- Chapter 25: Questions of Location -
Rohde sat against the wall of Natasha's room, by the door, darkness and silence all around him. They had offered him a bed, of course, but this was how he was accustomed to sleeping. Beds were for women, the rich, and the sick, and he was none of those.
A good thing he wasn't terribly fond of sleep, either; he had been awake for something close to a half hour now, and saw no hope of ever getting back to sleep. He might need rest for the coming day, naturally, but other than that he didn't mind being awake. Sitting perfectly still and watching Natasha's shadow and the blankets covering her faintly flicker with her rhythmic breathing was plenty to keep him occupied.
Something caught his eye: another shadow, above that of the one cast by Natasha and her bed. Even with all the time his eyes had had to adjust to the darkness, it was tricky to make out its shape, and at first he couldn't be sure that it wasn't just Natasha bending one of her legs in her sleep, or something. But after a moment he was able to discern that it was most definitely another human, and it was furtively reaching out one of its dark hands to Natasha.
His eyes darted around for some sort of a weapon, once again cursing the fact that they hadn't let him keep his axe. There was a vase filled with flowers, apparently provided by some of those Iomites grateful for what Natasha was doing for them, sitting on the nightstand a couple feet away. It was absolutely the only thing within easy reach that even vaguely resembled a weapon - no, Rohde remembered, there were a couple small utensils sitting on the nightstand too, but in the darkness he couldn't make one out well enough to grab it. The vase wasn't a proper weapon, but it could at least throw the creeping shadow which menaced Natasha off-guard long enough for Rohde to get his bare mitts on him.
He hopped up and to the left, seized the vase, and hurled it at the intruder. "Look alive, Natasha!"
Rohde expected the sound of the vase shattering. Instead, the vase was silently swallowed up by the creeping shadow. The only sound was Natasha leaping up to a sitting position and softly saying, "Blaze."
As the dwarf charged at the intruder, his expectations were broken a second time. Instead of striking the creeping shadow with her magic, Natasha quietly held her hand out before her, palm facing the ceiling, her little flame acting as a peaceful lamp to the room. Yet even in the light, the intruder seemed more like a creeping shadow than a normal sentient being, and it eluded Rohde's charge with equal slipperiness.
"Rohde, stop," Natasha said, forceful and faintly irritated, but calm. "It's just... it's just Dust. He's been looking after Deanna and I for months."
Rohde stared at the figure in black as it took the vase back to the nightstand and replaced it. The light of Natasha's spell showed a stream of water running over the floor, surrounded by a scattering of flowers. "Dust, there should be a candle in that drawer..."
Dust silently tossed it onto the bed. She picked it up and lit it, the new light allowing her to let the flames of her spell dissolve.
"Why in Iom's name didn't you tell me about him before?" Rohde demanded.
Natasha blushed. "I'm sorry... I just forgot. Dust, what are you doing in here anyway? Is something wrong?"
"What's wrong is he was trying to do something to you, Natasha! He came slinking in here, and he reached out to..." To what? What exactly was he trying to do? "...to touch you..."
"Where?"
"My lady -" Dust began to interject.
Rohde scratched his beard. "Around your middle somewhere..."
"Around my -" Natasha froze. Holding the candle steady with one hand, she reached down to touch her pregnant belly with the other. Then she looked back to Dust. "I thought I felt something there. You just wanted to feel her again, didn't you?"
Dust seemed frozen in place. "I swear to you, lady Natasha, by the name of Iom, and my Lord Hindel, that this is the first time I have intruded into your room for any reason besides your safety, and I equally swear that it will be the last. I will leave you to your rest now, with my sincere apologies."
One moment he was there; the next, he had slipped out the window.
Rohde looked at Natasha. "You trust him?"
"He... he saved Carla's life, Rohde." She was looking out the window. "I wish he had let us talk to him."
He didn't know what to think of that. "I'm sorry I spilled your flowers."
