Fallen Ward (Deepwoods Saga Book 3) (14 page)

Neither, but it was a naïve answer to give. Siobhan realized the truth of the matter even as she wrestled with it.

“All of that aside, are you sure that Rune has gone to Coravine?” Ryu Jin Ho’s tone was heavy with worry. “This is not something a single person should take on alone.”

“It’s a guess on my part,” she admitted. “I’m really hoping that I’m wrong, and he just got caught up in something in Goldschmidt and couldn’t get back before sunset.”

“If he is at Goldschmidt, we’ll know in the morning.” Ryu Jin Ho hesitated before asking, “How long would it take a Pathmaker to travel to Coravine?”

“By himself? A day, I would think.” Not wanting to ask the next obvious question, she had to force the words out of her mouth. “How long would it take to assassinate a guildmaster?”

“Likely more than a day. He’ll need time for reconnaissance before making a plan.” Head tilting back, he looked at the ceiling, logistics flashing across his eyes.

“I think he’ll need about five days to do the job,” Wolf offered behind her, voice solemn.

“Yes, I must agree. That is a good estimate.” Shaking his head, Ryu Jin Ho stared at the floor for a long moment before his eyes came up to hers. “If he is not back by morning, we will assume the worst. When he comes back from Coravine, you must send him directly to Hyun Woo. His master will take him to task for this. He was taught better.”

Siobhan snorted. “If there’s anything left by the time I’m done with him, I’ll do that.”

Rune had left the deserted remains of Stott behind him, and was about halfway across the bridge, when he realized that leaving as he did was likely going to get him in trouble. Rune didn’t believe for a second that he could have gotten permission for this particular mission. But he could have at least told them that he wouldn’t be back that night so they wouldn’t be worried and searching for him.

Ah well. Damage was done now. He’d best be quick. The longer he left them hanging, the more he would suffer when he was back.

A Pathmaker traveling alone could move much faster than a group. Rune had used the last of the sunlight to get to Stott, and from there it was a three hour run across the bridge. There was already a path in place that would lead from Channel Pass to Coravine. He would likely reach the city before mid-morning.

From there, he had no plans.

The problem was that Rune didn’t have enough information. He knew from his previous trip to the city its layout, and where Fallen Ward’s compound was located, but that was all he had been able to learn in the two days they’d spent there. In order to sneak into the compound, he’d need more information than that. It would take days of him observing the traffic coming in and out of the compound and the guard rotations before he would see the weak points.

A part of him wanted to just slip in, kill the guildmaster, and slip out again. Nice and easy so he could go home. But rushing things would get him killed. Rune was fairly certain that if he died, Siobhan would make Conli revive him somehow just so she could kill him again. He owed it to her, if no one else, to be careful with this new life she had given him.

As he ran, he planned in his head as best he could. He didn’t have much in the way of supplies on him, just a pouch full of money and his weapons. He’d either have to forage for food—he knew how to do that now thanks to Wolf’s survival training—before he entered the city, or buy food when he got there. Once he was set in a good perch, he wouldn’t leave it for the next two days. Buying enough food to last him might be difficult considering how expensive things were in Coravine right now.

No, better to do some foraging out here.

Decided, he took a break from running and settled on the side of the bridge. From his pathmaking tools, he made a rough line and hook, baited with a fly that had been trying to bite him for the past several minutes. As Wolf had taught him, he set his mind to fishing. Night fishing was actually the best kind, as some fish were much more active now than during the day. It took him a little longer than he liked, but he caught four fat fish.

Satisfied, he hooked their gills through a line before setting off at a run. He’d cook and eat one in the morning while waiting for the sun to rise. The other three he’d sell in the city or use to barter with. He’d need more ready-to-eat food than raw fish.

It took another hour for him to reach the end of the bridge. He decided to stop right near the embankment, as sleeping anywhere near Channel Pass would be too creepy, but sleeping out in the open space too dangerous. The side of the bridge would give him some cover, at least.

He hooked his catch line around a stone and let the fish soak in the water, trying to keep them as fresh as possible. Then he snuggled into a dry patch of ground and tried to get some sleep. For some reason, it proved difficult. Was it just because he was in a relatively open place, outside of the city, and therefore unprotected? No, he’d slept in more dangerous places before.

Rune snorted, amused at himself. Was he really so used to having his guild at his back that he now found it impossible to relax when he wasn’t with them? He’d been with them a little over six months. Six months had overturned eighteen years of habit?

“I really am in trouble,” he murmured to himself. “How could I become this dependent so fast?”

Shaking his head, he tried again, shifting his arm underneath his head to a more comfortable position. Determined, he closed his eyes tightly. He had to sleep. Rune had worked a full day before he had done that little marathon across the bridge, and he’d be up with the sun. Then, when he arrived in Coravine, he’d only be taking cat naps before he went for the guildmaster. Four days, perhaps five, to do the job. That was a long time without properly sleeping.

Sleeping several hours every night was a foreign thing even now. Rune managed four hours a night and the rest of the time he was patrolling the place and making sure nothing was coming anywhere near his guild. He did manage naps during the day, sometimes, if he found a good spot. But he was nothing like his master. Grae could sleep ten hours and still want a mid-day nap. How a human being could sleep that much was beyond him.

