Wolf Captured (84 page)

“Check if she’s there,” Derian said, “and when you have, I need to talk to you—and show you something.”

Harjeedian rose, not so much obediently but as one humors a child or madman. His expression when he knocked, received no response, then investigated and found Rahniseeta’s room empty changed from bemused puzzlement to apprehension.

Derian, meanwhile, had checked the spot where he knew Rahniseeta typically left messages for her brother and had located what he had hoped to find.

“Read this,” he said, thrusting a note—folded, rather than sealed as his own had been—at Harjeedian.

Harjeedian unfolded the note, and Derian watched with growing tension as the man’s gaze flitted over the written characters. Just how much had Rahniseeta told her brother?

Finishing, Harjeedian bent his fingers around the note, unconsciously crushing the paper.

“What is this? A raid on Misheemnekuru? Is this some sort of joke?”

“May I see what she wrote you, Harjeedian?” Derian countered.

Harjeedian handed it over, his slim, strong build held tense. The snake on his arm, responding to that tension, lifted the upper length of its body from Harjeedian’s warmth, its tongue nervously tasting the air.

Once Derian had confirmed that Rahniseeta had not told her brother anything other than what she had overheard being said in Barnet’s room, he shaped his reply, giving it force by the simple expedient of starting to leave the suite.

“This is much of what was contained in the note she left me,” Derian said. “I came here for your help, because I have no idea where to start looking along the wharves. Are you with me or not?”

Harjeedian uncoiled the snake from his arm, and set it gently amid some of the plants that grew about the suite.

“I am with you,” he said, “but why would Rahniseeta go there herself? This could be dangerous. Why wouldn’t she get assistance?”

“Aren’t all of us northerners rather politically charged right now?” Derian said, leading the way out. “Rahniseeta may not have wished to start anything until she was certain that Elwyn was not talking fancy—he’s not among the brightest, you know. Or she may have hoped that Barnet would succeed in dissuading Waln. Either way, a major scandal would be averted.”

Derian was almost amazed at how easily he made up excuses that held just enough of the truth to be convincing, without giving away those things he still thought best to conceal.

Two years of conspiracy and intrigue have evidently taught me something,
he thought, but the thought was devoid of amusement.

Nor was he certain that Harjeedian did not suspect that Derian was holding back something. However, as the aridisdu was willing to wait for explanations until they had found Rahniseeta, Derian was grateful for the respite.

Once they left Heeranenahalm, Harjeedian took the lead. He stayed off the processional way, taking them through side streets that snaked toward the southern end of the wharves. They did not talk, saving breath for moving as quickly as possible. In contrast, the sounds that came from the open windows—a baby fretfully crying, drunken laughter, a woman’s voice intoning a prayer—seemed surreal, as if these hints that even late at night human lives went on were eddying through from another world.

“This is the part of the wharves where Waln’s people have kept their
Islander,
” Harjeedian said. In response to Derian’s puzzled look, he answered, “That is what they call their boat.”

“Ah.”

Derian looked at the rows of tarped vessels bobbing at anchor. Their masts were bare, those lines left in place hummed in the breeze, the metal fittings ringing faintly against each other. To Derian’s eyes the sailboats were indistinguishable. Yet, tied as they were bow and stern so the shifting currents would not cause them to bump into each other, they rather reminded him of stabled horses—and there was an unsettling gap in the line.

“One seems to be missing,” he said softly.

“And I think it may be the
Islander,
” Harjeedian said. “Let us look more closely, and if Rahniseeta is still watching, she may come out to meet us.”

The wooden pier bore some interesting marks, visible even in lantern light.

“Fresh mud,” Derian said, kneeling to inspect it. “Damp. Someone was here, perhaps with mud on his boots from the storm earlier.”

“And a sailboat is definitely missing,” Harjeedian said. “We must assume then that the northerners have indeed gone out—the question is whether they went to Misheemnekuru.”

