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“Quinn, what’s wrong? Please, talk to me.”

Quinn hadn’t realised that she had completely stopped moving, a bundle of clothes in her hands ready to shove into a bag just hanging from her closed fist. The sheer prospect of Sammah being an empath too had literally stopped her in her tracks. Maertn placed a concerned hand on her shoulder, his wide brown eyes boring deep into her heart, trying to understand why she wanted to run away. Quinn broke, tears sliding down her cheeks. She shook her head at him. She couldn’t compete with Sammah. Not if he was the same as her. Or worse, something more powerful.

Resolute, she continued to ignore Maertn’s pleas. She packed clothes and a small dagger. She forgot about food, naïvely resolving that she would be able to scavenge or beg what she needed out on the road; Quinn had never lived outside a city in her known life, but right at that moment she would risk exposure and death to get out of the clutches of Sammah. Maertn wouldn’t leave her be, hounding her out of the door and through the corridors of the castle.

* * *

So enveloped were they in each other, that they didn’t notice the silent figure of Elias stalking them through the stone halls. Candles flickered as they all passed, a silent shake of the flame on its wick the only signifier that the two were being stalked. If Quinn thought that Sammah would let her pass out of his control so easily, she had been gravely mistaken. Elias had been given a very specific task, with grave consequences if he failed. Elias never failed his master.

26

Eden loved training at night. The air was cool and still; so was the castle. He could slowly concentrate on his movements. The men had laughed at him before when he trained like this, so he tended to avoid them now. No one had cared at first when Eden had met a Sha’sek swordsman visiting Sevenspells. The man, grisly and scarred as he had been, had been largely ignored. Eden, a forgotten younger son, had attached himself to the stranger. The man had tried to ignore the young lordling who had consistently tugged at his sleeve and asked to be taught a different way of combat. It was when Eden had explained that he didn’t want to use the skills to fight—he simply wanted to understand—that the man had given in. He had been dark-skinned—darker than most Sha’sek, as Eden had since learned. His name had been Under, and he had been a prizefighter from the southernmost of the islands of his kingdom. The myriad of scars the man bore, striping his flesh with pink lines, had been enough for the juvenile Eden to believe him. He had stayed with Under’s quiet tutelage for a whole winter. As soon as the weather had let off long enough for him to leave, Under had fled Sevenspells. The majority of men were cruel, he had told Eden, and none more so than the ones he had found north of the desert. Under did not want to stay in Sevenspells, and even less did he want to stay in the lands of Everfell.

Eden had been sad to see the man go, but Under hadn’t been the first traveller to make his way briefly through the young man’s life, and he would not be the last. Eden swung around his sword in a slow arc, admiring the blade as it glinted against the dull light shining down on him from the stars above. It felt comfortable in his hand, sitting neatly in his palm without needing a firm grasp. Eden’s bare arm was fully extended, his eyes fully concentrated on his movements. He was almost offended when two people came barrelling out of one of the side doors and into the courtyard. He shuffled back a couple of steps, out of sight, surprised to see others out at this time of night, and curious as to what they might be doing. They were arguing, that much was clear. Their voices carried easily across the courtyard. She wanted to leave, and the lad did not want her to. A lover’s quarrel? No. It didn’t look like an argument with that kind of passion. The lad looked petrified, and the young woman looked absolutely incensed.

“I can’t explain it to you Maertn. I don’t know how many different times or ways I can tell you. I’m going. That’s final.”

“You haven’t explained it to me in any different ways Quinn. You haven’t explained it at all!”

The lad’s voice screeched to almost a wail, and Eden felt sorry for him. He might have felt embarrassed, but that emotion didn’t suit this lanky desperate lad chasing a woman he clearly adored. Why was she leaving him? What was their problem? What was her problem, more to the point? Why would she want to leave Everfell in the middle of the night? Either she had work in the castle already to be there at such a time, or she had snuck her way in to break the terrible news to… whoever this man was to her.

