Duskfall (9 page)

She felt guilty about it, but not enough to break it.

Lian shouldered his pack as they walked down the gentle slope towards the city. “Been a spell since I’ve been to Cineste. More than a year, maybe two. I think the last time…”

Winter smiled, though her focus was on the city before them. Lian was just speaking for speaking’s sake, and while she didn’t much care to listen to it, she appreciated what he was doing on principle. Lian blathering on was better than the alternative.

She just couldn’t bring herself to say much when there wasn’t something that needed saying. She worried what would come out if she did.

“We need to decide what to do next,” Winter said, interrupting Lian. “I’m not sure where Knot would be. Maybe an inn, maybe with someone he knows. Or he may have just passed through on his way to Roden.”

“To
Roden
?”

“It’s the most likely place he’d go. We found him in the Gulf of Nahl. The attackers at… the attackers had Rodenese accents. It makes sense.”

Lian looked at her, one eyebrow raised. “We’ll address the insanity of two tiellans strolling into Roden later. For now, go back to the part about you not knowing what we’re doing next.”

Winter shrugged. “Told you I didn’t know what I was doing.”

“Not sure you ever
did
say that—”

“Lian. Arguing won’t help.”

“Sorry. It’s good to hear your voice. Even if we’re arguing.”

Winter thought about apologizing. The idea certainly crossed her mind. That was something, wasn’t it?

“Won’t be much daylight left when we get to the city,” she said. “We’ll need to work quickly. We should sweep all the inns we can find, first.”

“Right,” Lian said. “We’ll just walk up to every human inn we see and ask after our forgetful human friend, whose name might be Knot, might be Lathe or whatever it was those men called him, might be something else entirely, who could probably kill them in the time it takes to blink. I’m sure they’ll appreciate two
elves
asking after a human. Who wouldn’t?”

“Don’t say that. Please.” Winter hated the term.
Elf
. It sounded so dirty. She didn’t understand how others could refer to her people that way.

“I’ll give it a try,” Lian muttered. “But that don’t make me wrong,” he said, more confidently. “We can’t just go up to every inn in the city and start questioning people. We’ll only attract attention. The painful kind.”

Lian wasn’t wrong. The city was, supposedly, slightly more tolerant than the rural areas, but that wasn’t saying much. Prejudice against the tiellans had magnified in the past ten years or so, despite the Emancipation. Tiellans had once worshiped alongside humans in Cantic chapels, but new sessions “reserved” specifically for tiellans began to appear, and soon there was complete separation.

“You have any suggestions, then?” If he wasn’t going to accept her ideas, he had damn well better be helpful in some other way.

Their feet crunched in the snow as they neared the gates. A small crowd of people waited outside the wall to enter the city.

“Well?” she said, when he didn’t say anything.

“Hadn’t thought about that, princess,” he said with a shrug. “Criticism ain’t helpful enough?”

Winter rolled her eyes. “And you wonder why I don’t talk much.”

Lian punched her lightly on the arm as they descended to the city gate. And Winter laughed.

* * *

The rare, spontaneous desire to laugh had long departed after a few hours of scouring inn common rooms.

It was worse than Winter had expected. Not a single inn even let them inside. “No elves,” the innkeeper said, gruffly, at each door. They looked down at Lian and Winter as if they were stray dogs, begging for scraps.

That look had both infuriated and terrified Winter. These humans could do whatever they wished to them. A group of humans could beat them, kill them, or worse, and by the looks of things Winter didn’t think anyone would care.

Lian was in a rage about being turned away. Lian’s anger only increased Winter’s anxiety; just by speaking his mind, he could put them in danger.

Winter and Lian had checked the Snow Gate, just in case. The gate was on the west side of the city, opposite the side they had entered, but it was near the tiellan quarter, anyway, and they figured they might as well check. The guard they questioned had given them that same look—pity and disdain mingled in an apathetic glare—and said he hadn’t seen any men matching Knot’s description. The information was useless, but at least the guard had actually spoken to them.

