Rodian ran for it and snatched it up. The leather lace was broken, snapped rather than untied, and he flipped the folio open.
All the pages were still inside, but it didn't matter. They were fakes, arranged by High-Tower and a'Seatt in this effort to lure and trap the killer.
Rodian raised his eyes, looking through the dark broken pools of lantern light.
Had their quarry—at least the one who'd gotten away—realized the pages were a ruse? How could anyone have even glanced inside the folio during flight?
"Ruben and Lúcan should have the other in custody," Garrogh said. "We'll get some answers out of that one!"
Rodian simply nodded. Turning, he headed back at a trot, all the way to the Upright Quill. But upon drawing closer to the scriptorium, he slowed in caution.
Four of his men lay in the street.
Only Lúcan was on his feet, hovering with sword in hand over Wynn, as the sage tended Ruben's bleeding shoulder.
Shâth lay with limbs askew where he'd fallen in a bloody mess.
Far to the shop's right lay Ecgbryht's limp form, his head cocked up against the shop's wall. Nearly all color had faded from his rough face, making the stubble of his blond beard stand out. His features were frozen in shock beneath tangled strands of gray-streaked hair. Taméne lay where the figure had struck him… his eyes open, his neck broken.
And the pale-faced man was nowhere in sight.
"Where is he?" Rodian snarled. "Where's the other one?"
"Ask her!" Lúcan snapped, nudging the sage with his boot's toe.
Wynn held a torn wad of tabard against Ruben's bleeding shoulder. She didn't even look up.
"What have you done now?" Rodian demanded.
Her shoulders curled forward as if she might collapse in exhaustion. Then she squeezed her eyes closed in a pained cringe.
"Gods damn you!" Rodian snapped, not caring what anyone thought. "
Wynn tucked the makeshift bandage inside Ruben's split tabard, closing the edges over it. She rose up to lock eyes with Rodian, and then movement in the corner of Rodian's sight made him jerk around.
A shadow-cloaked figure approached along the deeper darkness of the next shop's awning. Rodian raised his sword, inching toward the silhouette draped in a black cloak and… a hat?
Pawl a'Seatt stepped out, wearing a black cloak over his matching vestment and a pressed white shirt.
Upon his head was the flat-topped hat of black felt with a brim almost wide enough to shield his shoulders. He swept his gaze over the scene, pausing briefly on the shattered window of his shop.
"What are you doing here?" Rodian demanded. "You and yours were to keep away until I told you otherwise."
Master a'Seatt didn't answer.
"Did you find the dog?" Wynn whispered.
Rodian glanced back in disbelief. Wynn gazed down the empty street like a child who'd wandered off and only just realized she was lost. Rodian didn't care.
After all the careful setup and planning, he'd failed. There had been not one but two perpetrators here this night, and both had escaped. Three of his men were dead and another injured—and he had nothing to show for it. And it was all wrapped around one meddling little sage.
"Garrogh, see to the men," Rodian growled, and he snatched Wynn by the arm, dragging her down the street.
Wynn sat alone on her cell's bunk within the military's castle, staring at a heavy wooden door with no inner handle. On top of everything else that her superiors held against her, being arrested was going to destroy any grain of credibility she had left. She took a deep breath, trying to calm thoughts spinning out of control, but the effort failed.
A shrouded black figure, who could walk through walls, had stolen a folio and killed three of the Shyldfälches. The city guards had barely slowed it down. This only strengthened Wynn's belief that it was an undead as well as a powerful mage.
And Chane had appeared in the company of this monster, just as he had with Welstiel.
Then Chap had bolted out of the dark to protect her—only to vanish in pursuit of the black-robed undead.
It was too much to hold all at once in her head.
If Chap was here, then where were Magiere and Leesil? Though she ached to find Chap, to learn why he'd come, her jumbled thoughts kept turning back to Chane.
Once a minor noble in life, he was a scholar and sometime warrior who'd stood between her and death more than once. He was also another monster, a killer who fed on the living and had ended or ruined many lives. She'd tried to shut him out, to make him leave her once and for all in that forgotten castle of the Farlands' highest peaks. Yet here he was again—always again and again.
Wynn slumped, elbows on knees, and buried her face in her hands. Why had she believed his denial in the street?
She'd been disoriented by that thing coming out of the wall and the sudden appearance of Chane… and then Chap. Too much had happened in those panicked moments. Yet, even if Chane was a Noble Dead, he'd always revered the guild.
