“You mean you gave him no choice, considering what followed you there! You used that to get what you wanted in the first place!”
His face resembled a dull beet, likely at the thought that she’d once more gotten around him and the guild.
“I saw the second codex,” she said, her voice rising. “The one you wrote and kept from me, along with any texts or translations not listed in the first one! Or did you and Premin Sykion keep it from others, as well? Don’t you lecture me about deception.”
He uttered no further counter, for what could he have said? He had lied to her. They’d all deceived her, holding back anything they could.
“And what of your tall companion?” High-Tower asked.
The shift threw Wynn off. “What about him?”
Chane had kept to himself here. No one could say he’d been any kind of inconvenience.
High-Tower rounded the desk an instant after Shade began growling in warning. He slowed, though he didn’t glance once at Shade.
“Your friend left a little something behind when you were all thrown out of the seatt,” he said. “A shirvêsh at the temple was cleaning his room. What use would he have for a large urn full of blood?”
Wynn went still. She’d arranged for the goat’s blood so Chane could feed. The fact that she’d forgotten about the urn—and it had been found—should’ve been the first thing to fear. But it wasn’t.
“Full?” she repeated without thinking.
High-Tower’s eyes narrowed.
It was too late to cover her slip, though he wouldn’t understand her exact meaning.
“Yes, full,” he repeated.
High-Tower was the enemy here, not Chane.
“It was probably for some dish from his homeland,” she lied, shrugging. “I saw his people make blood puddings and sausages, just the same as yours. We were in a seatt, after all.”
She tried hard to be outwardly disdainful as she turned for the door and gripped its handle. After a slow breath, she glanced back. “When does our ship leave?”
“Tomorrow. At dusk.”
They weren’t giving her much time, but sooner was better, especially now.
Opening the door, Wynn stepped out, and she jumped at a flash of brown in the corner of her sight.
Regina Melliny’s bony form stood just behind the opened door. Shade pushed past, bumping Wynn against the doorframe, and Regina instantly backed away.
“What are you doing here?” Wynn asked.
Regina was an apprentice in the Order of Naturology, and she’d recently made Wynn’s life miserable. No doubt the nickname of “Witless” Wynn had been Regina’s doing.
“As if that’s any of your business,” Regina answered haughtily, but with a nervous twitch of her eyes toward Shade.
“But it is mine, apprentice,” High-Tower growled, his voice close behind Wynn.
Regina’s gaze shifted as the venom drained from her expression.
“I was just ... I was up above,” she faltered, “taking my study time on the tower roof, sir.”
“In late autumn?” High-Tower asked. “Not wise or healthy ... Miss Melliny.”
That he hadn’t called her “apprentice” this time didn’t escape Wynn’s notice—or Regina’s. It was clearly a warning. Regina spun and scurried down the tower’s stairwell.
“Off with you, as well,” High-Tower said, his voice now somewhere farther across the study.
Wynn shut the door without looking back. She had no time for Regina’s spiteful antics. But High-Tower’s mention of the urn—the full urn—still confused her. She started down the stairs with Shade, but by the time they reached the bottom, she’d begun worrying more about money.
There wouldn’t be enough for anything other than what the council had planned for her, and she didn’t possess anything worth selling. Did Chane? Even so, they had little time to go off bartering his possessions. So how could she get more coin or something worth selling later?
An awful notion occurred to Wynn. It was almost sacrilegious, but it was all she could think of for the best profit anywhere, at any time.
She and Shade passed quickly through the main floor and out into the courtyard. The sun hadn’t yet dipped, and she looked toward the northwest building, the one with Chane’s guest quarters.
And below that were the guild’s laboratories.
“Come on, Shade,” Wynn said. “One more stop before supper.”
Chuillyon’s white robe swished about his felt boots as he strolled through an open archway and into the royal castle’s manicured garden copse.
The second and final loss of Prince Freädherich Âreskynna still weighed heavily upon him, as well as the renewed grief of the prince’s wife, Duchess Reine. There had been little he could do to console her or himself.
With his cowl down, a chill shift of air blew his faded and streaked golden brown locks across his narrow mouth. Prominent creases lined the corners of his large amber eyes set around a narrow nose a bit long, even for an elf.
Late autumn, when fiery colors began to fade and fall, was to him the saddest time of each year, making his mood much worse. He did not like it. Even the wispy white of snow and glistening icicles were better than this. He strolled on through hedges and past one rose bush still bearing dead buds that would never birth light blue petals before winter came. The royal family always preferred blues and aquamarines.
The garden was empty, with no sign of the one he had come here to meet in private.
Nearly four centuries past, before Calm Seatt could truly be called a city, the first of the Âreskynna, rulers of Malourné, had resided in a much smaller castle. In a few more generations, they had embarked on plans for a new and greater residence. The royal family moved in, and the first castle became the barracks for the nation’s armed forces. Two centuries more, and Queen Âlfwine II—the “Elf Friend”—desired something new yet again. Scholars thought she had preferred a more lavish residence, suitable for a monarch. Others claimed that like her descendants, she hungered for a view of the bay.
To Chuillyon, the latter was obviously correct. Any in the bloodline of the Âreskynna—Kin of the Ocean Waves—had always shown strange affinities for the open sea.
Âlfwine II oversaw designs of this very castle. The nation’s armed forces, including the newly established city guard contingent, moved to the vacated second one. The first castle, by far the oldest and smallest, was given over to the Guild of Sagecraft. Or, rather, to its founding Numan branch.
It had been long years, decades that Chuillyon served discreetly as counselor to the Âreskynna. He spent so much time here as to have rooms of his own. But he preferred this garden, even in the sadness of late autumn ... and what had come to pass in Dhredze Seatt.
He strolled among elaborate obelisk trellises of thinning ivy and between sculpted evergreens and half-denuded oaks and maple trees.
“Psssst! Here, sir!”
Chuillyon slowed at that too-loud whisper, took a deep breath, and assumed his most serene demeanor. This was not a meeting he relished, but it was necessary all the same. He turned slowly, facing a large myrtle shrub clipped into the form of a conch shell. A flash of brown slipped around it, and a bony girl in a brown robe stepped into view.
Regina Melliny bowed briefly, too much eagerness in her small human eyes.
“I have heard that your Premin Council held a short private meeting today,” he said. “Was there anything of import?”
She looked him over, trying to be proper, but the more she tried to hide her glee, the more obvious it became. She knew nothing of his true position or the reach of his influence—only that he served the royal family. And the Âreskynna held sway and favor with the guild.