Hunger surfaced, hardening his fingernails and filling his cold flesh with strength.
Crawling to the shop's rear, Chane dug his fingernails into the roof's shakes.
He pried up and removed seven as quietly as he could and found the underplanking was solid and sound— troublesome but expected. Rising slightly [isiove, he scanned the street once for anyone in sight, and then punched through the planks. He kept at it, clearing a hole large enough to pass through.
As he dropped lightly into the shop's rearmost room, he fully widened his sight. The scribe's workroom was so sealed off from outside light that even he had difficulty. He barely made out worktables, chairs, and the lighter tone of piled parchment and paper.
He felt his way about, recognizing objects clearly only when he was close enough. At the back shelves he found a lantern and an old tin cup full of crude wooden matches. He lit the lantern, turning its knob until only dim illumination filled the space. Leaving the lantern in place, he turned to scan the room.
Where would a master scribe or proprietor secure the folio?
And there it was. A leather folio lay on a short side table beside the largest desk just two steps away.
Chane took those two steps and then hesitated.
Why was it out in plain sight? This seemed too unprofessional. Perhaps the scribes had worked late, being too far behind in their efforts, and the folio had not been properly stored away. But even that did not seem plausible.
Chane picked up the folio.
By its thickness and heft, all the guild notes and excerpts were still inside. He glanced across the near desk and quickly at the others in the room. All were cleared and orderly. No transcription work appeared to be left lying about, so perhaps that had been stored away.
He pulled the folio's leather lace and opened its flap.
At the sight of the sheets, all scribbled upon in ink and charcoal strokes, his shoulders sagged in relief. But he could not linger here, nor turn up the lamp and risk its light being spotted through even the crack of a shutter. He turned down the lamp until its flame snuffed out and quietly hurried out to the shop's front room.
Carefully cracking open a window, enough to do the same with its outer shutter, Chane held the stack of pages close. He angled them until weak light from a street lantern fell upon the top sheet.
This time he sagged in frustration.
Aside from his limited understanding of the Begaine syllabary, some of these sages had terrible handwriting. To make matters worse, the notes were written with sharpened charcoal sticks. Cheaper and more convenient than quill and ink, they often left characters blurred. Even though some notes were not written in Begaine symbols, he could not sound out all of them. Many appeared to be copied in their original languages, which Chane could not even identify.
He turned a few more sheets and finally gave up, realizing he needed more time to decipher the folio's contents—and for that he could not remain in this shop.
A tingle crawled over his skin.
The beast chained within him growled in warning.
Chane pulled the window closed, latched it, and stepped back, watching the street outside through the narrow space of the ajar shutter. A soft shift of shadow flickered to his left.
Beyond the shop's door, the front wall's far side wavered. Wood appeared to bulge inward like an ocean swell, and then settled flat around a tall shape emerging.
A black figure stepped straight through the wall into the shop's front. But it looked as solid as anything else in the room.
Garbed in a flowing robe and cloak, the latter's folds shifting and swaying, the figure paused in stillness. A voluminous hood covered its head and face, and even Chane's undead eyes couldn't penetrate the dark within that opening.
He stared as his senses fully awakened.
He had not felt it coming. Not even a tingle, until it had pushed through the wall like water or vapor. Before he could utter a demand or warning threat, the figure raised a hand toward him.
Its sleeve slipped down, exposing forearm, hand, and fingers—all wrapped in strips of black cloth. A soft hissing rose around it, as it slid forward across the floor.
Chane shoved the pages into the folio and backed against the side wall beyond the window. And still it came at him. He vaulted the front counter on his free hand and retreated toward the open doorway to the back room.
The only way out was through the hole in the workroom's roof, or to shatter his way through the rear door. Either path meant turning his back on this thing that had just walked straight through a wall.
Chane jerked out his longsword.
'Do not be closed…
If Master Teagan were still there, she might bluff her way in to retrieve the folio. Perhaps a threat that Premin Sykion insisted on its return might do the trick, regardless that the work was incomplete. Wynn could simply promise to have it back first thing in the morning—and hope that later she wouldn't be cast out of the guild for interference.
One way or another, she was going to get into serious trouble. But a look at the folio was all that mattered.
'Please be open,' she whispered again, and then halted, her mouth dangling open.
The Upright Quill was as quiet and dark as any other shop on the street.
Swearing in Old Elvish was a bad habit she'd picked up from Leesil. A few profane expressions were about all the half elf could pronounce correctly in his mother's language. Wynn took a long breath, shuffling toward the shop's door. Now what?
One window shutter was slightly cracked open, and she hurried over.
Swinging the shutter wide, she flinched when it creaked too loudly. She craned up on tiptoe to peer through the panes.
Light from the nearest street lantern wasn't enough to fill the shop's front room, but perhaps someone was still working in the back. She would have to knock at the door after all. Then two closely spaced footfalls pounded inside the shop. It sounded like someone stomping.
Wynn grabbed the sill with both hands, pulling herself up with her face close to the panes. But she saw nothing.
An indistinct form shifted in the dark, near the door to the back workroom.
Wynn's nose squashed against the pane.
A tall, broad-shouldered man in a dark cloak stood beyond the front counter. His hood was down, and he held a leather folio in his hand.
Wynn's stomach hardened.
Someone had beaten her here and gotten in, and she tried to make out his face. Besides Master a'Seatt, she'd never seen anyone of such stature here. In the dark, his skin was so light she began to make out a narrow face, straight nose, and red-brown hair, and maybe…
Sparkling eyes looked about the shop's front room.
Wynn stopped breathing… and stared at Chane.
The last time she'd seen him was south of the Farlands in the company of Welstiel, Magiere's undead half brother. Half a world away atop the Pock Peaks, in the library of Li'kän's castle, he'd promised never to follow her.
He'd promised—yet here he was, holding a folio.
Confusion scrambled Wynn's thoughts.
It wasn't possible, not for the way all the victims had died. Except that Chane had kept company with Welstiel for a long while. And Welstiel had been trained by his father's retainer—Ubâd, that decrepit necromancer and the architect of Magiere's unnatural birth.
Welstiel was a conjuror. As a Noble Dead he'd had many years to refine his skills. And what might Chane, a
