“Kill her!” cried the weremage, thrusting a finger towards Mag. “Kill them both!” But rather than help them, she turned and vanished into the press. I saw another flash of light from her eyes, and in an instant she had become a raven. It wheeled up into the sky, heading west towards the Greatrock Mountains.
For the second time, I saw Mag alone amid her enemies. My sword lay on the ground nearby. I scooped it up and launched myself towards the fight with a battle-cry.
Before I could even strike one of them, a club crashed into my temple. I fell into blackness and knew nothing more.
“Are you all right?”
Sun blinked. “What?”
“Your eyes,” said Albern.
Raising a hand to her cheek, Sun found it wet. She did not know when she had begun weeping. The tears had come slow and silent, wending their way down her face.
“I am fine,” she said, scrubbing at her eyes with the back of a hand.
“We could enjoy silence for a moment,” said Albern. “I do not mean to distress you.”
“It seemed so unfair,” said Sun, keeping her voice low for fear it might betray her and break. “For you and Mag to think Sten would live, only for that witch to … Sten did not even want to be there.”
“None of us did,” said Albern quietly. “That is sometimes the way of it. You find yourself somewhere you never thought you would be, and great tragedy or great fortune befalls you, unlooked-for. And then, too, things are not always what they seem. Sten was hardly the first friend I lost that way. I had a friend who I saw struck down on a battlefield in Wavemount, but he lingered on for three more days. One of my captains in the Ruby Crowns took a scratch on his cheek from an arrow. He laughed at the time, and led us to victory. The wound became infected, and he died a month later. Then there was young Bowtin, a foolish boy I met in Dulmun. He fell from a ship into the Great Bay during a sea-battle, and we thought him drowned. We mourned him and moved on—and then we met him in a Dorsean tavern two months later, for he had fought his way to shore and survived. Loren, our friend who rode from Northwood? She thought us dead in that battle. She mourned us for a long while. Our deaths helped shape her life for a good deal of time afterwards—and then she discovered that we had never died in the first place. Life and death are never so clean as we imagine them to be, especially when it comes to those we love. And they have not moved.”
Sun frowned. “What?”
“Your friends in the corner,” said Albern. “You keep glancing at them as I speak, as if you are afraid they are watching you, or looking for you. But they have not moved since they arrived.”
“I know. Is that not odd?” Sun scowled into her beer and took another sip. “They have not even risen to relieve themselves.”
“Nor have you.”
Sun glared at him. “I would, but I am afraid they will take notice of me.”
“I can take you outside if you wish,” said Albern. “But if I do, you will have to move when I tell you to, and do exactly as I say.”
Sun blinked. “What?”
“I can take you outside. In fact, I think I should.”
She did not understand, but his words were earnest, and his eyes held no trace of a joke. “I … yes.”
Albern lifted his hand, and Sun noticed for the first time that he wore a silver ring on the middle finger of his left hand. It bore a symbol she had never seen before, and it was part of no tale about Albern that she had ever heard.
Curling his knuckles, Albern rapped twice on the wooden table—just as the barman had done earlier in the night. Then, whispering, “Come,” he abruptly stood and strode through the back door, snatching his bow up as he went.
Sun dared not glance at the guards in the corner as she leaped to her feet and followed him, but she guessed they must have noticed the commotion. She hid her face under the hood of her borrowed cloak and tried to get through the door as quickly as she could.
In the brisk night air, Albern stood with his face raised to the moonslight. He looked as if he was listening for something, or mayhap sniffing the air. But when Sun emerged into view, he turned at once and smiled at her.
“You will have to make a bit of a climb,” he said. “But if I can do it with one arm, I am confident you can do it with two.”
So saying, he jumped atop a small crate beside the tavern’s back door. From there he took a large step up another two that were stacked atop each other. Sun saw that a pile of crates, which she had thought were stacked at random, actually formed a little mountain leading up to the edge of the tavern’s roof, and Albern was scaling it like a satyr.
She hurried to follow him, and soon they had both reached the solid ceramic shingles. There was a little platform there, with two piles of soft cushions. Albern kicked off his mud-covered boots with some difficulty and sank down on one of the cushion piles, and after a moment’s hesitation, Sun took her place on the other.
“What is this—” Sun began, but Albern shushed her and pointed down at the ground.
Sun watched as the two guards from her parents’ retinue burst out the back door
