A Play of Shadow (73 page)

Patpat.

Though he was familiar with the yling by now, Bannan couldn’t be sure if he saw it or a leaf held aloft by a breeze. Save there was no breeze and the leaf kept rising, following the stairs.

To stop, midair, then tumble back and down, now leaf, now yling.

To land in Jenn’s hair, not his.

Her dear face flashed disappointment, then acceptance, and he knew what she’d say before the words left her lips. “I—we—can go no further.”

Lila gave the stairs a suspicious look, shifting that look to Jenn. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Bannan said huskily. The yling chose to show Jenn the edge and, this time, to stay within its magic. He couldn’t blame the tiny creature. The truthseer opened his arms and Jenn put down the toad to run into them, holding him as tightly as he held her. “Take care, Dearest Heart,” he begged, lips to her ear. “Wait for me at the Keepers’ house. We’re almost done. Think of that. We’ll be home, in Marrowdell, tomorrow.”

“I won’t leave without you,” she replied, her voice no steadier. “I won’t!”

It was a promise, and magic, and if he didn’t come back—

He would, Bannan vowed, just as firmly. They moved apart, and he couldn’t smile. “However far we are apart,” he prayed.

“Keep Us Close,” Jenn answered.

Words he felt, warm along his neck.

Then she went to the bottom stair, the vines a wall behind her, and stood waiting.

“If you’re done, little brother?” Lila inquired with unexpected patience. When he nodded, she turned and began to climb.

“Wait.” Bannan had marked the stair the yling refused to pass. “Let me go first.”

“Says the man without his sword.”

Bish’s hung at his hip, but his sister wasn’t wrong. The weapon was small and unfamiliar; he’d likely stab himself before an enemy. Not that he hoped to draw the thing. “Wait, Lila.”

She shook her head, annoyed, but stopped.

Bannan eased by her and looked back at Jenn. Against the dark green, half in shadow, toad under her arm, her golden hair and the pale skin of her shoulders and face shone in the lamplight—or had their own glow—

She seemed more dream than real.

Heart’s Blood. Swallowing, he turned and took not one, but several steps in haste, going past where the yling had been, making sure, before he stopped and turned once more.

Lila frowned up at him. “Before dawn, if you please?”

Not a vine or leaf had moved.

But there was no one else below.

~The edge, elder sister. The edge!~

“Hush,” Jenn said soothingly, though her heart—what felt like her heart—fluttered in her chest and her stomach—for surely nothing else could churn like that—tried to climb into her throat.

The edge? She could feel it for herself, this close.

The yling had bounced back, pretending to hit a glass wall. But it wasn’t a wall, it was another world, to her untouchable.

Unreal.

Bannan passed into it, looked back. Looked for her. He couldn’t see her, though she lifted a hand and waved, just a little. Because you did, when someone tried to find you.

You waved.

Lila glanced back. “What’s this about?”

Jenn made herself smile. “Saying good-bye.”

“Ancestors Limp and Lovelorn. I’ll get him back to you.” Shaking her head, Bannan’s sister bounded up the stairs, following her brother.

Through the edge.

In that other, unreachable, world, Lila took Bannan’s arm and pulled him with her the rest of the way. Out of sight.

Leaving Jenn Nalynn, alone, at the bottom of the stairs.

Though she’d wakened him, on seeing her face, Leott made Jenn sit while he boiled water for tea over an ordinary flame. While the tea brewed, he rummaged under his cot for a small tin box from which he produced dry-looking biscuits for them and a fat worm for the toad who accepted the gift with a gulp.

After they’d sat and sipped and devoured what were—somewhat to Jenn’s surprise, as she’d planned to eat anything he provided without comment—delicious and satisfying treats, she told the artisan of the night’s events as frankly as she would Wainn. Leott listened, eyes hooded with thought, the lion on his shoulders pacing back and forth, until she reached the staircase that led beyond the edge.

“They’ve gone where I cannot,” Jenn finished, tired enough her voice quivered despite her best effort to be stalwart, that being, she’d decided, what she would be until “they”—being everyone, from Bannan and his sister to Herer and his clockwork—returned safely.

Though it was impossible not to think about swords and blood and traps of magic, not to mention outright war.

Laughable now, her dire warning to Bannan of the dangers of Endshere’s homely inn, had she been at all inclined to laugh.

“The shadow lords, is it?” Leott murmured, unsurprised. “A whisper from any of them’s worth all the shouting in either House.”

While not saying much for the government of Mellynne, Jenn thought, it did bode well for Emon’s mission and Rhoth. “Where they meet—” she began, then hesitated.

“More tea?” As he poured, Leott gave her a keen look. “You understand why the sect meets outside the Shadow District, don’t you?”

She’d thought of little else, riding back here. To evade the turn-born seemed the obvious reason, though she couldn’t see the point. Mistress Sand and the rest had no interest outside the edge and absolute power within, when they agreed to use it. Whatever the shadow lords might decide in secret would fail if it went against the Keepers’ smallest whim. Still, like her and Peggs sneaking to the privy for a conversation their father and aunt couldn’t overhear, there was something to be said for privacy.

