“A’ye!” the dwarf shouted. “Behind you.”
The guard’s head began to turn.
Ore-Locks brought his staff down on the man’s helmet with a dull clank.
The man’s eyes rolled upward, and as he crumpled, the second guard ran through the arch, swerving to grab the staff’s end with one hand. Sword up, he rounded on Ore-Locks.
Chane snagged the shoulder of the man’s tabard and jerked him about. His fist cracked against the guard’s jaw, dropping the man in his tracks.
Ore-Locks stood beyond the heap of two guards, glowering at Chane. Without waiting, Chane grabbed the top guard and dragged him farther along the common hall’s inner wall before dropping him.
“Where is Wynn?” he asked urgently.
Ore-Locks dumped the other guard a short way up the other side.
“Heading out through the library, no thanks to you,” he retorted, and then paused with a seemingly confused shake of his head. “Some others came after her ... two Lhoin’na wrapped up like thieves.”
Chane knew exactly whom Ore-Locks meant and slumped in relief—at least briefly. This was not all of what he had wanted. Wynn was safe, but she would soon be back with her old companions, including Magiere.
“Did she call one of them Leesil?” he asked, needing to be certain.
“Yes,” Ore-Locks answered with a surprised blink. “You know him?”
Chane nodded bitterly. “Yes ... I know him.”
“Enough dawdling. This is over, and we should leave now ... before you attract any more attention.”
Moving fast for his bulk, Ore-Locks ducked out the archway and stalked off into the kitchen. Chane followed, at a loss for what the dwarf was up to. But it became all too clear once he caught up to Ore-Locks, standing before the kitchen’s rear wall.
“Brace yourself,” Ore-Locks said, and without a moment’s grace, he grabbed Chane’s wrist.
Chane never got out a word as he was jerked into the wall. Darkness, cold, and smothering silence swallowed him whole. He had not counted on leaving this way. Then again, nothing this night had occurred as he had planned. Wynn was free, but in the darkness of stone, Chane felt only bitterness, not relief.
After all that had happened, the guild would be locked up tighter than ever before. Worse still, should Wynn somehow be granted access to the resources required to decipher what remained in the scroll, should she ever be allowed within these walls ... he would not.
The guards, and Premin Hawes, had seen him breaking in at night. The Premin Council would soon learn of this.
It had been only a few nights since he had come to terms with what was required of him. If he wished to remain at Wynn’s side, her goal, her mission, had to be his, as well. If he wished to have any existence that involved the guild, he had to abide by it and watch over all within it, regardless that some did not belong here.
Perhaps he was one of those who did not.
In Chane’s effort to help Wynn, all seemed lost to him, including her. He could not even imagine how she would contact him now—considering whom she would be with.
He felt the comparative warmth of chill night air on his face, and the darkness outside appeared bright for an instant as he was hauled out of the stone by Ore-Locks. He nearly stumbled at suddenly standing in the shadows of the inner bailey between the northern keep tower and the northwest outer building. He had enjoyed peace and quiet, more than once, in the guest quarters there. That was lost, as well. He looked at the thick bailey wall before him, behind the leafless trees.
“Once more,” Ore-Locks whispered.
Chane nodded, steeling himself, but he could never be ready for his last glimpse of the guild.
Pawl a’Seatt had not moved from the rooftop near Norgate Road. Neither had the tall stranger that he watched one rooftop away. That cowled figure with the tied-up cloak still crouched at the rooftop’s edge, watching the guild grounds, and Pawl wanted to know why.
Then the cowled man tensed almost imperceptibly.
Pawl looked to the keep as someone climbed out a rear library window and dropped to the top of the bailey wall. This figure was slender, his face and hair covered by wraps. It was one of the pair who had scaled the wall and entered earlier through that same window.
The slender man stood up, looking both ways along the wall, and then turned to help someone else. A smaller figure came out the window. The second one dangled over the sill and dropped with steadying help from the first one, who then watched as a third figure—the tallest one of the original pair—came out last, his face and hair still covered. That one dropped straight from the window’s edge, landing in a crouch.
Pawl focused most sharply upon the newer figure, the smallest one. Two had entered, and three had come out. He saw no sign of this being a capture or kidnapping. The reasonable alternative was a rescue, and there was only one person Pawl had heard of who would count as any kind of a “prisoner” within the sages’ keep.
Even in the dark cloak and high, soft boots, it could only be Wynn Hygeorht.
The translation project had been stopped shortly before Pawl heard of Wynn’s incarceration. It was unlikely that her freedom would start it again, and more likely that it would prolong its pause. He wondered whether to halt her flight himself.
The shorter of the two men handed something to the other one. After a brief exchange, the tall one tossed a rope’s end over the bailey wall’s side. The shorter one climbed down and stood waiting, and then Wynn took quite a bit longer to follow.
To Pawl’s mild surprise, the tall figure dropped the rope over the side and scaled quickly down the wall using two blades. In an astonishingly brief time, all three crept southward along the base of the wall. And then Pawl looked back to the cowled stranger on the roof.
That one had risen, gripping a strange short bow by its silvery white metal grip, and reached behind his back, beneath his tied-up cloak. When his hand came out, his fingers pinched the end of a short arrow. He notched the arrow and aimed down at the trio below in the shadow of the bailey wall.
Chane nearly gagged in relief as Ore-Locks pulled him through the bailey wall onto the northwest side of Old Bailey Road near Switchin Way. They were finally out, and Chane focused on the moment, unable to face this night’s outcome.
“We need to find Shade,” he rasped.
They had left her at the keep’s front, but Chane could not be spotted near the gates. How unexpected that it bothered him to think of Shade waiting out there alone.
Ore-Locks cocked his head toward the west tower down the way. “We can try to get to the front if we ...”
He fell silent, and Chane followed Ore-Locks’s fixed stare.
Something ... someone dark stepped from the shadows of the wall and into the street. Chane did not need to wait as she pulled back her cowl. Even if she had not been wearing the midnight blue robe, he would have recognized the way she moved. But he had no idea what the sudden appearance of Premin Hawes meant here and now.
She stepped steadily up the street toward him, and then he noticed she held something slung over her shoulder. His puzzlement grew, as did Ore-Locks’s wariness, as she stopped an arm’s length away.
Premin Hawes rolled the strap off her shoulder and held a pack out toward Chane.
“You did not wait as instructed,” she said calmly. “Under the circumstances, I thought you would prefer to hold on to these yourself.”
Still confused, Chane took the pack from her and looked inside. Within it he found the cloth-wrapped bundles of the dwarven mushrooms and the flowers he had scavenged from the plain outside the lands of the Lhoin’na. There was also the precious text The Seven Leaves of Life.