Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
Avoiding the inn’s main room—although it sounded deserted at this late hour—Nocren went out through the back.
He struck off down the road, his mind wandering as much as his feet.
There was a briskness in the air now that the storm had abated.
He’d hoped it would wake him up. Clear his head of the old doubts lingering at the edges.
A chill wind wrapped around him, offering nothing in the way of enlightenment.
When he reached out, the soft glow of magic at his fingertips, the wind flurried away, recalcitrant as only the fucking wind could be.
His annoyance came out as a puff of condensation.
No use trying to get the wind to cooperate; he’d burn through magic for a scattering of images and even more confused impressions than he already had.
Maybe other air mages could wrestle the element into submission, but Nocren could not.
My submission is a gift.
Calya. He’d thought the wind had meant for him to be wary of her, but then it kept throwing them together.
Tempting him with the possibility of her.
Never before had he met a woman whose acquaintance necessitated a set of fucking directions.
Repeatedly, she threatened his staid, painstakingly curated life, yet every time he recognized her danger, he wanted to fall in.
Worse, hadn’t she been frank with him? All business, no heart.
He’d identified her moral directive early on: ambitious.
Reckless. Do not trust,—well, that was a sentiment shared.
He couldn’t trust her. She’d confirmed it, by word and action.
Snooping through his room. Through Avenor’s. Her quip of having a diviner on call.
He couldn’t trust himself with her. That last remark had been a joke, but the reaction on his part, it was a warning. He knew better than to ignore it.
But Nocren had known better than to do so many things when it came to Calya.
She’d opened up enough with him to let a sliver of vulnerability see daylight.
He wanted to do the same, to dare to hope that he’d found a kindred spirit.
Conventional wisdom might have warned against diviners forming attachments, but there was nothing conventional about Calya.
The wind didn’t contradict him on that part.
Nocren comforted himself with those thoughts as he plodded toward the bakery side of An Honorable Pelf. A flicker of lamplight shone in the window on the upper floor, drawing him in.
The front door was locked, but unwilling to admit defeat, Nocren went around the back.
It was curiosity driving him, he told himself, not a vague sense of unease at the thought of returning to the inn.
Not Avenor’s smug words of always knowing where one stood with Calya and the wind’s whisper of Change spiraling through his head.
He wouldn’t forsake the scant amount of peace he’d won for himself.
The back door was locked, too, but the shadow of figures sitting at a table above it was visible through the window. Froley noticed his presence, descending the stairs with something silvery glinting in their hand.
A knife, and they held it in a way that implied they possessed not only the knowledge but the will to use it.
“It’s me,” Nocren murmured when their face peeked through a curtain next to the door.
Froley’s hard stare didn’t waver, and for a long moment Nocren thought they’d refuse him entry. But then they stepped away. He heard a snippet of their voice calling up the stairs—“the Sentinel”—before the door creaked open.
“Out for a midnight stroll?” Froley closed and locked the door behind him.
“Something like that.” Nocren nodded toward the blade in their hand. “Expecting someone else?”
“Something like that.” Froley led the way back up the stairs. “I don’t believe you’ve met Magister Eren.”
A cloaked man sat beside Zhenya at the small table. He looked up, his eyes narrowing as he tried to place Nocren. Then he sat up, recognition dawning on his face.
“Not formally,” Nocren said.
“You. You and that Graelynd woman were spying on us.” Eren’s shoulders hunched, elbows coming to rest on the tabletop. His eyes met Nocren’s for less than a second before darting away.
The Rhellian was the picture of exhaustion, the lines around his eyes and mouth more pronounced than most men in their mid-fifties.
His unshaven jaw had gone past the point of scruff and into beard territory, poorly maintained.
Lack of sleep bruised his eyes, his pale hair limp and beginning to look greasy.
Yet, for all that the older man looked in desperate need of rest and hygiene, there was nothing strained about him.
No peace, either, but a sense of subdued resignation.
The Sylveren University robe was gone, replaced by a nondescript shirt, trousers, and brown cloak.
A battered haversack rested on the floor next to his seat.
“Going somewhere?” Nocren asked.
Eren glanced at Froley, who sighed and waved their hand as if to say carry on.
“Away,” the Rhellian man said, his tone careful. “The project here is… There’s nothing more I can do.”
“For what?”
Eren shook his head, his palms coming up to press into his eyes.
“He’s going to find out,” Froley said.
Eren shook his head again, voice muffled by his hands. “Not before I’m away. We had a deal.”
“What?” Nocren started forward, unease twisting in his gut. “What is it?”
Froley put their hand out to placate him. To Eren, they said, “Tell him. You owe it to—”
“What do I owe a Sentinel?” Eren snapped.
“You owe it to all of us if what you’ve said is true.” It was Zhenya who spoke up, with a fierceness Nocren hadn’t known she possessed.
Froley thumped Eren on the back. “We’ve already made our bargain, and I’ll honor it. Now talk.”
Nocren looked back and forth between them, fighting the urge to grab the other man by the collar and shake until answers fell out.
Several seconds passed where Eren didn’t speak. He simply stared down at the table, at his hands, as if seeing beyond their emptiness.