"It's okay. It was knowing that someone would give them to us that matters." She blew out the candle and lay back down. In the midst of the darkness he heard, "Thanks for trying to protect me, Rohde..."
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Deanna thanked the woman, and he and Yurligi turned to go on their way. Yurligi's race was rare enough, so she wore a thick hooded cloak to mask her features. The last thing they needed was to call attention to themselves. Of course, Deanna himself was somewhat well-known throughout Iom, but for both of them to go about with faces shadowed by cloaks would look more suspicious than anything. And thus far, Deanna had not been recognized.
"Well?" Deanna asked his companion after a few moments.
Yurligi shook her head.
"She wasn't... imprinted on her?"
"She was, but that does us no good," she sighed. "I explained this to you in the town where we met. Indirect imprints don't work well. We need to meet someone who knows where Aaron's heir is right now."
"I thought it wouldn't work there because the man was... was dead."
"Did you stop paying attention after that? I tried asking the people who had the deceased's imprint on them, but none of them knew where the next in line is, or seemed to be hiding any knowledge. I explained to you that some of them knew the next in line, but that -"
"I'm sorry." Deanna gently clasped her wrist; he could feel her trembling. "I know this is very trying. But I promise, I'm going to help you find your son."
"I... I simply don't think that my power can truly help your search." Her voice was choked. "I'm so worried... Can't we just go find Amelo now, I... I find this so tiresome, talking to all these strangers, trying to somehow imprint them on my empathetic vision, and... The more we do this, the more I realize how useless I am to you..."
"You're... you're not useless," he said, forcing his voice to be firm. "You've followed trails that I never would have been able to. They've been dead ones so far, but they still should be checked." There was a moment of silence, and a rather overdue suspicious thought entered into Deanna's naturally trusting mind. He looked to his companion. "Yurligi... the truth, now. You haven't been keeping information from me so that I'll give up on this search more quickly, have you?"
She started - not with alarm, it seemed to Deanna, but with confusion. "What? What are you...?"
"Lying about the limitations of your senses, or finding someone who knows where Aaron's heir is and not telling me... things like that," Deanna clarified. He stepped in front of her and put his hands on her shoulders. "Please, the truth. Just confess you've been doing that, and I promise, we'll go straight to the shrine. I want to find Aaron's heir as soon as possible, but neither of us can get what we want if we can't trust each other."
"No, that's not..." Yurligi looked down. "I swear to you, I truly want to help. I'm grateful to you for helping me rescue my son, and I would never hinder your own search." She paused, and then lifted her head to look him in the eye. "I can feel how badly you want to find Iom's king."
"I... thank you." He took his hands off her, fidgeted a moment, and then turned once more to go on his way. "There's one other person in this village who we think has a connection to the one we're looking for. Are you alright with going to see him now, going back to the inn to rest until tomorrow, and then going to the shrine to find your son?"
"Of course."
The words were simple enough, and he wasn't looking at her face anymore, but the gratitude in her voice was easy to notice.
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Frecor came by the following day, looking pleased. It was a relief to see him, if for no other reason than that she appreciated the company; she felt rather awkward with Rohde, and Lady Anasta had not come by that morning. Dust, of course, never came by, much as she wished otherwise. She supposed she should be afraid of him after the incident the previous night, but it only made her heart go out to him all the more. And on the self-interested side, she liked company, even if Carla was sufficient most of the time.
"You're back," she smiled at Frecor. He was livelier than Jengh, too, and that made her extra glad of the company. She moved to get up from her seat, but he gestured for her to remain.
"Yep. Good news, too, of the best sort. I've gotten word that they've found the fifth person on the list of Aaron's heirs. He's being brought here, grounds of being a fugitive. No one but me knows that he's actually the possible heir to the throne."
Natasha put a hand to her belly as she came out of her seat, trying to contain her excitement. "You've found him? Deanna can come home to us?"
