"What are you doing?" Chane repeated. "I thought to find you near the market or the duchess's inn."
"Pointless," she answered, rolling up the scroll and tucking it back in its case. "Reine has retired until tomorrow night. Everyone with her is apparently waiting for something. They're going back down for days. I have no idea what's so special about tomorrow night."
"The new moon," Chane said, and before she asked, he shook his head. "Something I noticed while onshore. The moon will be invisible tomorrow night."
Wynn pondered this, though it didn't seem to mean anything. Stonewalkers would rarely see the sky or the moon.
"Never mind … did you find a way in or not?"
"Ask her," Chane replied, jutting his chin toward Shade.
Wynn blinked rapidly. How could Shade know but not Chane? Upon seeing her confusion, he explained all, up to the point when Shade led him back to the lift.
"She clearly wanted to return to you," he added.
Wynn put aside Shade's sneaky reluctance for language and crooked a finger at the dog.
"All right, you," she said. "Out with it, now!"
Shade approached and Wynn reached for the dog's face. At the touch, she raised a memory that Shade had shown her—of the grated opening beyond a sea pool in the sealed chamber that the duchess had visited.
In answer, Wynn's head swam with new images, scents, and sounds.
The smell of the sea was overpowering, as if it clogged her whole nose. She felt cold and damp all over. Even high up the shore's slope, the surf's spray kept hitting her. Her feet hurt, as if she'd been walking barefooted—bare-pawed—on broken stone all night.
Inside Shade's memory, Wynn looked down upon rock as she sniffed her way along the shore. Wet crags, cracks, and crevices glittered in her sight. She—Shade—glanced up.
The sky over the ocean was dimly lit. Dawn wasn't far off, though the sun couldn't have yet crested the eastern horizon beyond the mountain. Only Shade's superior sight allowed Wynn to see as much as she did. She felt and heard herself whine, and the sound was so frustrated and tired.
In the distance, too far off, she made out the port by its tallest buildings and the few moored ships. Instead of dipping her muzzle in continued search, Wynn turned back toward the port. Her pace quickened as much as shifting rocks would allow.
Wynn's own frustration and misery mounted on top of the memory. She let her hands drop from Shade's face at her own weak whisper.
"No … no."
"What did she find?" Chane rasped.
Wynn was too crestfallen to face him. Shade had found nothing. But when Wynn tried to lift her head to answer, Shade huffed. The dog dipped and wriggled her muzzle until Wynn's fingers slid down her neck.
The memory began again.
Down the shore, the port seemed nearer, but not by much. And Wynn—Shade—climbed higher up the shore to pass over a deep inlet. Then she stopped, pricked her ears, and listened. The sound of the water below seemed wrong.
She heard the undulating sea breach the inlet's shallows, and she crept dangerously close to look down. Waves broke out near the inlet's mouth, and below, she couldn't quite see the inlet's back.
A second memory flashed over this moment, from sometime much earlier during the night.
Wynn saw an inlet from along its southern-bordering rock ridge. At the back was a wide overhang barely a few feet above the water. She—Shade—listened as the water hit the cave's back somewhere in that deeper dark.
Then she was back in the previous memory.
She stood atop the overhang, and the sound had changed. It echoed. Not the soft reverberation of water undulating against the cave's back, as in that second overlaid memory. It was more rolling and extended, amplified in the space below.
The water in the inlet was shallower now, revealing the inlet's rocky floor.
Wynn scrambled across the inlet's top and down the backbone. She didn't stop until she was all the way along its inner slope and staring into the inlet. At low tide, the overhang was now well above the water's shifting surface. The change of the waves' sounds increased, becoming clearer. Wynn leaped off the backbone's edge into the cold water.
She sank chest-deep as all four paws fought for sure footing, and she heard …
A soft trickling, water flowing … out between sluggish inward surges.
She froze, waiting as water rolled inward, rising halfway up her hips and soaking her tail. When it receded, again she heard the hollow echo of water trickling out—as if from a deeper space.
Wynn lunged in beneath the dark overhang. When her nose finally struck the back wall, she recoiled, snorting and shaking her head. The dim light of predawn wasn't enough to see, but the water was now only halfway up her legs. She nosed carefully along the rough stone until … it wasn't there anymore.
Wynn—Shade—pulled back, startled, but the echo of trickling water was now loud in her ears. She glanced back to get her bearings and found she had shifted far to the right of the overhang's opening. Whatever space she'd found would never even be seen from outside.
She extended her snout.
Poking about, she found an opening's edge. One careful paw step after another, she crept inward.
It was a tunnel. By her best guess and the echoes of her splashing steps, the passage was not tall. The farther she went, the less water surged inward, until it barely splashed under her paws. Then her head bumped sharply against something hard. Somehow it had missed her nose and caught her on both sides of her face. She retreated as the thump echoed, sounding dully metallic.
Wynn sniffed about until she found something.
It was upright and round, thicker than her foreleg. She carefully closed her jaws on it. Indeed, it tasted like metal. The next vertical bar was too close to slip her head between them.
Shade had found a hidden passage, but it was barred against entry.
She was already shivering from cold, but it didn't matter. She had found what Wynn needed.
Shade wheeled about, lunging back down the passage, into the ending cave, and out from beneath the overhang. By the time she scrabbled over the rocky backbone, she was hurrying for port as fast as her footing allowed. When she reached it, full daylight had arrived.
Fishermen and sailors glanced over as she trotted between the buildings, but none approached, giving her no reason to growl. She was alone and cold, longing for the blanket at the inn. She stopped outside the door, hesitated, and turned aside. Then she spotted a small shed filled with netting and piled canvas.
Shade slipped inside and burrowed into the pile.
The memory ended suddenly.
Wynn's head ached from such a prolonged exchange, but she knew the rest of what had happened. Shade had waited out the day, having no way to reach Chane. Close within sight of the inn, she had watched for him and led him back to the lift.
Wynn was shaking, and not just from memory of drenching cold water.
"Oh … oh, my Shade!"
"What did you see?" Chane asked.
"She did it! She found it! Shade, you clever girl!"
Wynn told Chane all she'd experienced. His eyes widened at her mention of the inlet, and he shook his head, as if denying it was true.
"The tide," he hissed. "Why did I not think of that?"
At Wynn's silence, he explained how he and Shade had first stumbled upon the inlet and found nothing.
"We must check the tides," he added, "and return when it is low or at least receding."
"And find a way through those bars," Wynn returned. "It may be another grate, like the one in the pool's room."
Then she faltered. One puzzle remained concerning her companions' venture.
"How did you make Shade understand what to do … on her own?" she asked. "She can memory-speak only with me."
Chane hesitated and then raised his hand directly before Wynn's face—the hand with the brass ring.