Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
“I definitely need to search Brint’s room,” Calya said with poorly contained glee.
As he followed Calya back into the inn, Nocren didn’t try to hide his dismay, but she ignored it all the same.
For all her insistence to the contrary, the beginnings of fatigue were starting to show, and not even the return of the Rhellian mage could truly cure it.
He’d get her back to his room. Maybe have food sent up instead of letting her go back out and do something foolish.
Like breaking into Avenor’s fucking room, or spying on the mage, or…
who knew when it came to Calya and her plans.
She needed a distraction, and if that meant putting her in his bed, so be it.
He’d remind her that she wanted him. For a time.
For now. Careful phrasing to hedge bets against their unlikely future.
Nocren didn’t care. A primal urge in him suggested that once he had Calya upstairs, he wouldn’t be inclined to have either of them going back out this night.
If a clear-minded Calya was half as ravenous as the one fueled by the Scarlett Kiss had been, then he doubted she’d have any interest in leaving, either.
“I’m going to have a chat with Froley,” Calya murmured as they entered the inn’s main room.
Nocren eyed her, making no attempt to hide his skepticism.
She nudged him toward the bakery. “Get us some food to take up. I’ll be right back.” Then she left, chasing after Froley as they went down the hall.
Nocren filled a bag with the last of the pastry case’s goods, then went back in search of Calya.
He looked over the inn’s moderately full main room, not yet accustomed to how the Pelf also served as housing for most of the scholars and graduate students doing research in the Landing.
It wasn’t nearly so crowded as the Mighty Leaf on any given day, but almost a dozen or so people were seated at various tables around the large room.
“Hey, ranger. Lowe.”
Nocren registered the voice only after he’d turned at the sound of his name. Avenor had returned from his shadowy meeting and tucked himself into a lonely corner table.
Nocren cast a last, desperate glance around for Calya, but she was nowhere to be found. He couldn’t snub Avenor, who was waving to get his attention, so publicly.
Swallowing his contempt for the man, Nocren pasted what would have to pass for a neutral expression on his face and went to join him.
At the man’s emphatic gesture, Nocren dropped into a seat across from Avenor, even though it put his back to most of the room and left him feeling exposed.
“You called?” he said, dipping his head in a small nod of greeting.
“Seen Calya lately?” Avenor asked, folding a copy of Grae Port News, the periodical from the capital city, and setting it beside him.
“Earlier, at the dock.” No point hiding it, especially if Gormund had reported their visit like a good little lackey.
“I didn’t think the Sentinels would stoop to work with the likes of Graelynders.” Avenor laughed, the sound loud and too practiced to Nocren’s ears.
“It’s not a formal partnership,” Nocren said with a shrug. “Our interests happened to align, that’s all.”
“A word of advice, ranger…” Avenor wagged a finger at him. “She can’t be trusted.”
Nocren forced himself to remain still, for all that Avenor’s declaration made him inwardly bristle. “Your company partners with Miss Helm’s often. Do you not trust your business partners?”
Avenor’s lips formed a smile, but his eyes remained hard.
“We’re in the business of making money. If your work here has a fraction of warmth to it, Caly will ice it out.
She’s ruthless when it comes to HNE, and she’ll pick it over anything else.
” He settled back in his chair, legs invading Nocren’s space.
“She turned her back on her own sister when her dreams went against Caly’s vision for HNE. ”
Nocren said nothing. It wasn’t anything Calya hadn’t already said—warned him of—herself, though in different words. The sourness in Avenor’s tone was likely as manufactured and false as the rest of him.
I’ll never love you…
A whisper of wind seeped through a crack in the window. Nocren’s hands balled into fists beneath the table. Avenor was trying to needle him. Nocren knew it, and yet…
“…warn you, since you don’t know her like I do. So you always know where you stand with her,” Avenor was saying. “Never first.”
The wind picked up, whistling through the glass, stirring Nocren’s hair and calling a twinge of magic to ripple through his fingers. As it did when it wanted something.
Out of the corner of his eye, Nocren saw Calya peek into the room. She found him—and his table companion. A mischievous grin spread across her face. “Help me,” she mouthed.
Dread swept through Nocren’s gut. Though from his position Avenor could see the main room, he didn’t have an immediate eyeline to the front desk, but all it would take was a turn of his head.
