There was something of greater concern, but Wynn had barely finished writing that Chane should leave when he took the charcoal from her hand. He again wrote one word, but he wouldn’t give the charcoal back this time.
No.
Wynn gasped in frustration and grabbed for his fingers, struggling to get the charcoal. It took no effort for Chane to jerk his hand free. He lifted the charcoal up, beyond her reach, and mouthed no again, this time with an incensed glower. Rather than make a futile jump to snatch the charcoal, Wynn smacked him in the chest.
Chane’s eyes widened as Wynn jerked her hand back with a gasp of pain. A brief snarl filled the quiet room, and both of them froze at the sudden noise.
Shade sat up on the bed with her ears flattened and her jowls pulled back. But she wasn’t snarling at Chane this time. Shade’s memory-words rose sharply in Wynn’s head—in Wynn’s own voice.
—Wynn ... quiet—
The last word had probably been stolen from some memory of Wynn’s in which she’d admonished the dog.
Shade glanced meaningfully at the closed door, where Dorian must be standing just outside. Even Chane paused at that, glancing the same way as his hand dropped lower.
Wynn grabbed the end of the charcoal stick and snapped it off before Chane could pull it away again. She went at the journal, scrawling rapidly, and then shoved the journal at his face.
Get the scroll out of the keep!
The scroll—Chane’s scroll—held the only hope of clues to finding the two remaining orbs. Wynn had repeatedly learned the hard way that anything she recorded or acquired might be taken from her. As for her journals, burned and beyond anyone’s reach, she’d read everything they had contained to Shade, until the dog had memorized their entire contents. No one could take anything from the powerful memory skills of a majay-hì like Shade.
That wasn’t possible with the scroll.
Its inner writing, in an ancient Sumanese dialect, had been scribed in the black fluids of a long-gone Noble Dead, and then the scroll’s entire surface had been covered in dark ink, thus hiding the poem beneath. Only by calling upon mantic, elemental sight could Wynn alone see the script beneath the coating. Until she could translate the entire poem, they couldn’t lose that scroll.
It could not be discovered here.
Hurrying to her bed, she pulled the scroll case from under her mattress. Chane had left it with her for safekeeping before his trip to Dhredze Seatt. She thrust it at him. Looking down, his features flattened as he took it from her and slipped it into the back of his belt, beneath his cloak.
Wynn rushed back to her desk and began writing again. If Chane got in the council’s way, he could be in actual trouble. He could be arrested by city authorities, if not dealt with directly by Sykion or even Hawes. As an undead, no one could see him fall dormant at sunrise, should they manage to put him in captivity. The only problem was that the keep’s outer portcullis was now closed. She’d heard the gears creaking and clanking while Dorian dragged her up to her room.
Chane would have to sneak out through the library’s upper window, the same way Wynn had snuck him in when he’d first arrived in Calm Seatt. Of course, that meant they’d have to use a ploy to get Dorian away from the door and beyond sight of the courtyard.
By the time Wynn finished writing, Chane had already drawn near and read every word over her shoulder. He straightened up as he stared out the room’s one narrow window. There wasn’t time to ponder his stubborn reluctance; that would only give him another chance to argue.
Wynn crouched to dig through the gear tucked in her pack from their last trip, looking for a flint. She couldn’t find it, and when she rose, she tore all the pages with their written conversation out of the journal, writing one last line on the top sheet.
Take these with you and burn them.
She didn’t care if he thought she was paranoid. Even a hastily written conversation held bits and pieces she didn’t want found.
Chane took the torn pages with a nod, but he dropped them on the stone floor. Wynn froze in puzzlement as his eyes closed halfway, focusing on the sheets. She realized too late what he was doing. It had been a long time since she’d seen him do it.
Before Wynn could grab Chane’s arm or even risk a whisper, a glow brightened beneath—through—the stack of torn pages. Almost instantly, a small flame sprang from one corner. Another sheet’s corner and then another on the stack caught, as well. As the pages burned, so did Wynn’s temper, until the whole stack was eaten away to black ash.
Wynn glared up at Chane.
All he did was frown, briefly raising his hands as if dumbfounded, and then Shade sneezed. The dog backed up along the bed, snorting the whole way.
Wynn swatted trails of smoke in the air. She pointed at her nose and then at the door, where a journeyor still waited within hearing—and smelling.
Chane rolled his eyes and went for his packs. When he flattened against the wall on the door’s nearer side, Wynn hurried to Shade, passing memories as quickly as she could. Thankfully, Shade understood and didn’t argue this time. With all of them ready, Wynn went for the door. And then she faltered, thinking of that one moment when Chane had looked out the window.
Before she’d come out of the keep’s main doors, she’d peered at the last window of the barrack’s upper floor—her window. No one was there and no light shone from within her room. She’d been gone so long, certainly he couldn’t have been standing at the window all that time. Had Chane been simply waiting, perhaps lost in reading one of his own books, or ...
How much had he seen?
Wynn opened the door to her room, and Dorian immediately spun into view from its left side.
“What?” he asked sharply.
“How much longer?” she demanded. “I thought Premin Sykion wanted to see me.”
“However long it takes,” he answered. “You’ll stay put until then.”
Dorian’s gaze drifted beyond Wynn, perhaps to Shade. Then he squinted, wrinkling his nose. Dorian sniffed and snorted, and Wynn could’ve punched Chane right then.
“Very well,” Wynn countered, taking a forward step. “Come on, Shade.”
Dorian blocked her way. “As I said, you will wait.”
This wasn’t the way Wynn had wanted things. If she went with Shade, the two of them could have stalled Dorian longer together. There was nothing to be done about it, and her plan changed.
“Shade needs to go out and that can’t wait,” Wynn said flatly. “Unless you want her doing her business in the passage. If so, you can clean it up, because she’s not doing it in my room.”
Dorian faltered in silence.
Wynn glanced back, but Shade hadn’t moved. With her back to Dorian, she glared at Shade and mouthed, Get going.
Shade looked at Dorian and then Wynn. With a curl of jowl, she hopped off the bed and trotted for the doorway. Dorian quickly backed up, bumping into the passage’s far wall. Shade just turned down the passage toward the stairs.
“She prefers the grove in the bailey’s back,” Wynn instructed, “below the northern tower.”
Dorian stood there, his lips barely parted, caught between a stray “wolf” wandering in the keep and his instructions. Wynn folded her arms and waited, daring him not to go after Shade. Dorian pushed Wynn back and grabbed the door’s handle.
Wynn had to shift aside when he jerked the door with a slam. She exhaled in relief and scurried to the window, waiting to see Shade lead the annoying “guard” off and out of sight.