Wynn flopped facedown on the bed. "Let go!"
Shade growled and heaved again.
Wynn shot headfirst over the bed's side, hanging upside down below a stubborn Shade.
"I should go alone," Chane said. "She does not want to leave you."
No, that wasn't it. Shade was trying to tell her something else, but at the moment, Wynn didn't care.
"Give it to me!" she growled through clenched teeth.
Wynn twisted over, slapping at Shade's legs while her own were still hooked over the bed's edge. In that upside-down tug-of-war, she finally twisted the staff out of Shade's mouth. When the dog tried to grab it again, she scrambled away across the bed.
Shade hopped up and began barking, and Wynn finally realized what this was all about.
She rarely went anywhere without the staff. Shade had pinned it down, trying to insist that Wynn "stay put" in this room.
"I'm following the duchess!" Wynn growled back. "You are going with Chane. Now get!"
With a sharp huff through wrinkled jowls, Shade bounded off and out past Chane, rumbling all the way. Wynn exhaled in frustration, though Chane just shook his head and closed the door. She got up, brushing herself off, and went to return the staff to its place.
She was sick and tired of everyone telling her what to do or not do, even a dog now. She snatched the scroll case off the table and headed for the bed. Then she froze in the middle of the room.
Wynn turned very slowly and stared at the door.
She imagined Chane following a peeved Shade. Not Shade following Chane, but rather … the petulant, adolescent majay-hì had been leading the way.
"Oh … oh, you …" Wynn began, unable to get the words out.
She ran for the door, jerked it open, and rushed out.
Chane and Shade were already gone, but Wynn still knew one thing: She had shown Shade what needed to be done, but the dog had given up only once Wynn had lost her temper and ordered Shade out … using language, not memory-speak! And how could Shade have understood what Wynn planned to do as her own task while Chane—and Shade—were away?
Wynn clutched the scroll case hard. "You little sneak … just like your father!"
Shade had understood words—at least enough to know exactly what Wynn planned to do.
All this time wrestling with memory-speak until her head ached—and now it seemed Shade understood at least some of what she heard. Wynn stepped back inside and slammed the door.
"Oh … I've got some choice words for you … when you get back!"
Sau'ilahk heard and saw through his servitor half-submerged in the ceiling stone of Wynn's room. He quickly recalled it.
The servitor rose from the inn's side wall, surfacing like a four-legged spider from mottled gray water. Sau'ilahk reached out with one solidified hand and snatched its rock body.
Wynn, Chane, and Shade were on the move again, but along separate ways.
The scroll case had also caught his attention. But it was only one text among many, a paltry resource compared to others. Clutching his conjured creation, Sau'ilahk slid out toward the mainway.
In the distance, Chane and Shade headed toward Sea-Side's entrance cavern and the lift down to its lower port. The conversation regarding one called Ore-Locks had confused him. But he had forgotten all about the Iron-Braids once he heard mention of the duchess.
An Âreskynna—"Kin of the Ocean Waves"—if only by marriage, was here in the seatt. This good fortune was almost unbelievable. Duchess Reine had acted for the royals in Calm Seatt, and they were directly connected to the guild superiors and the translation project.
Sau'ilahk half submerged into the inn's wall, pulling his servitor with him. He waited there, watching for Wynn to emerge. When she did, he merely blinked along after her, slipping in and out of dormancy as his servitor scuttled and swam high along the mainway's walls.
Wynn finally paused on the next level down and peered into a side passage.
Reine Faunier-Âreskynna stepped from a shop.
Sau'ilahk knew her face. She had helped protect his interests at the guild, keeping that city captain at bay in his investigation. The nature of the texts had remained secret, in the guild's control. The translation folios had remained scattered about the city's scribe shops.
Until Wynn had intervened.
But he no longer needed her … not if the duchess could lead him right to the texts.
Sau'ilahk would soon be finished with one troublesome little sage.
Chapter 14
Chane overtook Shade and led the way to Sea-Side's outer cavern. Passing the turn into the tram station, he headed for the main entrance. Unlike Bay-Side's larger one, there was no true market here, only a few scattered vendors with carts servicing patrons on their way in or out.
He stepped out of the huge archway and onto the mountainside street, and Shade pulled up silently beside him. The pair found themselves in the settlement's surface district overlooking the vast western ocean.
Sea-Side was less developed than Bay-Side. The narrow main street switch-backing up the mountain appeared steeper and more haphazard by comparison. Still, it was lined with varied buildings of stone, built in thin-line fitted blocks or carved from the mountain's rock. Directly ahead at the narrow plateau's edge was another crank house and lift station.
Shade began rumbling as Chane steeled his resolve. These dwarven contraptions were the most unnatural method of travel he had ever experienced.
"Come on," he rasped.
Shade's ears pricked over a wrinkled snout, and Chane realized he had picked up Wynn's habit of talking as if the dog understood.
He pulled out his pouch, pouring dwarven and Numan coins into his palm. He had no idea how much was proper for the trip down to shore level. As they approached the station, an impossibly wide dwarf waddled out of the crank house. How this whale of a stationmaster even fit through a dwarven doorway was a wonder. Wild hair tinted like redwood bark swung around his face, and a like-colored beard was dotted with oats. Perhaps he had been sharing a meal with his mules.
"Down?" he grunted. "How far?"
Chane held out his coins. "To the port."
The stationmaster grunted again and plucked a dwarven iron "slug" from Chane's palm. When he glanced at Shade, with a twitch of his bulbous nose he pecked out a copper one as well. He waved Chane toward the lift, not bothering to escort one lone passenger.
No one else waited to descend and Chane saw no passenger lift as at Sea-Side. There was only one large cargo lift, and he stepped quietly aboard. As he turned, about to close the lift's gate, Shade was lingering on the stone loading ramp.
Her head hung low. Rumbling, with every slow paw pad, she finally followed. Chane had barely closed and pinned the gate when metal clanks sounded from the crank house. At the lift's first lurch, he grabbed the rail with both hands, wood creaking under his fingers. An instant later, mountainside crags and gashes began rushing by.
Speed built quickly—too quickly—until they dropped far faster than the ride up to Bay-Side. Thunderous racket rose under the platform from its massive wheels boring along the granite road's steel-lined ruts. It was not just the sound—the vibrations shuddered through Chane's whole body. He felt as if he were being thrown down the mountain at the waiting rocky shore below. He thought he heard Shade gag over the lift's raucous noise.
He did not want to look.
The lift passed two lower settlements, but neither had a station where passengers transferred to another lift. Sea-Side's one cargo lift went all the way down, and those brief settlements blurred by in a rush.
Chane's only comfort was in knowing that—one way or another—the lift would eventually stop. When it finally slowed, then bumped into a wall-less station at the port's back, he shuddered in the silent cloud-laced night.