Blood of the Watcher (The Dark Ability Book 4) Read online

  Or were they?

  He cast one more glance to his mother before turning away. When he reached the door and pulled it open, he saw Jessa standing in the shadows just outside, waiting for him. A deep blue flower was tucked into her charm today, and she glared at him, punching him as soon as he stepped from the home.

  “I’m sorry,” he said softly.

  “You run here, after everything they did to you, and don’t bother to tell me?” Her voice was higher than normal, and she punched him again to emphasize her irritation. “Is that the kind of relationship that we have now?”

  As he closed the door behind him, he saw his mother watching him. “I’m sorry,” he said again.

  “You don’t have to be alone, Rsiran,” Jessa said. “Haven’t I shown you that?”

  “I could always use a little more explanation.” He reached for her hand, and she let him take it, though punched him a third time as they started down the street.

  “I’m not sure that you deserve that,” she grumbled.

  “You found me fine.”

  “Well, Brusus told me you were here, and so—”

  “You knew where she was, too, didn’t you?”

  Jessa bit her lower lip.

  “It’s okay. I don’t think I was ready to see her before today.”

  “And now?” she asked. She tipped her head toward the flower in the charm and took a deep breath. It was times like this, when walking through these parts of Lower Town, that Rsiran wished he had something similar. At least then he wouldn’t have to smell the stink.

  “Now I know that we have more in common than I realized.”

  Jessa frowned. “What does that mean?”

  “Only that my mother’s parents were exiled.” He smiled at her. “Makes me a child of the Forgotten as well.”

  “Oh, Great Watcher,” she said, stiffening next to him.

  “What?”

  “Do you think they want to claim you because there is some sort of connection?” she asked. “They knew about my parents, and you saw how they treated me.”

  “Not a connection,” Rsiran said. “But it helps me decide something that Haern told me I’d have to.”

  “And what is that?”

  “He told me that we would have to pick a side.”

  Jessa pulled away from him and looked over. “And you want to side with the Forgotten?”

  “I…” He didn’t know. That was the problem. But knowing what he did about his family, and Jessa’s, even Brusus’s, he wasn’t sure that he knew the answer anymore. “I don’t know,” he said finally.

  “And your sister?”

  He wasn’t sure how Jessa would respond to what he would tell her next. She didn’t think that his family deserved his attention, not after what they had done to him, but then Alyse didn’t deserve to be abducted because of something their father had committed to. And it was Rsiran’s fault that their father was no longer in Asador. Had he left him there, the Forgotten wouldn’t have had any reason to come for Alyse. But he had had taken him from the city, drawn attention to himself, and in doing so, put Alyse in danger.

  How could he not try to help her?

  Chapter 12

  The smithy felt as much like home as anyplace ever had. He stood inside the door, now with the bars of heartstone slammed into the ground and over the doorframe, and surveyed the smithy, wondering if it ever could be home. There had been a time, especially after he first met Brusus and the others, when he had thought that it would be. But what if that could never be?

  “What do you think you’re going to do?” Jessa asked.

  He leaned against the door. It felt strange walking to his smithy rather than Sliding, but the risk of being tracked while Sliding was still top of mind. Now even more so. Until he knew whether they were actually in danger, or whether the two he had seen in the forest were people he needed to worry about, he would walk.

  But walking left him missing the experience of Sliding. He missed the movement, the speed, and—if he were honest—even the smells that came with the Slide. The bitter scent of lorcith had become calming, a familiar scent that reminded him of the forge, but also of the freedom he’d gained learning how to control his Sliding.

  “I don’t know yet,” he said.

  “But you intend to find her? How do you think we’re going to do that?”

  It was a question he didn’t have the answer for yet. He could find the Forgotten again, but what would he do then? Go and demand his sister? That would give them leverage over him as well, not that they needed any more leverage than they already had. But there was another reason to find the Forgotten, one that he could tell from the way Jessa watched him that she feared. A reason that had to do with all of them, something that unified them in some ways.

  But that would come later.

  First, he needed a better understanding of why his father had been in Asador in the first place. Short of returning to Venass and demanding access to his father, he wasn’t sure that he could figure out what his father had been up to there.

  He remembered that piece of metal that he’d found in the hut. Would that somehow provide him with answers?

  He hurried across the smithy to the table where he’d left the small piece of metal. Grindl and iron, a strange combination, and one that he couldn’t believe the Forgotten would have been interested in.

  He tried once again to examine the patterns in the metal. Even with his new Sight, he couldn’t see them well enough to understand if they meant anything. Jessa could see them, but she didn’t understand metal as he did. He thought if only he had her Sight, he could understand, but then he realized there might be another way.

  Rsiran took a small piece of lorcith from the bin that Shael had brought him. At least that had been a gift that had served him well, regardless of the fact that Shael had not intended it that way. Shael had wanted him to forge something for him, though Rsiran still didn’t know what that had been, other than proof of his ability to create the alloy.

  As he waited for the forge to heat up, he held the metal out to Jessa. “He hid his. There has to be a reason that he thought this important enough to hide.”

