Of Truth and Beasts

Ore-Locks’s room was across the hall, but he followed them inside their own room, looking about. He set the chest down, shut the door, and then dropped his bulky sack. It clattered strangely. Then he walked to the bed covered in quilted raw silk of varied violet hues, pressing his hand down until it sank through the puffy bedding to the soft mattress.

“Like sleeping in a sinkhole,” he said.

Chane wanted to go out by himself, but he was uncertain how to broach the subject. How long did Wynn intend to stay in Drist before heading inland?

“What now?” he asked. “Winter is so close that we will find few caravans on the move. I should try to procure a wagon.”

Wynn glanced away nervously.

“Wynn?” he asked.

After a slow breath, she answered, “We’re not headed inland ... just yet.”

Ore-Locks’s complexion flushed, and he beat Chane to the obvious. “What?”

Wynn rolled a shoulder, fidgeting in sudden discomfort. She swung her pack onto the bed and began digging through it, finally pulling out a journal Chane had not seen before. She paged through it and flattened it open.

“Look at this. I copied a map I found in the archives.”

Why did she keep everything from him until the last moment?

“We’re here,” she said, pointing to one inked dot on the coastline. “If we take another ship south, all the way to the port of Soráno in the Romagrae Commonwealth, we’ll—”

“Another ship?” Ore-Locks cut in. “I have no quarrel with a good walk.”

“And I want to reach the Lhoin’na as quickly as possible,” she countered. “Soráno is nearer to our destination. This is the fastest way.”

Ore-Locks sighed but otherwise remained silent.

“Instead of going inland, south by southwest,” Wynn continued, “and all the way through Lhoin’na lands, we’ll come in below and take the shorter route directly east. By the time we reach their forest, we’ll be on top of a’Ghràihlôn’na, the one great elven city, and their branch of the guild. For a slightly longer sea voyage, we’ll cut our journey time in half, and keep us in ... civilized areas a bit longer.”

Chane glanced at Shade, who was watching him, but he shook his head, incredulous.

“Then why did we stop here at all?” he asked. “We have no business in Drist.”

“To throw the guild off my trail.”

Chane did not understand. Wynn looked up at him, a bitter anger in her eyes that he had not seen there until recent times.

“High-Tower laid out my route,” she answered, “not only to waste my time, but to track me. Think about it. Our funding was barely adequate, and I was commissioned to make two stops, both at guild locations. Whatever was in that letter to the Chathburh annex, someone might have checked if I booked passage anywhere else. By landing here, all they can report is that I went to Drist.”

She tilted her head. “If ... when High-Tower hears of it, he’ll think my trail ends here, only to be picked up once I reach the Lhoin’na, but I’ll be there long before he expects. And there’s no one here to report that I booked passage farther south.”

Chane crossed his arms. Every day there was something more about Wynn and her guild that became tarnished in his view. Besides her, the guild was the only thing in this world he had ever believed held value.

“As you said,” Chane countered, “we were not given enough money for another voyage.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

Chane lost all patience with more surprises. “Wynn, how are—?”

“It’s taken care of.”

“What have you done?”

She bit her lower lip but did not answer. Instead, she reached into her pack. When she withdrew her hand, she opened it, exposing a cold lamp crystal.

Chane was still baffled. He had seen her crystal many times and even used it once or twice himself. Then she put her other hand into her short robe’s pocket and pulled out two more.

“These are spares,” she said quietly.

Chane began growing suspicious. Only journeyors and above were given a crystal as a mark of status and accomplishment. Such were nearly sacred among sages. So how had Wynn acquired a second, let alone a third?

Before Chane said a word, again Ore-Locks beat him to it.

“Did you steal those?”

For once, his expression was completely unguarded. Ore-Locks knew the implications as well as Chane.

“No!” Wynn answered.

“Wynn?” Chane warned.

“Premin Hawes gave them to me ... when I told her that I’d lost mine.”

So she had lied to get them.

“No one is hurt by this,” Wynn said. “I knew we’d need more money and wouldn’t get it.”

What she intended was now clear.

“Even just one of these will bring more than we need,” she went on heatedly, almost daring either of them to argue. “We simply trade it to someone who has no wish to reveal where or how it was gained.”

Chane remained silent. He had seen Wynn give in to questionable—sometimes dark—rationales to justify her endeavors, not that the effects mattered to him. He had done worse for far less and more self-serving motivations. But he had never thought her capable of lying to her own for this kind of purpose, or to barter away something so honored. The act was so ... premeditated.