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Tyreste squinted, shaking his head. “What, you think... You think the Rhiagain sorcerers are plotting against the Ravenwoods?”
“Plotting infers ideas. Plans. Whatever the Meduwyn have against the Ravenwoods, they’refarpast plotting, Scribe.” Sesto stared at the stack. “The letters stop, rather abruptly. The last one is from the Wynter girl, Zo. That’s how she signs her letters, Zo. And the last one, it’s not to the boy, Paeris, but to a woman named Annelyse. Of course, like all of Zo’s letters, I can’t read more than a word or three.”
“Two hundred and fiftyyearsthough, Sesto,” Tyreste replied. “That was a long time ago.”
“Then let’s rule it out,” Asterin said sensibly. “Let’s just do what we can to decipher the message, and if we determine the past is the past, I’ll happily sell the letters to the Reliquary.”
It was evident Asterin was only pretending to consider that the relevance of the letters was purely historical, but his stubbornness was stoking Tyreste’s concerns. Asterin Edevane was a man of reason, not an inciter of fear. “But why... Why would Zo write her letters to Duncarrow in Vjestikaan? No one in Duncarrow speaks the language.”
“If you want to be sophistic, they don’t speak Old Ilynglass either,” Sesto replied. “They’re both dead languages. One forbidden by the king, the other lost to time. So if you ask, why Vjestikaan, you must also ask, why Old Ilynglass?” He nodded at the letters. “They chose to communicate in languages few know for a reason. Don’t have to be a sleuth to deduce it was to keep others from reading their words. How they learned each other’s dead languages, well, that must be part of the mystery. As far as we can tell, the letters made it to the mainland by accident, found in a trunk belonging to a Rhiagain who’d settled in the Easterlands. Perhaps there was a cipher that was lost along the way.”
“Allof this is supposition until we know the contents,” Asterin said, sounding closer to the man of learning Tyreste remembered. The scholar fingered the leather on his gloves, tracing it in nervous passes. He blotted his temple on his sleeve. “And until we know the contents, I can’t ethically sell these to anyone. Certainly not the Reliquary, who are funded by the same crown who controls these creatures.”
Tyreste gripped the edge of the table with a long look at Asterin. His mouth parted, but it was another moment before he knew what to say. “You’re scared. You’ve never been scared by anything we’ve translated before.”
“A reaction, I hope, is proven embarrassingly unwarranted,” Asterin replied. “But my instincts are all I have. And they’rescreamingat me to beware of the hands these might fall into.”
Tyreste reached a palm down, for Rikard to rub his head against. Both men watched him, waiting. Could they see the plume of dread rising from his chest? Did they sense his simplistic questions were a ploy, to cover his apprehension?
For therehadbeen whispers about the Ravenwoods. He hadn’t remembered at first. Exhaustion wasn’t just calling, it was hollering, and his memory wasn’t to be trusted when he was so tired. He’d never been one to concern himself with the doings of others who came in and out of the Tavern at the Top of the World. It was the way, the creed, of a taverner to never engage, never share. Within their walls was a promise so sacred, it never needed to be said. What happened in the tavern stayed there.
But as his old friends shared their concerns, little wisps of conversation returned to Tyreste. The high priestess of Midnight Crest had purportedly paid an unexpected visit to Steward Wynter several months past, in the dead of night. No one knew why. Those who might weren’t saying.
Yet what business was any of it of his? Of Asterin’s and Sesto’s? If there was trouble in the mountains, it had nothing to do with them. If that trouble involved the king and his sorcerers, it was cause for more caution, not less.
Tyreste Penhallow had already borne enough trouble for an entire lifetime.
No. I sound as paranoid as they do. If I mention what I heard, they’ll stay, and if they stay, they’ll be stuck here for weeks.
“I don’t speak Vjestikaan. I can’t help with this one.” Tyreste pushed the letters across the table. He couldn’t meet either man’s eyes. “I’m sorry you came all this way for nothing.”
Asterin pushed them back. “If you can’t translate them, we can’t sell them. Keep them. Maybe you’ll find another way.”
“You don’t care about the money. You never have.” Tyreste scoffed.
“No.” Asterin finished his ale, pushed his chair back, and stood. “It’s my conscience that bade me leave my wife in her convalescence when there was nowhere else I’d rather be than at her side. Fear has me farther and longer away from my children than I’ve ever been. I hope it’s unfounded. But I don’t think it is.” He nodded sideways at Sesto. “I figure we have until noontide before we need to be on the road, to stay ahead of the storm. We’d love to catch up, Tyreste, if you’re not too tired.”
“No,” Tyrese said quickly, stifling a yawn. “No, I’d love that.”
“Good.” Asterin lifted the letters from the table and thrust them at Tyreste’s chest. “And if you can’t find a way in the end... burn them. It would be a shame to lose such historical relics, but we’ll all sleep fairer at night knowing we weren’t complicit in something terrible.”
Chapter3
The Rotting Center of It All
Anastazja, her head hunkered and swallowed by her double hood of furs, trudged behind Magda.Deliver us, springtidewas the saying around the village, more of a jest than a prayer. Every season was winter in Witchwood Cross.
The snow was deepest in the valley between Fanghelm and the forested foothills of Icebolt Mountain. Hunters had been forbidden from the forests for the past five years, a consequence of continuously failing the Vuk od Varem, so the paths were overgrown and packed with seasons of snow and ice. The eerie silence, blanketed by the towering pine-needled sentries, was another reminder they didn’t belong.
There’d been a heavy storm since her last visit, but Anastazja could just make out the divots from when she and Magda had trekked through a fortnight ago, for Magda’s last “endeavor.” That was what she called her terrible experiments,endeavoring,as though she was merely dabbling in evil and not existing at the rotting center of it all.
It took an hour to reach the cave by foot. Horseback wouldn’t have been much faster without a true path, and it might have been deadly for the horses with the way hidden beneath the shifting banks. Anastazja loved Enzi so much, she’d stopped riding her altogether, terrified of one day finding her throat cut in her stall as punishment. Magda had already taken everyone else Ana loved.
Not everyone. You can still keep him safe.
Ana winced. It was a colossal effort keeping Tyreste from her thoughts, a necessity born not only of fear of Magda potentially reading her mind but of addressing a heartbreak so tender, it left her retching anytime she remembered the awful lies she’d said to push him away. She wondered what he was doing,howhe was doing, but that was too far. She had to stop. Shehadto forget him. Magda would afford him no mercy if she knew he wasn’t just an amusement.
Though, Ana had never had amusements. Tyreste had been her first and, though she hadn’t realized it back then, her last.
