Before she asked another panicked question, Ghassan il’Sänke blinked slowly with a shake of his head.
“Ah, yes,” he added. “I believe I did see them ... briefly.”
That panicked Wynn even more—“see” and not “meet.”
The domin, so strangely dressed, nodded.
“I recognized them from the descriptions in your journals,” he went on. Then he paused a bit too long. “Your friends were arrested, along with a mixed-blood girl, and imprisoned below the imperial palace grounds. I never spoke with, let alone met, them.”
“What?” Wynn gasped.
“Mixed-blood?” Osha repeated. “What you mean?”
Wynn glanced at him and then Chane. Magiere had never actually reached Ghassan il’Sänke, never spoken to him. She, Leesil, Chap, and Leanâlhâm had been locked away, but for what reason?
“How long?” Chane rasped.
He and the domin hadn’t parted on good terms the last time they’d all seen one another.
“Perhaps a moon,” il’Sänke answered.
“And you haven’t seen them since?” Wynn asked.
“No.”
Wynn’s panic edged toward frantic. Even the dim light from a lantern up the way in the street hurt her eyes. The walls of the cutway felt too close.
“This can’t be happening,” she got out and then fell in the babbling. “We found another orb, and Magiere was here seeking the last one ... You were to help her. So we brought ours here and—”
“Wynn!” Chane rasped, and even Shade snarled in warning.
Wynn snapped her mouth shut under the fixed stare of Ghassan il’Sänke.
“This is not the place to speak of such things,” he said too calmly. “Come with me. I will take you to a place of safety.”
“Safety?” Chane hissed. “Your high premin would have simply sent us away ... until your name was mentioned. No one is going anywhere with you if—”
“Chane,” Wynn interrupted. “We need to speak privately and not here in—”
“No, Chane is correct,” Osha countered in Elvish.
Before Wynn could argue, Osha narrowed his eyes on the domin.
“You ... hunted?” he said in Numanese. It was less a question than an accusation.
Wynn sighed, exhausted and still panicked as she turned back to the domin. Perhaps his own branch’s Premin Council was seeking him, but the city guards could hardly be after a sage like il’Sänke.
“Just answer them,” she encouraged. “Are you wanted by the authorities?”
Chapter Two
Brot’ân’duivé—the Dog in the Dark—crouched upon a rooftop outside the great wall of the imperial grounds. He maintained this vigil out of little more than habit, as he had come to accept there was little else to do at present. And so it had been for the last moon.
Much of the time, he remained in hiding, for his physical appearance in this land and city attracted much attention. Even cloaked and with his hood up, his height brought curious glances. Up north in the Numan lands, he was half a head taller than most human males. Here he towered over everyone and was easily visible even in a crowd.
Coarse white-blond hair, with streaks of gray darkening some strands, hung over his peaked ears and down his back beneath his hood and cloak. He was deeply tanned, nearly as dark as the Sumans, with lines crinkling the corners of his mouth and his large amber-irised eyes. But the feature that stood out the most, if someone drew near enough to look into his hood, were four pale scars—as if from claws—upon his face. Those ran at an angle from the midpoint of his forehead and slanted down through one feathery eyebrow to skip over his right eye to his cheekbone.
He spent much of his time near the palace grounds, where he watched for anything that might be used to his advantage. Patience was a necessity more than a virtue among the Anmaglâhk, guardians of the an’Cróan people and their vast territory; it was even more so for him as a master among them, a greimasg’äh, or “shadow-gripper.”
During the waterfront arrest of Léshil, Magiere, and Chap—and Brot’ân’duivé’s own young ward, Wayfarer—he had made the instant assessment that he could not stop it. Instead, he vanished before it happened. This had seemed prudent at that time, for they had been so outnumbered that even he saw no way to extract all of the others alive. Within moments of their being taken away, he had managed to sweep back in and save their belongings left in the street. These he had later hidden well.
Now ... he had come to question his quick decision.
Among the Anmaglâhk—viewed only as assassins by any human who’d survived to recognize one—he was one of the few remaining masters. But he no longer wore his caste’s garb of hooded forest gray cloak, vestment, pants, and felt boots. Instead, he now dressed in simple breeches and a weatherworn jerkin beneath a marred and smudged hooded cloak. His change of attire was no simple disguise, for he was at war with his own caste.
Many of his brethren still served their too-long-lived leader, Most Aged Father, a paranoid madman who was utterly self-serving at the expense of his people. Brot’ân’duivé was determined to stop Most Aged Father and his loyalists at any cost. This was one reason he had traveled halfway across the world in protecting Magiere and Léshil from a team of loyalists sent after them.
Once again, Brot’ân’duivé studied the outer wall of the imperial grounds. He had seldom felt regret in a long life, as he did now over his choice to abandon his companions at the waterfront. He assumed he could soon rescue them, but he could not have known then that a human construction would be able to keep him out.
The wall was taller than any he had seen in his lifetime. It was also taller than any surrounding building, for he had set foot on every rooftop around its circumference. That had taken two days and half of the following night.
Sheer and smooth, as if impossibly made from solid sandstone, the wall offered little chance of purchase for a blade’s tip to climb it. And even if so, the broad space between it and the nearest structures was twice the width of the widest street in the capital. Regular patrols of city guards walked the wall’s outside and top, and imperial guards with gold sashes manned the interior grounds.
And he had only one lead to what had become of Léshil or Magiere.
On the day those two were arrested with Wayfarer and the errant majay-hì called Chap, he had followed them unseen to the imperial grounds. Among their captors of armed guards were two of Most Aged Father’s loyalists.
Dänvârfij and Rhysís were dressed in poorly cut human clothing; both wore swords of a strange make. The very idea was anathema, as by the caste’s creed they worked “in silence and in shadow.” But sight of them did not surprise him, for they had been hunting Magiere across the world.
He had waited outside all that first day, but only Dänvârfij and Rhysís had emerged. His initial instinct had been to follow and eliminate them, as he had done one by one with their team ever since leaving his homeland after being branded a traitor.
That urge was quickly abandoned. This pair was his only link to what had become of his lost companions. His second instinct had been to capture one of his enemies and extract information by any means. This was rejected as well. It was doubtful that even he could break a seasoned anmaglâhk.
And now his only way to know that Léshil and the others still lived was because three times Dänvârfij had gained access directly through the imperial grounds’ main gate. When she left, she looked close to angry and frustrated.
An unguarded emotion—let alone expression—was rare for a true anmaglâhk.