“I was about to see that the fire has been lit in the main hall,” she said. “Perhaps you could walk with me to talk of this.”
Nikolas stared at her as if he had not heard her correctly. “You want me to ... ?” He nearly jumped to his feet and then looked to Wynn. “Will you and Osha be all right on your own?”
“We’ll be fine,” she answered.
Nikolas followed the duchess out and left Osha with Wynn and the majay-hì, who still licked her plate on the floor, as the cook stomped about and irritably muttered near the ovens.
Osha said nothing, merely waiting on Wynn.
She finally blinked and leaned in to whisper in his tongue. “I can hardly believe it, but it seems that we are free to move about as we like.”
He could hardly believe it, either, and whispered back, “Where do we start?”
Wynn glanced at the cook. “I should try Jausiff again and hopefully catch him off guard about what he was doing last night.”
“Do you have any reason to fear speaking to him alone?”
“No. Even if he was in league with a minion of the Ancient Enemy, knowingly or not, he’d never openly risk harming a friend of his son or an emissary of the guild.”
Osha nodded, though he was not as certain as she was. “I will seek out Aupsha. More and more she seems the likely one with the elder sage last night. If nothing else, I will find a way to confirm that first ... and if I can, there may be more to learn.”
Wynn’s expression grew anxious. “Are you sure? We don’t know anything about her, and her allegiance to this house, and especially Jausiff. She might not have any reluctance to injuring one of us.”
“I will be cautious,” he assured her. “We will meet in our rooms afterward, the easiest place to find each other ... in privacy.”
Wynn nodded and stood, and then she looked toward the cook as she spoke loudly in Numanese. “Thank you for breakfast, Martha. Could you tell us where we might find Aupsha again? We need some help getting about the keep without mistakes.”
“That foreigner?” Martha grunted, holding a pot in midair. “It’s not my job to keep track of her comings and goings.” Then she set down the pot and faced Wynn. “I heard she don’t like it much indoors, and spends mornings in the courtyard. Try there first.”
Wynn nodded and turned back to Osha, whispering, “Shade and I will try Jausiff’s study first, while you look to the courtyard.”
For the first time, Osha did not feel so much like an outsider in Wynn’s world ... in her life.
Chapter Fifteen
After leaving the kitchen, Wynn steeled her resolve as she made her way toward Jausiff’s study. In recent years she’d managed to face down premins, nobles, Stonewalkers, and the undead. So what was it about Nikolas’s father that left her feeling like a stuttering little guild initiate? She wasn’t going to let that happen again, and she stroked between Shade’s ears as they climbed the stairs to the keep’s second level.
“Jausiff’s a guarded one, but try to catch anything that slips out of his memories.”
Shade huffed once for yes.
Upon reaching the second floor, they stepped off down the passage, but Wynn faltered at the master sage’s door and paused for a deep breath.
“Ready?” she whispered.
Shade huffed again, and Wynn knocked on the door—and she waited longer than expected.
For some reason Jausiff hadn’t come down to breakfast, and so Wynn assumed he would be in his chamber, but that might have been a mistake. She knocked again, harder, and this time heard a faint rustling or movement beyond the door. A moment later it opened.
Jausiff’s gray robe was rumpled, as if he’d slept in it. His eyes were mere slits behind strands of uncombed silver-white hair, but at the sight of Wynn, his eyes opened fully.
“How may I help you?” he asked.
All of Wynn’s confidence drained away.
A cloudy sky and drizzling rain met Osha as he reached the keep’s courtyard and looked around. Straight ahead, three standard guards were on watch at the large gate. To his left was a stable and to the right the barracks. There were no Suman guards in sight.
Neither did Osha see Aupsha, and the courtyard was not large. As he stepped onward, movement near the stable caught his attention.
Aupsha came around its far corner toward the courtyard’s front and stopped upon spotting him. He nodded politely in turning toward her.
He had never before seen a human like her, with such very dark skin and eyes like stained walnut wood. Her tightly curling hair was even darker. With long and slender limbs, she was easily as tall as the average human male—perhaps taller. She wore no cloak and seemed unaware of the falling rain, but she watched Osha without moving as he closed the distance.
“May we ... speak?” he asked in Numanese.
During the past moon he had worked hard on his Numanese and had become slightly better with it than he was at Belaskian, but he could not remember the word for “privately.” Instead he swept a hand toward the stable, and by that she should take his meaning. He hoped the structure was empty of anyone but horses.
Only Aupsha’s dark eyes shifted once toward the stable’s open central bay doors. The barest crease of her brow signaled suspicion.
That gave Osha a strong suspicion of his own. If she had been the one with the elder sage in the passage last night, it was possible she had seen him as well. She turned for the stable, as if he was no concern to her, and he followed.
Something more caught Osha’s attention—something he should have heard but did not.
He dropped his gaze down the back of her wool tunic and down the low, full skirt. He saw the back of one boot push up against the skirt’s hem. There was no extra layer at the heel and the sole was flat, thick leather worn smooth over time. When that foot moved forward in another step ...
It did not make enough sound in landing as her other heel-less boot came up.
The packed-dirt courtyard was drenched by rain. There were puddles of water everywhere, even along her path. He should have heard at least the soft smack of footfalls, but no. She walked with more silence than the average person would, almost ... like an anmaglâhk.
Once inside the stable, alone and out of sight of the gate guards, she turned as he stepped in, three paces behind her.
“What do you want?” she asked clearly, with only the trace of an accent he had never heard before.
Her bluntness, and that walk, and the look she had given him when he had first spotted her called for a change in approach ... as Sgäilsheilleache would have done.
“I saw you and the old counselor in the passage last night. You were there and then not. How?”
Her expression flickered with sudden wariness, as he knew it would, and he remained silent in waiting for her answer. She would not answer his actual question, but she would say something to change directions.
“There are secrets ... within secrets in this place,” she said. “They are not mine to share, and none of your concern.”
That brief falter—catch—after that third word told him she perhaps lied in a quick second thought. He had learned of such the hard way as he had waded through all of the much better lies of Brot’ân’duivé. That she had not given him a direct lie as to how they had left that passage said something more.
However she and Jausiff had vanished last night, it had nothing to do with the secrets of the keep. It had to do with her. When she said no more, he knew further silence on his part would not induce her.
“What object did Counselor Jausiff hold?” he asked. “What did he do with it?”
Aupsha glanced beyond him toward the stable’s bay doors or somewhere outside.