Chapter 28
My heart rams against my chest, and a nose brushes through my hair. An authoritative whisper. “Quiet.”
I stiffen as those other voices grow louder.
“Did you hear something? A cry?”
“What do you expect? We’re passing the island.”
Shadows glide past us; I don’t dare move a muscle until the strokes of their oars have faded.
I quietly lift the palm off my mouth and turn. Dark robes, a hood cast low. So much like Nicostratus, dressed this way. But the feel of him, the scent of him wrapping around me as we waited for the men to pass, his dominant ‘quiet’ . . .
“What are you doing here?” I rush out at a whisper.
He brings his face close to mine until I can see the cool displeasure in his eyes. “That is my question.”
He picks up the oar closest to him and gestures to the other. The island looms to our right; I watch Quin’s profile for a reaction, but he stares intently at the canal ahead.
“I told you not to come here.”
My stomach hops and I grip the oar. “I needed grey spotted frogs.”
“Lying to your king now?”
Quin continues rowing, but the scent of pain belies his stoic demeanour. Not a physical pain, though his leg seems cramped in this position, but deeper. An all-consuming, emotional pain. Heartbreak.
I turn my head towards the other boat, far in front, approaching the city wall. You were ahead of them.
My mention of this island brought him out here tonight; brought him this pain. I swallow a guilty tendril; it takes me three uneven breaths before I can speak. “Are we following to stop them?”
A contemplative nod.
I whisper, “Will sentinian spells be involved?” My stomach clenches. “I’m better left behind.”
“I need you to do the legwork.”
Legwork?
“They’ll disembark at some point,” he says. “Follow and look for evidence implicating my uncle—letters, documents.”
I blink at him. “I’m a scholar.”
“Who, I maintain, is fearless,” Quin says with a familiar chastising glance.
“What if they catch me?”
“Use your shield, like you almost did against me earlier.”
I lean toward him, surprised. “It was really that strong?”
He doesn’t look at me, but his jaw twitches. His hands tighten on the oars, and the silence feels sharper than the cold breeze. I pull back, not entirely at ease. “What if I can’t do that again?”
“Channel your feelings,” he bites out.
We row to the stone wall surrounding the royal city. I gaze quizzically at Quin as he thrusts his hands toward three key stones. The wall shifts, revealing itself to be a hidden gate.
The boat glides past the cold stone into a darker, forested area. The air grows heavier under the canopy of tall, thick trees. These trees are familiar. Too familiar.
My stomach tightens, and I dig my fingers into the edge of the boat. This is the royal belt, where I often went to look for . . .
I clamp my teeth together and shove away the memories. Not now. Not here.
Quin rows in silence, but I feel his gaze flicker toward me.
It’s also the place where the high duke’s redcloaks tried to kill Nicostratus. That memory, at least, doesn’t make my chest ache. Strange, the things I’d rather remember . . .
I curl into my cloak with a guilty shiver. “Feelings, feelings,” I croak, heart throbbing, the words barely louder than the creak of the oars.
Quin glances at me, his expression unreadable. He puts more weight into his rowing, and I almost lose my oar. I frown at him.
He doesn’t look at me. “The canal forks ahead, we can’t lose them.”
Not much later we reach a tidy neighbourhood on the fringe of the inner capital.
Large stone-walled manors with modest households line the canal, separated from it by a wide lane and sprawling oak trees that cast long shadows in the moonlight.
The boat ahead docks at a small jetty, and we squeeze ours into a nook, long grasses curtaining us from view.
At Quin’s command, I don my hood and scrabble up the dewy bank. Wind shifts through the grass and the trees overhead. I glance back to an empty boat. What’s he doing?
I skirt the shadowy stone walls with nervous steps and pray to the heavens I’m not seen—
“Shush, something’s there.” Only a dozen yards away, a redcloak spins in my direction.
I melt back into the wall, breath held tight.
The men stride closer—
Something skedaddles past their legs and one hits the back of the other. “It’s a cat, you fool.”
They turn while I try to recapture my gut that’s long dropped into the earth. Fearless my foot.
From somewhere above, I feel Quin’s penetrating eyes on me, silently demanding I keep moving. I glare into the night and edge along the wall.
“This is the place.”
They leap onto the wall and drop out of sight; I grit my teeth and curse Quin silently as I clamber up and belly-slide over, then tumble into a bush.
“What’s that?”
“How did you become a guard if you’re this easily spooked?”
“I heard—”
“It’s that damn cat. His chambers are west of the main building. We’ll search the rest of the house once we’ve dealt with him.”