Now Winter and Lian were in the tiellan quarter. They’d found an inn for themselves, and had just entered the common room. Winter looked around. Tiellans were always easy to spot in crowds, but it was comforting to see a group of her people together. Tiellan tradition dictated a certain way of dressing: floor-length dresses with long sleeves and
siaras
for women; loose trousers, long-sleeved shirts, and wide-brimmed
araifs
for men. Showing as little skin as possible was the goal, though the more form-fitting trousers that many human men wore in the city were still considered inappropriate for tiellans, despite technically covering skin. Winter herself wore a traditional tiellan dress, although she had never much liked it. Tiellan modesty had always felt superfluous to her. And restrictive. Her
siara
was a comforting weight on her shoulders, but the things became horribly impractical when the weather was warm. In the country, or on her father’s boat, she could sometimes get away with wearing trousers and shirts as the men did, even if she still wore her
siara
; in the city, such a thing would be far too provocative. She would draw too much attention to herself.

“This place ain’t half bad,” Lian said, sipping the dregs from a bowl of stew. His mood seemed to have lightened since entering the tiellan quarter. Winter felt better too. “Not half as fancy as the human inns we’ve been rejected from,” Lian continued. “But not bad.”

Only a few moments after they sat down, a tiellan man approached them, smiling broadly.

“Welcome, wanderers,” he said. His familiar drawl was a welcome sound. “Ain’t seen you two around. On your way someplace, or this your destination?”

Winter glanced at Lian. Honestly, she didn’t know, but she couldn’t tell this man that. “Destination,” she said. “We’re here visiting from Pranna.”

Lian raised an eyebrow. The man, who Winter assumed was the innkeeper, nodded his head. “Very good. Cold it is, up there. We have the freezing winds o’ the plain here in Cineste, but you have the freezing winds o’ the sea.” The innkeeper chuckled. “Either way you’re freezing, eh?”

Winter smiled. She wasn’t in the mood for small talk, but she didn’t know how to make the man go away without being rude.

“Can I get the two of you anythin’ more?” the innkeeper asked.

Winter was about to say no, when Lian spoke up. “A mug of ale.”

“Aye,” the innkeeper said, then looked at Winter.

“Nothing for me, thank you,” she whispered, avoiding his gaze.
Why don’t you just look at him?
she asked herself. He wasn’t a human. There was no reason to fear him.

The man nodded. He moved as if to turn away, but stopped. He leaned down low, close to their table.

“If you’re here for the you-know-what,” he whispered, looking over his shoulder, “we’re meetin’ in the back room at midnight. You’re both welcome; we welcome fresh faces.”

He turned and left.

Winter peered after him. “What was that about?”

Lian glanced over his shoulder, and then down at the table. “Don’t know,” he said.

Winter narrowed her eyes. She knew Lian. She knew what he looked like when he was telling the truth, and she knew what he looked like when he was lying. And he was definitely lying.

“You know, don’t you? What was he talking about, Lian?”

Lian shrugged, looking around the room. “Look, I… I’ve been going to these meetings for the past few years, whenever I’ve come to Cineste.”

Winter raised her eyebrows. Anything that would get Lian out of Pranna must be important, indeed.

“They’re for tiellans who are sick of the status quo. Who want change, and are willing to do whatever it takes to make it happen.”

“Whatever it takes?” Winter repeated. She didn’t have to ask for clarification; she knew what it meant.

They were willing to fight.

She shook her head. “Why, Lian? Nothing will come of it. Things have hardly changed in the past century.”

“Pointless it may be, but it’s
right
,” Lian said. “The way we’re treated
ain’t
, and the Druids—”

Winter scoffed. “The
Druids
? That’s what you call yourselves? That’s archaic, Lian. From fairy tales and myths. Might as well call yourselves mummers—you’ll be taken just as seriously.”

Lian frowned, and Winter felt guilty. She wasn’t being fair.

“The Druids represent everything good in tiellans,” he said. “All the qualities we’ve lost. And it’s not a name from fairy tales; it’s from the Age of Marvels.”

“Same thing,” Winter muttered. The Age of Marvels had come and gone more than three thousand years ago. A time of magic and wizardry, when horrifying monsters and beautiful creatures, now long extinct, had walked the Sfaera. It was a time when the tiellan ruled, and the humans respected and loved them for it.

