Ghassan nodded slowly with a long breath. “All of you return to the sanctuary. Wayfarer will let you in.”
“And you?” Brot’an asked.
“Chane will be dormant until dusk,” Ghassan answered. “This house is safe now, and I will assist Wynn in moving him to the hidden room in the cellar. We will join the rest of you after nightfall.”
“You’d sit in a cellar all day ... for him?” Leesil asked.
“Enough,” Magiere whispered.
At his sudden silence, she didn’t look back. If Chane hadn’t been there for what happened in the passage below the house ...
“Do you really think you can get Wynn, Shade, and Chane out of there after dark?” Leesil asked. “There are bodies everywhere. This place will be overrun with imperial and city guards soon enough.”
That did make Magiere look up.
“No, it will not,” Ghassan answered calmly and fixed on Magiere. “Go now. All of you.”
Magiere stared at the corpse again, wishing she could have watched Khalidah die and remember it clearly. Leesil grabbed her arm and pulled her up, but some things Khalidah had said began coming back.
How long will you last denying what you are ... why you are?
Chapter Sixteen
Two mornings later, Wynn sat on the floor with Shade in the back corner of the sanctuary’s main room watching Chane as he lay dormant. She hadn’t bothered covering him yet. The sun had risen, but Magiere, Leesil, Chap, and Wayfarer were still asleep in the bedchamber. The sheet tacked up over the bedchamber entrance was still in place.
For Wynn, time seemed difficult to measure since destroying the specter. Some moments had stretched endlessly while others had passed in a wink. After most of her companions had left the battle site two nights before, she—along with Shade, Ghassan, and dormant Chane—had spent the day in that hidden cellar room where they’d intended to trap the specter’s host.
She’d found herself unable to openly thank Ghassan, though she was grateful for his help where Chane was concerned. The domin’s assistance in getting Chane down the stairs and into hiding, and then sitting vigil with her and Shade all day, had somewhat restored Wynn’s trust in him after all of his deceptions.
Unlike the others, Ghassan seemed to accept Chane as a useful member of the group and did not view him as a necessary “evil.” But when Chane rose at dusk that night, Wynn had been unsettled by the ease with which they all left that other house.
The bodies in the street were gone, as was that of the specter’s host. No imperial guards were present. Other than the broken shards of glass on the ground, the street and market looked as if nothing had happened.
Wynn’s wariness toward the last “sorcerer,” a fallen domin of the guild, rose again. But in the face of all that still lay ahead, she’d thought better of asking Ghassan anything as they returned to the tenement sanctuary.
Everyone had been quiet since then, though Wynn still wondered about the bodies. Had Ghassan simply blotted those from anyone’s awareness, just as his sect had hidden this place she was in? Or had they been cleared away somehow ... by someone?
She looked down at Chane, thankful that he hadn’t been burned by her staff.
Brot’an again sat cross-legged in the main room’s front corner. Wynn couldn’t see him clearly beyond the table and chairs in her way, but he was likely sleeping sitting up again. Or maybe he was just pretending. Ghassan had made a bed from floor cushions in the sitting area and appeared to be sound asleep. Only Osha was awake.
He sat in one chair and stared blankly at a glass cup framed between his palms on the table. Since Wynn’s return, Osha hadn’t said a word to her. She wasn’t certain why, but that hurt her.
No one had discussed what was to come next. They were all numb from what it had taken to destroy a thousand-year-old sorcerer. In truth, Wynn couldn’t stop dwelling on this. Now it felt too easy though it hadn’t been.
Shade whined softly, and Wynn absently stroked the dog’s back as she looked down again at Chane’s handsome face. She’d gotten over the sight of him like this, considering he always looked ... dead. His red-brown hair hung in jagged layers against the pillow, and now he looked peaceful. But again troublesome thoughts wouldn’t leave her in peace.
None of them had uncovered the specter’s true agenda.
According to Ghassan, it had infiltrated the highest level of the Suman court. Why? What did it want there? Perhaps to influence the empire, but to what end?
This didn’t fit its obsession with Magiere to the point of torturing her about why she had come here. But he had been a servant of the Ancient Enemy.
Khalidah was gone, and the truth might never be learned.
The lack of answers weighed upon Wynn as she peered toward the sheet-curtained bedchamber. In there, an orb still lay in its chest. All of the Enemy’s minions who’d crossed her path had been seeking one of those. That was why she and Magiere had come here.
Had Khalidah come to the empire for that reason as well?
The thought made her even more anxious.
Patting Shade’s head, she whispered, “Stay here.” She got up and quietly crept around Ghassan toward the bedchamber.
Much as she didn’t want to disturb anyone in there, she felt the need to check.
She pinched aside the sheet curtain to peek in and saw Chap lying asleep before Wayfarer on the far bed’s edge. The girl’s arm was wrapped over his shoulders. Leesil and Magiere were still tucked away in the nearer bed. Wynn crept in slowly.
She knelt before the chest on the floor between the two beds, pulled the pin in its latch a little at a time, and lifted the lid. Weatherworn hinges squeaked, and she froze, holding her breath. Once certain no one had awakened, she pushed the lid up and drew aside a fold of canvas over the chest’s contents.
There it lay: the orb of Spirit.
Slightly larger than a great helm, its central globe was as dark as char, though not made of any stone she’d ever seen. Its surface was faintly rough to the touch, like smoothly chiseled basalt. Atop it was the large tapered head of a spike that pierced down through the globe’s center, and the spike’s head was larger than the breadth of a man’s fist. Its roughly pointed tip protruded through the orb’s bottom somewhere below in the chest.
Both spike and orb looked as if fashioned from one single piece with no mark of separation hinting that the spike could be removed.
Wynn knew it could be through the use of a thôrhk, one of the handles ... an orb key.
She reached in to brush one such key with a fingertip.
That circlet, broken by design, was made of some unknown ruddy metal. It was thick and heavy-looking, with a circumference larger than a helmet and covered in strange markings. About a fourth of its circumference was missing by design. The two open ends had protruding knobs pointing inward across the break, directly at each other.
Those knobs fit perfectly into a groove running around the orb spike’s head. Once inserted, the spike could lift out, thus opening the orb and releasing its power.
Wynn had never attempted such a thing, nor did she plan to.
The previous few desperate years had centered upon locating all five orbs to keep them hidden from the Enemy’s minions. Now there was only one left.
She carefully closed the chest, looked both ways to be certain everyone was still asleep, and crept out of the bedchamber. In the main room’s back corner, Shade raised her head, her ears upright, and Wynn put a finger over her lips to keep the dog quiet.
There was another arcane object related to the orbs that she’d found.
Wynn inched into the main room’s back. Chane had earlier moved her belongings out of the bedchamber and nearer to his. She crouched to dig into her own pack.