As one the two men scanned the dark expanse of water, but there was no telltale light to give testimony.

There wouldn’t be
, Derian thought.
Waln is mean and dangerous, but he’s not dumb.

He glanced back at the shadowy bulk of the buildings set back along the wharves. There was no sign of anyone coming out to meet them. His heart beat uncomfortably fast.

“No Rahniseeta,” he said uneasily.

Harjeedian’s expression, glimpsed in the light of the lantern he shifted in his grip, was also uneasy, but he did not let that uneasiness touch his voice.

“She may have gone to Heeranenahalm by a different route than the one we took and be waiting for us—wondering where we have gone, and we forgot to leave her a note. Why don’t you go up there and look for her? I will meet you, but first I want to go by the building where the shipwrecked sailors were quartered and see if they are still there.”

Derian nodded. “I can do that. It’s a good idea if you check. We’d look pretty stupid if we raised an alarm and they were sleeping soundly in their beds.”

“My thought exactly,” Harjeedian said. “Rahniseeta may have even had a similar thought and gone there to see. As you said, Lucky Elwyn is not the best witness.”

“We’ll meet in your suite,” Derian said, “and decide what to do.”

Harjeedian nodded, and together they began to walk quickly down the pier.

“There is one other thing you can do,” Harjeedian said as they walked.

“Name it.”

“If you do not find Rahniseeta—or Barnet Lobster—where they should be, you might see if Lady Blysse is easily found.”

“Firekeeper at night?” Derian snorted. “As easy as pinning down the wind.”

“Our stories say that was done once,” Harjeedian said. “Don’t go far, but if you can find her, it might be a good thing.”

“Fine, I’ll do it, but why?”

“Because,” Harjeedian said, “if this rumor is indeed correct, and Waln and his men have gone to Misheemnekuru, Lady Blysse is likely the only one among us who the yarimaimalom will not view merely as the second wave of an invasion.”

XXXV

FIREKEEPER RAN ALONGSIDE TRUTH, with Blind Seer on her other side. They had left the House of Fire some hours after Firekeeper had finally broken through the jaguar’s abstraction. Although the great cat’s mind could now interact with what Firekeeper rather stubbornly insisted on defining as “reality,” Truth demonstrated an alarming tendency to slip in and out of focus.

A thunderstorm in early evening did much to clear both the air and the jaguar’s head. When Truth demonstrated a desire to leave the screened house and go hunting, Tiridanti, who was well aware she had too long neglected her own duties, was glad to facilitate this wish.

“But would you go with Truth, Lady Blysse?” asked the ahmyndisdu. “She may think herself strong, but I know better than she how little she has eaten these last days.”

Firekeeper, who had already been invited by the jaguar, and who had only hesitated lest this apparent mark of favoritism make her an enemy she could ill afford, went happily.

Now, free of the city, the oddly sorted trio ran beneath the dripping foliage, hunting nothing so much as an escape from the constraints that had bound them all. When they were wearied, they collapsed upon a mat of thick, damp moss near a streambed.

Firekeeper, always the quickest to grow hungry, for the great predators often go days between meals, found a stand of sturdy yet flexible reeds and began to weave a fish trap.

“Tracking through probability,” said Truth, “is not unlike what you are doing there.”

“What do you mean?” Firekeeper asked.

“Humans often talk as if divining the future is like divining for water or ore,” the jaguar replied. “There is a source and one scents it. When seeking what course the future may follow, one must twist over and under the various currents, seeing which is strongest, which fade into nothing, which—given the right stimulus—might become reality.”

Blind Seer, who Firekeeper knew had been wondering a great deal about divination, sneezed as if the jaguar’s description had tickled his nose.

“It sounds complicated,” he said.

“It is,” Truth said, bending in a curious arc to wash between the toes of one hind paw. “But I was very good at it.”

Something in the statement lacked the jaguar’s usual easy self-satisfaction, and Blind Seer sprang on it as he might have upon a running deer.

