before he could react, a wave of frigid air blasted out from the storm, an icy exhalation awash with hoarfrost. He stumbled back, his cheeks freezing. Ice crusted his lashes. His eyes ached, but even his tears froze. He could not blink, only stare into the face of the storm.

And a face it did have.

The oil-black streaks eddied out of the snow tempest, coalescing into a monstrous countenance, growing as tall as Tashijan’s walls, yet still vague and indistinct. Tylar suddenly knew that it was not oil nor ink that shaped this face, but Gloom, the smoky essence of the naether world, bleeding into Myrillia.

Tylar murmured between frozen lips, “Run…”

But the cold fought them: numbing limbs and heart, frosting cloaks to a dragging heaviness, freezing boots underfoot. Tylar grabbed Rogger and hauled him. One step, then another. Eylan followed, bent against a wind that wasn’t there.

As they struggled, the timbre of the storm’s wail changed behind them. Or maybe it had always been there, hidden behind the wind. Either way, a lilting sweetness stretched to them, ringing with the crystalline shatter of ice. And behind it a voice…as misty as the swirling face of the storm…singing.

Tylar slowed, straining to hear. He snagged up Rogger’s coat sleeve to stop him, to get him to listen, too.

“Keep going,” the thief protested, twisting.

Tylar ignored him and slowly turned.

But Eylan was there at Tylar’s shoulder. She struck him with a fist, square in the face. His head rocked back.

“Seersong,” she said through the ringing in his ears.

Another wave of ice washed over them, worst by far than the first. It cut through Tylar as if he were naked. Again their boots were frozen in place. He felt his very bowels ice up inside him.

A step ahead, Rogger cried out, grasping at his chest.

Tylar fought to help him-but he had brushed too near a wall. His cloak had iced against the bricks, trapping him. He wrested against its clutch, but the cold had weakened his limbs.

Eylan sank to her knees, clutching at her throat. Even the air had become ice, impossible to breathe.

Tylar glanced back to the storm as his vision darkened.

The countenance had grown more distinct-somehow familiar. Who…? But it had not yet fully formed. Song again distracted him, coming not from the face of the storm but behind it and all around, as if the storm were not snow but pure song itself. There were no words, but its sweetness was like warm wine poured into his frozen ears.

Tylar gave up his struggle, happy to listen.

But another was not.

Deep inside him, beyond bone, his naethryn surged in a violent quake, writhing, as if the song burnt. Tylar had never felt it thrash with such force, as if struggling to claw itself free. It bashed against the cage of his ribs. But escape was impossible. The song would snare its trapped prey, and Tylar with it. There was only one key to its escape.

“Agee…” Tylar moaned from between lips frosted with ice.

It was all he could do. He was trapped between ice and song.

But his one word was heard, caught out of the air by the same who had first spoken it to him. Agee wan clyy nee wan dred ghawl. It was ancient Littick, the tongue of the gods. Rogger knew its meaning. Break the bone and free the dark spirit.

The thief was already on his knees, weighted down by the storm, face anguished. But one hand, the one clutched at his chest, shifted to a neighboring fold. To a hidden belt. A dagger appeared in the thief’s fingers as if born of Grace out of the very air.

It was the last Tylar saw. Darkness folded over him as the song’s warmth washed the world away. Even the thrashings inside him calmed to its sweet lilt.

Then the barest flash of silver cut through the darkness.

The thrown dagger struck Tylar in the face-where Eylan had punched him a moment ago. But it was not the blade that struck him, only the butt end of its steel hilt. Struck glancingly from the side and broke his nose.

Tylar’s face was too numb to feel it. But like a loosened pebble that starts an avalanche, the small break spread in a sweep of agony throughout his body. One leg broke under him, then the other. He toppled, only to have his arm shatter to the shoulder. Bones knit, callused, broke again, and reformed crooked. All his old injuries, once healed by Meeryn, returned in a blinding instant, leaving him the same cripple again.

He writhed, and freed of its bone prison, his naethryn rose like smoke out of the black handprint on his chest, burning through cloak and cloth. It sailed high into the air, black wings unfurled, fraying with wisps of smoke, a neck stretched. As it settled to the snowy street, ice melted and steamed around its claws. Fiery eyes opened upon this world. Half wyrm, half wolf, it glared toward the storm.

The pain warmed Tylar’s frozen form and melted his joints. He pushed to his knees, then stood, bent-backed and hobbled, a broken knight once again. As he straightened, he still felt the cold, but less so now, more like a dream one tried to remember upon waking.

He stumbled over to Rogger, who was careful to remain ducked from the wings of Tylar’s dred ghawl, the dark spirit that was Meeryn’s naethryn. Sculpted of Gloom itself, it was deadly to touch, to all except Tylar. He remained tethered to the creature by a smoky cord that sailed out of the print on his chest. The edges of the cloak and underclothes still smoldered where it had burnt its way out.

Tylar helped Rogger to his feet.

“Next time I won’t challenge the wits of rats,” Rogger chattered.

Tylar still heard the strains of seersong behind the falling motes of snow. But they held no power. Freeing the daemon had broken whatever spell it held upon him. Upon both of them.

The naethryn hunched in the street, smoky mane flared in challenge toward the storm.

Tylar searched closer, realizing someone was missing.

“Where-?”

Then movement drew his gaze farther down the street. Eylan was at the edge of the village, stumbling toward the storm.

“Eylan!” he called.

She continued, deaf to him. Tylar knew her ears were too full of seersong. She was Wyr, born of Grace, rich with its blessing or curse, susceptible like Tylar. She had resisted for as long as she could, tried to break its spell on him, and maybe even his nose. Had she known freeing his daemon would free him, too?

But she had failed.

Tylar stepped toward her, ready to drag her back. But hobbled and still half-frozen, there was no chance. A moment later, he watched her vanish into the storm. One moment there, the next swallowed away.

No…

Before him, the figure of the storm stared down at him, sketched in gloom by a wavering hand, cold and dispassionate. Then in a single brushstroke of wind, it all vanished, wiped away as if it had never been there, swept back into the storm. But Tylar still remembered, now and from long ago, from another life. He knew whose countenance had fronted the storm.

It made no sense.

“There’s nothing we can do,” Rogger said, tugging on his arm. “We must let Kathryn know what we face.”

And who.

“There can be no doubt now,” Rogger mumbled.

Tylar turned to the thief. “What do you mean?”

Rogger stared toward where Eylan had vanished, toward the storm that circled Tashijan.

“We are under siege.”