She lost track of the time as she dozed. Dreams came and went, fleeting images plucked from her subconscious that tickled her fancy or tore at her emotions. They came and went and came again, whirling around and around, like her juggling balls, in an endless circle. She dreamed of a strange orange cat and a black dragon, of a ship that burned without being consumed, of her mother dying of the plague while she sat helplessly by. She saw Varia’s moon eyes staring at her from the night and she heard the owl say, “You will follow your heart.” The words echoed and reechoed into another vision of Lord Bight, laughing softly at her in the darkness, “Which will you prove to be when the time comes?”
She heard more voices: Sir Liam Ehrling, the Grand Master of the Knights of Solamnia, whispered the Oath in her ear; a faceless Knight of the Clandestine Circle repeated over and over, “At all costs,” until she thought she would scream. Other voices came, voices she did not know, and they talked over her and around her in an endless bedlam of sound that thundered in her head and drove all the other dreams back into the dark recesses of her mind.
All at once one familiar voice called her name softly, insistently. The tones titillated her heart, sending it tripping over its own beat. The nuances of his words warmed her with pleasure. The other voices faded into reality, and Linsha realized she was awake. There were other men in the shop, and one in particular was very close to her.
She opened her eyes, looked up, and fell into Ian Durne’s blue gaze. Without conscious effort, her face ignited in a dazzling smile that warmed her skin to roses and lit her eyes like jade touched with sunlight.
She saw him respond in kind, simply and with delight. Their eyes locked in a rapt gaze that excluded all but the tantalizing attraction they saw in each other.
Neither one of them realized how long they stayed there, staring at each other, until the two Governor’s Guards who came with the commander elbowed each other and loudly cleared their throats.
Commander Durne stood up and quelled them with one raised eyebrow. He offered a gloved hand to Linsha to help her up.
Trembling inside, she took it and let him pull her to her feet. She wasn’t certain she had the strength to make it on her own anyway. Her knees felt wobbly and her heart was pounding. But whether it was the waking from her dreams or the unexpected presence of Ian Durne that caused her weakness, she did not know.
“Two City Guards told me you had run into some trouble,” the commander said.
“A couple of looters,” Mica replied, still engrossed in a book. “The squire took care of them.”
Durne turned back to Linsha and indicated her torn, bloody shirt. “You were injured.”
“Yeah. The dwarf took care of that,” Linsha retorted.
The commander’s lip twitched in a controlled smile. “Are you well enough to continue your duties?” he asked Linsha.
“Of course. I’m fine,” snapped the dwarf. At the startled silence that followed, he lifted his head, looked at the four guards staring at him, and belatedly realized the commander wasn’t talking to him. He grumbled something and went back to reading.
“I’ll be all right,” Linsha answered. “I was waiting for him to finish.”
“It’s getting late,” the commander observed. “If you wait for him to finish, you could be here for several days.”
A glance out the window showed Linsha he was right. The shadows had grown quite long since she sat down, and the sun was settling low in the western sky. She rubbed her forehead. She had obviously slept longer than she thought.
Commander Durne studied her pale face and remembered the state of his body after the dwarf healed his head injury. The mystic healing sped up the process of recovery nicely, but the body still had to recover from the shock of injury and blood loss. He made up his mind. “We were going back to the palace. Pack your books, Master Dwarf, and we will ride with you to the temple.”
Mica recognized an order when he heard it. Reluctantly he closed the book he was reading and piled the four together. He and the guards wrapped the volumes in blankets and bundled them together with rope. They loaded the books on the back of Mica’s horse. When they were finished, Linsha closed the shutters in the shop window, bade a silent farewell to the dead priest, and pulled the door shut behind her.
In a group, the guards and the healer rode back to Shipmaker’s Road and turned east toward the city gates and inner Sanction. They saw very few people. The sick lay in their beds and ranted and died in the frightful heat; the well stayed indoors, either hiding or caring for their loved ones. The harbor and the city lay in a stupor of late afternoon heat and malaise that showed no sign of relenting.
At this rate, Linsha thought, the city would be easy pickings for the first enemy who dared risk Lord Bight’s wrath. She sighed.
Commander Durne heard her and turned his head to see her. He slowed his stallion until Windcatcher walked by his side. “What are you thinking?” he asked softly.
Linsha liked his voice. She liked his nearness and the way he spoke to her as if he genuinely wanted to know what was on her mind. She couldn’t imagine that a man like him would be interested in a sell-sword with Lynn’s dubious history, and yet his eyes devoured her and the vein in his neck seemed to throb with the same nervous pounding hers had.
“I was thinking that Sanction is dying,” she finally answered. “If this plague doesn’t ease off soon, it will decimate the entire population and leave the city vulnerable to attack. I’m not sure even Lord Bight has the strength to defend Sanction alone… if he survives.”
“I hope the plague doesn’t last that long!” he said fervently. “But you’re right to worry. The City Guards have been hit hard, particularly those who patrolled the harbor district, and the plague is spreading through the eastern guard camp.” He paused and glanced at her thoughtfully. “Did Mica find anything in the records he was so anxious to read?”
“I don’t think so. They’re from a temple in Sanction. I can’t imagine that they will include anything from as far away as Kalaman.”
Commander Durne surprised her by visibly starting. The movement was spontaneous and immediately controlled, so she wasn’t certain what she had seen in his face. Did he already know about the earlier outbreak? No, how could he? Surely he would have told Mica or Lord Bight. She was just letting her suspicious nature read more into this than was there.
“What does Kalaman have to do with this?” he asked, his voice faintly curious.
“We learned there was an earlier plague there that was similar to this one,” she answered.
“Where did you hear that?”
Linsha made it a policy never to reveal her sources unless directly ordered. “From an old resident who was ill.”
“Was this resident lucid at the time?”
Linsha pretended to study the stone flagging beneath Windcatcher’s hooves. She heard a note in his voice she could not clearly identify. Was it excitement or alarm? “I don’t know. Seemed lucid enough, but you know how fevers can affect people. It seemed a good lead at the time.”
“What did Mica make of this lead?” Durne persisted.
“Very little. He doesn’t hold out much hope of finding something useful.” She shook her head, trying to be tolerant. “But then he doesn’t hold out much hope for anything. Especially me.”
Durne chuckled. “Nor any of us. Mica is a superb healer, but he cares more for the process than the patients.” He shot a look over his shoulder to the dwarf, who rode silently at the end of the group. Mica’s eyes were elsewhere, his thoughts probably lost somewhere in the text he had read. Durne leaned slightly closer to Linsha and lowered his voice. “Watch your back around him, Lynn. Lord Bight is not entirely certain of his loyalties.”