Chapter 14 #2
“It’s for your benefit, but you don’t need to drink it.”
Nocren touched on his magic, letting it unspool from his fingers to intertwine with the steam rising off the cup.
It glistened like a golden thread, spiraling up and fading just above the level of their heads, breaking into pieces and coalescing anew in a steady stream of light.
A few pinpricks of gold broke away, floating like bubbles and popping at random, but the miniature combustion was no larger than a fingernail.
Nocren inhaled slowly, his gaze going unfocused as the wind caressed his face.
Trouble, the wind impressed upon him. Danger in all forms. Avenor as the cause, the victim, at the heart of the concept. Change whispered around the edges of Nocren’s mind, but it held a discordant note, unlike when the word accompanied thoughts of Calya.
Reaching for the brighter spot in his mind, Nocren chose to follow danger.
Avenor, hunched over a desk, writing a letter addressed to his father. A sheet of numbers lay next to him, the figures not matching those he put in the letter.
The scene dissolved, reassembling to show Mayor Krowe toasting Avenor. “Settled! And for a third less than we predicted.”
Another fade to darkness, the vision blurring until clarity unfurled once more.
A man stepped out of a room, pulling a heavy door braced with iron shut behind him.
The clang of metal against metal filled the air as the man dropped a bar into place, locking the door from the outside.
Another clank sound followed as the man fussed with the door.
He turned around, one hand leaving his pocket.
Avenor. Then he walked away, the glow of runes etched into the door fading in the background.
“Well?” present-day Avenor prompted, the impatience in his voice dragging Nocren out of the wind’s touch. “How does my future look?”
Bleak, he wanted to say. But for everyone else most of all.
“You’ve nearly reached the end of your trials,” Nocren made himself say. “Successfully, I might add, but not without effort or conflict.”
Hunger filled Avenor’s face, but also a flicker of doubt. “I’d like how that sounds, if you had specifics. You just used some pretty words and a light show to cover how general that fortune was.”
“It’s not a fortune,” Nocren said through gritted teeth. “It’s… possibilities, not the definitive future.”
“Sounds like an excuse to me.”
Truly, the Goddess Syvrine must’ve smiled on Avenor. It was the only explanation for how he’d made it all these years without a broken nose.
Rain pelted the glass as the wind surged. Nocren’s magic pulsed beneath his skin, eager to taste the thin stream seeping through the windowpane.
He hesitated. It had been so long since he’d done such personal readings.
What he did for the Sentinels was always small.
Open questions, like what could he expect if he cleared that trail?
What were the warning signs for each Coalition delegate?
How should he approach them? A touch of the wind here and there, more like consulting an almanac.
Most days, he didn’t consult the wind at all.
Just an ordinary man relying on his wits.
He’d forgotten the slippery feeling of the wind when it was eager like this. Hungry to show him everything. Anything. This was the wind at its most dangerous, the potentialities it would show most colored, whether by Nocren’s own desires or Avenor’s.
Change whispered through his skull—still inharmonious, but this time with an unmistakable similarity to how it felt with Calya.
No, not similar. Connected. If she was in trouble…
Nocren closed his eyes once more.
A slim figure rifled through a desk, tossing all manner of papers and random writing paraphernalia aside. The woman paused, picking up a thin notebook held together with twine. She started to unwrap it, then froze, her head whipping around to look over her shoulder, bringing her face into view.
Calya.
Change, the wind pressed into Nocren’s mind, but this time with a sense of foreboding. He didn’t remember feeding the wind more of his magic, but the scene dissolved just as it had during the last sequence of visions, slowly coming back into focus in a dimmer light.
A dark room devoid of any furnishings aside from a plain sconce on the wall, its torch unlit. The feeble light came from above, slivers of it creeping in through the slats of the ceiling. Not a roof but floorboards. A basement cell.
More light flooded the room as a door at the top of a short flight of stairs opened. A silhouette filled the doorway—Avenor. He gazed down at the bottom of the cell. Sensations rolled from him, dread and hope coalescing into panic-infused relief.
Calya was on the floor, hands bound in front of her.
