“And will you be needing one room or two?”
“Two,” Gaven said.
“Please, come in.”
New Cyre by daylight was a strange experience. To Gaven’s mind, it was easy to imagine that he was in Cyre. The fashions and architecture he’d seen on his previous visits to that nation were on proud display, and the people spoke with the lilting accents of Cyrans. In his cell in Dreadhold, Gaven had heard only vague and conflicting reports of what had happened to Cyre, the nature of the magical cataclysm that had engulfed the nation. Most of Cyre’s residents had been killed in an instant, he had heard, but here was a village full of refugees who had been lucky enough to escape the Mourning, presumably because they had been traveling or fighting abroad when it occurred.
As they walked to House Orien’s enclave, Gaven found himself thinking of his own home, House Lyrandar’s island refuge of Stormhome. When he was convicted and sent to Dreadhold, his family had declared him excoriate, cut out of the house, and he was no longer welcome in Stormhome. He felt an odd sort of kinship with these displaced Cyrans, who spoke so lovingly and passionately about the home they had lost.
Gaven hardly dared to breathe as another agent of House Orien examined his papers. She stared at them a long time, reading each word carefully, and Gaven felt sure she would recognize the forgery. When she handed the papers back to him with a smile, saying, “Enjoy your trip, Master Lyrandar,” he could scarcely believe it. He shot several glances back over his shoulder as he walked to the coach, certain that she was summoning a Sentinel Marshal to arrest him. But apparently the forgery was a success. He and Senya boarded the coach, settled into a pair of comfortable seats, and began to relax as they started to move.
Only when they were up to full speed did Gaven stop looking out the windows and actually look around the coach. It was similar to the lightning rail coach-the well-appointed ones, not the steerage cart-but on a smaller and slightly less lavish scale. Instead of a private compartment, they had a cushioned bench with a high back, affording them some privacy. The ceiling was elegantly carved with the unicorn seal of House Orien. There were no passengers in the only other seats Gaven could see, the ones across the aisle to his left.
He drew a deep breath, savoring the woody smell of the coach, and let it out slowly. He turned his gaze back out the window, trying to ignore the warmth of Senya’s body beside him, and watched the mountains drift slowly past. The effect was hypnotic, and his eyes started to droop.
“Who’s Rienne?” Senya’s question jolted him fully awake. He didn’t remember ever having mentioned Rienne to Senya.
“You tell me,” he said. He wasn’t going to give more information than he had to.
Senya laughed at his guarded answer. “That’s what you called Juni, remember? The gnome on the lightning rail? The guard asked your daughter’s name, and you said Rienne.” She watched his face, and he concentrated on keeping it impassive. Her smile faded. “Do you have a daughter?”
“No,” Gaven said. “I just gave him the first name that popped into my head.”
“But whose name is it?”
Gaven turned to look out the window again. “Before… all this happened, I was to be married.” He glanced at Senya and saw her eyebrows rise. “Rienne came from a minor noble family, and our marriage would have been advantageous to both our families. House Lyrandar is always looking for political alliances while officially maintaining the neutrality demanded by the Edicts of Korth, and the families it makes connections with stand to gain a great deal of wealth and prestige.” He paused. “So that’s who Rienne is.”
“A nice arranged marriage, then?” she said, leaning closer. “Loveless? Passionless?”
Gaven turned to look past Senya out the windows across the aisle.
“Was she human? Is she an old woman now?”
“She’s a Khoravar, elf-blooded like me.”
“And she’s in Vathirond? All this time I’ve been helping you reunite with your long-lost love?”
“No, she lives in Stormhome, as far as I know.” He scowled. “Seeing Rienne again is not a priority.”
“Oh, I see.” A mischievous smile crept onto Senya’s face. “The romance ended badly?”
Gaven scowled, and Senya’s smile disappeared. “My life ended badly,” he said. He waved his new papers in her face. “I’m living someone else’s now.”
He turned back to the window and smiled grimly at the clouds darkening the afternoon sky.
As soon as she stepped into Krathas’s office Rienne knew that there was news of Gaven-and that it wasn’t good news. The old half-orc’s face spoke volumes.
“There’s been an incident,” he said.
Rienne put a hand on a chair back, then stumbled around it to sit down. “What happened? Is he dead?”
“I don’t think he’s dead, and I’m not even sure what did happen. There are people working hard to keep this quiet.”
“Tell me.”
Krathas took a deep breath, then plunged in. “What I hear is that a team of Sentinel Marshals captured Gaven on the lightning rail near Sterngate.”
“Captured him? But he escaped.”
“Apparently. There was some kind of storm between Sterngate and Starilaskur, and one carriage was blown open.”
“Blown open?”
“Sort of funny, isn’t it? They call it the lightning rail, but then a lightning storm does this.” Krathas smiled weakly.
“One carriage-the one where Gaven was?”
“It appears so.”
“So he called in the storm and used it to escape. That means he’s in Breland somewhere.”
“Probably. Quite possibly trying to get here-that lightning rail line runs through Starilaskur and on to Vathirond.”
“There’s something else,” Rienne said. Krathas’s eyes were fixed on his desk.
“One of the Sentinel Marshals was killed,” he said.
CHAPTER 22
The coach stopped too often, but never for long. At some point in the night, they had a longer stop to bring a new driver aboard and change the magebred horses that pulled the cart, but even so, Gaven figured they were moving most of the day. And within two days of leaving New Cyre, the coach pulled into Starilaskur, eastern Breland’s largest city. They stayed in a hostel that night, which was a vast improvement over trying to sleep sitting up on the coach’s bench. The next day, they boarded a new coach bound for Vathirond.
Another two days of endless rolling and bouncing, punctuated with fitful attempts at sleep or conversation, brought them almost to Vathirond’s gate. Gaven awoke from another nightmare to a child’s loud voice in a bench near the front of the cart.
“What is it?” the boy said.
“I’m not sure, sweetie.” The child’s mother kept her voice low, trying to calm him. “Probably a dragonhawk.”
“But dragonhawks live in Aundair. We’re still in Breland.” He sounded as though he couldn’t believe his mother’s ignorance.
“But we’re in northeast Breland now, actually not far from Aundair.”
That seemed to satisfy the child, and Gaven closed his eyes, settling back into his bench with a smile. Then Senya, sitting by the window, hit his chest. She was staring intently out the window.
“What is it?”
“Look.” She pointed out the window and up, skyward.
He leaned over her and peered out, trying to follow the direction of her finger. At first he saw nothing but the
