“Well, did you?” Wynn pressed, dropping the sack.
He knew what she saw when she looked at him: an overly tall wolf with silver-gray fur and crystalline blue eyes, the ears and muzzle just a little long for its kind. That was because he was not a wolf.
Chap did not bother answering.
Eight people and two majay-hì, he being one of them, had been living on top of one another in two rooms for days and nights on end, and this state of affairs was taking its toll. They were safe for the moment but trapped in hiding. Their current quarters had passed from feeling overcrowded to outright stifling.
There was little enough comfort these days so, yes, he had eaten the cheese.
If there had been any more, he would have eaten that too!
Chap surveyed his surroundings for the ... uncountable time.
Shelves lined three walls of the main room, all filled with scrolls, books, plank-bound sheaves, and other academic paraphernalia. This was no surprise in a place once a hideaway for a sect of renegade metaologer sages who had resurrected the forbidden practice of sorcery.
Cold lamps provided light, and one rested on a round table surrounded by three chairs with high backs of finely finished near-black wood intricately carved in wild see-through patterns. The lamps’ ornate brass bases were filled with alchemical fluids producing mild heat to keep the crystals lit.
The right side of the main room’s back half, just beyond a folding partition, was covered in large, vibrantly patterned floor cushions. Farther right was a doorless archway into another room with two beds. Fringed carpets defined various areas throughout the place.
For two or three people, all of this would have been a welcome luxury. For eight people and two majay-hì, it was cramped, cluttered, and becoming unbearable. There were also packs and sacks filled with personal belongings everywhere ... aside from two large chests in the bedchamber.
“Chap, answer me!” Wynn insisted.
“Oh, leave him alone,” Magiere growled. “We can buy more cheese.”
Chap’s gaze shifted to her standing in the bedchamber’s opening. Just behind her, Leesil was fussing with something unseen.
Magiere was tall and slender with smooth skin pale to the point of seeming white. Her long black hair hung loose, but the lamps here did not provide enough light to spark the bloodred tint in her tresses. She wore the tan pantaloons favored by the Suman people and a blue sleeveless tunic. These were a stark contrast to her usual studded-leather armor and dark canvas pants.
“Don’t snap at Wynn,” Leesil admonished her, as if more tension were needed. “If Chap’s been rooting around like a hog again, I’d call him out.”
Magiere half turned on her husband but apparently bit back whatever retort came to mind.
It was an excuse for another bit of petty bickering after being stuffed away in hiding for too long.
Chap rumbled with a twitch of jowls but did not lift his head.
Leesil was only slightly taller than his wife. His coloring was the sharper contrast. White-blond hair, amber irises, tan skin, and slightly elongated ears betrayed his mother’s people, the an’Cróan—“[Those] of the Blood”—or the elves of the eastern continent. His father had been human. Leesil too wore tan pantaloons, but his tunic was a shade of burnt-orange.
And as to the others present ...
Wayfarer, a sixteen-year-old girl three-quarters an’Cróan, sat in one high-backed chair at the table, mending a torn blanket. Unlike Leesil’s, her hair was a rich brown, and in any direct light, her eyes were a shade of green. Chap was fond of her and, shy and quiet as she was, she clung to him the most, though she had come to look upon Magiere and Leesil almost as new parents, or at least as accepted authority figures.
Osha, a young full-blooded an’Cróan with the height as well as the white-blond hair of his people, sat across from the girl, fletching an arrow. He had proven himself an exceptional archer, though how he had come by that skill was not a subject to raise with him. Vigilant in guarding all with him, he caused little trouble, with one exception: he was obsessed with Wynn.
Any feelings Wynn had for him, she did not show. That situation bore watching, considering Wayfarer’s mixed feelings for Osha. And if that was not bad enough ...
Chane Andraso—a Noble Dead, a vampire—stood near Wynn, as dour and sullen as always. Though he was barely tolerated by anyone here besides her, they had all been given little choice in tolerating his presence. He resembled a young nobleman, with red-brown hair and with skin nearly as pale as Magiere’s. His white shirt, dark pants, and high boots were well made, if well-worn. And he, like Osha, was obsessed with Wynn.
Chap’s gaze shifted slightly right, and he failed to suppress a snarl. Sitting cross-legged on the floor below the one window at the back left of the room was Brot’an—Brot’ân’duivé, “the Dog in the Dark.” That aging elven master assassin was one of Chap’s greater concerns.
Coarse white-blond hair with strands of darkening gray hung over his peaked ears and down his back beneath his hood. Lines crinkled the corners of his mouth and his large amber-irised eyes, which rarely looked at anything specific but always saw everything. The feature of the man 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 deeply tanned face. Those ran at an angle from the midpoint of his forehead to break his left feathery eyebrow and then skip over his right eye to finish across his cheekbone.
Brot’an claimed to be protecting Magiere, but Chap knew better. Brot’an always had an agenda and would place it over the lives of anyone if a choice had to be made. He had proven this more than once.
Needless to say, Chap was in a very foul mood.
He might hate Chane for what he was, but he hated Brot’an for who he was.
As Chap’s eyes continued drifting—to the cramped room’s one other occupant—his feelings grew more complicated. The other tall but charcoal black majay-hì lay on the floor beside Wynn, where the troublesome sage still knelt with the upturned cheese sack.
Chap’s own daughter, Shade, refused to acknowledge his existence for the most part. She was not without good reason, but tonight he chose not to think about that. Instead, he swallowed down his pain and turned his attention back to Wynn, speaking directly into her mind as he could do only with her.
Now that our host has stepped out for a while, perhaps it is time to talk ... of something other than cheese.
Wynn slapped the sack onto the floor and turned toward him with an angry frown. But the frown faded, and she did not argue, only letting out a tired sigh. Their “host,” Ghassan il’Sänke, had gone out on an errand, and time without his company was rare.
She nodded. “Yes ... we should.”
“Should what?” Magiere asked, and then looked to Chap, knowing something had passed between the two.
Chap often spoke to Magiere, Leesil, and Wayfarer by calling up words out of their own memories—something Wynn quaintly called “memory-words.” How he communicated with Wynn was not based on pulling up broken, spoken phrases. She was the only one to whom he could speak directly in thought—after she had fouled up a thaumaturgical ritual while journeying with him in the past.
“What’s he babbling into your head now?” Leesil asked, pushing out of the bedchamber and past Magiere.
“We should settle some important things while Ghassan is away,” Wynn said to the two of them.
All annoyance faded from Magiere’s pale face. “I don’t know what. Unless you’ve come up with an idea for a hiding place we haven’t already discounted.”