At least she’ll be able to speak the truth if she has to justify her choice.
Her face is pale. “I’ll take you to where it’s hidden.”
Without another word, she strides to the wall where her cloak hangs, she scoops it around her shoulders, tugging the cowl up over her mouth and the hood down over her forehead, leaving only her eyes visible before she gestures me to the door.
Quickly pulling up my own facial covering, I follow herthrough her quarters and step out into the warm night with her, hunching my shoulders and making myself as small as possible as I follow close behind her.
She’s tall, but towering over her will only draw attention to me.
She heads toward the city’s eastern side, slipping along busy streets and keeping to the shadows. It’s even easier to disappear into the crowd now that the sun has gone down, because the city’s bustling with nightlife. Laughter spills from nearby inns, along with cheerful music. The Tol-Dakri may be ferocious, but they know how to enjoy themselves.
When we reach the city’s edge, where the open plain extends that the Tol-Dakri use for combat training, I’m surprised to see half of the area taken up by an encampment.
A small cluster of tents sits near the far wall. It’s difficult to tell for certain at night, but the tents appear to be made of an ochre-colored canvas that would camouflage them from the sky.
“What are those?” I ask Ortansia, keeping my voice low.
“A traveling party. They arrived this afternoon.” Her voice is clipped as she inclines her head toward the men walking freely between the tents and the city. “I gave them permission to camp here for the night.”
Keeping my head low, I study the men, my instincts prickling.
Their clothing is simple. Nothing alarming there. They all wear short beards and, from what I can see when they turn into the light, the color of their skin indicates limited time in the sun. They have the appearance of lowborns. But the absence of a tan is unusual.
“They’re passing through?”
“That’s what their leader said,” Ortansia replies. “A man named Stanimir. That’s him there.”
I follow Ortansia’s gesture to the man with a patch ofdarker skin on the left side of his neck, who is disappearing down the nearest street.
I don’t miss the daggers he and his comrades carry at their belts, one each, but then, that doesn’t mean they’re a threat. Most adults in this city openly carry blades of some sort.
Even though I can’t shake the prickling at the back of my neck, I move on, focusing on the task at hand.
Ortansia’s movements become furtive, her backward glances more alert before she heads toward the edge of the cliff located furthest from the city, close to the inside of the eastern wall.
The closer we get to the cliff, the more my ears fill with the roar of waves crashing against rocks, making it difficult to hear Ortansia’s low murmur.
“Don’t react,” she says. “Follow me.” Then, “Be sure to bend your knees.”
At that, she steps backward, right off the cliff’s edge, and plunges out of sight.
I clamp down on my surprise before I mimic her movements.
A long drop and then my feetthudonto a narrow ledge, the next wave roaring toward me before it diminishes enough that only its tip crashes into the ledge, tugging at my feet before it pulls backward.
A narrow cave mouth looms in front of me, surrounded entirely by jutting rock. Even from the sky, I wouldn’t see it, not unless I flew low enough to hover directly opposite it.
Ortansia disappears into the gloom ahead of me, the opening only wide enough to walk single-file.
Her voice floats back to me in the dark, and I make out a firebrand on the wall at the cave’s mouth. “Help me out?”
Reaching the firebrand’slocation, I tap my forefinger to it, setting it alight, once more praying my fire doesn’t burn out of my control.
Now visible, the cave’s interior is simple and shallow. If I somehow stumbled onto it by accident, I wouldn’t think there was anything special about it.
Ortansia reaches the uneven back wall and uses the heel of her palm to press on a particular knob of jutting rock, at which the stone grinds apart.
She steps into a smaller cavity, and I catch sight of a wooden table that fills the cavity from side to side before she pulls its treasure into her arms.
