Page 8 of The Sundered Realms

She squinted through the haze in the direction they were headed and finally glimpsed the stone of stumpy Yenti Castle peeking through the fog.

Liris frowned at the guard’s chest.

The woman fingered her sword hilt. “What do you think you’re looking at?”

Her speech marked her as local: the language here was a Senic derivative mixed with indigenous loan words, and people from the towns spoke this exact dialect with broad vowels that dropped a truly impressive number of written consonants.

Liris lifted her gaze. “Your armor. Aren’t guards supposed to look official?”

The guard narrowed her eyes. “We get the official crest stamped onto our leather. Mine’s old; it’s worn off. What’s it to you?”

So not an easily swayed newcomer to guarding, then. Too bad. “Just confirming I’ve been abducted officially rather than by bandits.”

“Why would bandits want you?”

“Why does the castle want me?” Liris countered.

The guard shrugged. “Not my business to know.”

Liris blinked. She supposed it had been too easy to maneuver her into that question for that to work, but—“It isn’t?”

“Nope. Just told to pick up a newcomer to town apprenticed to Dyer Ayass, a young woman with brown skin and long wavy darker brown hair.”

Liris opened her mouth.

“If you’re thinking of telling me there are other brown-skinned young women around, you’d be right, but you’re the only one I don’t recognize and also I can smell.”

Void it. That was a problem with taking up work as a dyer.

Liris had thought that had been a stroke of luck. Ayass’ last apprentice had gotten himself killed by mishandling toxic ingredients, and the dyer had shockingly not been overwhelmed with applicants hoping to replace him.

Liris had never worked with Serenthuar silks, but she’d memorized every detail about their production that could be used to emphasize their quality to foreigners, which gave her a running start. In a strange way the work made her feel closer to Serenthuar than she had living there.

Liris had been taken to observe Serenthuar dyers at work, but she hadn’t been permitted to interact. Or rather, she’d understood the implicit threat behind those field trips:

Fail one more test, and you’ll never, ever be free.

It was some kind of cosmic irony that as soon as she was out, she ended up leaping at exactly the work that would have trapped her before.

“You really don’t have any guesses?” Liris asked the guard.

The woman drawled, “In my experience, you’re the one most likely to know what you did.”

“Of course I know what I’ve done—since I woke up—I just don’t know why the castle would be interested.”

“Since you woke up?”

“Did they not cover that in the briefing? Yes, I stumbled starving and dehydrated out of the swamp, collapsed before I made it to civilization. Rescued by a stranger, woke up feverish, no memory. Everyone says it’ll come back, but I’d apparently rolled around in the toxic blood of a snapping snake and it hasn’t yet. So.” The guard recoiled, and Liris shrugged. “If the castle wants to know about something I did more than a month ago, they’re going to be disappointed.”

She’d been surprised how easily people had trusted that answer—but then, Yenti was a politically insignificant place in the realm of Etorsiye, so why would a spy bother infiltrating? Serenthuar wouldn’t have any contacts here, which made it perfect for Liris’ primary goal of Not Dying, though she had no idea what contacts Jadrhun could muster.

Hopefully not demons. Liris suppressed a shiver.

Now the guard looked unimpressed, and maybe even a little smug.

“Whatever you did,” she said, “the lord of Embhullor will find out.”

Embhullor? The home of the elite university?

---