Half a head taller than his captain, with a clean-shaven head as well as jaw, Percier Branwell looked twice as wide and at least six years older. His red tabard had been specially tailored to fit his broad shoulders.
“I passed Lúcan heading for our barracks,” the lieutenant said. “He told me we were riding out. Where to?”
Rodian didn’t answer. Promoting Branwell had been the correct choice; he was a competent, experienced veteran of the regulars who could read and write. Had Rodian chosen anyone else to replace Garrogh, discontent would’ve sprouted among his men. But Rodian didn’t care for Branwell, didn’t trust him, and never had.
Percier Branwell was among those whose resentment was rather open concerning Rodian’s early rise in position, to the point of making speculations on how it had been achieved.
Turning away, Siweard Rodian headed for his white mare, Snowbird.
“To Old Procession Road, to the sages’ guild,” he finally answered, still wondering what he was about to ride into.
Chane slipped silently downstairs, peeked out the barracks door, and found the courtyard empty. Several options ran through his mind.
As Wynn had suggested, he could make his way through the keep to the new library, as its back met the bailey wall’s rear. Slipping out a window and dropping over the twenty-foot wall was not a challenge for him, and he knew the path well enough. But the chance of being spotted was high if he tried going through the keep this early at night.
He had no idea what might result if he was spotted. He was only a guest here, but with Wynn under constant suspicion, the council’s mistrust might also spread to him and anything he did. Not to mention, the very fact that she had been banished to her room, with a guard at the door, gave him pause.
Chane glanced toward the gatehouse tunnel, framed by its two small inner towers. Of three old portcullises along the tunnel’s length, only the outer one was ever used by the sages. Its controls were likely in one of the outer gatehouse towers, but he had no notion of which side. The other side would be unmanned.
He could go there, climb to the two-story tower’s top, and risk a jump down into the bailey. But if he guessed wrong about which side to enter, he might run into more sages, and his sudden appearance would cause alarm.
Another worry had nagged Chane since agreeing to flee the guild. Wynn had refused to leave with him because she feared losing her resources here. She did not know that he faced the same unfortunate prospect. There were means here that he needed, as well. Chane considered the risk of one stop before making his escape.
Across the courtyard lay the northwest building, flush with the keep’s wall. A passage had been built through the wall behind it that connected to a newer building in the bailey. This was where the guest quarters, his quarters, lay. But in the sublevels below that building was something more useful to him. The guild laboratories were in the first and second subfloors there, along with the office or study of Premin Frideswida Hawes of the Order of Metaology.
Chane stepped quickly across the courtyard and through the northwest building’s central door. But just as he pulled the door closed behind him, voices drifted up from below. Slipping into the first chamber on his left, he rounded its upward stairs to hover at the top of the ones that descended below. The pair of voices floating up the stairway grew slightly clearer.
Chane recognized only one: that of Premin Hawes.
“The need is critical now,” she said. “Besides the archives, the passageways here, and the main corridors of the keep, where else have you managed placement?”
“Placement isn’t the issue,” a frustrated female voice answered. “Can’t you explain to Premin Sykion how long it takes to create even one of these?”
“That isn’t her concern,” Hawes answered. “You will place more eyes as quickly as possible. Requisition anyone and anything you need. I will handle the cost. Do you understand?”
A long pause followed, and then, “Yes, Premin.”
“I’ll check in later. Prepare a detailed report on how many are still under construction and those that have been distributed.”
The voices fell silent. One pair of footsteps upon stone began growing fainter.
Chane tensed, ready to run should another pair of steps come toward the stairs. When he finally heard the second pair, they were brief, followed by the ringing thud of a closing metal door. He stood there, wondering....
What was meant about “eyes,” “construction,” and “distribution”? According to Wynn, the sage’s cold-lamp crystals were made here in the lower levels. What were the metaologers making now and to what purpose?
Time pressed upon him, and he had a more urgent reason for coming here.
Descending, Chane found the first sublevel’s passage empty but for the six handleless iron doors, three on each side, and a portal at the far end on the right. He stepped quickly and quietly to the last one still ajar and nudged it inward a little farther.
“Premin?”
If she was inside, there would be no mistaking his maimed voice and who had come. She would be unable to ignore him, as she might ignore someone knocking. Light footsteps sounded against stone, and the door was pulled open wider.
For an instant, Chane’s gaze caught on what lay beyond the narrow inner passage that was barely three strides long. All he could see were shelves pegged in the chamber’s left wall in line with the entryway. The rest of the room, which opened up to the right, was hidden. Those pegged shelves were filled with books; plank-bound sheaves; and narrow, upright cylinders of wood, brass, and unglazed ceramic.
Then he looked down into Premin Hawes’s piercing hazel eyes.
They had not seen each other since the previous autumn, when Chane had left with Wynn to journey south to the Lhoin’na, this continent’s elven people. With Hawes’s midnight blue cowl pulled back, her cropped ash gray hair bristled across her head. Any lines of her true age were faint in her even, small features. Below her small mouth, her jawline narrowed to the soft point of her chin. She might have caught some men’s attention if not for her stoic demeanor and severe, penetrating gaze.
“Master Andraso,” she said with no inflection.
She was the only one who called him that. Then again, Chane rarely spoke to anyone but Wynn. Hawes’s eyes watched him without wavering, and she showed no surprise at his arrival. In the brief times that Chane had interacted with her, nothing ever seemed to catch her unawares.
“Forgive the intrusion,” he apologized, and then quickly wondered why, as he had never been given to apologizing, even in his mortal life. “But ... I am leaving for a while ... tonight. I wished to speak with you first.”
A flicker of something, though it was not surprise, flashed across Hawes’s face. It vanished with a brief twitch of her left eye.
“Leaving? Why?”
This question was unexpected, and Chane had no intention of telling her more.
“I am taking city lodgings, rather than burden the guild further as a guest.” Before she pressed him, he went on. “I wanted to know if you have continued with one of the ... the projects we discussed.”
“The healing concoction?” she returned bluntly.
Neither subtlety nor manners would help Chane here, and he simply nodded.
Hawes shook her head slightly. “It would be pointless, as I don’t have the components.” She cocked her head slightly. “You’d best come in.”
Chane was uncertain how much he should tell—show—the premin of metaology.
She turned down the short entryway, and he stepped inside and closed the door. When he followed her, in three strides, her study filled his view. He had been here several times, always wishing for a stolen moment to explore it.