I have to search the house for documents while these men commit murder? My stomach roils. I should be saving lives, not letting someone die, but . . . I have no fighting skills. Quin’s doing heaven knows what else. There’s nothing I can do against sentinian magic except cast a volatile shield—
Or . . .
I slip through shadows, climb through a window left partially open, and grab the first scrolls I find. Never mind if they’re incriminating or not.
I rush through the cold, quiet manor, fling open the door and run towards the west. My heart hammers, my footsteps make heavy clomping sounds against the earth, my fingers choke the paper in my hand.
I trip over a prone body in the grass, surrounded by wine jars. The man shifts only to snore sharply.
A life is on the line. I scramble to my feet and spy the redcloaks ahead, closing in on a semi-detached cottage. My ears ring from my rapid pulse.
This can be considered a ward. Preventing death. Grandfather would’ve approved.
I haul in a breath and call out at the top of my lungs. “Stop. Don’t move.”
They spin, drawing metallic spells to their palms. “Who are you?” They creep closer, and I step back, raising the paper.
“I have the evidence.”
The redcloaks exchange glances and fork towards me. Clearly, they think they can get rid of me and get the evidence. Clearly, I did not think all this through. I’ve only delayed a death with what might be my own.
“If I don’t return,” I say, hoping my voice isn’t shaking, “I have orders for it to be distributed.”
They pause.
The paper trembles in my hand and the beefier one narrows his eyes on me suspiciously.
They rush forward, magic swirling in their raised hands; I drop the paper with a yelp and throw my arms over my head, too terrified to—
Something whizzes past my ear to the right, then to the left. Through the thin gap between my arms, I see the charging men freeze and plunk backwards to the grass like boulders.
I unwrap my arms from my face and stare at their motionless bodies. Were they . . .? I hop towards them, fighting the instinct to flee, and check their pulses. Not dead. Unconscious. I find stiffened grass blades piercing the knockout acupoint.
Insane accuracy—the depth is precisely enough to keep them under for a whole day.
I judge the angle the blades hit them according to their height, and trace the trajectory back to a giant oak sprawling over the back fence.
Quin is perched on a branch at the origin, his hood thrown back, moonlight bathing his face through the leaves. He meets my eyes with a calm that has me swallowing.
“I asked you to collect evidence, not audition for martyrdom.”
“I couldn’t let someone die.”
Quin’s gaze drills into mine. “So you threw yourself towards them without so much as a crude weapon?”
I glance towards the blank sheets of paper I abandoned.
Gusts surge up under me, his magic a steady force that cradles me mid-air. Quin’s hand twitches at his side, as if he wants to grab me, but he chooses to lock his eyes on mine instead. “Foolish,” he murmurs and yanks me closer, until I can see a flicker of softness. “Brave.”
For a fleeting moment, the air around me feels brighter, warmer, gentler. Then the magic vanishes and I plummet, the ground smacking me to my senses. “Don’t try that again.”
I pick myself up off the grass, rubbing my banged-up elbow. “I won’t accept anyone dying—”
“I never intended to let them kill anyone.”
“They were near the door!”
“There’s not a soul in this manor, save that drunken porter.”
Now that he mentions it, the house does seem quiet. And dark, at barely nine-thirty in the evening. Compared to other lantern-lit manors along this canal, the lifelessness here should have been immediately telling.
And it was telling, to Quin.
“You mean I risked my life for an empty room?”
Quin’s laugh rumbles and a startling snore interrupts my returning glare. I whirl around to the drunken porter bolting up in a stupor.
“Who’s there? This is my drink, get your own.”
Like he did with me, Quin uses his magic to lift the man to his feet, and the porter gasps into instant sobriety.
“Who sleeps there?” Quin demands.
The porter squirms and stutters, “The second master, Petros Tornikes. My master’s younger brother.”
“Where is he?”
“The family spent the spring in Hinsard. They were due back yesterday but bad weather slowed their return.”
“When will he arrive?”
“Tomorrow evening, all going well.”
Quin sets the porter on his feet. “You’ll strip the uniforms off those two redcloaks and hire a boatman to send them south.” Quin plucks a chunk of gold from a pouch and tosses it to the porter. “Don’t tell anyone about this evening.” He eyes me. “Take their passes and head back to the boat.”
When I slide down the bank to the boat we arrived in, Quin is already perched on the seat, oar in hand.
I sidle in beside him and grab the other oar. “You let them go?”
“They won’t come back.”
“How do you know?”
“They failed tonight,” Quin says. “If they return, it won’t be me who kills them.”