Backing toward the gatehouse tunnel, Rodian said. “Come?”
Shade trotted after him.
Chane knelt on the floor, working on the heel of a boot. He remained externally passive, but how he felt on the inside was another matter.
Telling Wynn the truth this morning about the concoction—or at least the one he had completed so far—took away one burden. He still hid the secret of the white flower petals and dwarven mushrooms—the anasgiah and muhkgean—and the hint of their use in The Seven Leaves of Life. He was also worried about the risks Wynn would undertake tonight.
He had no contention with the plan that Leesil had devised, only with the fact that Wynn was actively involved. If Leesil was so clever, why not come up with a plan that kept Wynn out of danger?
Chane was also unhappy about a visitor due to arrive any moment, and it was not long before that hesitant knock came at the door.
Wynn looked up from sewing padding into the shoulders of the forest gray cloak Brot’an had provided.
“It me,” a soft voice said through the door.
Wynn swallowed and tried to clear her throat. “Ore-Locks, would ... would you ... ?” she stuttered.
The dwarf went to unlatch the door, and a tall, cloaked elf immediately stepped in. His amber eyes quickly found and locked on Wynn. This one was younger than Brot’an, with a long face, and loose, white-blond hair. Chane had seen him before and hated him at the time.
Once, in the Pock Peaks, this one had offered his full protection to Wynn—and she had accepted. Much later, when he had been injured, she had watched over him to the point of threatening Chane to keep away, though he had had no harmful intent in that moment.
“Osha,” Wynn said tentatively, clearly aware of the strain in the room. “Come ... in.”
Chane still did not like him.
Osha did not even glance at Chane, either avoiding contact or because he was too fixated on Wynn. As he stepped closer to her, she put down the cloak and picked up Leesil’s stained and tattered green scarf. Reaching up, she put her hand on Osha’s arm.
“Let’s see how this looks,” she said. “Can you show me how he ties it up?”
Osha knelt beside her, taking the scarf.
Chane paused in his own work and had to fight to keep his hands from clenching.
“I think I hear Shade,” he said, and hurried out the door.
He had heard no such noise but would have taken—made—any excuse to leave. He descended the steps two at a time to get away from that room.
Cracking open the inn’s back door only a fraction, he hid behind it, against the daylight. A short while later, when Shade did arrive, she did not need to scratch. She poked her head inside, peeking around the door at him, and he widened the door for an instant, then shut it after she slipped in.
Shade trotted up the stairs and Chane followed, though not quickly enough; his reprieve from what waited in that room was far too short. Shade was already scratching at the room’s door, and in her makeshift collar was a folded slip of paper, though not the one Wynn had sent.
Wynn jerked open the door from the inside before Chane gripped the handle. She snatched the paper as Shade stepped into the room. Chane was left standing on the landing as Wynn fumbled to open the sheet. One quick read, and she raised her eyes to him.
“He’ll do it,” she said, exhaling.
Chane ushered her back from the doorway and reluctantly followed her in and shut the door. No matter that the next step had been achieved, he watched Wynn already fretting again. Her gaze roamed as she looked at nothing, and he knew her thoughts were tangled up with what came next.
The cascade of events had begun and would not stop until all of this was over and done.
“We need to get word to the others,” she said, and turned to Ore-Locks. “Leanâlhâm must leave as soon as the first wagon arrives. Can you go tell Magiere?”
At the mention of Magiere’s name, Chane almost flinched.
Ore-Locks nodded, retrieving his staff from behind the door.
The plan may have been Leesil’s, but whenever Magiere was around, she was always at the heart of more risks to Wynn’s life. Chane could not help wondering how different things might have been if Magiere had never come back.
“Are you all right?” Wynn asked him.
“Yes ... I am fine.”
If nothing else, he would be with her this night. And if all went well, Magiere would soon be gone again.
Midafternoon, Leanâlhâm stood alone, outside the inn, dressed in Wynn’s cloak with the hood pulled up. Behind her on the inn’s porch were two large trunks and two crates of weathered wood planks. When she spotted a wagon rolling slowly up the street among the people coming and going—so many human faces—her stomach began to quiver.
The driver pulled his horses to a stop as another man beside him jumped down.
“You arrange for transport to the docks, miss?” the driver asked.
“Please,” she answered carefully. “Thank you.”
Brot’ân’duivé had coached her on what to say and how to say it. As with most foreign languages, more so this new one of Numanese, she understood more than she could actually speak.
At her silent direction, the second man loaded the crates and then the trunks, or, rather, he tried. When he attempted the first trunk, he grunted and could not quite lift it. The driver immediately hopped down to help.
“Begging your pardon, miss,” the driver asked with a friendly smile. “What did you pack in there—rocks?”
Leanâlhâm tried to smile in turn, though nervousness made her small lips twitch. She looked away and down as she said, “Only some books ... many books.”
Brot’ân’duivé had thought this the best answer if needed.
“Books, eh?” the other man said, shaking his head.
The two men tried to lift the first trunk, but then thought otherwise. They dragged it to the wagon’s back before heaving it up. The first trunk landed on the wagon’s bed with a loud thump, and the wagon rocked. So it went with the second trunk.
“That’s everything,” the driver said, “Come on, miss. Up you go.”
Leanâlhâm wavered. Once she boarded this wagon, there was no turning back. She had to manage this part of the plan alone. It would be the rest of the day and into the night before Osha—and Brot’ân’duivé—finished their tasks and rejoined her. She was frightened to be out in this strange, foreign place without Osha.
Brot’ân’duivé was dutiful to all his people, keeping them safe, including her. But Osha was truly good and kind, and as wounded by loss as was she. Perhaps even more.
“Miss?” the driver asked impatiently.
Leanâlhâm inhaled deeply. She took the driver’s hand and let him pull her up onto the wagon’s bench, as the other man climbed in back. There was nothing else she could do now that the cargo was loaded.
The wagon rolled down the street, farther and farther from the inn. In a surprisingly short time, the driver pulled up at the port. The waterfront and docks were filled with even more people than the street outside the inn, and none of them looked anything like her. The men unloaded the two trunks and two crates, carrying them off to the third pier, which she indicated as instructed by Leesil.
Leanâlhâm found herself waiting again, this time for a skiff to take her out to a ship.
The men headed off down the dock as the driver called out, “Safe voyage, miss.”
For some reason, those words touched her, as if he truly wished that for her. She wanted to thank him but stumbled on the words, and then he was lost in the waterfront crowd. She checked the latches and straps on both trunks to make certain they were secure and then looked out over the great bay, past the docked ships and those beyond, toward the open sea. She looked anywhere to avoid seeing all the people around her and feeling so out of place. And yet ...