And then, despite his insistence in calling them to his side, Jassion and Mellorin could do nothing but wait as Kaleb knelt over the ogre's chest and muttered his incantations.
"So?" Jassion asked as the sorcerer rose, his expression weary, more than an hour later. "Did it work?"
"I'm not…" Kaleb shook his head and leaned against the wall of the towering house. "Maybe. A little."
"How could it work a little?"
"Even with the two spells layered on each other, the trail's so tenuous I can barely feel it. I'm sensing a slight pull, but it's about as precise as pissing into a crosswind. I can tell you that he's somewhere between south and east of here."
"Ah. So we only have to search about a third of Imphallion, rather than all of it," Jassion groused. "At this rate, Rebaine will be dead before we ever get near him."
"He may not be the only one," Kaleb said.
"At least it's something," Mellorin interjected, not in the mood for another argument. "It's more than we had before."
Kaleb offered her a gentle smile.
"There's another option, isn't there?" Jassion asked. "As I recall, Rebaine was known to have had four lieutenants during the Serpent's War. We've only found three. We could try to find-Ellwyn? Something like that."
"I thought you were getting tired of traipsing all over the map hunting for these people," Mellorin said.
"I am. But I'm not sure how traipsing all over a third of the map looking for Rebaine is any better."
"Ellowaine."
The baron and the warlord's daughter both blinked. "What?"
"Her name," Kaleb said, "is Ellowaine. She's already been dealt with. She can't offer us anything new." And that, no matter how Jassion insisted and Mellorin cajoled, was all he would say.
"Fine!" Jassion, clearly, felt he'd had enough. "Let's conclude our business here, and we can be on our way." He moved toward the slumbering ogre, hand closing about Talon's hilt.
"No!" Mellorin hadn't even realized she'd spoken until the faint echo came back with the sound of her own voice.
"Oh, come off it!" her uncle snarled. "You want to snivel for the life of some random ogre, that's your call. I needn't understand it. But this is Davro! How many did he slaughter under Rebaine's orders? How many more will he kill if we let him live?"
"He doesn't look like he's all that interested in killing anymore," she noted, gesturing at the surrounding vale.
"This is not up for discussion," Jassion said coldly. "And you need to learn to think with your head, rather than your heart."
Gales of uncontrolled laughter burst from Kaleb's throat. He doubled up, clutching his stomach, and only the wall kept him upright. "That, coming from you," he gasped when he could finally breathe, "is hypocrisy that even the gods must envy. I expect that you've carved out a place of honor in Vantares's domain, where the entire pantheon will come to learn at your newly angelic feet."
Even beneath the chain hauberk, in the dim light of the moon and stars, they saw the baron's shoulders tense. His hands, as he raised Talon, vibrated with suppressed emotion.
"You," Kaleb said far more seriously, "are not going to kill that ogre. It is, as you said, not open to discussion."
"And why might that be, sorcerer?" Jassion demanded. At least for the moment, he'd stayed his stroke. "Surely not because you're hoping to win more of my niece's misdirected favors?"
Mellorin gasped, and there was no telling whether the spots of crimson across her cheeks were birthed by embarrassment or fury-or perhaps both. Kaleb held out a pacifying hand but otherwise remained focused on the baron.
"Because, m'lord Cretin, if we can't locate Rebaine in any reasonable amount of time, we may have to come back and repeat my efforts to track his spells back from Davro. And for that, he has to be alive."
They heard Jassion's ragged breathing as he struggled to decide.
"Look around you," Kaleb continued. "Davro's obviously not going anywhere. Once we've dealt with Rebaine, you can always come back and do whatever you feel needs doing. But for now-think with your head."
Jassion, with an audible hiss, slammed Talon back into its sheath. He spoke no word to either of them as he headed toward the horses, leaving his companions to hurry in his wake. THe dark night and mountain trails made for treacherous, nerve-racking travel, but they could not afford to make camp too near Davro's vale. It seemed unlikely that the ogre would come after them once he awoke, but the beast knew this terrain better than they, and it wasn't a risk any of them cared to take. The thought of a single sentry meeting up with him, while the others slumbered unawares, was the stuff of nightmares.
Albeit very short nightmares.
Jassion had gone some ways ahead, seeking a hollow or a clearing broad enough for them to bed down, and Kaleb took the opportunity to bring his mount alongside Mellorin's own palfrey.
"Could you really kill him?" he asked gently. She, at least, did him the courtesy of not pretending confusion.
"I don't know," she said with a sigh. "I don't even know if I actually want him dead. But I have to see him pay for what he did. I know that you and Jassion are planning to see that that happens, and I want to help-or at least to be there."
"Because of what he did to Imphallion? Or for abandoning you?"
"It's all the same thing," she insisted with a sidelong glare-one that answered the question far more truthfully than her words. Kaleb chose not to pursue it further.
"Thank you for, um, for back there," she said then, with a vague wave back the way they'd come.
Again he smiled at her. "For what? I was just following the most rational course."
"Of course you were," she said stoically, and then she, too, broke into a smile. "But are you sure it wasn't maybe, just a little bit, to earn my 'misdirected favors'?"
"Hideously misdirected," he told her. "But for them, I'd have done far more."
Driven by a single shared thought, they leaned over the narrow gap between the horses. Lips pressed tightly together, they drank deeply of each other, and for once, nobody appeared from nearby to interrupt.
Chapter Sixteen
She marched the city's outermost streets, oblivious to the muttering and joking of the men in loose formation behind. She knew she could count on them to watch her back if trouble appeared, and that was all she asked. Beyond that, she cared as little for what they had to say as they did for her.
Nobody who'd ever met or even heard of this woman would have mistaken her, for she looked very much today as she had for over a decade of violence and carnage. Her blond hair was perhaps longer in back than once it was, tied in twin braids that reached to her shoulder blades, but it hung unevenly at the sides. She remained gaunt, almost to the point of appearing ill, yet more than strong enough to outmuscle enemies who outweighed her twice over. A pair of short-handled hatchets hung at her waist, and over her chain hauberk she wore, not the tabard of a true Cephiran soldier, but a simple crimson sash crossing her chest from the left shoulder. Clasped with a cheap tin gryphon, it was the standard "uniform" of all non-Cephiran mercenaries who served the invaders.
The mark of a traitor to Imphallion, some would say-a few had said, to her face-but if she cared, it never showed. What had Imphallion done for her?
Emdimir itself, in fact, had changed more in weeks than she herself had in years. The streets, recently so crowded with refugees that the dirt had practically been compacted into stone beneath uncounted feet, now hosted only sporadic traffic. Nowhere in Cephiran-occupied Imphallion did the populace enjoy those freedoms that the invaders had initially permitted their early conquests, such as Rahariem. No longer did citizens go about their business in greater numbers than their occupiers, living daily lives as though little untoward had occurred. No longer did Guildsmen and nobles of the region govern with only occasional nudges and directives from Cephiran officers.