Nein'a was his contrast in all ways-tall compared to humans, with silken white-blond hair tied in a coil. More often she wore it loose down her back and rucked it behind her elongated ears whenever she wished to accentuate her strange appearance. Her skin was a golden brown. Almond-shaped amber eyes, larger than a human's, dominated her triangular face. They captivated any human male who stared at her too long. As a spy and assassin, this was her strength.
Nein'a served as a distraction at Darmouth's rare evening events, putting off guard any noble or officer her lord suspected of duplicity. Such men eagerly tried to impress her with whispered words of their affluence in the province, and how much they could offer for her favor. But her whole world had just shifted-hers and her husband's.
Her heart pounded slowly inside her narrow rib cage, and she shook her head. "Leesil is upstairs, asleep in his bed."
"No." Gavril looked in her eyes. "He is gone."
Nein'a closed her large eyes. Leesil had abandoned them?
"Darmouth will hang us from the keep walls," Gavril said, and he pointed at her. "Change, and grab weapons. I will retrieve our store of coins."
Of the three of them, one always remained in the house. The only exception was when she was called to one of Darmouth's evening gatherings and remained under her lord's watchful eyes. Only then were her husband and son both free to leave their home. Gavril sometimes took Leesil to a little inn at the backside of the merchant district. But one of them was always a hostage to ensure the others' obedience. Yet Leesil, her son, had fled the city of Venjetz.
"Where did you hear this?" she asked.
"Byrd warned me and-"
"How did he know?"
"There's no time," Gavril said too sharply. "We must run!"
He hurried out of the kitchen.
Nein'a followed him upstairs, but before she ducked into their room she went to Leesil's. It was empty, and the covers lay rustled. Chap was nowhere to be seen. She suppressed panic, turning cold inside, and rushed back to her own room.
She tore open her dress, snapping off buttons, and let it drop upon the floor. Standing naked in the cold room, she looked briefly toward the rear window. Their lord and master's massive keep loomed offshore in the lake. She hurried to gather clothing for a cold night's travel. Then she spotted something lying upon their bed.
Nein'a snatched up the small drawstring pouch. It was full of silver shils and pennies. A sharp pain rose in her chest as if she had been stabbed. Leesil had left this for them. Did it mean he'd been forced to leave? Had he planned for this?
When she glanced back to the open door, Gavril was climbing onto the railing of the stairs to the third floor. He reached for the hallway's ceiling lantern.
When Nein'a had breeches, a wool shirt, and boots on, she kicked the dress under the bed and retrieved a cloth-wrapped bundle from beneath the dresser. The last thing she grabbed was a charcoal wool cloak. By the time she stepped out, Gavril stood before her with another small pouch in hand. He reached out and gently touched her arm.
"Leesil was spotted hiding in a wagon beyond the city wall. The alarm was sounded, and the wall patrol has been alerted. We'll never get out that way. We have to go back inside the keep."
She knew what he suggested, and the risk was great. "The guards at the bridge gatehouse may be alerted as well. We will be caught in the open."
"We have no choice. Our only hope waits in the belly of that keep."
He was correct, and she knew it.
They slipped out the kitchen door and into the night. Darmouth's keep stood out upon the lake, its tower braziers casting burning reflections upon the water.
"Why would Leesil do this?" Nein'a whispered, pulling her cloak tighter.
Gavril's voice was soft as he gestured toward the keep. "I think our son could bear no more."
Nein'a looked up. With her elven night sight, she could see clearly and did not need the orange light of the tower braziers. A limp corpse in a cream robe hung upon the nearest wall. For an instant she felt the cold stab in her chest once again.
"He left us to die because an old scholar was hanged?"
Gavril's softness vanished. "Leesil wasn't meant for this life, but you insisted…"
Nein'a knew the words hanging on his stilled tongue. She had been the one to insist on their son's training, though Gavril would have preferred Leesil remain nothing but a hostage, the leash Darmouth used to bind them. She had trained their son in the ways of her caste, the Anmaglahk.
There was no time left to defend or regret what was past. Nein'a grabbed Gavril's hand and hurried along the water's edge toward the bridge. They fled toward the keep and their only chance of living through the night.
CHAPTER ONE
"Where is that girl?" Magiere muttered. "And that conniving four-footer?"
"Wynn and Chap will be along," Leesil answered. "The day's almost gone, so we might as well stay in the city one more night."
Leesil didn't look at Magiere and barely heard her impatient footfalls smack upon the wet street behind him. Instead, he stared out the massive northern gate of Soladran, the northernmost city in the nation of Stravina. As he raised his eyes to the distant snow-covered peaks of the Crown Range, his gaze passed over the forested foothills of Lord Darmouth's province at the eastern side of the Warlands.
He closed his wool cloak against the late afternoon chill as a gust of wind slipped through the stone archway with its massive timber gates swung wide. The wind rustled his hood, and he tucked escaping strands of white-blond hair back into hiding.
Full winter had come during their long trek up the continent. Patches of lingering snowfall marked the ground inside and outside of the city walls, and lightly dusted the shake-and-thatch roofs of the nearest shops and other buildings. The open land beyond the gate sloped down to a wide ice-fringed stream running east to west. On the water's far side, the ground rose to an open field of browned wild grass partially matted by the earlier cold rain. Farther out was the tree line of firs and pines marking the edge of the foothills.
There lay the forested reaches of Darmouth's domain within the War-lands, still and quiet below a gray sky. The naive might find the sight serene, but it was a deceit to the eyes, and Leesil knew it. Across the border stream waited the haunts of his first life.
Son and slave, spy and assassin.
Never walk backward through your own life. At least, that was the truism Leesil made up for this moment, but he had little choice if he was to continue his search.
No visible road ran out from the gate, and no matching path could be seen on the border stream's far side. Sparse travel and trade came here from the north. None of the Stravinan border guards in their white tabards and fur-trimmed helmets stepped beyond the gate's threshold. The citizens of Soladran didn't even glance out the opening as they went about their daily routines. The opening of the gate each morning was a ritual rather than a necessity to the life of the city.
Leesil was so absorbed that he barely noticed Magiere cease pacing. She peered at him around the side of his hood with an impatient scowl, and then followed his gaze toward the tree-shrouded land and the white-capped mountains beyond. Leesil turned his eyes just enough to watch her search for whatever had captured his attention.
Her wool cloak's hood lay in bunched rolls across her shoulders, and her black hair was pulled back by a leather thong into a dangling tail. She glared out the gate, dark brown eyes in a face too pale for the living. In profile, her nose ran straight and long down to the clean, neatly chiseled wedge of her mouth, lips barely tinted with life compared to her complexion. Her scowl faded in realization.