“We can’t be in two places at once, and we know the site isn’t on the water,” Calya replied, drawing a circle around the inlet. “Unless we don’t believe the traumatized assistant?”
He followed her back to the front of the workshop. “I thought we couldn’t trust…”
She tilted her head at him. Lowe only closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose as he muttered, “Them. You said not to trust them.”
“I don’t know that we can,” Calya murmured. Pausing outside the door she met Lowe’s gaze, her lips forming a small, sad smile. “Faith, ranger. We’re going on faith.”
Then she marched over to Orren, taking him by the arm and tugging him a few steps away from his men. He followed, eyes darting down to where she pulled at his arm, then up to her face. “Found something?”
“Maybe.” Calya gave him the map fragment, pointing at her circle. “This doesn’t exist on any official map. I wonder why that is.”
Orren stared at the lines, a furrow forming in his brow. “Why are you giving this to me?”
“Consider this a gesture of… Oh, fuck it. How long have we known each other, Orren?” she asked. “I’m ambitious, but not stupid, I would like to think. If the Coalition are involved, and I think we agree that they are, then I can admit you have the superior manpower. Do not let them get away with this.”
Orren’s fingers tightened around the map. He nodded, turning toward his men, but he paused to look back at Calya. “Would you like to come with us?”
She smiled. “My thanks, but I have matters to attend to down here. Good luck to you, lieutenant.”
“And you, Miss Helm.” Orren strode back to the stable.
As Calya watched him go, she hoped she wasn’t seeing another friend ride off for the last time.
Chapter Nineteen
They borrowed horses from Froley. Nocren debated having Calya ride behind him, but she insisted she could manage on her own. He set the pace, trying to balance mindfulness of her stamina with a sense of foreboding that grew every minute that slipped by.
For her part, Calya kept up with minimal complaint, but the lack of griping did nothing to settle Nocren’s nerves. They rode single file down the neglected backroad in terse silence. An occasional curse when her horse jolted her in the saddle or a branch scratched at her face was the only sound she made.
The tension lingering between them wasn’t helped by his mediocre attempt—singular—to have a conversation. When she gave only a monotone, short reply with nothing in the way of continuation, he gave up. He was a shit conversationalist, anyway, accustomed to having small talk die out around him. Never mind that silences between them hadn’t been so ugly before.
Maybe Calya was simply preoccupied with the task before them. When he’d chanced a look over his shoulder, she hadn’t paid him any attention. A furrow creased her otherwise smooth brow, her gaze not vacant but her mind elsewhere.
They bypassed the turnoff to the old site, the road growing even more overgrown and dilapidated as they followed a course going toward the point Lily had indicated. After another hour of gradual climbing, the horses pushed through a thicket to stumble onto a new road. Not one of uniform cobbles, but hardpacked dirt and gravel, wide enough to fit a horsedrawn cart.
They halted, Calya’s horse pawing at the ground. Even with a shod hoof, it barely scraped the surface.
“This didn’t get here by accident.”
“No, it didn’t,” Nocren agreed grimly. He motioned for them to move off the road, following it from the overgrowth on the side.
It didn’t take long for them to reach a small clearing, the road leading to the foothills of the eastern mountains. A few structures had been erected within the clearing, though two weren’t buildings so much as large shipping containers that had been repurposed. A spindly tower rose up at the far edge, bracketed by trees, though for what purpose Nocren didn’t know. The tower was hardly more than layers of scaffolding, the few platforms too thin and paltry to hold much weight. A single person, maybe, but he wouldn’t dare climb it in any weather but the lightest breeze.
Aside from marked paths through the clearing, the remaining bare ground was sectioned off into strips, wards marking each corner. They reminded Nocren of garden plots, in a way. Plots of bare dirt, the air distorted around the perimeter by the heavy containment spells in the wards.
Calya dismounted to crouch beside a plot, tilting her head to see the ward’s sides. “It’s similar to the ones Anadae designed, but not the same.”
He joined her on the ground. Each ward was capped by a chunk of clear quartz, with several more chips set into the wooden shaft. The amalgamation of different strains of magic exuded was enough to make Nocren feel ill after less than a minute of close proximity.
Calya was similarly affected. She backed away, her mouth working as if to rid herself of a foul taste. “Goddess. I’m not even magical and I can feel the pulse of these things.”
A wisp of light swirled within each ward’s stone cap. It emitted a faint glow, more gray than the golden-yellow Nocren was accustomed to seeing when one called on their magic. Squinting through the rippling barrier created around each plot, he focused on the ground. “Does that look wrong to you?”
“It’s dirt. I’ve never seen Eylle’s poison, so I wouldn’t know what it looked like. However”—Calya waved her hand to indicate their surroundings—“considering the context, I’d say everything about this place is very fucking wrong.”
Nocren grimaced. He looked around, but there was no one in sight. No movement. Even the wind had gone dead still. Yet, unlike the previous site, the silence here carried an eerie quality. Not one of abandonment, but as if everyone had simply vanished. There was a sense of life to the emptiness, as if all the people had merely been plucked out of the setting, like pieces from a board while the game was still in play.
“Come on,” Calya murmured, heading toward the closest of the shipping containers.
