He held a cup of water to her lips, but she could take only a sip.
"I will check on you before dawn," he whispered.
The little world of that room grew dark, but not before Wynn again wondered … Do the dead dream?
It wasn't the best thought with which to fall asleep.
Chane slipped from Wynn's room under Shade's cold stare and quietly closed the door. He was hungry and dazed. Rarely had his dormancy been interrupted, and he felt something like what he remembered of going without sleep in his living days.
It made him feel even weaker … and hungrier.
Worse, when he turned about, Shirvêsh Mallet came bustling down the corridor. Chane was not up to polite conversation.
"I was told young Wynn is ill," Mallet blurted out. "Does she need care?"
Chane tried to stand straight. The blunt question was welcome, as all he could do for Wynn was give her water and let her rest.
"She drank dwarven ale … too much, in a Sea-Side greeting house," he rasped. "It has affected her badly."
"Oh, good grace!" the shirvêsh exclaimed. "What was she thinking? And you moved her? What were you thinking?"
Chane bit his lip in restraint. "She insisted on coming back," he answered politely. "I could not refuse."
Mallet's wrinkled face softened. "I will fetch purifying herbs for tea to clean out her blood. She will be shaky for a few days." He shook his head, white hair swishing over his shoulders. "Dwarven ale is not for such a tiny Numan … someone should have stopped her!"
Indeed, Chane thought.
"Get some rest yourself, lad," Mallet added.
Nodding, and surprised at his own gratitude, Chane stepped into his own room across the way, but only closed the door to a crack. He waited long enough for the shirvêsh to trundle off and then slipped along the passages and through the roundabout circling the chamber of the dwarven Eternal. No one seemed to notice him, even as he exited out into the night. He paced the mountainside's winding streets, his thoughts twisting inward.
Wynn's ignorant gift of goat's blood made him wonder about feeding on livestock. Mules used at the crank house's turnstile had to be stabled nearby. Or could he solve the mystery of Welstiel's arcane feeding cup?
The beast with hands, chained down within him, lunged at its bonds, howling to be fed.
Neither cup nor livestock appealed to him. Yet he had to find a way to survive, while keeping his feeding to a minimum. He wandered down the mountain's street, poignantly aware that he was alone and unrestrained. To protect Wynn, he needed the strength of life—and she need never know how.
Chane slowed.
Directly ahead lay the lift's way station, crank house, and the huge glowing maw of the market cavern's entrance. He had not even thought about where he was going, yet here he was. Or had that other part of him known? Had the beast pushed him here, already hunting while he was distracted in thought?
Chane looked from the way station to the cavern's entrance. People were still about. A few even passed him on the street, giving him little notice. He could not risk feeding upon someone who lived here—someone with a clan and a tribe, as well as family, who would notice one of their own gone missing. His brief encounter with Sliver emphasized Wynn's warning against matching strength with a dwarf.
He needed a visitor, a traveler … a human.
Chane stepped away from the pylons' crystals and slipped into a darker path between buildings at the settlement's cliff side. He took little notice of the structures' back sides as he moved quietly down the short-walled cobbled walkway along the cliff. When he neared the row's end, close enough to see the way station, neither a cargo nor a passenger lift was currently docked. He peered over the retaining wall and along the sheer mountainside, but did not see any lift crawling up the steep stone road.
Chane leaned against the wall and looked upward. He had to shift along the path to see between the buildings. It was the same above, where the empty stone road continued toward the mountain's top, perhaps all the way to what Wynn had called Old-Seatt.
Sudden voices made him duck away from the wall and against the last building's back side.
Chane peered around the corner toward the night chatter's source. Four humans in the attire of the well-to-do rounded the crank house. One sounded as if he were chuckling at his own wit. The others merely smiled or nodded, and only the last responded, too low to hear. But the first boisterous one …
Chane knew what to look for.
The small group separated as three headed off toward the lift. But the talkative one, so amused with himself, waved a hand in parting and turned up the street along the pylons.
A lone merchant in a foreign settlement.
Chane sped along the cliff-side path behind the buildings. When he reached the next alley back to the main street, he crept out near its end to watch. Searching the street's far side, he could not find the man—not until he looked along the frontage of the cliff-side structures.
There was his quarry, strolling along, but Chane held back, remaining still in the shadows. Beyond the merchant, a pair of dwarves in matched attire trudged the street's far side. Both appeared armored in hauberks of hardened leather scales. Each carried a long oak staff, used like a walking stick, not that they needed such. They glanced about with no serious interest, yet they were clearly some kind of night watch.
Chane ran his tongue over his teeth and backed deeper into the alley until the two dwarves moved on, out of sight. Then he flattened, still and quiet at the sound of approaching footfalls.
The merchant strolled right past the alley's mouth.
Chane stepped out and dropped his coin pouch.
It landed on the street with a clinking thud. An old but simple trick, used many times before—because it always worked.
"Sir," he called in Numanese. "You dropped your purse."
The merchant started at the sound of Chane's maimed voice and spun too quickly, stumbling for an instant. When he spotted Chane in his long brown cloak and well-made boots, he calmed, and then quickly checked the small bulging pouch tucked into his belt. He was more stout and solid than Chane had first noticed, with a large brown mustache hiding his upper lip.
"Thank you," he said, "but I have mine."
"Are you certain?" Chane asked. "I thought I saw it fall in your passing."
The man clearly had his purse, but he walked back toward Chane with an expectant expression. Either he too wondered who had lost it, or he thought it was just a lucky find that he might share in. He never had the chance to express either notion.
Chane lashed out.
His right hand closed over the man's mouth and jaw, and he spun back into the alley. The merchant flailed in surprise, his feet twisting under him. Before he could set his heels, Chane jerked him further into the darkness and slammed him hard against one building's stone wall.
On impact, the merchant shuddered and slumped.
Chane held his unconscious prey pinned as his senses widened.
He smelled warm flesh, heard a quickened heartbeat. His jaws ached under shifting teeth as his canines elongated. Somewhere within him, that beast clawed the floor of a dark cell, trying to break its chains and reach for the promise of blood. Its snarls mixed with screeches of hunger that shook its whole body.
Chane began to shake as he stared at the merchant's throat.
A thunder crack jarred him into sharp awareness, and he whipped his head around.
Far beyond the alley's end, across the wide main street, the two dwarves had turned back on their patrol. Their wooden staves rose and fell with every other step, cracking out the rhythm that had seemed so near in Chane's heightened hearing.