Eden was quite happy with his silent vigil, until he saw the man edging around the courtyard to the quarrelling couple. The newcomer had no intention of helping them; if he did, he would be striding straight up to them, not doing his utmost to keep hidden in the shadows. Eden straightened himself up, ire building. The man intended them harm. It wasn’t clear whether that was aimed at the women or the young man. The way she had been talking, either one of them could be at risk, and she was intent on leaving to make sure that the young man was kept safe. Who was she for such a thing to be true? But here was evidence of it, surely? Should Eden let things run their course? What business was it of his, what the courtesans of Everfell got up to in the dead of the night? But being a bystander felt as wrong as his impulsive summary of the man the girl had called Maertn. With a shrug to slough of the remainder of his doubt, he broke out of the shadows and sprinted towards them, just as their silent pursuer broke his own cover.

27

It was a mistake,
Quinn thought angrily to herself,
to read him before I left.
She thought this, because no matter what she had repeatedly told herself, the knowledge of how much pain she was causing Maertn emotionally was making her stay. She did not want to leave him, nor her home. There were many things about it that she would not miss, but there were too many things that she was also just beginning to learn, and she couldn’t help but feel that turning her back on those would be closing the door to a world she would never be able to regain. The decision not to tell Maertn what she was, and what he was, was making her actions even more difficult to explain. If she could simply say,
Sammah has been using us because of what we can do, and now I’m too dangerous to stay around,
then all would be well and good. Maertn would have a credible reason for her to leave, and he would know that she was doing it for her own good. But he’d want to know what that ability was. More importantly, and rightly so, he’d want to know what his own ability was. Quinn had spent the majority of her life feeling alone and indebted to Sammah. He had manipulated her as the only one knowing she had a secret skill. Maertn’s skill was no secret, and if he found out that his natural talent came from unnatural sources, then it might just ruin his life. He loved healing; it completed him. He had told her as much on enough occasions. Quinn thought she might just have the capacity to break his heart for his own good, so that she could leave and keep him out of danger. She could not, in that process, knowingly and willingly extinguish the entire purpose of his life.

Maertn wasn’t accepting anything she had to say, though admittedly she did not offer him much to go on. She had closed herself off to him now, and was so glad that she had the choice. With the way his emotions had started escalating, the Quinn of a mere week ago would have passed out with his intensity. She was left in no doubt as to Maertn’s feelings. It was the last thread of hope she was clinging to, as the tapestry of her emotions unravelled under his onslaught. She was leaving to keep him safe. If she felt any love through friendship towards him, she
should
leave, if only just for him.

“You haven’t explained it to me in any different ways Quinn. You haven’t explained it at all!”

She flinched at the tone he used then. His voice was starting to sound as broken as his soul. Quinn opened her mouth to respond to him, but over his shoulder she thought she caught sight of someone moving. She craned her head. Maertn didn’t turn to look. He must have thought she was playing him for a fool. He muttered at her, and she didn’t catch what he said, but the abrupt change of tone could have only been along the lines of
you think I’m stupid enough to just look away like that
?

Quinn didn’t answer him. She kept trying to catch sight of the moving shadow again. There was plenty of light pouring in to the courtyard from the high blanket of the star-laden sky, but whatever it had been was keeping very much to itself. Just as she became resigned to it being a trick of her imagination, a shout from the other side of the courtyard made her jump half out of her skin. Maertn turned to face this outburst. As he did, the giant form of Elias sprinted from a wall not fifteen paces away, heading towards them. The silent man couldn’t yell a war cry, but it was obvious enough from the malevolent glint in his eyes as he got closer, what his intentions were. Maertn caught sight of this over his shoulder and cried out. He twisted to face Elias, unwittingly standing in the way of his previously clear route to Quinn. The huge mercenary virtually ran through the slight healer. Maertn pushed his hands up to cover his neck and face at the last second, and crumpled under the oncoming weight. Elias had a dagger drawn, but had not used it. Instead, he used his shoulder to wade into his first obstacle. He brought his dagger round now, gripped in his left hand, the blade dull and obscured in the flittering shadow.

