Given that Dänvârfij would have surveyed the grounds’ wall as well, the only reason that she continued diplomatic attempts was that her quarry still lived. By her expression, she had not gained access or learned where they were kept.
Eight days had passed since Dänvârfij last appeared at the main gate. What did her long period of inactivity mean?
Frustration, like regret, was another emotion Brot’ân’duivé rarely felt.
Movement at the gate drew his attention.
He watched as Dänvârfij exited between two dozen guards standing post at the gate.
She still wore her poorly cut human clothing and the sword on her hip, but over the distance it was too dark to see her expression. He had been on the rooftop since late afternoon but had not seen her enter, and he wondered how long she had been inside the grounds.
Brot’ân’duivé flattened upon the rooftop’s edge to watch her walk past below. He knew the route she would likely take, as he had tracked her twice before. Both times she had lost him before reaching her final destination. Somewhere in the capital hid the remainder of her team.
Counting her, only four of the eleven remained alive.
Slipping his right hand to his left wrist, he pulled the cord on the sheath up his sleeve and slightly tilted his left forearm. A stiletto slid out hilt first to settle in his left palm. He spun the blade outward as he rolled back from the rooftop’s edge and to his feet without a sound.
Brot’ân’duivé’s patience was gone.
He leaped silently to the next rooftop to get ahead of his prey before scaling down into an alley. At the mouth of that dark path, he watched the street less than seven strides to his right.
Dänvârfij appeared and headed onward at a quick and quiet pace.
The instant she slipped from sight along the street’s next block, Brot’ân’duivé stepped out to follow. When he rounded the corner closely, prepared to disable and capture her in the dark, another tall figure dropped from above to land beside her.
Brot’ân’duivé swerved silently in against a shop with its awning tied shut. Both figures headed onward without pause. When they passed beyond a lantern at the next intersection, he recognized the newcomer by his movement and the color of his clothing.
In the last season, Rhysís often wore a dark blue cloak with the hood up.
Two anmaglâhk—loyalists—walked apace in silent purpose.
Brot’ân’duivé shadowed them block after block and deeper into the city’s northern side. He had never tracked any of them this far before, and when they turned into a cutway beside a three-story inn, he turned up a side street to reach the alley that would run along the inn’s rear. There they were, and he watched as they scaled the inn’s back side and slipped into a window.
Brot’ân’duivé slipped his stiletto back up his sleeve and tied it in place with a single twirl of his fingers.
Dänvârfij and Rhysís had not come to this city alone, and he had now found the remainder of his enemies ... his targets. Two others inside the inn might make easier prey for interrogation, but now was not the time, with all his enemies together.
And if Dänvârfij had gone back to the imperial grounds, then Magiere and perhaps the others were likely still alive.
Brot’ân’duivé regained patience as he waited and watched.
Dänvârfij—“Fated Music”—slipped through the window of their current hiding place with Rhysís directly behind her. The single room they had paid for was small, with only two rickety beds, a bleached wooden table, a cracked washbasin, and two candle lanterns. It served its purpose.
The other two members of what remained of her team waited therein.
She waited before the window, but Rhysís quickly approached the two women sitting on the same bed. Like her, they were anmaglâhk in status, though not so in function anymore.
Én’nish, the youngest of the team, was nearly as tan and white-blond as all an’Cróan. She was also smaller and slighter of build than most. Her size was a deception she used to advantage in combat. She also was—had been—reckless. More than this, or perhaps the cause of it, she was poisoned by their people’s grief madness in having lost her mate-to-be to Léshil’s blade.
Dänvârfij had opposed Én’nish’s inclusion in their purpose from the start.
The young one had proven to be a survivor when others had not, but she had taken a wound in her abdomen during the last battle with their quarry. And again, it had been Léshil who had done this to her.
Én’nish had not healed well and was less than capable for combat. Rhysís stood towering over her, his hair even lighter than hers, which he always wore loose.
None of them now wore the forest gray clothing of anmaglâhk, as they traveled disguised in human attire. Dänvârfij still could not fathom Rhysís’s new affinity for blue clothing. In addition to his pants and shirt, even the cloak he wore was a dark shade of that color.
Her gaze shifted to the final surviving member of their team.
Fréthfâre—“Watcher of the Woods”—sat hunched forward on the bed’s edge. She could no longer sit straight without support at her back, and sometimes not even then.
“Well?” she demanded. “Did you learn anything new ... or useful?”
Fréthfâre held status as shared leader of the team, but she was fit in neither body nor mind and perhaps not even in spirit. Her wheat-gold hair, so uncommon for an an’Cróan, hung in waves instead of properly silky and straight. In youth, she had been viewed as supple and graceful. She was now brittle in approaching a mere fifty years—barely beyond half of what most anmaglâhk lived and notably less than half of any other an’Cróan. The human dress of vibrant red that she wore made her appear all the more fragile.
Once covârleasa—“trusted advisor”—to Most Aged Father, Fréthfâre was nearly useless now. More than two years before, the monster Magiere had run a sword through her abdomen. The wound should have killed her, but a great an’Cróan healer had tended to her. Even so, she had barely survived, and the damage would never be wholly undone.
Dänvârfij, ever respectful in dealing with the ex-covârleasa, had no new information to share this night. She shook her head once in answering another of Fréthfâre’s spiteful questions.
“The commander of the imperial guard made it clear that I should not return,” she added.
Fréthfâre said nothing and her thin lips pursed. What could she say? What could any of them say?
These three anmaglâhk were all that Dänvârfij had left with which to hunt the monster Magiere, her mate Léshil, the deviant called Chap ... and the traitor greimasg’äh, Brot’ân’duivé.
A year and a half before, when Most Aged Father had asked her to prepare a team and sail to this foreign continent, she had not hesitated. Their purpose had been direct and clear. They were to locate Magiere, her half-blood consort, and the tainted majay-hì who ran with the pair. Magiere and Léshil were to be captured, tortured if necessary concerning the “artifact” they had carried off from the Pock Peaks, and then eliminated—along with the majay-hì, if possible.
Fréthfâre had not blinked at the last of that, though her team, including bloody Én’nish, had balked. Killing a majay-hì—a “sacred one” of their land—even a deviant one, had never been asked, let alone done. And never before had so many of the Anmaglâhk jointly taken up the same purpose.
Most Aged Father feared any device of the Ancient Enemy remaining in human hands.
Eleven anmaglâhk had left together, but one more had shadowed them across the world.
After the first and second deaths among them and before they knew for certain, Dänvârfij could not believe who that one had to be. Only on a night when she had glimpsed his unmistakable shadow had she acknowledged the truth.