Already, his eyes narrowed the slightest bit as he realized Nocren’s attention had strayed. He moved to look over his shoulder—
Nocren’s arm jerked as he called the wind. A few crackles of Nocren’s magic lit the air, and it swirled around the pair of them, rustling the paper folded at Avenor’s side.
Avenor startled, his attention whipping back to Nocren. He stared at the golden motes of light as they landed on the table and twinkled before fading.
Slowly, he looked up, a covetous gleam in his eyes. “I’d forgotten. Is it true, then, you’re a fortune teller?”
“A diviner,” Nocren said, keeping his internal disgust in check. “It’s not an absolute magic.”
Avenor dismissed the warning with a careless wave of his hand. “What’s the price to tell my future?”
Calya had disappeared. Off to carry out her reckless plan, he presumed. “Help her” indeed. If he was going to extract payment from anyone for this farce, he knew who would be at the top of the list.
Motioning for a server to bring tea, Nocren inclined his head toward Avenor, saying, “A gesture of good faith after our shitty start.”
Elated by her stroke of luck, it took all Calya’s self-control to keep her gait unhurried.
She nodded to a maid as she strolled in the direction of her room, then paused at the end of the corridor.
A swift look confirmed that it was empty.
With light steps, she went to the opposite end, away from her own lodging and instead to Brint’s large corner room.
In a nod to Desmond’s Landing’s small-town feel, the inn used simply wrought metal keys, and the handles lacked magic-reinforced lock mechanisms. Though there was a fortified lockbox in the backroom on the main floor for valuables, only Froley held that key, and Brint wouldn’t have constrained himself to waiting on the innkeeper’s convenience.
Froley also had a master key for the entire inn, and had been willing to give Calya a handful of minutes to use it at liberty.
The door creaked as Calya let herself into Brint’s room. He’d turned the lamps down, or a maid had done so for him—he wasn’t the type to be mindful about burning someone else’s fuel.
She maneuvered around a trunk Brint had left open on the ground with clothes spilling from it.
Picking her way around his mess, she turned up the lamp on the writing desk in the corner, just enough so she wouldn’t trip over anything.
Brint had the largest single room in the entirety of the inn, and appeared to have done his level best to scatter his belongings everywhere.
She couldn’t begin to fathom how he’d managed to pack so much of his personal shit for the trip.
She prowled around the edges of the room, leery of casting any shadows that might be seen through the many windows set into the rear and side walls.
For all Brint’s mess, it seemed to be just that: frippery.
If she’d been hoping to find a gleaming document penned in golden letters and detailing his collusion with Bioon Song, such a childish fantasy was thoroughly doused.
Given his cozy relationship with the mayor, any such documents and the convenient box of missing wards were probably displayed within Krowe’s manor.
Conscious of her precious few minutes dwindling with every moment, Calya turned out the desk drawers as quietly as she could. Nothing of interest, the few papers on top benign letters to his father and the Avenor Guard board with general updates.
Annoyed at her brilliant plan’s disappointing outcome, Calya moved back toward the door. Perhaps another round with the Coalition mages was in order. Could she leverage her having seen Eren meet with Brint into something more?
Lost in thought, she nearly crept past the small stove against the wall without sparing it a second look. She’d have continued right past if not for her foot slipping as something beneath her shoe fluttered away. She caught herself on the wall, wincing as her ribs protested the erratic movement.
One hand pressed to her side, Calya knelt to retrieve the offending item. She squinted at it in the dim light. A scrap of paper? No, an envelope. A torn piece, to be precise, with only a few broken-off lines of the handwriting remaining.
Calya’s eyes went to the stove’s small door, and she reached for the handle.
The tea was just a prop. A touch of the theatrical employed because gormless worms like Avenor would only give Nocren’s magic credence if they saw something with their own eyes. Even when what their eyes saw was completely unconnected shit.
A curl of steam floated up as Nocren poured a cup for Avenor.
The weather had decided to play along with his show, a storm sweeping in from the sea to blanket the town with heavy rain.
The wind sent sporadic gusts to rattle the windows, and it took hardly any effort to find the right current for his plan.
“Do I need to drink this?” Avenor asked, a shadow of disgust on his face. “I thought you worked the wind. Or do you need to grease your—”