Quinn opened her mouth to scream. To her horror, no sound came. Her heart had been racing just from her arguments with Maertn, and now it was hammering out of her rib cage right through her chest. She stood dumbly, mouth open, almost accepting of the end, when someone else flashed through her line of sight. The stranger collided with Elias and sending him crashing to the floor a scant pace or two from where Quinn stood. She came to her senses and yelled for help, as the two men grappled on the ground. The response was quick; there were always men on patrol in Everfell. Two men shouted from a crosswalk on the far side of the courtyard, and she could hear more voices in the distance coming to their aid. She rushed to Maertn, scared of the two men now fighting on the floor. Elias was bad enough; who would be insane enough to take him on in a headlong run? Maertn was unconscious, though his body seemed intact and his skin was not cold. Quinn tried to tell between the two men on the floor. She couldn’t leave a man who had most likely saved her life to work out his own fate with Sammah’s most aggressive henchman, could she?

Quinn felt helpless, though. She could lay a kick or two into Elias, but the men were moving around so quickly that she knew she couldn’t trust where her blows would land. She didn’t want to do more harm than good. She reached out, and instinctively flinched away. Never before had she seen so much anger concentrated in one spot. The feel of it burned her. Angry in turn at being completely helpless, yet being the obvious victim of this plot, she lashed out in her mind against Elias. If it had made a difference, neither of them showed it. They did not slow down, and they did not pay her any heed. If Quinn had another plan in the offing, she did not have time to execute it. Half a dozen men of the guard charged past her, weapons drawn and lungs issuing orders of all kinds. Candles started to illuminate windows higher up in the castle, and, with deepening horror, Quinn realised that she the only place other than her own room she’d end up tonight would be the king’s cells. She collapsed to her knees, the shock of Elias’s aborted attack and the exhaustion of what she had been preparing and yet failed to do washing through her.

Someone pressed between her shoulder blades to get her attention. She looked up to see a guard who seemed familiar. The vague recognition was apparently mutual.

“Here, you’re that awkward lass aren’t you? Sammah’s maid?”

She nodded mutely, suddenly too drained to argue.

“Here, Rob, we’ve got one of the maids here. A lad, too. Your lover, lass?”

Quinn shook her head quickly, hoping the man didn’t see her starting to blush.

“Spirits above, it’s that young healer. He’s out cold. Someone call Torran. Those two, what are they about?”

Between them, a handful of the king’s guard had just about managed to separate what had degenerated into a catfight. The young man was indignant, yelling to be left alone, and for Elias to be led away in chains. Quinn agreed wholeheartedly with his sentiment, and wished the lad had the weight of authority to have that order carried out. Quinn was astonished then to see that Elias was indeed being chained up. Like a common prisoner, one of Baron Sammah’s own personal retinue was led away. He was at swordpoint—it would be obvious even to a common bystander, never mind a trained guardsman, that Elias was a threat. But Quinn had her wish, as had the man who had risked himself to save her.

She reached out again, hoping to find out what was going on around her. Everyone was so excited, that it was still quite difficult to channel through the burgeoning flashes to find the person she was looking for. Once she did, it was easy to grip on to him. He was…calm. Every other man around him was letting off emotion like a wildfire vomits out smoke. In the centre of it was a calm, white fire. He was still angry; Quinn could sense that like a current ripples under the calm surface of a river. But it was under control. There was more…this was a man she had touched in the past. In the courtyard, when she had passed out. And again, when she had been in the corridor. This was the man who had turned down Yvette, the one who she had declined to read on Sammah’s behalf. Quinn blinked in rapid succession. Why had he been out here? And why did he want to help her?