  “What if he didn’t hide it?”

  “You think Brusus put it there when he had the hut built?”

  “Not Brusus, but you know that your father wasn’t the only one in that hut.”

  “Thom?”

  She shrugged. “Can we be certain that it wasn’t Thom?”

  Rsiran looked at the metal and couldn’t think of any reason that Thom would have hidden it in the wall. “This has to be my father,” he said.

  “But you said you don’t know what it is. Why are you getting the forge ready?”

  Rsiran ran his hands along the surface of the grindl. The pattern created ridges that his fingers traced. “I can’t see what it is, and I can’t feel it, but if I use lorcith, I might be able to feel what this is for, and understand why he took the time to hide it in the wall.”

  She stared at the flat sheet of metal for a moment and then shrugged. “If you think so,” she said. She took a seat on the bed near the hearth, leaving Rsiran at the forge.

  He started by taking the small lump of lorcith and heating it, getting the coals glowing to a bright orange, and then red. As he waited, he considered the sheet of metal in his hand and realized that it would be a mistake to use lorcith. Lorcith took much greater heat than either iron or grindl. Were he to use it, he would end up destroying what his father had left.

  When the lorcith was ready, he listened to it a moment, gathering what shape it would take, before beginning the process of forging it. A long-bladed knife emerged. Different from the kind he usually forged, this knife was meant for throwing or pushing. It was intended to be carried for defense. The knife would be for Jessa.

  As he finished, he studied the sheet of iron and grindl again, convinced that lorcith wasn’t the answer.

  Some of the soft metals would work. Gold, if he had it, would be parti
cularly effective. But it was too expensive to use on something like this, and it wouldn’t give him any more connection than he already had with the sheet of metal. The same went for silver.

  What he needed was something soft enough, but that wouldn’t destroy what his father had made, at least until he knew what it was for.

  The only thing that might work was heartstone.

  Rsiran didn’t know how well it would work. Heartstone was softer and required a lower temperature to work effectively, but it also was unpredictable. What would happen when he heated it and added it to the grindl?

  He didn’t know. But if he wanted to understand what his father had left behind, he would try.

  The box containing the remaining heartstone was nearly empty. He had acquired some that they’d found in the warehouse, but Rsiran hadn’t been able to come up with any more than what they had already discovered, even after reaching out for it with his ability.

  After finding the Forgotten Palace, he knew there were places that possessed much more heartstone, enough that it wasn’t nearly as rare as what he had thought, and in pure form. Likely that was because the Forgotten didn’t have anyone able to create the alloy. That might have been why they wanted the smiths, and part of the reason they had wanted him. From what he’d seen with Josun, the Forgotten wanted the alloy, but they had no way of obtaining it.

  He did not need a large section of heartstone. And unlike lorcith where he had to work the entire piece, leaving the rest unworkable once it had been heated, heartstone was different, allowing him to pry off only what he needed. For this, he didn’t need much more than a small piece of the soft, gray metal.

  At the forge, it took heat quickly. Rsiran set it into an iron pot, letting the heartstone turn to a softly glowing liquid. A faint, deep bluish color burned within the heartstone, much darker and hotter than it should be. Lifting the pot of heartstone away from the coals, he surrounded the iron and grindl sheet with long bars of iron, creating a box form. Then he poured the liquid heartstone onto it.

  He cleaned his work while waiting for the heartstone to cool. As he cleared the remaining heartstone from the iron pot, a flash of green and blue flame burst from the form holding the heartstone.

  “Damn!” he swore, dropping the iron pot and running over to the form. The heartstone glowed a bluish green, and flames flickered across its the surface. He slapped the table in frustration.

  “What is it?” Jessa asked.

  She peered into the form, nose turned up at the stink from the burning metal, as she studied what he’d made.

  “The grindl. I don’t know the different temperatures required to heat heartstone and grindl.”

  “But you’ve worked with them before.”

  He nodded. He was an idiot, and had he any true training as a smith, he wouldn’t have made the same mistake. “I’ve worked with them before, but not together. They must have a similar heating point.” He shook his head. The only thing that he could think had happened was that the heartstone had fused with the grindl. “Now I think I’ve ruined the plate.” He slapped the table again in frustration.

  It hadn’t been the only plan he had to find some way of learning what his father might have been doing for the Forgotten, but it had seemed the easiest, and even that had proven not nearly as easy as he’d hoped.

  Anything else would be riskier.

  “Wait until it cools,” Jessa said.

  “Won’t matter.”

  She laughed softly. “You don’t know that. Wait until it cools and then see what you can learn. Don’t let yourself get too upset just yet.”

  Rsiran nodded, but didn’t have much hope that it would work. And if it didn’t work, for him to find why the Forgotten had used his father meant that he—likely they—would be taking another dangerous trip.

  Part of him actually looked forward to it. If he could understand what happened to his grandparents, to Jessa’s parents, even to Brusus’s mother, maybe he would better understand what the Forgotten were after.

  Jessa watched him, almost as if Reading his thoughts, and Rsiran turned his attention back to the form around the heartstone.