Nocren’s eyes opened, the sticky feeling of Avenor’s rejoicing still burning in his mind. Avenor’s emotion in the visions had not been a kindly release but that of frayed nerves—the shaky exhale of a man who knew he’d escaped harsh judgment by the skin of his teeth. Guilt and glee rolled into one.
It set off something dark and defensive in Nocren’s chest.
“Why is Calya a threat to you?” he asked.
Avenor stared at him as if digesting the words. Then, abruptly, he sprang up—“Thanks for the reading”—and strode quickly toward the stairs. He didn’t seem to hear Nocren calling after him.
Nocren was forced to watch helplessly, his mind churning, as he walked away.
“Fuck.”
One of the papers Calya had seen Brint reading earlier that morning was in the tinderbox. What was left of it, anyway. A corner of the paper, though scorched, was still intact enough for her to make out entire words.
…tion steady, but ward prot is
…50% at best. W/o Song you must
…ur lies. Help us, or I
The letter was signed simply M.
Calya’s fingers shook. The slanted handwriting matched that of the other notes she’d found. The scribbly ‘M’ of Matthias. Reporting to Brint. Making demands of him. The mention of wards. Could it be Anadae’s missing ones? And Song could only mean Bioon.
Calya chewed her lip. Matthias had been the one to contact the Sentinels—before he’d suddenly changed his tune. If Froley believed Matthias to be “one of the good ones,” perhaps the tonal shift had been against his will.
And now he was gone. Hidden away wherever Bioon’s-now-Brint’s secret project was held?
Pocketing the fragment, Calya dug through the tiny stove for any more clues but came up with nothing. Still, her find was huge. It was confirmation that Brint and the Coalition’s mages were lying. The wards had arrived, were being used in some manner.
Calya frowned. Memories of the contaminated dirt she’d found with Lowe and Zhenya’s reluctant acknowledgment of “similarities” to the Eyllic poison rose up. But no matter; she’d theorize with the others later. Her time with the master key was long since up, and she’d promised that nothing—
Heavy, urgent footsteps grew louder as they marched up the corridor. Toward Brint’s door. They were already upon her. No chance of escaping without notice, the room being the last one in the hall.
At least, if she went out the same way she’d come in.
His room was situated such that it looked out on the pier on one side and the forested hills on the other. Calya chose the hill-facing window; it wouldn’t do for her to have an audience to her rooftop escapades.
She hurried to the window and pushed it open, grateful that the storm covered the groan of the hinges, and even more grateful for its dormer-style design. She scrambled through, easing it shut and pressing herself into the crevice behind the shutters.
Not a moment too soon. Brint’s door opened, light flaring as he turned up the lamps. The door closed with a slam Calya felt in her bones.
But she’d made it outside, with the noise of the storm providing needed cover. Less welcome was the onslaught of rain. The roof wasn’t meant to be used as a pathway, and Calya’s progress mincing along the gutter was painfully slow.
Faintly, she heard Brint’s footsteps as he stomped across the floor. She inched farther along, heart racing. Another window sat between her and freedom. Gods all break, what if the room was occupied?
Focus, she ordered her spinning mind. Her clothes clung to her skin, her fingers going numb as she clung to the shingles. The sound of Brint throwing open his harbor-side window so hard that it banged against the inn’s siding nearly made her slip.
Faster, Calya!
She was nearly past the awning of the adjacent room’s window. If she could get to the other side, she could find cover around the frame so Brint wouldn’t see her if he gave his forest-facing window the same treatment.
Almost there.
The gutter creaked as she took another step, wobbling and beginning to crumple as her weight settled. Calya leaned forward as far as she could, fingers outstretched for the shutter.
The gutter’s complaint went from a creak to a groan.
She’d have to jump. Launch herself the remaining few feet and hope she could grab hold of the shutter—not plummet to her death or, at best, grievous injury.
She had a bitter feeling that, when it came to landings, she’d used up all her luck for the day.
The window beside her slid open. Calya startled, feet slipping on the unstable gutter. She began to fall, the only sound she could make a small, horrified gasp.
Steely fingers wrapped around her flailing arm and dragged her in through the window.