She hadn’t been thinking about her own demise then, but was just happy that the pack would live on and remember her.It had literally been the only thing in her mind.And later, when we’d met...wherever we’d met, assuming that I hadn’t hallucinated the whole thing, she had been equally inscrutable.
She’d never asked whether we would live, or be crippled for life, or anything at all.She’d only wanted to talk about some dead mage who wasn’t us.Someone who—
I stopped, my thoughts all piling up on each other, like a wolf who tries to turn too fast and ends up with its haunches around its ears.
“What?”Hargroves’ voice came immediately.He’d been watching me and seen my expression change.
I held up a finger, my eyes going to the same spot where I’d been standing yesterday, when he was here last.And where I’d fought something, what had Jen called it?“A Chindi?”
“What?”Hargroves’ voice sharpened, and it had already been honed enough to cut glass.
“What Jen was talking about yesterday,” I said.“That thing we fought in here.What if the spirit that attacked you...wasn’t the only one?What if there was a backup in case you detected yours?”
“What are you talking about?”
I swallowed; it was getting exhausting to talk.“The spirit I pulled off you...I don’t think I noticed it...I thinkshedid.The other version of me.She must have been close enough to the surface...after what happened at the grocery store to see it or smell it or something...and she alerted me.Cyrus couldn’t even detect it, and his nose is better than mine.But not better...than hers.”
I held up a finger again when he tried to interrupt, because I was fading and needed to get this out.
“And she told me something when I was out...That a ‘dead war mage did this.’I didn’t...know what she meant, but what if she noticed another Chindi?And not just any spirit...but one of ours?A ‘dead war mage’?”
Hargroves stared at me like I might be crazy.“A spirit can’t deactivate wards!”
“No, but whoever they’re controlling can.”I swallowed and breathed for a second, gathering strength to puzzle it out.“You were wearing one when you came in here...and didn’t know it, because it hadn’t tried to attack you.Maybe it was hitching a ride...waiting until you went down to the right levels at HQ...where the talismans for the wards are—”
“And then what?”he looked furious.“I wouldn’t have deactivated them!No matter what it did to me!”
“Not consciously, no.But what if it could take over...for a second?You’ve turned them on and off before...for maintenance or recalibration...so it wouldn’t be out of character.And a war mage...would know what they were, so maybe its chindi...could recognize them.But it had to wait...until you were close—”
Hargroves said a very bad word that didn’t go with the fine tailoring at all.“That’s absurd!War mages can’t be influenced.You know that!”
“I’m not sure what...I know anymore,” I told him, and saw it hit.
Because neither did he.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Iwas running blindly through the darkness, relying on instinct and scent.Primarily the latter, although the trail I was following was weak, but not because it was old.He had passed this way recently, maybe even today; I could smell him!
I should not have been able to, or, if I did, I should not have been able to act on it.A captain could follow her clan members in spirit form and leech off their senses to give her eyes, a nose, and ears at a distance if she trained the ability.But I shouldn’t have had any clan here, in the labyrinth they called Tartarus.
But I did.Some had answered my summons during the battle, yet they had been too afraid to go with the others and expose themselves to a place where so many High Clan resided.But since no clan had claimed them, they remained mine.I could feel them in little branching bonds, half-formed and so slender, almost not there at all, and yet enough.
To anchor me, to give my spirit passage, to allow me to follow...him.
I’d smelled him on the day of the battle here, but couldn’t react.The other had been in control, and she was too panicked, too focused on retrieving the small one to pay attention to anything else.I did not blame her; I would have done the same, and I hadn’t been sure.
How could I be sure?
What I was sensing seemed impossible, and I did not trust it.This world was so strange, and even pulling thoughts, explanations, and translations from her mind often wasn’t enough to make me understand.And yet thatscent...
So, no, I wasn’t sure, but I needed to find out, to findhim.But of all the places to have picked up the trail...Yet I could smell him, I knew I could!
The problem was, I could smell so many other things, too.
The tunnels down here were bad, trapping layers of scent within their walls for months, but the caverns filled with light and noise and people were worse.This one punched me in the face with sensation as soon as I entered, throwing enough smells at me to leave me dizzy: roasting meat, a dozen kinds of alcohol, unwashed bodies, greasy take-out, sex, puke, a dog’s piss in a corner, the moldy bone he’d gnawed the marrow out of lying nearby, a candy cooker roasting some tree nuts in honey, an open wound being dressed by a healer in a tent, the pungent salve eye wateringly strong, a hundred types of dirt dragged in by a thousand different shoes...
And magic.
