A whisper of wind seeped through a crack in the window. Nocren’s hands balled into fists beneath the table. Avenor was trying to needle him. Nocren knew it, and yet…
“…warn you, since you don’t know her like I do. So you always know where you stand with her,” Avenor was saying. “Never first.”
The wind picked up, whistling through the glass, stirring Nocren’s hair and calling a twinge of magic to ripple through his fingers. As it did when it wanted something.
Out of the corner of his eye, Nocren saw Calya peek into the room. She found him—and his table companion. A mischievous grin spread across her face. “Help me,” she mouthed.
Dread swept through Nocren’s gut. Though from his position Avenor could see the main room, he didn’t have an immediate eyeline to the front desk, but all it would take was a turn of his head. Already, his eyes narrowed the slightest bit as he realized Nocren’s attention had strayed. He moved to look over his shoulder?—
Nocren’s arm jerked as he called the wind. A few crackles of Nocren’s magic lit the air, and it swirled around the pair of them, rustling the paper folded at Avenor’s side.
Avenor startled, his attention whipping back to Nocren. He stared at the golden motes of light as they landed on the table and twinkled before fading.
Slowly, he looked up, a covetous gleam in his eyes. “I’d forgotten. Is it true, then, you’re a fortune teller?”
“A diviner,” Nocren said, keeping his internal disgust in check. “It’s not an absolute magic.”
Avenor dismissed the warning with a careless wave of his hand. “What’s the price to tell my future?”
Calya had disappeared. Off to carry out her reckless plan, he presumed. “Help her” indeed. If he was going to extract payment from anyone for this farce, he knew who would be at the top of the list.
Motioning for a server to bring tea, Nocren inclined his head toward Avenor, saying, “A gesture of good faith after our shitty start.”
Elated by her stroke of luck, it took all Calya’s self-control to keep her gait unhurried. She nodded to a maid as she strolled in the direction of her room, then paused at the end of the corridor. A swift look confirmed that it was empty. With light steps, she went to the opposite end, away from her own lodging and instead to Brint’s large corner room.
In a nod to Desmond’s Landing’s small-town feel, the inn used simply wrought metal keys, and the handles lacked magic-reinforced lock mechanisms. Though there was a fortified lockbox in the backroom on the main floor for valuables, only Froley held that key, and Brint wouldn’t have constrained himself to waiting on the innkeeper’s convenience.
Froley also had a master key for the entire inn, and had been willing to give Calya a handful of minutes to use it at liberty.
The door creaked as Calya let herself into Brint’s room. He’d turned the lamps down, or a maid had done so for him—he wasn’t the type to be mindful about burning someone else’s fuel.
She maneuvered around a trunk Brint had left open on the ground with clothes spilling from it. Picking her way around his mess, she turned up the lamp on the writing desk in the corner, just enough so she wouldn’t trip over anything. Brint had the largest single room in the entirety of the inn, and appeared to have done his level best to scatter his belongings everywhere. She couldn’t begin to fathom how he’d managed to pack so much of his personal shit for the trip.
She prowled around the edges of the room, leery of casting any shadows that might be seen through the many windows set into the rear and side walls. For all Brint’s mess, it seemed to be just that: frippery. If she’d been hoping to find a gleaming document penned in golden letters and detailing his collusion with Bioon Song, such a childish fantasy was thoroughly doused. Given his cozy relationship with the mayor, any such documents and the convenient box of missing wards were probably displayed within Krowe’s manor.
Conscious of her precious few minutes dwindling with every moment, Calya turned out the desk drawers as quietly as she could. Nothing of interest, the few papers on top benign letters to his father and the Avenor Guard board with general updates.
Annoyed at her brilliant plan’s disappointing outcome, Calya moved back toward the door. Perhaps another round with the Coalition mages was in order. Could she leverage her having seen Eren meet with Brint into something more?
Lost in thought, she nearly crept past the small stove against the wall without sparing it a second look. She’d have continued right past if not for her foot slipping as something beneath her shoe fluttered away. She caught herself on the wall, wincing as her ribs protested the erratic movement.
One hand pressed to her side, Calya knelt to retrieve the offending item. She squinted at it in the dim light. A scrap of paper? No, an envelope. A torn piece, to be precise, with only a few broken-off lines of the handwriting remaining.
Calya’s eyes went to the stove’s small door, and she reached for the handle.
The tea was just a prop. A touch of the theatrical employed because gormless worms like Avenor would only give Nocren’s magic credence if they saw something with their own eyes. Even when what their eyes saw was completely unconnected shit.
A curl of steam floated up as Nocren poured a cup for Avenor. The weather had decided to play along with his show, a storm sweeping in from the sea to blanket the town with heavy rain. The wind sent sporadic gusts to rattle the windows, and it took hardly any effort to find the right current for his plan.
“Do I need to drink this?” Avenor asked, a shadow of disgust on his face. “I thought you worked the wind. Or do you need to grease your?—”
“It’s for your benefit, but you don’t need to drink it.”
Nocren touched on his magic, letting it unspool from his fingers to intertwine with the steam rising off the cup. It glistened like a golden thread, spiraling up and fading just above the level of their heads, breaking into pieces and coalescing anew in a steady stream of light. A few pinpricks of gold broke away, floating like bubbles and popping at random, but the miniature combustion was no larger than a fingernail.
Nocren inhaled slowly, his gaze going unfocused as the wind caressed his face.
Trouble, the wind impressed upon him. Danger in all forms. Avenor as the cause, the victim, at the heart of the concept. Change whispered around the edges of Nocren’s mind, but it held a discordant note, unlike when the word accompanied thoughts of Calya.
