"One of mine watches over her," the tall elf replied, "though she does not know this."
A flash of surprise crossed Byrd's ruddy features. "You have orders to watch over her?"
At the mention of "orders" a face appeared in the elf's mind. Chap focused on the memory and examined what he saw there.
Aoishenis-Ahare.
Chap knew this was less an elvish name than a title. In his brief time among the elven people, he had seen this face, heard these words-in the memories of others. "Most Aged Father" would be as close as Wynn might have translated it. The race in the visitor's memory was aged and withered, with sunken cheeks that sharpened its triangular shape and made the cheekbones jut outward. Yet the skin was light for an elf, as if not touched by the sun in decades. The whites around the cloudy amber irises were faintly yellowed. His long hair was so white it seemed translucent.
Most Aged Father was patriarch to the elves of this continent, as well as the leader of the Anmaglahk. Along with this face, Chap sensed troubled dissent in the elf standing before Byrd. Even fear. This one was hiding something from Aoishenis-Ahare, his superior.
"Brot'an, really," Byrd said when his visitor remained silent. "This isn't at all how I do things."
The elf's name seemed familiar, though Chap could not recall where or when he might have heard it. Byrd's voice pulled Chap's gaze, and he caught a flickering memory of a younger Leesil from years past that surfaced in Byrd's mind.
Byrd turned his head with a puzzled frown, eyes lifting toward the stairs.
Wynn quickly shoved Chap back and ducked low.
All memory images vanished as Chap lost sight of both men. He heard a rustle of fabric and quick footsteps. By the time he ventured to peer below, as did Wynn, the inn's front door swung shut. Byrd and his companion were gone.
The presence of an Anmaglahk in Venjetz was a complication with unknown consequences. That this first sighting was within earshot of Leesil left Chap deeply disturbed.
Since being given to Leesil as a pup, Chap had met few elves in his life. Most such encounters ranged from uncertain to dangerous. Nein'a, Leesil's mother, had been secretive and guarded, though on a few occasions Chap had seen Most Aged Father's face in her memories-and felt the same discontent in her that he had sensed in this Brot'an here tonight.
Whatever Byrd's reasons for involvement with elves, Leesil should be kept far from them. Difficult at best, since he might have to be told of their presence-but not yet. There was some small hope of brief peace for him, alone with only Magiere for this night.
Wynn scrambled over the top stair and ran down the hall. She reached Magiere and Leesil's door before Chap realized her intent.
He raced after her and squirmed around her legs, trying to block her way. Before he could shove Wynn back with his head and paws, she reached out and pushed the door wide.
"Get up! We must search this place-now!"
Wynn's eyes widened, and Chap groaned in frustration as he looked into the dark room.
What little light filled the space from a single candle exposed shoulders and a back of pale, flawless skin over smooth muscles. Magiere sat naked in Leesil's lap upon the bed, her legs and arms wrapped about him. She turned her head enough to glare toward the open door with one dark eye.
Chap backed up with a hard swallow, and Wynn spun away, eyes clamped shut as she cringed against the hallway wall.
"Damn you, Wynn," Magiere growled. "Not again!"
Chane climbed from the bathtub and used a dressing gown left by the maid to dry himself. Welstiel had procured rooms at the Bronze Bell, reputed to be the finest inn Venjetz offered. The accommodations were decent. Nothing close to the standards of Bela, but the bed was covered in a green comforter and the aged furniture was well kept. His room contained two porcelain oil lamps and a small table and chair.
When Welstiel requested they both have a bath, servants carried tin tubs into each of their rooms, filling them with buckets of hot water. Later, the tubs would be laboriously emptied and removed.
Chane remembered the rooms Welstiel had rented in Keonsk, the luxury of sleeping in a bed, and the fat candles by which he wrote all through the long night. Looking about at his current surroundings, he should have recaptured some pleasure in the finer things, but he felt nothing at all.
He combed his red-brown hair back behind his ears and dressed himself in a pair of spare breeches and a tan shirt. The rest of his clothing had been taken by a maid for laundering. He had not given up his cloak and brushed this out himself. He strapped on his longsword, donned the cloak, and stepped across the hallway to knock at Welstiel's door.
"It's me," he said with a rasping voice.
"Come in," Welstiel called.
Chane found Welstiel sitting on the floor with the domed brass plate before him and a knife in his hand. These were the tools Welstiel used to scry for Magiere's whereabouts. He and Chane excelled at differing methods of conjury. Welstiel was an artificer who created objects to work his magic Chane relied primarily upon ritual, though he used spellwork if urgency required it.
He stepped in and closed the door. "You wish to locate her tonight?"
His companion looked much improved. Bathed, groomed, and properly dressed, Welstiel was a striking figure, distinguished white patches at his temples visible now that his hair was combed back. He no longer wore his black leather gloves, and Chane's gaze strayed to the missing end of Welstiel's left little finger. It bled black fluid from a fresh cut, and Chane saw one dark droplet upon the brass plate's domed backside.
"Only her general whereabouts," Welstiel replied.
Speaking of Magiere was difficult for Chane. Since the night his robin had listened in at the Soladran barracks, his thoughts had become confused concerning Magiere… and Wynn.
"I'm going out," he whispered.
"Out?"
"I'll return by sunrise."
"Be cautious," Welstiel said with a disapproving frown. "Here the city's soldiers appear to do anything they wish."
Chane left without response. The last thing that concerned him was a pack of mortals who thought they had power over their fellow cattle. As he crested the top of the plush staircase, movement in the foyer below caught his attention.
A slender woman in a burgundy gown donned a charcoal cape, fastening it with a silver clasp. Soft black curls hung to her shoulders around a pale throat and face. Her features were small and lovely down to her tiny red mouth. Her expression was calm, but Chane sensed urgency both in her eyes and her controlled movements.
He gripped the railing, and the wood creaked beneath his fingers in answer to his hunger.
In the last village, he'd lured out a woman of similar make. A mere peasant compared to the one he now watched, but both women's features hinted of the one prey he wanted most of all. Before Welstiel had interrupted him behind the hut among the snow-dusted trees, he'd tried to find solace in tearing warm flesh. Even with blood between his clenching teeth, a missing memory left an ache in him he couldn't smother.
He couldn't remember Wynn touching him in the murky forest of Apudalsat… after Magiere took his head.
He must have fallen immediately, prone upon the ground as his head rolled away. But surely it hadn't been so quick that he remembered nothing of Wynn falling upon him in sorrow. Some touch, or just the pressure… and not being able to do anything for her.
All he remembered was the brief pain of Magiere's blade through his throat and then waking among blood and corpses with Welstiel sitting impatiently nearby.
And behind that forest hut, he'd bitten deep into the peasant woman's throat as if digging for a memory lost between those two moments. He squeezed the outcry from the woman's mouth until her jaw cracked under his hand. There was the rush of life filling him, and the distant euphoria it carried in the wake of the kill-and nothing more.