But privacy wasn’t the most important thing about leaving the edge.

“They remember what others forget,” she said quietly. “They know that makes them special. Meeting outside lets them prove it.”

Leott clapped, startling the now-dozing toad. “It’s a test,” he agreed. “One all who would rise with the sect must pass.”

Jenn stared into her cup. “Has anyone ever—” it wasn’t quite cheating “—found a way not to forget?” When he didn’t answer, she looked up.

He’d stood and walked away.

“I’m sorry,” Jenn said at once. “I didn’t mean to—” what might she have done? “—offer offense.”

The lion’s face looked from his shoulder at her. “You could never offend me, Dear Heart. Your presence is a gift from the Source.” But Leott didn’t turn around, busy, as Jenn rose to join him, his fingers traveling the worn spines of books.

At her approach, he glanced at her with a reassuring smile. “I don’t know how to keep memories the Source wishes lost. However, somewhere in here,” he stroked a volume, “are stories of those blessed by the Source to remember.”

Like Bannan, receiving the mark from the moth. The sei, Jenn thought suddenly, had that power.

Did she? If she did, she frowned inwardly, how did she use it?

“You worry,” he perceived. “Is it of being forgotten by this Lila?”

“I worry about Lila,” Jenn corrected, and sighed. “Though she’d not thank me for it. Winter in Marrowdell isn’t like here. Our rivers freeze; our roads are choked with snow. She won’t see her sons again till spring. Ancestors Witness, it’s not right, a family being so divided. If only I could take her with us.”

The lion opened its jaws in a silent roar as Leott twisted to face her.

“Not that I can, or would even try,” Jenn added, before the toad or kruar could add their own objections. “Bannan and I will leave tomorrow—” Ancestors Witness, it must be nigh dawn. “—today, I mean. Lila will know he’s with them.”

The lion hadn’t relaxed. “Remember, Dear Heart. You and Bannan must be seen to leave as you came, both of you, and no one else. The sect will be watching.”

Good, she thought. Let them prove to themselves Bannan Larmensu was a Keeper. Let them continue to believe only a Keeper could pass between worlds.

Both worlds would be safer for it.

So when at last Jenn Nalynn returned to the house the Shadow Sect had prepared for their magical visitors, the kruar again seeking their rooftops, she smiled at Appin as though he were an ally and friend, and thanked him for the bed.

Not that she’d sleep, until Bannan was safe and back with her.

Moonlight gilded the cobblestones, stars twinkled above, and Jenn had vanished from his sight as if erased from the world. Sick inside, Bannan stumbled more than ran behind Lila along now-deserted roadways until they reached the alley that was her goal.

Once within that cover, she stopped and he did and where was his courage, that he couldn’t ask what she remembered—

Lila punched him in the shoulder. “Smarten up, little brother. You look like your Jenn’s died instead of taking our very good advice.”

He hugged her then, he couldn’t help it, and laughed like a fool. Though startled, Lila patted him on the back instead of objecting.

“I should have known. I should have,” he gasped when she’d had enough and, not gently, shoved him away.

“Yes, to whatever and all of it,” his sister agreed absently, looking down the alley. It was more a small road, wide enough for a cart, and doors broke the walls on either side. “Come.”

They surprised a cat as Lila led the way to a small wooden door within a pair of larger ones meant to receive goods; proof the manor had been a warehouse once, like the other buildings along the greater canals.

Implying there hadn’t always been a need for the shadow lords to meet here. Or shadow lords at all. Marrowdell’s crags bore the scars of the last time the edge had been disturbed and worlds convulsed.

At that moment, what had happened elsewhere along the edge? Bannan wondered suddenly. Here, the other world met this one above the ground, not within it. Had the sky torn open?

“Ancestors Witness, you’d think they could afford better locks,” Lila murmured, having made short work of the one on the door. “This leads into the servants’ corridors,” she reminded him. “We’ll start looking for Glammis where he took you—”

“Heart’s Blood!” Bannan said abruptly. “The barge!”

She swore in understanding. Abandoning the door, they ran to the iron gate at the alley’s end, scrambling up and over.

The Straight loomed before them, stroked by moonlight. Barges lined the bank on which they stood, tarped and quiet, waiting for dawn. Barges as far as his eyes could see, tied by the embargo with Rhoth.

Except for a new gap, where the barge of Glammis Lurgan had moored.

“We’re too late. He’s gone.”

Lila went to the edge. “And not planning to come back, by what he’s left behind.”

Bannan joined her, looking into the water. Bodies bumped restlessly against the stone, tangled in lines. “It’s my fault,” he said grimly. “I had us follow the moths.”

“There are always consequences, little brother.” Lila looked up at the building behind them. Light outlined closed curtains and slipped by shutters; windows on the lowest level were bricked closed. “If your Jenn hadn’t summoned us, Emon wouldn’t be in there,” a tip of her head “hauling Ordo’s arse from the fire. Nor,” grimly, “would you have exposed Bish in time.”

All well and good, but of one thing he was certain. “Glammis must be dealt with, Lila. He’s a threat to Werfol—”