“‘Was’?” he asked.

Truth contorted to groom the underside of her tail.

“I do not know,” she admitted, “if I will ever again dare look into the currents of time and possibility. I am afraid …”

A pause came, as if she awaited mockery for admitting to fear. When the wolves remained listeningly still, Truth continued.

“I am afraid I will become trapped there again.”

Firekeeper, leaning on her belly, close to the water so she could see if the fish trap moved, agreed.

“I can see why. It was very hard to get you out, and you were far from pleasant when we succeeded.”

“If you had seen what I had seen,” Truth replied, “your mood would have been less than sweet.”

“Can you recall what it was you saw?” Blind Seer asked.

“A little. I had become trapped while trying to discover why I could see so little about Firekeeper and what she will do to us. At first I thought it was only some indecisiveness in her own character that hid her from me, but eventually I became aware of a … I don’t know how to describe it. It was like deafness but not of the ears, blindness but not of the eyes. It was a little like the way a fawn’s spots make your eyes slide over where the little morsel lies, even when your nose proclaims it must be near. In short, something other than Firekeeper herself was keeping me from seeing her.

“I did what I could to dig through this obstruction, and that is when I became trapped in the ripples of possibility. I cannot say it any better than that. Rather as the fawn’s spots fool the eyes, so this fooled my ability to divine by splitting possibility into finer and finer ripples. I came away with one certainty, though. It was not Firekeeper who was being hidden from me, but rather that her fate was intertwined with some other—and that other was hiding … or being hidden.”

The jaguar shook her head as if flicking water from her ears. “I cannot think of it any more. Even now my head is spinning.”

“Let us tell tales, then,” Firekeeper suggested. “Let us tell you of our venture to Misheemnekuru and what we did there. Doubtless the ravens have already told you much, but there are things we learned upon our return that you may not have heard.”

Truth seemed grateful for this respite. She listened for a long while, holding herself with such stillness that only the flicker of gold in the burnt-orange eyes betrayed how carefully she listened. She listened with the same motionlessness even when Firekeeper kindled a fire and cooked some fish, even when Blind Seer finished off the guts. Only when Firekeeper and Blind Seer had finished relating Derian’s report did Truth move, stretch, and yawn.

“I knew pieces of this,” Truth said, “but it is good to hear how you saw events.”

Firekeeper waited to see if the jaguar would say more, and when she didn’t, asked a question that had been troubling her for some time.

“Truth, from what Derian and the others have discovered, this cabal of Dantarahma’s is no newly hatched fledgling. Why did the yarimaimalom wait for our coming to ask for help?”

Truth stretched, her rear end rising, her tail curving over her back as if to remove silence from her limbs. Then she sat with her paws before her, her eyes giving back the light from the fading embers of Firekeeper’s cook fire.

“You speak of yarimaimalom as if we were one beast with one mind,” the jaguar replied at last. “Are you not yet old enough to realize that the very intelligence that makes us different from the Cousins assures that we will not all think the same way? But, I forget, you are wolves, and wolves follow the rule of the pack, not their own minds.”

Had she possessed fur, Firekeeper would have bristled, but Blind Seer’s hackles remained smooth.

“We have seen,” he said, “differences even between wolves. We can accept that, but Firekeeper and I are not your prey that you may toy with us. Can you answer her?”

Truth’s feline arrogance did not quite admit an apology, but there was a softening about the angle of her whiskers that said she was amused at being challenged, even—or especially—so mildly.

“I can and will,” Truth said. “The answer is like the progress of time, simple and complex. The simple answer first. The yarimaimalom have indeed been aware of Dantarahma’s desire for what he thinks of as ‘religious reform.’ How could we not be aware when we move in and out of the humans’ lives so that they hardly notice us? Indeed—and this is no taunt—the birds are difficult to tell from their Cousin kin unless upon close inspection.”