The morning after the debacle at the shrine, Lorelei sparred with Creed in one of the Crag’s training circles. They wore padded coats, fencing helmets, and wielded blunted rapiers and poniards. In typical fashion, Creed bested her in their first three bouts, but the score was even in the fourth—three strikes apiece—and Lorelei was determined to take one from him before they headed to the library to see Kellen.
She approached Creed warily and swung her rapier. Creed blocked it with his poniard and thrust his rapier at her belly. She turned it aside but had to skip back from his cheeky follow-up with his poniard. He overextended in doing so, and Lorelei swung wildly at his head. Creed ducked and retreated with liquid ease.
A pair of constables stopped to watch as they circled one another. Lorelei waited for an opening, but Creed was as fast as he was big. She swung at his hip, trying to get under his guard, but Creed smashed her rapier with his poniard so hard her arm went numb.
She sucked air through clenched teeth and dodged back. Creed smiled at her behind his face guard. She flexed her wrist as if she were trying to make the pins and needles to go away, and Creed thrust straight at her chest. She leaned away, swung her rapier up under his guard, and touched his stomach.
Breathing heavy, they separated, raised their swords in salute, and lowered their weapons. The constables smiled and headed toward the Crag’s rear entrance.
“Not bad,” Creed said as he removed his helmet, “but as I’ve said, you need more power behind those lunges.”
“You’re just sore you lost,” Lorelei said between breaths.
“I just wanted a workout, Lorelei.” He wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his sleeve. “Remember, this is play. Everything changes in a real fight. That poke you just gave me wouldn’t have pierced one of Kellen’s dusty old scrolls.”
They entered the weapons hall, and Lorelei slipped out of her padded coat. “I know the rules change in a real fight.” She hung her practice gear on the wall. “I’ll change with them.” Creed looked like he was about to launch into one of his lectures about muscle memory, so she made for the exit. “I’m off for a bath! You’re still coming with me to see Kellen and his dusty old scrolls, yes?”
He nodded, but seemed annoyed. “Accuracy and power, Lorelei. It’ll save you one day!”
After they’d bathed and changed into their uniforms, they left the Crag and headed into the city. Most days Lorelei would need to slip from place to quiet place, but Creed was more talkative than usual, and it helped calm her nerves. As they entered the quadrata, however, it felt like everyone—from the man walking his wolfhound to the woman at her wine cart to the jongleur and the small crowd of children around him—was watching her. She quickened her pace, and Creed, without a word, quickened with her. They hot-footed it to the library, walked through the doorway, and Lorelei took a moment to calm her pounding heart.
“Good?” Creed said after a moment.
Lorelei blinked, let out a slow breath, and nodded. “Good.” They headed up the stairwell to the third level. “Knock, knock,” Lorelei said as they entered Kellen’s research room.
Kellen was sitting behind his desk, poring over an old clay tablet. As Creed headed toward the cork board at the far end of the room, Kellen leaned back, pulled off his spectacles, and laid them on the desk. “Well, well, a more unrefined pair of scofflaws I’ve never seen.”
Creed crossed his arms and considered the crowded notes and multicolored strings pinned to the cork board. “A mad spider, indeed,” he mumbled.
“What’s that?” Kellen said.
Creed turned to face him. “Lorelei tells me you’re penning a masterpiece.”
“Mmm . . . You enjoy history, Creed?”
Creed grinned, but Lorelei recognized it as more of a shrug. “Who doesn’t?”
Kellen looked amused. “Would you like to hear about Justinian’s victory over the Kin at Blackthorn, then? Or maybe you’re more interested in the binding of the empire’s first indurium.”
Creed made a show of considering Kellen’s offer. “I think I’ll wait for the book.”
Kellen nodded. “Yes, perhaps that would be best.”
“So”—Creed slapped his hands and rubbed them—“where’s this bloody chalice then?”
“Ah, unfortunate news, I’m afraid,” Kellen said. “The trading caravan Ezraela joined has been delayed.”