Despite his best efforts, Rune never really fell asleep that night. He managed a doze, but came awake at the least bit of sound. When the sky turned that light blue-grey, he gave up trying to sleep at all and rose with the sun. It didn’t take much effort to find some driftwood and make a cook fire. With his fish cleaned and staked out near the fire, he went back to the shoreline and tried to clean himself up some. He was still covered in soot from yesterday. It proved easy to wash off, although his clothes didn’t improve any. It would take strong lye soap to get it out, not that he had any on him or a change of clothes.

Shrugging, he let this go. He’d been dirtier in his life. It wouldn’t kill him to wear stained clothes for a few days.

After a hot meal of the fish, he doused the cook fire, grabbed his catch and a small flask of water, and went for the path. This one was a coral pattern, a much larger one than he needed, as it was built for caravans. But it was also the only one that was prebuilt and Rune wasn’t going to stop and build himself a path just because this one was too large. It wouldn’t hurt to use it.

Opening a path and stepping through it never got old. The brilliance of the stones as they lit up in that clear blue color, the way the air felt against his skin, the thrum of power as it hummed through him and into the path, all of it made him feel alive in a way he had never been able to describe. According to Denney, she sort of felt these things as well. She could see the stones light up, and the air felt more moist and dense to her, but it wasn’t on the same level as what he felt. Only Grae could understand his feelings perfectly.

As much of a rush as it was to open a path, it was just as much a disappointment to close it again. Grae had cautioned him, the first time he’d activated a path, that this would happen. He said that under no circumstance should Rune just open a path and then sit there. It would cross his mind to do so at some point, and tempt him, but doing it was dangerous. Staying on an open path would invite anyone that wanted to use it to just go across, and if they brought too much with them, it would make the path warp or collapse. Even if no one came, if Rune sat there too long, it would drain his life force away and make him dizzy. It took concentration to keep a path open. If he lost that focus at any point, it would again warp the path or close it unexpectedly, leaving him heavens-knew-where.

The way that Grae had given this advice made Rune think it was personal experience talking. He really wondered, just how and when had Grae done this? And what had happened afterwards? Grae wouldn’t say, and the only other person that might know was Siobhan. One day, he’d have to get her alone and ask her.

Knowing better than to linger, Rune concentrated as he should all the way through and closed the path promptly once he was at the last stepping stone.

Coravine. At last.

Rune was barely a hundred yards from the front gate and, already, he did not like the feel of the city. He had only gotten the informant’s report third-hand, but what he had been told was remarkably on target. There was an air of desperation about the city, mixed in with an odd sense of greed, and a great deal of confusion. The state of the city was such that he was able to go through the main gate without even being questioned or checked by any guards. Granted, Rune had not done a great deal of traveling in his lifetime, but every city that he had ever passed through always had guards at the gate that at least took down your name and asked you what guild you were from. To have absolutely no control over who entered and exited the city was completely unheard of.

Once he was inside, he used his memory of where the market was to navigate his way there. It took a little haggling, but he was able to trade in his three fish for some bread, jerky, and a jug that he filled up with water in the main fountain nearby. As food went, it was nothing to write home about, but it would be the perfect thing to have on hand while he observed the Fallen Ward compound.

Getting inside of the city had been easy. Rune soon discovered that getting near the compound was actually the tricky part. He’d never seen a place that was so tightly locked down and so heavily guarded. If he wanted to know where the guards that should’ve been at the gate were, one look at the compound was enough to answer that question. They were all guarding these gates instead of the city gates.

Nearly six months ago, when he was here the first time on a reconnaissance mission, it’d struck him as strange that the new guildmaster for Fallen Ward would be such a tightly guarded secret. But now it was even stranger. What sort of leader could be so bad that they would sacrifice the security of the city in order to keep it hidden? If the guildmaster was that incompetent then wouldn’t it be better to get rid of tradition and fire the man?

Yes this was all very, very strange.

It took considerable patience and timing on his part, but eventually Rune found a chink in the defenses, and he was able to find a perch near the compound that would let him sit unobserved. It was nothing glamorous. Just a simple nook in between a chimney and a third floor balcony edge. But it kept him out of line of sight from the street, it gave him a comfortable place to sit, and if by any chance it rained, it would provide him with decent shelter. Really, he had done more with less in the past.

Settling in comfortably, he pulled the small spyglass out of his pocket, and started observing.

He sat like that for nearly two days, only leaving once in the dead of night in order to refill his flask of water and answer the necessities of nature. After two long days of sitting in the same spot, he was able to see the pattern of the patrols, and gain an idea of how to slip through them. They had covered all angles of the compound well, but like everyone else in the world, they had this inherent weakness: they never looked up. Rune had taken advantage of this his entire life. Unless some sound or flash of movement caught their attention, most people did not look up as a rule. One of the easiest ways to infiltrate an area was to simply go by rooftop. One of the first things he had tried when testing his boundaries with Deepwoods was to see if he could escape by rooftop. Of course, Fei had quickly shot down this idea as he too was a rooftop lurker. But he was definitely in the minority. Rune had never encountered that problem before. And it was not likely he would do so again.

The guards at this compound especially never seemed to be interested in looking up. Which was all for the better, as it made this job easier for him. With an entrance and exit strategy more or less mapped in his head, the only problem that Rune still faced was that he had no idea who the guildmaster was, or where he would be located in the compound. In the two days of watching the area, not once had he seen anyone that could be the guildmaster. There was only one solution to this problem. He would have to infiltrate the compound and then find a place where he could lurk inside until he could figure out who the guildmaster was. It would mean spending a great deal of time in their attic crawlspace. But he did not see any other way around it.