On the hill behind town stood the massive cathedral, one of the most impressive buildings in the entire world. It was built long before anyone could remember, outliving even the gods it had been built to worship. Some parts of the ancient building had been adapted over the years, still in use after all this time though for different purposes, while others had vanished from memory.
One part of the building which had been lost in the folds of history was the catacombs. Dark, narrow and more expansive than anyone still living knew, the shadowy reaches of the cathedral’s catacombs extended its cavernous fingers all the way underneath the town next to it. No one had explored all the passageways beneath the cathedral, not even when the building was young. It made the catacombs the perfect place to hide.
Unbeknownst to the world, there was someone using the subterranean halls for that very purpose. He hid away in his underground world, his only company the flickering light of the candles he surrounded himself with and the hundreds of books piled all around him. Some of them were filled with writing while the rest had yet to be written, but all of them had a part to play in the things to come.
The man himself wasn't much sturdier than his books. His body frail and skin pale from lack of sunlight, his greasy hair hung in a curtain around his face the same color as the darkness he surrounded himself in. As always his eyes were closed, quill in hand as he scratched shadowy words across the page of the book in front of him. That was why he was the Writer. It was more than a job, more than simply the act of putting words to page. It was his power.
“Come in,” the Writer said, preempting the knock on his chamber door. His voice was too strong to have come from such a frail body.
At his command the door creaked open and a man bathed in shadows entered. Even with the candles flickering on the desk in front of the Writer it was as if their light couldn’t reach the man’s face.
“Right on time,” the Writer said, never looking up from his work.
The man smiled beneath his mask of shadows. “Would you expect any less? Why did you call me?”
“Did you bring what I asked you to?”
The man pulled a bag out of his coat and dropped it on the Writer’s desk. With one hand still occupied with his quill, the Writer fished through the bag. It was filled with food, which he pulled out piece by piece and started to eat, all while his quill continued to scratch across the page.
“I see you’re manners haven’t improved,” the man standing behind the Writer said. “When was the last time you ate?”
“The last time you delivered food. The future won’t write itself.”
“Then I guess you’re lucky to have me for an errand boy.”
The Writer smiled. “I’ll have a new one soon enough. Which brings us to the real reason for your visit. I have a new job for you.”
“Is this about the mage-knights?” the man asked. “About the anti-mage our spies say joined them?”
The Writer shook his head. “That's not your concern for the moment. A situation has arisen in Inari, one that demands your immediate attention. As you've no doubt heard our plan was discovered by one of the city sentries.”
“I was under the impression that everything about Inari was Feidal's responsibility.”
“His job is to prepare the ritual site, correct.”
“Then why does this demand my attention? Shouldn't he or his new assistant deal with it?”
“They are dealing with the sentry, but before they got to him he managed to send a copy of our plans out of the city. This is a loose end we cannot allow.”
“You couldn't stop him?”
“I only write the future, not direct it. That's why I have you by my side, is it not? If our plan is revealed, it will jeopardize everything. The future we desire will be ruined. You must stop that. You must find the person the sentry entrusted our plans to, and deal with him.”
The man stood silent for a long while. “Where should I start?”
A smile crept its way across the Writer's face. “That I can tell you. Take a seat.”
* * *
“This is unacceptable,” Shaw said, running a hand through his golden hair. He felt a yawn coming but stifled it before it reached his mouth. A captain should never show that kind of weakness, especially when he was scolding his subordinates.
Across the desk from him Trace’s head dropped. “Yes sir.” He had never dreamed of getting called into Shaw’s office so late at night, especially not two nights in a row. Even so he wouldn’t dare say it wasn’t his fault, even if he hadn’t done anything wrong.
No, the reason he was sitting across from Shaw facing his icy stare for the second night in a row was the girl in the chair sitting next to him. It was all because of Rin, her slender ears drooping at the moment and her tail tucked demurely behind her. But despite her mournful position of her body the look in her golden eyes said quite clearly that she didn’t believe she’d done anything wrong.
Shaw turned his frozen gaze on Rin. “It’s fine that the people of Avaril chose not to punish you, but breaking into the mage-knight barracks is a far more serious offense than stealing food and will not be tolerated.”
“You know,” Rin said, meeting Shaw’s gaze without hesitation, “I wouldn’t have to break in if you’d just let me stay here.” She was completely unfazed by Shaw’s icy demeanor, made even colder by his lack of sleep, and seemed to have no understanding of the gravity of her situation. “And I wouldn’t exactly call it breaking in. I practically walked in the front door. Maybe if your guards were better this wouldn’t be happening.”
“I think what she means to say,” Trace interjected before she could dig herself any farther, “is that it won’t happen again.”
“Sure it will,” Rin tried to say, but Trace got his hand over her mouth halfway through, muffling everything but the first word.
“And you,” Shaw said turning once again to focus on Trace. The young mage-knight shivered, caught up by the icy chill of the captain’s stare. “It’s your freedom to exercise judgment as you see fit, but you must always keep in mind the consequences and take responsibility for your decisions.”
“I understand,” Trace said, eyes fixed on his lap.
“In allowing her to follow you, you’ve made yourself responsible for all of her actions. If something like this happens again she will be punished, and you along with her. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes sir,” Trace said, praying Rin would stay silent. Much to his relief, she did.
Shaw let out a thick sigh. “Then you can go.”
Trace bowed his head. “Thank you.” And before Rin could say anything else to get them into even deeper trouble he grabbed her by the hand and dragged her out of the office. The night air was cool as he escorted her out to the wall around the mage-knight barracks, but it actually felt nice in comparison to the atmosphere in Shaw’s office. The grounds around the barracks were empty except for the breezes that swept through, pushing the grass gently back and forth. Under other circumstances he would have found it nice out.
