I looked back. Nik held up a small stone statue of a Terran god carrying a small hammer. Tommen probably would have asked it for hot fires and pure metal. Nik turned it over,revealing the hollow in its base. He gave it a shake…and a cylinder of parchment fell onto the table.
I carefully unrolled it and put tools on the edges to keep it flat. It was a drawing, but not of anything I recognized. A piece of metal that forked at one end, surrounded by symbols I didn’t recognize.
“It’s a tang,” Nik said. “The part of a sword blade that extends into the handle.”
I pointed to the words. “This looks like the Enshrined Monks’ language.” They were acolytes who lived within shrines and spent their time praying to their particular gods and seeking their wisdom. “Can you read it?”
He looked at it. “No.”
“So Tommen was working on a secret weapon and inscribing the tang with arcane words. Tommen kept the plans, or one of them, tucked away from everything else. Maybe he finished the weapon and was at the house to deliver it.”
“Someone paid him, took the weapon, killed him anyway. And maybe the practitioner was an Enshrined Monk, or has a friend of the cloth.”
Of which there were probably hundreds in Carethia. The stronghold had three major shrines—for Terra, the Aetheric, and Oblivion—and dozens of smaller ones.
I grabbed a scrap of parchment and a stick of charcoal and sketched out the symbols as quickly as I could. “I might know someone who can help translate.”
Brows lifted, he waited for more. I’m sure he was used to getting answers.
“Not even the prince can afford that information,” I said, then folded the paper and slipped it into my tunic. “But I’ll let you know what I learn.”
We searched the rest of the smithy but found nothing more. It began to rain, sheets of water pouring over the roof, a curtain between us and the rest of the world. With the sun now hidden, the air had gone chilly, and I crossed my arms to preserve the heat.
Nik moved to stand beside me. For a few heartbeats of gods-blessed silence—and no death or attacks or Aetheric conspiracy—we watched the rain fall. My thoughts were as scattered as the raindrops. Imperial guard or not, it was comforting to stand beside someone who’d seen the same things today and understood how I was feeling. But his nearness was…powerful. I was almost too aware of him, of how he smelled of leather and sunlight. Of the visible strength in his crossed arms. He was a force, and the soldiers who stood beside him in battle—or had to stand against him—surely knew it.
“Thank you for your help today,” he said. “I didn’t think a garden trip would be quite so…eventful.”
“No lies,” I said. “I can deal with running and death and danger, but not lies. You knew there was a chance it wouldn’t be a meander through the garden. You’re looking for an assassin, and you brought me along in case I could lead you to him.”
He was quiet for a moment. “You’re right. There was a possibility.”
“I knew it, too, and I came anyway. But there would have been danger even if I’d stayed in the stronghold.”
“Meaning what?”
“He could be looking for more Anima to control, humans to possess. And maybe also for humans whose skills would be useful to him.”
Alarm flashed in his eyes. “You think you might be a target?”
“We’re all targets until he’s put away. So help your prince and his new stronghold, and stop the person who wants to destroy it all.”
When the rain slowed, we walked back to the gatehouse. Galen had already returned and waited while his horse drank from the communal trough, now brimming with rainwater.
“All is well?” Nik asked.
“The cart is en route,” Galen said.
Nik nodded, then shifted his gaze to me. “Come with me—with us—to the border tomorrow.”
I could hear Galen’s groan from several feet away.
“What border?”
“The one your stronghold exists to protect. The Vhranian border.”
Vhrania. Land of hard winds and windblades and never-ending grasslands. And of the Zephyrii, a community of Vhranians who moved across their country as the seasons changed, navigating the plains by the moons and stars.
“Why in the gods’ names would I do that?”