“Your researchers. The wards the Helm girl is looking for. Matthias. All of it,” he said at last. “It was us. But they said they had it under control!” He looked up, a feverish gleam in his eyes as he searched Nocren’s face.
“It was. We were so close to finding a cure. We would’ve, if we’d just had more time.
If Song hadn’t gotten herself caught. Left us with Avenor. He had to run his fucking mouth…”
“What are you talking about?” Nocren asked.
Eren ran a hand through his hair, making the thin strands clump. “We were so close. I was going to save Rhell, you have to believe that. To hell with Avenor and the Coalition. I did it for my kingdom. I would’ve…”
“You’re talking about the Eyllic poison.” When Eren didn’t answer, Nocren grabbed his shoulder. “Hey. The researchers from Sylveren. They’re alive?”
He nodded absently. “Alive. Working on our experiment. Containing it.”
“You’re certain?” Zhenya asked, in a way that suggested he’d made such assertions before but she still needed to hear the words.
“Yes,” he hissed. “For now, I am certain.”
“The poison,” Nocren said, revulsion rising. “Here?”
“It’s… complicated. But I’m not lying—it is contained.”
“For now,” Zhenya said bitterly.
“What the fuck were you thinking?” Nocren snarled. “A fucking Rhellian. You should know—”
“What does a Sentinel of the Valley know of Rhell?” Eren was on his feet, rage making splotches of color bloom on his pale face.
“Your home is safe! Your people aren’t living—dying—under a curse.
Years of this and no end in sight! I don’t care what paltry steps the Restorers of the Alliance claim to have made.
A victory means nothing if it does nothing to change what the war has wrought. ”
Nocren got a vague sense he was witnessing a man on the verge of a breakdown. He raised his hands in a placating gesture. “Just tell me where to find them.”
“West of the site you’ve already found. Toward the mountains.” Eren hung his head. “Go. Don’t go. You will make no difference. It’s going to run its course. You can’t stop it, only pick up the pieces once it’s done.”
A series of taps sounded against the door. Froley peered out the window. “Your boat’s here, mage. They won’t wait.”
Eren picked up his bag, then faced the others. “Song had her reasons. I have mine. But with Avenor’s incompetence...” The fight drained out of him. Only a tired, defeated shell of a man remained. “I thought I could save Rhell. I failed.”
He left without a backward glance. Nocren turned to Froley, gesturing incredulously after the Rhellian. They only shook their head, closing the door once more and leading Nocren and Zhenya into the bakery’s empty front room.
“Does he go to face judgment from his king?” Nocren demanded.
“I’m sure he will one day.” Froley dug through one of the upper shelves and pulled down three glasses and a bottle of clear liquid. “Our deal was that he send word to Rhell. Ensure that we’re freed from the Coalition’s chokehold.”
“He swore with blood that whatever is wrong here, it’s not the same as the poison in Rhell,” Zhenya said, raising anguished eyes to Nocren. “We have to believe that.”
Believing something and it being the truth, those weren’t always the same. But Nocren didn’t have the heart to give the young woman more anxiety. What else could they do?
He watched Eren through the window until the mage was swallowed by the night. “He commits treason and gets away with it. You agreed to that?”
“Lesser of two evils.” Froley shrugged. “We have to live differently out here, Sentinel. And we’ll be here long after you’ve gone back home.” They poured liquid into the glasses and held one out to Nocren. “I don’t know where he’ll end up, but he doesn’t get to go back home.”
Nocren stared at the glass. A part of him screamed to find a map, to charge back out into the night and… and what? There’d been something fatalistic in Eren’s eyes, and even if Nocren stooped to very un-Sentinel ways to glean answers, he wasn’t sure the Rhellian could give them.
The other side of him, the wearied, rational part, knew it was futile. And not only because he imagined Froley would intervene if he meddled in their business.
Froley gave him a knowing look. “Tread carefully, Lowe. It won’t take long for the Coalition’s mages to realize the good Magister is gone.”
Nocren sat heavily in a chair and knocked back the drink. He coughed as it burned all the way down. “This is shit.”
Froley snorted. “Not a celebration. I don’t break out the good stuff for moral victories.”
He looked at Zhenya. “Do you want to come with us to find the site?”
She shook her head, worry creasing her brow. “I can’t. We need to take the healing tea back to the village in the morning.” She glanced at the clock on the wall. “We’re trying to let Eunny sleep as long as she can.”
They lapsed into silence, each wallowing in their thoughts.
Froley took a measured sip, eyes on Nocren. “You going to tell your Helm girl, or shall I?”
“She’s not mine.”
“Sure.”
Nocren declined any more of the foul brew. “I’ll tell her.”
“Hang on.” Froley grimaced. “I’m sure she’ll want to go haring off first thing.”
Nocren said nothing. Answers were finally within reach. His Sentinels’ mission and her company’s interests, intertwined. But if only one could succeed, how would he choose? And would Calya even wait long enough to consider anything beyond her own goals?
Sentinels or Helm Naval, Nocren or the company she was determined to rule. Would it even be a choice?