A driver dressed in plain breeches and a faded jacket sat on the bench beside a sage in a midnight blue robe.
Wynn blinked. Supply deliveries were scheduled well ahead of time. There was never a need to send a messenger to retrieve them.
Dorian stood watching as the wagon rolled over to the storage house, and then he looked to his companion.
“Go help unload,” he said, and then cocked his head toward Wynn. “I’ll handle this.”
The other metaologer trotted across the courtyard as another sage—another metaologer—appeared in the far building’s upper open bay and waved down at the driver.
With little choice, Wynn pulled open the barrack’s door, stepping inside with Dorian tight on her heels. She shifted right, climbing the stairs paralleling the lower passage that went through the keep wall to the initiates’ barracks built in the bailey. With every stair she took, she wondered exactly what Dorian was supposed to “handle.” Her puzzlement grew even more as she crested the stairs and turned into the upper passage.
There was light at its typically dark far end. One of the Shyldfälches in a red tabard stood there outside her door, with a standard oil lantern at his feet. He turned his head, and his eyes locked on her without blinking, his face expressionless. Wynn walked a bit too slowly, at a loss for what this meant.
“What are you doing here?” Dorian called out.
Only the guard’s eyes shifted, as if looking above—beyond—Wynn. It was hard to make out his features until she drew nearer. His sword sheath had the typical engraved plate but was not made of steel, or silver like Rodian’s. It appeared to be brass. He was young, clean-shaven, and somehow familiar, but Wynn couldn’t place him until she noticed ...
His hair was gray, and yet he looked young in the passage’s dim light.
This one had come with Rodian the night that she, Chane, Shade, and Domin il’Sänke had taken on the wraith, Sau’ilahk, outside a scribe shop. The captain had called him Lúcan.
“Your men were told to watch the gate and walls,” Dorian stated, as if he’d given the order himself.
Lúcan still peered over Wynn at Dorian. He turned his torso slightly, and his off hand settled on his sword hilt. Closer now, Wynn thought she saw the faintest crow’s-feet around his eyes.
“I have orders to take charge of the prisoner,” Lúcan said flatly, “until ordered otherwise by the captain.”
“You have no authority inside the guild,” Dorian answered.
Something happened in Lúcan’s eyes in the following long, cold moment. Whatever it was almost made Wynn back up.
It was a change in the feel of him more than anything she could see, as if he’d been cast into all seven hells of the Farlands’ folktales and come back. Wynn had once seen the horror in the face of a young sage who’d survived being struck down by the wraith. In place of that horror, she saw something else in Lúcan’s young-old expression.
He stood there, his sharp glare never wavering, as if nothing in this world could ever make him flinch again.
“Captain Rodian is now in charge of security in this place,” he said to Dorian. “You’re dismissed.”
Lúcan turned a little more, his off hand and sword now more toward Dorian. Though his gaze never shifted, he reached out with his sword hand and deftly opened the door to Wynn’s room.
“If you please, miss,” he said.
Wynn quietly stepped in, though she turned about in the opening.
Lúcan’s off hand was now fully wrapped around his sword’s hilt, his sword hand still holding the door open. Though Wynn couldn’t see the sheathed blade behind him, Lúcan’s hard grip had tilted the sword’s hilt, as if readied and aimed at Dorian’s head. Wynn had once seen Magiere draw her falchion off-handed and strike instantly with the hilt.
Dorian’s mouth opened slightly as Wynn’s mind raced.
Rodian had been placed in charge of guild security? She didn’t know if she was better off in that or not, but at least she knew what to expect from a Shyldfälche under the captain’s command.
“I will speak with my superiors about this,” Dorian said coldly.
“You do that,” Lúcan answered. “And they can speak with my captain.”
Dorian swung about and headed off, but Lúcan’s gaze didn’t turn away until Wynn heard Dorian take the steps down at the passage’s end. Lúcan looked down at Wynn with a slight lowering of his head.
“Do you need anything, miss?”
She wasn’t even sure what to say, so she shook her head.
“If you do, I will be here, miss ... at all times.”
He waited until she stepped back before even trying to close the door. She suddenly felt the urge to say something.
“Guardsman Lúcan—isn’t it?” she asked.
“Corporal Lúcan, miss.”
Wynn faltered. “Promoted, then ... congratulations.”
“Thank you, miss.” Lúcan gave a slight bow of his head and quietly closed the door.
Wynn was alone again—truly alone, without even Shade for company. A man stood outside her door, both protector and warden, who’d suffered in a way she couldn’t fathom. So many had suffered in her wake.
Tension and fear broke, leaving only exhaustion. Wynn backed up until her calves hit the small bed, and she dropped onto its edge. Now she had no way even to get a message to Chane. She was stuck in this little room until the council or Rodian or both decided what to do with her. This was her whole world for now, and she was so tired she could barely open her eyes to look at it.
She did open her eyes, and then she stiffened, clenching the bed’s edge. Her gaze fixed on the far corner to the right of the door. The sun-crystal staff was gone.
She looked frantically about the room. Had she moved it and forgotten? But it was nowhere in sight, and her little desk table also looked wrong. The journal with her cryptic notes, as well as the new one from which she’d ripped pages to speak with Chane, were gone. Her small travel chest was missing. Only the larger one near the bed remained.
Wynn scrambled over to flip open the chest. Her spare clothing was in complete disarray, as if someone had rifled through it. All that was left of her personal belongings were a few sheets of blank paper, her elven quill with the strange white metal tip, and her cold lamp on the desk. She looked to the room’s barren corner again.
They’d taken the sun-crystal staff, her only weapon, and she didn’t know whether to scream in fear, anger, or anguish. At a knock at the door, she whipped around on her knees.
At first she thought it must be Dorian. Upon hearing of Rodian’s changes, the council might have even more questions for her. Then again, why bother knocking? Or had the corporal intervened?
Wynn rose, but before she grabbed the handle, the door cracked open. The gap seemed to grow too slowly, and she grabbed the edge, jerking it wide.
Lúcan looked at her in surprise—as he was still gripping the door’s outer handle—but Wynn’s gaze fixed on someone else. Just behind the corporal stood Nikolas Columsarn, holding a tray with a plate of food and a pot of tea.
Any harsh words died on Wynn’s lips.
“Is this all right, miss?” Lúcan asked.
Nikolas was probably the only friend Wynn had left in the guild, and he also wore the gray robes of a cathologer. He wasn’t much taller than she was, with a slender build, a twitchy expression, and straight brown hair that always seemed to be half hiding his face. He was also, like Lúcan, one of the few people to have survived an attack by the wraith, Sau’ilahk.