“That is unfortunate,” Creed said with a sidelong glance at Lorelei. “I rather think your former protégé was hoping to postpone her stint in records.”
Kellen’s bushy eyebrows rose. “Records, is it?”
“Yes, but it was hardly my fault.” She gave him the high points, up to and including the discussion with Illustra Azariah and the punishment Damika had meted out.
Kellen took it all in stride. “You know what they say about inquisitors who haven’t done time in records, Lorelei . . .”
“No, what’s that?”
“They’re like rams with no horns.”
“Useless?” Lorelei said.
“Incomplete,” replied Kellen.
Lorelei rolled her eyes. “I’ll try to remember that while I nurse the paper cuts and blisters.”
“Well, the good news is the caravan should arrive by late afternoon. Perhaps you could come by after your temporary imprisonment? I really would like to look over the writing on the chalice with you.”
Lorelei nodded, then looked to Creed. “You?”
He shrugged. “Fine, but I’m not coming hungry. I know how you two get when you start arguing about history. We’ll eat, then we’ll come.” He turned to Kellen. “Does that suit?”
“That suits fine.” Kellen pulled on his spectacles and leaned over his scroll. “Good hunting, inquisitors.”
Creed accompanied Lorelei as far as the road leading up to the Crag. “Damika’s got me chasing a rumor of a new drug den being set up on a riverboat, if you can believe it. I’ll meet you in records this afternoon.” With that he trotted off.
Lorelei reported to Maudrey, the spindly woman who tended to the voluminous records in the Crag’s basement. “You’re late,” the old woman said.
Lorelei took off her coat and hung it over a chair. “Had to help quell a riot.”
Maudrey snorted. “Inquisitors. Always grousing about records, but ask them to help file? Oh, no, that’s too much, isn’t it?” She pointed to a loose pile of papers on a wooden table. “Last month’s reports. Bind them, label them, and stack them over there.” She pointed to a similar wooden table with stacks of leather-bound volumes.
Lorelei got to work. The binding she did was nowhere near the quality of a proper bookbinder. It was quick and dirty. It was also mindless, which gave her time to think about the shrine, the peat, and who Blythe had intended to deliver it to. Her mind kept drifting to Rylan, though, and the pleasant talk they’d had outside the shrine, the protective way he’d looked at her when Azariah dismissed him.
Time and again she tried to clear her mind and focus, but she’d been thinking about those other things for days. With no way to follow up on her questions, she was stuck. And Rylan was like the first warm breeze in spring—pleasant, welcoming, calming. The gentle way he had with dragons was endearing. He’d treated Bothymus with care and patience, even compassion, first in Glaeyand after the attack by the cobalt, then again behind the eyrie on Blackthorn. She saw him in her mind’s eye, standing in front of Bothymus, one hand held out, fingers spread wide, the other behind his back, singing with his eyes pinched to avoid becoming spellbound by Bothymus’s dazzling wings.
Less than a day had passed since the arcfire at the eyrie. She still hadn’t had time to digest it all. As was often the case when something momentous happened, memories of it flashed before her, one after another. Stromm holding up the crop stone. Bothymus raising his head like a threatened viper, then spreading his mesmerizing wings. She’d written off Bothymus’s display as a symptom of his proximity to the rift. Rylan said seeing the crop had triggered the big indurium, which seemed reasonable at the time, but it was also the same moment Rylan approached him.
She allowed that moment to play out again. Bothymus’s third eyelids swept over his eyes on seeing Rylan. His head jerked back. His jaws spread. All were signs of wariness, even distrust.
She began to question Rylan’s sudden appearance on the servants’ deck in Glaeyand, why he was helping Bothymus in the first place, his letter to Skylar about Bothymus’s health, his offer to come to Ancris. She had no grounds to question why he was in Ancris, but she couldn’t stop thinking about it. It was a sixth sense she’d come to trust over the years.
As she finished with a bound volume and placed it on the table Maudrey had indicated, she vowed to set her feelings for Rylan aside and let him prove himself.
Or not.