Her hold on Shade broke as she recoiled, careening backward. Wynn toppled as her footing failed, and she tensed, waiting for her back to hit the flagstones. She tried to hold out the staff to keep its crystal from striking.
Strong hands hooked her under the arms.
Chane hoisted Wynn up from behind, and she came face-to-face with the solid wall of padded rock … or rather an armored dwarf with a perplexed expression.
A fringe of beard ran around his jawline beneath his steel pot helmet. His leather hauberk was overlaid with an orange diagonal chest sash embroidered with a yellow vubrí. He also carried a tall iron staff.
"Oh, no," Wynn moaned. "I'm so sorry."
She had just slammed headlong into a member of a local clan's constabulary. The dwarf glowered as if she were some rambunctious child run amok.
"Mind your pace, missy," he warned. "There's too many people to go rushing about."
"Pardon us," Chane said. "Our dog got away."
"Then get a leash." With a final frown, the constable turned off through the crowd.
"A leash," Wynn muttered, but right then it was an appealing notion. "Shade, where are you … Shade!"
One bark carried over the market's ruckus.
Wynn couldn't see Shade, but at the dog's noise, a few people turned to look.
"There … go," Chane urged.
They wove through shoppers, vendors, and stalls, until Wynn spotted the top of a large tunnel. One brief break in the crowd exposed Shade hunkering in that opening.
Wynn pushed on. "Shade … come here!"
The dog backed another step into the tunnel, glowering at the crowd. She openly snarled at anyone who got too close, gaining far too much attention. Wynn rushed into the tunnel opening and clamped her hand over Shade's muzzle.
"She must learn not to growl at these people," Chane admonished, jogging up behind. "Can you not get that much through to her?"
Wynn only heard Shade's answering snarl and felt the vibration beneath her small hand.
"It's not her fault."
Apparently, whatever Shade had learned from Sliver's memories had immediately become an excuse to bolt out of the market.
"If she is as intelligent as her father," Chane returned, "then she should understand simple commands."
"Not now, Chane."
Shade seemed uninterested in communicating in any way other than memory-speak, which was understandable. But Wynn wished Shade might've picked up a few spoken words by now.
Shade shook her nose free and snapped her jaws closed on Wynn's sleeve. She jerked on it as she backed down the tunnel. Her intent here was clear enough.
Wynn pulled her sleeve free and stood, but as she turned to Chane, a passing white figure appeared briefly amid the crowd. Wynn froze, peering around Chane's side, and there it was again.
A stark-white-robed and cowled figure towered above the dwarves in the market.
"Oh, no … no … no!" she breathed, and grabbed Chane, wrenching him in against the tunnel wall.
"What are you doing?" he demanded.
"Shush. Don't move!"
She reached back, urging Shade in behind herself, and then peeked around Chane. There in the crowd was the white-clad elf she'd seen at Hammer-Stag's funeral. Beyond him, she quickly spotted the Weardas. And last …
Duchess Reine stood a little ways beyond the tunnel mouth, bartering with a clothier. She inspected a pair of folded pants and a heavy wool shirt. Both were simple—quite plain, in fact—and certainly not what a royal of Malourné would wear. And they were obviously too large for her.
Wynn frowned at this. The duchess was out shopping? That hardly seemed likely, since she would have anything she needed.
"It's the duchess," Wynn whispered.
She grabbed Chane's belt, pulling him as she backed down the tunnel. Shade kept huffing impatiently behind her. Once they were far enough along a curve and lost sight of the market, Wynn let go of Chane—only to find him scowling at her.
"She would not be coming our way," he said, and spun her around to push her onward.
Shade wheeled and took off, and they followed the trail she held in her mind.
Along twists and turns, they passed people in the crystal-lit tunnels, most heading back toward the market. But at each divergence, they encountered fewer passersby, until Shade made two turns in which they saw no one for a long while. Orange crystals mounted in the iron fixtures upon the walls grew scarce, until Wynn had to pull out her cold lamp crystal.
Then Shade halted.
By the crystal's light, they saw that the narrowing passage ahead split in two directions. Both branches sloped downward, arcing away from each other into the dark distance, for neither had any crystals mounted upon the walls.
Shade stood at the split, looking down one branch and then the other.
"What is wrong?" Chane asked.
Wynn crouched, touching Shade's back, and the dog looked at her with a whine. Wynn tried remembering the cloaked figure Shade had shown her from Sliver's memory. It was difficult, since it wasn't truly her memory. But in turn, Shade just whined.
"She doesn't know which way," Wynn said. "Maybe Sliver lost Ore-Locks here, or Shade didn't catch the whole memory of the way Sliver went. We've already come quite a ways and—"
"Then we must guess," Chane said, "and continue with …"
He never finished. Chane lowered his head, turning it to one side as his eyes half closed.
"What is it?" she asked.
He hesitated and then answered, "Just footsteps, some group headed off to the …" He trailed off again.
Chane spun around, staring back the way they had come. Shade paced past Wynn, following his gaze as she sniffed the air. Even stranger, Wynn saw Chane's nostrils flare.
"They are coming!" he whispered.
"Who?"
Then she heard the footsteps—more than one pair—and Shade's jaws snagged in her robe and jerked.
"Douse the crystal!" Chane whispered.
Wynn shoved the crystal in her pocket as they fled down the right-side passage. Chane got ahead and veered in against the wall. He pulled her in beside himself, and they flattened there.
"Be ready to hurry on if they come our way," he whispered.
Wynn peered up, still wondering why they hid. She just made out the branch head around the wall's gradual curve—and light was growing there. Chane pulled his cloak's hood forward, and Wynn did the same with her robe's cowl.
Over the rise at the passage's head, a sharp point of light appeared. It glowed from the hand of a tall and slender figure in a white robe.
"The elf," Chane whispered.
Wynn glanced up. Was that what he'd smelled? She tensed as the tall elf paused and looked back. Behind him came a much shorter figure in a deep sea green cloak, followed by three Weardas.
Duchess Reine was carrying a folded stack of clothing.
Chane gripped Wynn's hand, flattening his other against the wall. She knew he was preparing to bolt, and his hand in hers felt as cold as the stone. Shade stood poised at her hip, unblinking eyes watching up the passage.
The duchess approached the elf holding up a bright cold lamp crystal.
Yes, that was what it was, and Wynn's eyes widened. There were no orders of the guild that wore white, so where had the elf acquired a guild crystal?
The duchess passed the elf and disappeared down the other passage branch, the left one. The tall white-clad elf followed her, as did her bodyguards, and they all vanished from sight.
Chane's grip slackened on Wynn's hand. "Let us continue down this direction for now."
"No, wait," she whispered.
Wynn wondered why the duchess was wandering these lonely backways under Sea-Side, the same in which Sliver had followed her brother. Wynn took a step upslope.