Flexing wood in a stout travel trunk?
He returned to the trunk and began pulling everything out for the third time.
"Leesil?" Magiere called, her voice carrying from the hall.
He was halfway to the bottom when he heard her come up behind him.
"You've done that twice already," she insisted. "There's nothing there."
Leesil reached the bottom and pressed his palm firmly against it. The wood gave beneath the fabric. The trunk's sides were thick and solid, so why the thinner bottom? He placed his other hand on the outside floor. The distance down to floor and trunk bottom was noticeably different.
A false bottom. But how was it opened if the fabric was solid throughout the interior?
"Leesil!" Magiere said, her voice growing more annoyed.
He ignored her and shoved the trunk over backward. The lid slammed on the floor as the vessel toppled. He stared at its bottom, solid and flush to the edges of its side walls. There were six brass knobs that served as legs along the bottom edges, one for each corner, and the last two placed midway along the front and back edge. These were held in place with small brass nails.
He picked at one with his fingernail. It was loose. Magiere crouched down, as Leesil slipped a stiletto from his wrist sheath and began popping out brass nails. Only the front knob legs came off, and the trunk's bottom fell open.
Leesil found himself staring at a pile of flattened parchments. The first depicted the charcoal-drawn layout of a four-towered keep in crude lines. The sheet below this was an interior map of the same structure. He touched it. Part of the rendering smeared slightly, while the rest seemed set and clean. The whole of it was unfinished, with notable areas still blank within the structure's outline.
"Recently drawn," he said. "Or parts of it."
"Is that Darmouth's keep?" Magiere asked. "Why would Byrd have drawings of the keep?"
Leesil paged through more parchments. There were eight, each depicting a different area or level. All were incomplete, with at least three that had almost nothing added within the outline of the outer walls. Two were of the towers' interiors, with inked marks and lines that might indicate paths walked by sentries.
"A better question…" Leesil said, almost to himself. "Why have drawings of the keep and be meeting with an anmaglahk?
Magiere didn't answer but reached out for his wrist. "What are you going to do?"
"Ask him. I'm going to sit downstairs until he returns."
"I'll wait with you," she said, and it wasn't a suggestion.
"He won't talk unless I'm alone. Gather up Wynn and Chap and go to bed. I'll tell you everything I learn."
Magiere heaved on his wrist, jerking him around to face her. For all the rage in her face, he could feel her shaking through the grip on his wrist. Leesil had no patience for a fight over this.
"fust do it, Magiere!" he snapped. "I know what I'm doing-and you don't.
A long silence followed as she stared back. Magiere turned away without a word. Leesil rolled up the drawings, stuffed them into his shirt, and followed her downstairs.
Wynn was stunned when the search was called off. Of course she refused, until Leesil explained that he was going to speak with Byrd rather than tear the inn apart. Something must have slipped into his voice or expression, because she nodded and did as he asked without another word. He didn't show her the drawings, or he'd never get rid of her. Magiere ushered Chap and Wynn upstairs to their rooms, but Magiere never looked back at him.
Leesil turned down the lanterns and settled in the chair near the front wall to watch the door. He unfastened the catches on his wrist sheaths.
His father and mother, contrary to Byrd's acquaintance, had taught him many things in this city. Beyond blood ties-and sometimes those included-there were no friends here. There were only those who hadn't yet betrayed you, and those you hadn't yet betrayed.
Tomato and Potato were asleep on the bed, so Wynn was alone with Chap in her room. She sat cross-legged upon a braided rug, brushing his fur in long strokes to carefully work out his mats and tangles. She could not always read Chap's expressions, but he appeared relieved by her attention. With her hands once again in his silvery fur, she remembered the strange chorus of leaf-wings she had heard while watching him before the battle on the Stravinan border.
Part of her felt guilty for avoiding the dog… Fay… majay-hi… whatever or however she should think of him. He was all of these things, all at once, though this merely made it more confusing. He had also been her constant companion on this journey. One part of her took solace in his presence, but another part was frightened by the mysteries behind his presence. She knew too little of his agenda, and why he had left his existence among the Fay.
Was that what she had heard in her head as Chap grew angrier and more savage before the battle? And how or why had it happened to her, for that matter?
Chap whined and pushed his head against her folded legs. Wynn wrapped her arms around him.
There were moments such as this when he seemed no more than her four-legged traveling companion. He pulled his head back and whined again, then perked his ears in a quizzical expression.
Wynn grew hesitant. There were other moments when his canine form seemed a deception for his true existence-a Fay in flesh.
And everything in Wynn's vision turned blue-white.
Her stomach lurched, and her dinner rose in her throat. The room became a shadowy version of its former state. Overlaying all was an off-white mist just shy of blue. Its radiance permeated everything like a sec-ond view of the room coloring her normal sight. Within the walls, the radiance thinned, leaving shadowed hollows in the planks. The glimmer thickened within the sleeping forms of Tomato and Potato curled together in a tangle of little legs upon the bed's end.
Wynn lurched back, pulling away from Chap, and the sudden movement sharpened her vertigo. She stared at Chap in fear.