  When the metal cooled, Rsiran pried the iron bars away, tapping at them with a hammer to separate them. It probably didn’t matter how gentle he was with the bars. There wasn’t anything that to destroy within, anyway. Pouring the heartstone onto the plate had probably already done that.

  With the bars removed, he dropped them to the floor of the smithy and kicked them to the side. He’d have to clean the heartstone off them later.

  The light gray heartstone atop the plate had hardened to a smooth sheen. Once heated, heartstone cooled much harder than it was in its raw form. Lorcith had strange qualities like that as well, making it so that it couldn’t be reheated once it took a shape. Heartstone could be heated again, but it would never be as soft as it was when first shaped.

  Rsiran turned the block of heartstone over in his hands. The metal surrounded the plate, leaving barely an edge free. Had he been more careful with the form—or even more prepared—he might have a better chance of getting the plate separated from the heartstone. Now it didn’t really matter. The grindl would have fused with the heartstone. He might be able to pry the iron portion of the plate off, but even that wasn’t guaranteed.

  “Did it work?” Jessa asked.

  “Not like I’d hoped. The grindl and the heartstone fused during the heating process.”

  “Like an alloy?”

  He hadn’t known that grindl would join with heartstone before. If nothing else, some good could come of his mistake. “Something like that.”

  “So now you can’t separate them?”

  She took the brick of heartstone from him and ran her fingers across the surface. Heartstone was slick, much like how it felt when he tried to push or pull on it. There was always the sense that it would slide free of your grip, and pushing on it was no different. Jessa held it tightly, as if afraid that she would drop it.

  “Not that I can tell,” he said.

  “Can you, you know, sense it?”

  He should have thought of that first, and not needed Jessa to suggest it to him. “Maybe…”

  He took the brick of heartstone back from Jessa, gripping it carefully, and ran his hand over the surface. The heartstone pulled on him, but the way that it did had less intensity now. That must be the grindl, he realized.

  Rsiran pushed away the sense of lorcith in the smithy, forcing it to the back of his mind so that he could focus on heartstone. With lorcith pressed away, he could feel the draw of heartstone, and he felt the steady sense tickling in his mind. Rsiran focused more intently, drawing the awareness of heartstone even closer.

  Something like an image bloomed in his mind with flashes of color, both green and a deep blue. He could see it, as if it were right in front of him. The ridges that he’d detected had meaning, but what?

  There was almost a familiarity to it, as if he’d seen it before, but he couldn’t tell why. The intricacies of the metalwork amazed him. Whoever had made this was an incredibly skilled smith.

  The contours that he detected reminded him in some ways of the Ilphaesn mines, almost as if this was intended to serve as some kind of…

  “It’s a map,” he whispered.

  “A map?”

  He nodded. That had been what he’d sensed, the rough sense that he’d felt beneath his fingers. Now that he’d said it, he felt even more certain that it was some sort of map, but a map of what?

  And why would his father have had it? There had to be something, some reason for his father to have this, but Rsiran couldn’t think of one.

  Unless Jessa was right. Could Thom or someone else with him have hidden the plate in the wall of the hut after he’d left?

  If so, why? If they had intended for Rsiran to find it, there were better places to have hidden it.

  That left his father. The fact that Alyse had been abducted made it even more likely that his father had left it, and
that whoever he’d taken it from wanted it back.

  Maybe that was the reason his father had been locked in the room where he’d found him.

  When he’d gone to Asador, he’d found his father trapped in a building barricaded with alloy that made it difficult for him to Slide past. He’d never really considered the reason that his father would have been held like that, but maybe this was it.

  Could it be the reason Alyse had been abducted?

  And now, without his father here to ask, he had no way of knowing why he’d left this behind, and no way of understanding why it might be important.

  Chapter 13

  Rsiran slid the page across the table. Brusus picked it up and leaned toward it, frowning as he studied it. Haern glanced at it, but shook his head as he had the first time Rsiran had shown him the drawing of the map that he saw within his mind.

  “You say this was on a sheet of metal?” Brusus asked.

  Rsiran nodded. Movement near the back of the Barth caught his attention and he turned. Ever since the attack, he didn’t feel nearly as comfortable here as he once had, regardless of the fact that Brusus now owned it and claimed it safe. A lute and bandolist played together tonight, the combination almost haunting.

  He picked at the carrots on his plate. He’d eaten everything else and mopped them through the remaining gravy. His ale sat relatively untouched in front of him. “It was what I found in the hut. That’s what those other two were after, I think.”

  “Thought you said they were after you,” Brusus said.

  That had been what he’d assumed, but if they know of this map, and if they thought that he had it, could it be that they’d come after him for that, rather than his ability to Slide past the alloy?

  “I don’t really know,” Rsiran said. “Did they want me or my father? They probably knew that taking Alyse would motivate him more than me.”

  Brusus touched the page, letting his fingers trail across the ink. Rsiran had done the best that he could reproducing what he saw in his mind, but he didn’t have any real artistic skill. Copying the map was difficult. There was a sense of elevation in the map that he couldn’t reproduce on the flat page.