Friday, September 27
The Warring Lands
The Rangers of the Laines were mostly littorn carnivates like Indirk, with claws on their hands, sharp teeth, powerful muscles. Some were even more fierce than Indirk was, with gripping clawed feet, horns, and long, barbed tails. They were all adept at climbing trees and rocks, all smelling of the woods, all surrounded by the subtle music of magic if one listened closely enough. They’d charted the entirety of the Warring Lands, constantly sending new maps and intel back to the headquarters of the Rhyqir Valley Alliance.
In a different life, if her parents hadn’t been killed, if she hadn’t been sent to Pharaul to grow up, Indirk would’ve been one of them. She crouched in their number, garbed in dark leather with metal clasps so unlike their rigid suede and furs, her rifle across her lap so unlike their longbows and heavy arrows, while they explained the route she must travel if she wanted to reach Gray Watch quickly and without incident.
When they left her alone, she wept, and she didn’t know why. She spent the night perched on a flat rock watching many-limbed creatures with shining eyes drag caravanner corpses into the mud. Some of those animals made gurgling sounds at the edge of the rock, scratching their woody limbs at the muddy stone a meter or so from Indirk’s feet. Their eyes gleamed at her, but they wouldn’t come up onto the stone. They stared at her for hours, and Indirk stared back. When dawn came, they were gone, and she started her trek north.
* * *
Monday, October 14
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Gray Watch
There was a room under the name Indirk Correlon in the Angolhills, which was not Indirk’s real last name, but the keys were real enough. In the early morning, the door opened for the first time in over a month and a half. Indirk closed the door behind her and sloughed her filthy coat to the floor. She let herself lean weakly against the nice wooden walls, breathing hard as exhaustion washed through her, but she didn’t let her desperate body collapse just yet.
She straightened, stared ahead, and listened. Indirk had been deeply undercover in Gray Watch for years by then, and had been staying in this room under this identity for most of that time, working as a clerk in the Admiralty office near the quay. She knew this place well, this furniture, the rug in the middle of the room, the cheap bed, the wooden partition that separated the room’s one window from the luxurious wooden tub she’d built for herself with her own hands.
Something was off. Someone had been here. Things had been moved on the desk near the window. Had someone come in through the window, knocked things askew, and then put them back? Maybe Indirk should’ve looked for Amo and the other spies – surely they must’ve reached Gray Watch days ago – before coming back here. But now she was here, and she crept slowly further, eyes watching the shadows, wondering what else might’ve changed.
When she reached the desk, she found herself looking down at a bottle of wine and a folded piece of paper. Numbly, she opened the paper: Sorry I let myself in. Guess your work trip ran long? A gentleman left this for you and I didn’t want it getting lost. The landlord’s handwriting. The bottle was a favorite vintage of someone Indirk knew at the Admiralty office.
She turned the bottle in her hands. She chuckled, charmed. She put it down carefully before dropping to the floor and falling asleep right there on the rug. The bed was only a few paces away, but she didn’t care to reach it. In her dreams, she heard a hundred thin limbs scratching at the stony borders of the city, but that was as close as the sound came. In her dreams, these walls were secure and warm, and she slept well.