Page 80 of A Chill in the Flame
Tyr thrust a hand to the empty horizon. The tendon in his neck strained as he swallowed his urge to yell. “There’s nothing to the south, Dwyn.”
“I’m telling you,” she responded calmly, clipping the bags together and draping a blanket over the horse’s back before saddling it. “She’s southwest.”
“And I’m supposed to trust, what, the farmer’s wife’s blood that you stole so that you can play the role of tracker? She wasn’t even fae.”
“Any life, for any power. I don’t expect you to understand” came her irritated reply.
Tyr remained firm. “We got supplies for the road. We didn’t get supplies for the goddess-damned desert.”
“You keep sayingwe. There is no ‘we.’ Stay here. Live in Henares. Find yourself a good wife and settle down. Have little invisible babies. Or get eaten by a wolf. I don’t care. I’m going to Tarkhany.” Dwyn shouldered her bag and put herfoot in the stirrup. She’d managed to persuade more than just food, clothes, a broad-rimmed veil to shield herself from the sun, and healing tonics from the vendors of the market. Her charm had been so effective that despite having no money, she was now in possession of a tawny mount, two weeks’ worth of provisions, and enough water to keep her alive for at least the next several days. Her horse wouldn’t love the weight of her supplies, she knew, but the mount would have to adapt. At the very least, her acquisition of a steed meant that if they were to travel together, they would no longer need to share a saddle.
“Bye, dog,” she said as she swung into the saddle.
“There’s no way she’s in Tarkhany!” He balled his hands in his hair from where he remained on the ground, shouting after her. “How would she have gotten to the desert kingdom! Why would she go there!”
Dwyn didn’t need to raise her voice. She called back in mocking singsong. “She’s a manifester, Tyr. She can do whatever she wants.”
His heart turned to stone. “And once you get her…”
“I’ll be able to do whatever I want.”
Thirty-seven
Harland’s fingers flexed against the war-room table. It wastoo hot, then too cold. Job and title be damned, he was a shit royal guard. He hadn’t just failed at his mission. He’d burned it to the ground.
“This doesn’t make any sense.” King Eero bumped against his crown as he stuck his fingers in his hair, holding his head against what may have been the early signs of a headache. He wasn’t sure how the news could get worse, but then again, he’d never met a scryer before.
Harland’s brows knit in reluctant agreement. He shot a desperate look at the scryer. “Can you try again? They can’t be at the same place.”
The fae who looked back at him was a void of disapproval. There was a general agelessness to those kissed with immortality, but every once in a while, a fae entered the room with an aura that felt thousands of years old. The scryer had been escorted from Raascot to aid Farehold’s monarchs at the behest of her king. If Ceneth hadn’t offered generations of her family sanctuary from the southern kingdom after they’d been forced to uproot from their ancestral lands, she would have denied the request altogether. Though her face had no lines, and her hair no grays, she was very, very old. The airaround her was heavy, as though time itself dragged behind her like a cape around her shoulders, filling the room with her presence.
Perhaps the exodus of fae was not Eero’s fault, but he hadn’t stopped it, either. Harland kept his eyes on the fae woman, battling the unwise urge to drag a gaze of treasonous disapproval over his king.
The scryer looked as though she couldn’t be bothered to fully arch a brow. Her dark eyes were nearly bored as her head lolled from the guard to the king. Everything about her was terribly, if not laughably, informal. She wore a loose, black dress that may as well have been stitched from shadows and cobwebs. The gossamer gown was a product of comfort rather than fashion, and not a fit, shape, or fabric he’d seen in any kingdom. Perhaps she’d been on the earth long enough to value the gentle brush of whisper-thin material on the skin far more than the opinions of peers. Her dark hair was entirely unbound, which was also out of fashion. Most of the women wore braids, even if they only adorned half of their hair. Perhaps the rubbing or twisting of braids and ties was just as unimaginable as the discomfort of fashionable clothes. The woman looked tired, not in a way that denoted sleeplessness or stress, but with an overall fatigue at the world and her role in it.
“If you know better than the spirits, then you know better, Your Majesty,” she said, a lip pulling back ever so slightly, showing the barest hint of her pointed teeth.
Harland fidgeted, looking to Eero.
The king’s grip on his temple tightened. “First, we ask you where Berinth is, and you send us to the desert. The man isclearlyof Farehold blood. He’snota Tarkhany man. Then we ask you where Ophir is—the daughter of Farehold—and you point us to the same desert! Are we to believe they’re together?”
She inclined her chin. “That is an entirely separate question. Shall I?”
His crown tilted over the press of his fingers as he nodded.He pushed back from the table and moved from one side of the room to the other as he waited for the woman to act.
“Stillness would be preferable.”
Eero stopped his pacing. Speechlessness seized his tongue. The man was a king all right, Harland thought. Perhaps the occasional serving of indifference was good for his humility.
The scryer closed her eyes and rested her hands on the map that covered the war room table, palms facing toward the ceiling. The fae inhaled through her nose slowly, breathing the dense quality of eternity into her body, letting it fill her lungs. Her hands slowly began to turn over as the spirits guided them once more to Tarkhany, fingertips landing near one another, but not touching. Her fingertips dragged left to right and right to left, one scratching from The Shining Wilds, written in both the Farehold tongue and in the two unpronounceable languages of the southern kingdom, and the other from The Dying Sunset, which shared the same three-name process so common to the regions of the desert kingdom. One finger landed on the border town of Amurah, while the other stopped just shy of the capital city of Midnah.
“It would seem,” she said, slowly opening her eyes, “that though they’re separated by stretches of sand at present, the two will end in the same destination, though they do not share the same journey.”
“And what are they doing there?” Eero asked.
She slowly allowed a single brow to rise. “It wouldseem,” she drawled, “that you’re mistaking me for one with omniscience,Your Majesty.”
Another man would have snapped. Anger would have been an understandable response. Instead, King Eero grew still as he soaked in the information. This was a quality Harland had both loved and hated. Eero was a fair, level-headed monarch, but it would have been easier to understand his emotions if he would yell. His benevolence made his disappointment so much more poignant.
