He shrugged. He was not expecting anyone. “It might just be Delia,” he offered.
Kathryn’s face closed up, eyes tightening. “Then I’d certainly best be going,” she said stiffly and strode more quickly toward the door.
Tylar suddenly understood. Kathryn’s discomfort and veiled antagonism-maybe the alchemies involved here weren’t that complex. He recalled her tentative question about the Hands, inquiring about the rooming arrangements. She must have somehow gained word of how close he and Delia had grown over the past year.
“Kathryn-”
A gruff voice called through the door. “Is anyone going to open this door or do I have to pound my knuckles raw?”
It was not Delia.
“Rogger,” Kathryn said, half-irritated, half-relieved. She stepped to the latch and pulled open the door.
The thief barged in. He was dressed in a servant’s livery, though it fit poorly, being too large and bagging hugely over his lean form. He must have been in some hurry to wear such a makeshift costume.
“So you’re both here! If I’d a known that, I could’ve saved a thousand stairs at least.”
“What’s wrong?” Tylar asked, responding to the man’s anxiety.
“It’s that godling child!” Rogger practically shouted.
“Hush,” Tylar said. “Hold your voice.”
Kathryn touched Rogger’s elbow. “What about Dart?”
“Maybe the two of you had better stop holing up in here-as it is, people will be chattering about the regent and the castellan. Ballads will be written…odes sung…”
Tylar felt his cheeks heat up while Kathryn grew even paler.
“Out with it, Rogger!” he said.
“What is happening?” Kathryn echoed.
“The entire Citadel is riled with talk of daemons. Daemons summoned by the castellan’s page. It seems someone has seen Dart’s little bronze friend.”
“Oh, no,” Kathryn said.
“Oh, yes,” Rogger said. “The entire Order is being roused to search for her.”
Kathryn headed toward the door. “I must return to my hermitage.”
“I’ll go with you,” Tylar said.
“No. Argent will use such talk and rumors to discredit me. He has been seeking some way to shift attention from his own dark deeds with that cursed sword last spring. You must stay clear of all of this. Not just for your sake, but for the peace of Myrillia.”
Tylar watched her storm from the room.
Rogger had already discovered the spiced wine and was pouring himself a generous helping.
“Is there any word where Dart might be?”
Rogger shrugged. “Vanished. Like her bronze beastie.” He took a deep draught of the wine, then wiped his beard and lips on his sleeve. “But she’d best stay low. Them’s that are looking for her the hardest are those with those handsome crosses stitched on their vests.”
Argent’s men.
Tylar paced back to the hearth. “And what am I to do? Just stand here and wait?”
Rogger lifted an eyebrow. “Best leave the matter to the castellan’s skill. Kathryn has the pace and breadth of the place better than you. And besides, don’t you have a feast to dress for? And you could use a bit of a shave- getting as scraggly as me.”
Tylar scowled.
“Or…” Rogger dangled it before Tylar.
“Or what?”
“I’m certain your fine feast will be delayed while Argent does his best to bend talk of daemons to his favor. Until then, there was another rumor that was being bantered about before the talk of daemons arose. Something about the storm that blew your flippercraft to port.”
“What about it?”
“As the storm struck, it drove all the rats out of the sewers throughout the village surrounding Tashijan. Boiled up, they did. Then they all fled and scurried into our towers and battlements.”
Tylar shook his head at the strangeness.
“It is said that beasts of the fields have better senses-if not sense-than any man. Something in that storm set them afoot. And you know what they say about rats. They’re the first to flee a fire.”
Tylar nodded. “Perhaps such activity might warrant a trip beyond Tashijan’s walls.” And it would be good to be moving…to test the mettle of things here.
A twinkle shone in the thief’s eye. “I thought you might feel that way.” Rogger tugged up the hem of his baggy shirt and pulled free what was hidden beneath its looseness. He shook out a hooded cloak that had been snugged around his bony waist.
“You stole someone’s shadowcloak?” Tylar could not keep the shock from his voice.
“ Borrowed. Besides, you’re getting your own cloak in the morning if all goes well. A cloak to match those triple stripes on your face. In the meantime, a bit of black cloth will turn a god-regent back into a shadowknight. And with all the searching going on for a child and her daemon dog, it shouldn’t be hard for a knight and his manservant to slip out the main gates.”
Tylar pulled the cloak over his shoulders, sensing the Grace flowing through the cloth. “We’d best be quick.”
Rogger filled his cheeks with bread and mumbled through the mouthful. “Aye to that. The storm grows more fierce as we stand here jawing.”
Tylar headed toward the door, still ajar after Kathryn’s sudden flight. He wondered how she would fare with the warden-and wondered even more where the godling child had gone to hide. With all of Tashijan alerted, there would be few safe harbors.
Brant kept to Dart’s shoulder. On her other side, she rested one hand on the haunch of the massive bullhound. The twin giants leaned against the wall, eyes half-closed, exhausted but refusing to turn back until the cubbies were secured.
They all waited while the two wyld trackers-one young, one old-sniffed through a room thick with dust and rotted furniture, long unswept and forgotten. Brant smelled the musk of rat droppings and heard the skitter of beetles.
He kept his arms crossed, little satisfied with the pace of the search. So far, they had traversed three levels beneath the houndskeep, trailing the trickle of musky alchemies. Dart had already explained how these subterranean floors were Tashijan’s famed Masterlevels, the domain of the learned alchemists and scholars. But the hole into which the two wolf cubbies had fled apparently emptied into spaces beyond the normal lay of this subterranean warren, into crawlways and tunnels that wormed through these levels, walled away ages ago.
“Possibly forgotten sections of the original human keep that once stood here,” Dart had explained. “Like the houndskeep itself was once a dungeon.”
Brant considered that possibility as he waited yet again for the trackers. If Dart’s story were true, what dark purpose might the hole in the wall have once served? Currently it drained away the filth and biles and tiny gnawed bones of the houndskeep’s denizens. But before that? They had all heard tales of the barbarous human kings who had once ruled Myrillia…before the coming of the gods. How much blood had been spilled down that same stone throat from the dungeons, echoing with screams?
“No hope here,” the elder tracker said. “Naught but a few cracks in the mortar. But we’re on the trail. I can catch a whiff or two of the musk through those cracks. Another level or two-”
“Tracker Lorr,” the younger tracker called from another corner of the room. He held up his leech-oil lamp.
“What is it, Kytt?”
“The scent is strong here. And I’ve found a loose brick.”
Curiosity drew Dart and Brant inside. The bullhound tried to push after them, tongue lolling, but Dart stopped him with a palm on his wide nose.
“Stay, Barrin. That’s a good boy.”
