“Yes, now,” Leanâlhâm answered, and she began digging through a pack to retrieve a small pot, raw potatoes, and a few green stalks Magiere couldn’t identify. “Do you have something more important to do?”
Magiere caught the quaver in the girl’s voice. She remembered that moment between Osha and Wynn, on Wynn’s first arrival, and how Leanâlhâm had reacted. That situation bore watching, and Magiere reached out to touch Leesil’s shoulder.
“Get a fire started. We have to eat.”
She then went to drop on the floor across from Osha at the window’s other side, still hesitant at the notion of language lessons amid all of this. She couldn’t help remembering how Wynn had once done this. Most of the Belaskian Osha knew, he’d learned from the sage.
“Leesil, do you have a knife?” Leanâlhâm asked.
“Nothing I’d let you use on potatoes,” he answered, gathering sticks from a pile near the hearth. “I’ll find you something.”
Everything seemed so normal and, although the illusion didn’t fool Magiere, she was grateful that the girl tried just the same. Doing something—anything—was better than staring at the room’s closed door.
Osha put his back to the wall and slid down to the floor. He glanced over, watching Magiere with some unspoken concern. Leanâlhâm wasn’t the only one exposed to Magiere’s growing problem. Suddenly, even language lessons seemed better than facing that.
“How did Wynn do this?” Magiere asked bluntly.
Osha tilted his head back against the wall, his long, white-blond hair falling away from his face.
“She ... talk,” he said, a bit too wistfully. “Ask question. Make me answer. Scold if I talk Elvish.”
What Magiere truly wanted to ask was what Osha and Leanâlhâm were doing here. But by the way these two obeyed Brot’an’s every command, resentfully or not, it was too soon to press for answers.
Osha lowered his head, as if sad, and Magiere regretted turning his thoughts toward Wynn.
“I’ll give it a try,” she said. “You’re certainly doing better than Leesil did with your language.”
Osha lifted his head and blinked twice in puzzlement.
It had been a long time since Magiere had first entered the Elven Territories with Leesil, Chap, and Wynn. Along the way, Wynn had tried to tutor Leesil in Elvish, though it turned out to be the wrong dialect. Almost immediately, they’d been intercepted by anmaglâhk, including Sgäile and Osha. Since Osha was the most amiable among that escort, Leesil had thought to try out his new language skills.
Osha had paled in shock, flushed with fury, and drawn a stiletto. Wynn had to rush in, frantically trying to explain. Whatever Leesil had tried to say, it had come out wrong ... and as a possible insult to Osha’s mother.
Magiere cocked her head toward Leesil and then winked at Osha.
Osha rolled his eyes, snorted, and covered his mouth, trying to stifle a laugh.
“I not this bad,” he whispered, but loud enough to be overheard.
Leesil paused at the hearth long enough to shoot him a scowl.
“I am not that bad,” Magiere corrected. “Now tell me about the voyage across the eastern ocean.”
Osha turned serious, his thin lips tightening into a line as his jaw muscles clenched. He looked away, remaining silent.
“Not about Brot’an’s little secrets,” Magiere added. “Just the ship, the crew, the food ... the day to day.”
Osha half smiled, nodding. “Ath, bithâ!”
“No Elvish,” Magiere said. “I don’t understand it, anyway.”
In halting, broken phrases, Osha began telling her of his seafaring experiences among humans. Magiere listened, sometimes correcting a word or two. For the most part, all that mattered was that he could make his meaning clear.
Across the room, as the fire began to crackle, Leanâlhâm and Leesil spoke of mundane things, while he located a spare dagger and started on the potatoes.
“Those pieces are too big,” Leanâlhâm admonished. “Slice thinner.”
“That’ll take all night,” Leesil argued.
“If you do not, they will have to cook all night.”
She set the little iron pot’s handle onto the hearth’s arm and swung the pot in over the barely flickering flames. Magiere listened to Osha, but found it was not long before Leanâlhâm gently dropped a number of eggs still in their shells into the water. The potatoes followed, along with the greens she’d cut up.
After a while, Osha grew frustrated with fighting for new words he didn’t know. Soon after, he was saved from further struggle.
“All right, you two,” Leesil said. “Come eat something.”
They shared a late supper, maintaining the illusion that all was normal. But once the meal was done, they fell back into silent waiting—until the door opened.
Brot’an stepped in, followed by Chap.
Magiere climbed to her feet. Part of her was still enraged and heatedly hoping to talk some sense into Wynn about this insane notion of accepting help from anyone who offered.
Brot’an shut the door, and Magiere’s thoughts went blank. It took two breaths before she could speak.
“Where’s Wynn?”
Chap stalked right by her toward the hearth with a breathy exhale through his teeth.
Brot’an didn’t answer at first, and then said, “Wynn has chosen to remain with her other companions.”
Leesil had allowed Leanâlhâm’s domestic activities to suppress his own sense of betrayal and panic. He’d been on the verge of feeling almost himself again. Then Brot’an had returned and answered Magiere’s question.
Leesil was on his feet, but he didn’t speak to Brot’an. He turned on Chap.
“You left her there ... with him?”
Chap clacked his jaw and then huffed twice.
“It was not his choice,” Brot’an added.
Magiere stepped between the two, caught at the room’s center as she tried to pick one of them to go at. She finally fixed on Brot’an.
“Wynn would not leave,” Brot’an said before Magiere got out a word. “Forcing her would have accomplished nothing.”
Leesil was at a loss, puzzled by how visibly uncomfortable Brot’an looked.
“I tried to dissuade her, as did Chap,” Brot’an continued, ignoring Magiere, and turning to Leesil. “You did not see her there. She is in no danger, and perhaps where she belongs for what she must do ... for all of us.”
Leesil took a step, but Magiere got in his way as she rushed to the bed. It had been stupid to let Brot’an go in the first place, as he cared nothing for Wynn other than what she might accomplish for him. In one motion, Magiere grabbed her cloak from the pile on the bed and pushed right past Brot’an for the door.
“Chap, you show me where she is—now!” Magiere half shouted. “She’s coming back, one way or another.”
Leesil nodded. “I’m coming, too.”
“You cannot,” Brot’an returned, his voice rising above its usually calm, firm state. “She has set careful plans in motion, ones worthy of her intelligence. A message has been sent to a Premin Hawes at the guild’s castle, who will meet with Wynn to assist in translating the scroll that was mentioned. Wynn will then come to us. By tomorrow night, we may know the location of another orb.”
No one had a response to that, and Leesil struggled over what to do.
“Wynn has become a warrior in her way,” Brot’an said, “to hinder the Enemy, to stop another war. Would you dismiss her efforts?”
Leesil turned on him. “And what about you helping us, helping her ... all out of the goodness of your heart? In seven hells! What are you really doing here?”
Brot’an narrowed his large amber eyes; one glared through the cage bars of old scars.