“Why didn’t you figure this out years ago ... oh, great and wise Fay?” Leesil asked.
That brought back Chap’s spite. He called up Leesil’s own memory of a Chap covered in soot, scratching himself raw, and then added in broken memory words.
—You—not—think of it—either—
Leesil just glared at him.
“Wait,” Magiere said too quietly. “He can talk ... in our heads?”
“Yes,” Leesil hissed.
And Magiere leaned forward atop Leesil, peering down at him. “So he can yammer at us, order us about, anytime he wants?”
Leesil let out a groan, or maybe it was a deep whine. He dropped his forehead against the floor. Magiere let out a sigh as she dropped on her butt beside him.
Chap rumbled and flicked his tongue up over his nose at both of them.
Just before dawn, Brot’ân’duivé took Wynn and her two companions, Shade and Ore-Locks, back to their inn. It was a long, slow process of moving the sage, the majay-hì, and the dwarf from one hiding point to the next as the city began to awaken for the day. But when he left them at their inn, he did not return to where Magiere and the others hid.
There was a task he needed to complete, and best done without the others knowing. He slipped through the shadowed alleys and cutways toward the guild’s small castle.
Although Brot’ân’duivé would not say so, he thought Léshil’s escape plan was as sound as any he could have formulated himself. The half-blood’s mind worked well, likely from his mother’s training, when he was not distracted. He possessed an innate ability to see what others might do and build upon those possible reactions. In spite of this, there was one long-term risk that Brot’ân’duivé wanted removed.
Any contact the anmaglâhk in this city had with Most Aged Father could easily lead to other teams being sent out into the world. In addition, the ones already here might split up if they had the means to remain in contact and coordinate with each other.
At least one of those options had to be removed—especially the second one. And there was a step to add to the plan that the others could not know about.
He wanted all of his enemies following Magiere and Léshil ... and himself. Undead or not, Wynn’s vampire would be a poor match for even a few trained members of Brot’ân’duivé’s cast, though this was not his only reason.
Dawn and dusk were the most common times for agents abroad to check in with Most Aged Father or with others out scouting or on watch. With their numbers dwindling, Dänvârfij would be the one to do both.
A few streets from the guild, Brot’ân’duivé scaled the back of a small shop and slipped from roof to roof, out of sight of those below. He paralleled Old Procession Road from two blocks south, pausing often to watch the city’s skyline. Something moved on a rooftop two blocks north, where Old Procession Road met Old Bailey Road, right across from the castle’s bailey gate.
Brot’ân’duivé shook his head once. They must be spread thin, and have grown desperate, to put a scout in such an obvious position. It would be so easy to eliminate one more of them.
From his crouched position, at first he could not identify the one. He did not know all who traveled with Dänvârfij and Fréthfâre, even after following them for a year. The one suddenly scuttled to the roof’s edge and hung its head over.
Brot’ân’duivé rose a little, wary of betraying his own presence against the city’s skyline. Almost immediately, the one on the roof returned to the side facing the castle. Brot’ân’duivé did not need to know more. He took off north across the roofs, running in plain sight.
Someone else had passed by in the street below, checking in with the watcher on the roof. When he reached the last roof’s side over Old Procession Road, he flattened as he peered over the edge.
A slender, tall form walked away in the early dawn. It wore a plain cloak, but that hid nothing from him. He saw its soft leather boots, dyed forest gray, and pant legs that matched. The way the figure moved, each step planted in a silent, flat step, was unmistakable.
Brot’ân’duivé watched Dänvârfij slip along the northwest run of Old Bailey Road, heading for some side street. She peered up toward the other one still on top of the roof.
Brot’ân’duivé could now see that the other figure was male. When that anmaglâhk shifted on the roof’s edge, on hands and knees, the male kept his right knee off the roof’s shakes.
Brot’ân’duivé realized it was Eywodan, likely the oldest member of the anmaglâhk here in this city. Years ago, Eywodan had assisted flood victims of Brot’ân’duivé’s own clan. Eywodan’s knee had been broken by rushing debris when he had waded into the swelling river. Brot’ân’duivé had carried him to a healer.
Brot’ân’duivé pushed away that memory and any sickness it brought. Eywodan was now the enemy, as well as Dänvârfij, Fréthfâre, and all of Most Aged Father’s loyalists. Any who still followed that twisted, maddened patriarch could no longer be seen in any other way. But Brot’ân’duivé lingered, for an enemy was sometimes made so by the actions of another—by his action. One mistake made in fury and hatred had led to all of this, though it had been spurred by Most Aged Father’s fanaticism.
Brot’ân’duivé had made that mistake. There was no changing it now, and he would not succumb to regret.
He watched until Eywodan looked the other way in scanning the guild’s castle and the loop of street around it. With the street below clear and empty, Brot’ân’duivé dropped over the edge to land silently upon the cobblestones. He ran through the alleys and cutways, searching for a vantage point to catch sight of Dänvârfij. When he spotted her around a street corner in the early, dim dawn, he stalled.
She had doubled back beyond the castle and was heading south.
In scouting ventures with Léshil, Brot’ân’duivé had discovered there were not many inns or way houses in the southern district. That area did hold one of the city’s landside exits. Could Dänvârfij simply be checking on another sentry? Had she placed someone to watch that exit?
It seemed unlikely, unwise, to spread their numbers so thin and still search for Magiere. Or had they given up the search and now merely waited and watched?
The sun had fully crested the rooftops in the east when Brot’ân’duivé finally watched Dänvârfij walk along a city thoroughfare and out the city’s southern exit. He waited but a few moments and then followed, lingering inside the great gate’s arch.
She only traveled a short way before stepping off the road into a grove of fir and pine trees.
This was what Brot’ân’duivé had hoped for. He waited until she was out of sight for three breaths, and then he walked out of the city before drawing his blades, keeping them under the folds of his dangling cloak.
Dänvârfij sank to her knees before a tall fir tree, its lowest branches high enough to hang above her bent head. She dreaded making this report, and yet she longed for guidance. Reaching inside the front of her forest gray tunic, she withdrew an elongated oval of smooth, tawny wood no bigger than her palm. She reached out and pressed the word-wood against the tree’s trunk and whispered.
“Father?”
I am here, daughter.
Most Aged Father’s voice filled her mind with welcome calm. She should have reported sooner and not let shame keep her from him.
“I have much to report,” she said. “The white woman is here. We have seen her, and she has seen us, but we have not captured her yet.”
What is the delay?