Unlike all else in her tangled vision, he was the only thing that was not permeated with the blue-white trails of mist. Chap was one image, one whole shape, glowing with brilliance. His fur glistened like a million hazy threads of white silk, and his eyes scintillated like crystals held up to the sun.
Wynn cringed and blinked.
The room became dull and dim again. Before her was Chap, silvery gray and furry. He cocked his head, staring at her.
Wynn's panic rose until she shook. This had happened only once before.
In a dark forest in Droevinka, she had dabbled in thaumaturgy to give herself mantic sight. A foolish act, and in the end only Chap had been able to free her of the wild magic she could not control. With it, she had seen the elemental Spirit layer of the world in order to track the undead sorcerer Vordana, so Magiere and Leesil might free a town of the monster's influence.
Why had this happened again? Why had she heard the strange leaf-wings in her head when she had watched Chap at the Stravinan border? And mostly, what had been revealed to her that she did not yet understand?
Wynn took long breaths, looking back into Chap's curious eyes, until her shudders faded.
She needed to put aside the form she saw before her, to talk with him, but she hesitated. How could she ask after the nauseating leaf-wing sounds in her head, or tell him of her revulsion at his blood-soaked jowls? She laid aside the brush, pulled the talking hide closer, and unrolled it on the floor with honest purpose in mind.
"Chap," she began. "At the border, before you ran for the field to save the refugees, what were you doing at the city gate? Something happened that we did not see."
Chap wrinkled his snout briefly. He quickly sniffed at her as if check-ing for something, then barked twice for "no." It was low and breathy, like a whisper, and too quick and dismissive.
Perhaps it was that Wynn knew him well, for all the time they had spent together. Or that Chap was not a good liar when confronted.
"I saw you," she said, "and I heard… felt something. It made me sick and dizzy, like back in Droevinka, when you licked away my mantic sight. I heard whispers while I watched you. What were you doing?"
She hoped he would understand-trust enough to help her to understand.
Chap stood on all fours, dipped his head, and then leaned forward to lift his muzzle at her. His eyes locked on hers and a low rumble came up his throat. One of Chap's jowls rose slightly to expose teeth, and his crystal-blue eyes narrowed.
Wynn stiffened and leaned away.
He remained there so long in watchful silence that Wynn's shoulders and back began to ache from clenched muscles. She did not believe Chap would hurt her, but the questions had upset him more than she anticipated.
Chap swung his head down to the hide, his gaze leaving her only at the last instant. He pawed the symbols, and Wynn translated his words in her mind.
What did you hear?
She slowly sat upright. "Not words… and not in my ears, as no one else appeared to hear it. It was like leaves in a swirling wind and a flight of insects buzzing inside my head all at once."
Chap made no response by expression or movement.
"When they fell silent," she added, "a single leaf-wing answered back… What were you doing?"
Chap dropped on his haunches. He cocked his head again, and it remained there at that odd angle, his narrow eyes studying her.
Wynn felt naked under his scrutiny. Was she being judged?
Chap let out a rolling exhale, like a growl without voice. To Wynn, it sounded like a weary resignation. He pawed again, hesitating over the symbols he chose upon the hide. Some part of what he told her now was difficult for words.
Spiord… arn… cheang'a.
"Spirit… one-as-one, or collective… speech-no, communication?" Wynn whispered.
Beyond their differing dialects of Elvish, there was the more frustrating challenge that Chap did not think like mortals. At least not from what Wynn had reasoned out. Sometimes he grew frustrated in trying to express himself, while other times he was just reticent.
Elvish was a language of "root" words to be transformed into nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, as well as other elements of language. Chap now used pure "root" words, and perhaps transforming them could not render his full meaning.
"Spirit… as one of the five elements?" she asked.
Chap huffed twice for "no."
"Then spirit, as in spiritual… as opposed to physical or mental aspects of existence?"
He huffed once for "yes," then quickly added two more. Three total meant "maybe."
"Spirit… collective… communication…" Wynn rolled the terms together in her mind and drew a breath. "Commune? You were communing with the Fay?"
It was the closest meaning she could find. Instead of barking once, Chap nodded, but then pawed two specific Elvish words on the hide-"yes" and "no."
Wynn's translation was close enough but not completely what he meant or what she had "overheard" in her mind. And more realization came to Wynn.
To banish her mantic sight in the Droevinkan forest, Chap had touched her after all the flowing blue-white trails of mist had joined in his flesh. He had touched her while joined with his kin in some way that was even deeper than his communion at the Stravinan border. Something more had happened in that instant that even Chap could not account for.
His expression went flat, and he backed away.
"The mantic sight… it is still with me as well," she whispered. "I saw you a moment ago as I did that night in Droevinka."
Chap did not answer, but his crystalline eyes looked at her with a hint of sadness. Wynn realized that what was happening to her was a mistake that worried him. Still, a weight had lifted from her. She knew what she had heard at the border, and she held out her arms to him.
"I did not mean to… did not know, If you wish, I will not tell anyone of this. I promise."
Chap moved closer. Leaning in, he sniffed again as if testing her scent.
His tongue flicked out across her cheek, and Wynn closed her arms around him.