Supposedly. Many debated whether or not the Age of Marvels had actually occurred.

Winter resisted the urge to roll her eyes. She didn’t want to be cruel, but Lian made it so easy.

“The tiellans were once glorious,” Lian said, his eyes lighting up. Despite his foolishness, his demeanor caught Winter off guard. She had rarely seen him this passionate. “We were the defenders of nature, the champions of the Sfaera. We lived in harmony with Canta
and
the Elder Gods. We taught humans how to live honorably, how to till and care for the earth.”

“You don’t really believe that, do you? Next you’ll claim the ancient tiellans lived thousand-year lives and spoke with the trees.” All things from stories they’d been told, growing up. Every tiellan knew them. But no tiellan truly believed them. Winter certainly didn’t. They’d always seemed silly to her.

“They
did
,” Lian said. “We can have that glory again. We can become what we once were.”

Winter shook her head. “Can’t find a glory that never existed.”

Lian regarded her for a moment longer, then sighed deeply, sitting back in his chair. “You’ll understand, one day,” he said. “You’ll understand why this is so important.”

The two of them sat in silence.

The innkeeper returned with Lian’s ale. Lian waited for him to leave, then spoke again. “Don’t mean to pour salt on a wound, princess, but we’ve got to talk about what we’re doing here.”

“I know,” she said.

“We didn’t find anything. Not a single clue telling us where Knot could be.”

“I know.”

“If Knot’s left the city, we’re already losing ground.”

“I
know
,” Winter said. She glanced over Lian’s shoulder. Despite the inn being in the tiellan quarter, there were still a few humans in the common room. A group of them, young and rowdy, laughed and drank and made lewd comments to any tiellan who happened to pass too close. One other human, an older noble by the looks of him, dressed in a fine, brightly colored waistcoat and dark suit, sat at a table by himself. Everyone else in the room gave him a wide berth. Winter frowned.

“What do you think he’s doing here?” she asked, nodding at the man. “Behind you.”

Lian casually turned to the side, looking behind him. He shrugged.

“Having a good time, apparently,” he said.

The man
was
having a good time. He was smiling, nodding politely to everyone who passed by, human and tiellan alike. The tightness in Winter’s chest returned, which made her angry even as fear crept into her. This man looked harmless. Why should she be afraid of a human here, of all places? If she couldn’t feel safe in a tiellan inn, where in the Sfaera
could
she feel safe?

And yet, despite her anxiety, Winter wondered. She had never been superstitious—religion and superstition seemed to go hand in hand to her, one as useless as the other—but something tugged at her. Perhaps this man was here for a reason.

“Winter, I hope you’re not—”

“I’m going to talk to him,” she said. “You never know, right? Aren’t you the one that always talks about faith?”

“This ain’t what I mean.”

Winter was about to argue when she felt a chill. Someone had entered the common room, allowing a gust of cold wind to rush in through the open door. She turned.

Standing in the door was another man. Another
human
.

Some of the tiellans murmured. Winter could understand why. This was their space. They weren’t allowed in any of the human inns, but humans were allowed to invade theirs whenever they wished?

The newcomer looked around the room quickly, then took a seat at an empty table. He was short, for a human. About Lian’s height. He had dark hair and eyes, and the shadow of a beard.

The humans in the room hadn’t seemed to notice this one’s arrival. The group in the corner still drank, laughed, while the other human, the finely dressed man, only smiled.

“Winter…” Lian said.

She steeled herself. They needed information—something, anything, to go on. They wouldn’t get anywhere if she didn’t take risks.

Winter stood and walked towards the finely dressed man’s table. She forced a smile but she could hardly breathe, her chest was so tight.

The man smiled back at her. He wasn’t as old as Winter had first thought. A portly frame and thinning hair made him seem older, but now she looked at him closely she realized that he’d certainly seen fewer than forty summers. He might even be only five or six years Knot’s senior.

“Hello there, miss,” the man said, his smile widening. Winter detected the sour stink of ale on him. The smell didn’t fit with his smooth, tailored clothing.

“Hello,” Winter said, trying to sound confident and friendly at the same time. The combination was difficult, especially while trying to quell the fear roiling within her.