"Woah, woah now," Frecor returned, laughing slightly. "This isn't finished, pack and come home. Deanna still has to find the first three people on the list. We can't just crown the fifth person in line, all other claims forgotten."
"Oh." She felt foolish. "If we don't find the people who are higher up in the line, they could step forward later..."
"And then we'd have a bit of a mess, all but the best case. It might be different in Cypress, but Iom's just gone through a couple revolutions. Right now a king being crowned and then unseated could cause chaos."
"But at least now we know we'll have someone to crown, instead of Warderer's heir. As long as Jengh stops his coronation... this madness will be over." She looked to Rohde. "And then there won't be anything left for you to do for us, Rohde. Maybe you'd like to go with Jengh and his men?"
Rohde shook his head. "I'd rather stay here and make sure you're safe, Natasha. Would be terrible for you to die now that you've almost beaten the ones after you."
"Thank you..." She felt touched, and a little ashamed of herself. She knew she'd been right to keep Dust a secret from Rohde, so that just in case Rohde did mean her harm, Dust could still protect her; Deanna would have wanted her to take precautions for her and Carla's lives. But in light of Rohde's obvious loyalty, she felt wretched for having done it. Even though, she reminded herself, she still couldn't be sure that Rohde wasn't mentally unstable enough to hurt Carla. Rohde was a violent person by nature. From what she'd seen, his sense of right and wrong was stronger than that violent nature, but she hadn't really seen much of Rohde.
Frecor cleared his throat and pulled something from his pocket. "By the way, this letter arrived for you."
She opened it up, and immediately recognized the handwriting. "It's from Deanna," she said aloud; having expected the awaited reply from Hal and Shim, she was rather caught off-guard. "Could I... read this in private?"
"Of course."
Frecor took his leave, Rohde wandered off down the halls with a bit of grumbling, and Natasha slowly sat down at the desk, holding a protective arm around her womb. "See, Carla? We've got a letter from your father. That means he's alright. He'll be here for you when you're ready to come out." Carla stirred, moving about in response. It still amazed Natasha that her daughter seemed to already have a vague understanding of her sentiments.
She began reading Deanna's letter. Her first reaction was, of course, a touch of relief that he wasn't writing because some ill had befallen him. That relief was tainted with dismay at reading that their first target had been found dead, though he tried to make light of it. But as she read on, warm pricklings rose in her heart at each line, and she came to the realization that she was reading a love letter. It was an entirely new experience to her; she and Deanna had almost always been together since the start of their courtship, and no one else had ever wooed her in earnest. She certainly never thought she might get her first love letter when six months pregnant.
She fell back in her chair with a sigh. "I should have told you before, Carla," she said, "...but your father is quite the charmer. Or maybe it's just that he really loves us that much..."
It was a full minute before she finished savoring the emotion of the moment and got back to reading. The news about Prince Amelo made her breath nearly stop. It wasn't shocking news in and of itself, but...
"It can't be," she gasped out. The timing of Amelo's abduction and the location to which he'd been taken both matched perfectly with what Brehen had said.
For a moment she thought she might be overreacting, that there were ways Brehen could have known about this without the gift of prophecy. Perhaps the high priest had located Amelo by some other means; Brehen hadn't necessarily told the truth about helping Leifo locate the boy. But then how did Brehen know that Leifo would find him? What Deanna's talking about couldn't have happened before Brehen left the shrine. Amelo was well-hidden, and even if someone were to find him, it wouldn't necessarily be Leifo.
Gods of light... He could be lying, his visions could be less than completely accurate... but there's no particularly good reason to think that his prophecy about our child is untrue.
She finished reading the letter, then gathered herself together and burst into the hall at a fast walk, holding a tense arm protectively over Carla so that she could move as quickly as possible. First she needed to catch Jengh before he left, and tell him what Deanna was doing. And then, she and Rohde would have a talk with Brehen.