“You can’t just come in here whenever you want,” Trace explained for the second time to Rin, who was skipping happily alongside him.
“Then they shouldn’t make it so easy,” she said, as if that justified everything.
Trace let out a deep breath. “That doesn’t make it okay.” He could have been angry at her, and for good reason, but that wasn’t in his nature. Since before he’d been accepted into the mage-knights he had been waiting for the day to come when he could stay in the barracks. That day had finally come two days ago, but because of Rin he hadn’t been able to get a decent sleep yet.
“What’s so wrong about wanting to spend the night with my fiancé?” Rin asked, pouting.
“I’m not your fiancé,” Trace insisted, but by that point he already knew it was in vain. Nothing he could say would convince Rin to reconsider, at least nothing he’d thought of so far.
Rin flashed him a coy smile. “You’re still saying that after what happened in the woods?”
“Nothing happened in the woods.”
Rin skipped a few steps ahead of him, hands behind her back and tail swishing in impish pleasure. “That’s not how I remember it. You pushed me down--”
“You pushed me down,” Trace corrected.
“--You got on top of me,” she continued as if he hadn’t said anything.
“Nothing happened.”
“And now we’re engaged. Isn’t it great?”
Trace took a deep, calming breath. Rin moved at her own pace, and if he got sucked into it he would never get anywhere. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I don’t know anything about you. You don’t know anything about me either. Are you really okay being engaged like that? Because I’m not.”
“I’ve been trying to get to more acquainted,” she put an emphasis on the word ‘acquainted’ that sent a shiver down Trace’s spine, “but the guards always catch me before I get to your room.”
“Can’t you do it during the day?”
“You’re always busy during the day,” Rin pouted. “Training with Zephyr.”
The gate to the barracks was just ahead of them, where two gray uniformed knights stood sentry pretending not to listen to their conversation. In truth Rin and her attempted late night rendezvous with Trace had become the hottest piece of gossip around the barracks, but so far no one had said anything about it to Trace.
“Anyway, you can’t sneak in anymore, understand?”
Rin stamped her foot. “No. I’ll keep trying until they let us stay together.”
Trace sighed, knowing well that she would. Only Shaw would see them both in chains before that ever happened. “At least promise not to break in again tonight,” he pleaded. “I’ll think of something tomorrow.”
“Then we can be together?”
“Sure.” Trace was too tired to argue with her, and Shaw had been right when he said she was his responsibility. He wouldn’t be able to forgive himself if she got locked up for trying to see him, even if he ended up getting locked up with her.
“I suppose I can put up with one night,” Rin said slowly. “It is just one night, right?”
“Yes,” Trace said through another thick sigh. He already had an idea of what to do, he’d just hoped it wouldn’t come down to it. But it would take more than he had to convince Rin of anything, and he had finally come to accept that.
“Tomorrow then,” Rin said, smiling once again before skipping out the front gate and disappearing into the night. Trace didn’t know where she’d been staying and honestly he didn’t want to. Once she was gone he turned back to face what would probably be his last night in the barracks.
* * *
“I heard she came again last night,” Simon said as he sat down next to Trace at breakfast. When they weren’t training, the meals in the barracks’ mess hall were much better, consisting of actual food. “Too bad she couldn’t get past the guards.”
Trace, who had only gotten a few hours of sleep in the two days since returning from Avaril, wasn’t in any mood for jokes and said nothing.
“Seriously though, you go on one mission and come back engaged, to a leonid no less. What’s your secret?”
“We’re not engaged,” Trace said. “We were fighting and I beat her.”
Simon nodded. “But then you let her go. I hate to break it to you but that is getting engaged, to a leonid at least. It’s an old tradition I didn’t know they still followed, but there it is.”
“I was just doing my job.”
“Don’t look at me, this isn’t exactly my specialty. What are you gonna do?”
Trace shrugged and circled his food with his fork. “She won’t keep breaking in if I’m not here, right?”
“You’re moving out?” Simon asked, not surprised, but not happy either.
“What else can I do?” It was true, no matter how hard the two of them thought, neither of them could come up with a better solution. All through the day’s training Trace was waiting for inspiration to strike him, but at the end of the day he had to admit that he didn’t have any other options.
Once training was finished for the day, when all the other new mage-knights went back to the barracks Trace headed by himself for the gate. He found Rin standing outside, arguing passionately with the gray-uniformed guards about something that was completely forgotten the minute she saw him coming.
“Come on,” he said, not pausing as he stepped through the gate and out onto the road beyond.
Rin easily caught up to him, bounding to his side. “Where we going?”
“To find somewhere to live,” Trace answered, resisting the urge to take one last look over his shoulder at the barracks.
“Really? Thank you.” Before he could react Rin jumped on his arm, doing her best to squeeze the life out of it while her tail darted back and forth behind her.
Trace felt a knot growing in his stomach as the two of them made their way into the city of Vanadrin. Rin had only seen the city from a distance, and made no attempts to hide her surprise at the novelty of it all. She would point at just about everything they passed, each time clinging tighter and tighter to Trace's arm. Trace hoped she was doing it unconsciously, overwhelmed by all the new sights, but he suspected that she knew exactly what she was doing.
Just as she had apparently never seen some of the things lining the marble streets, many of the townspeople had never seen anyone who looked quite like Rin before either. They all knew what she was, but the leonid almost never left the sanctuary of the eastern jungle, choosing to have nothing to do with the world of men. For many of them it was the first time they'd seen one in person. All but the children had the decency to wait until she and Trace had passed before breaking into feverish whispers, but no one was immune to the gossip that followed them through the streets.
Trace did his best to ignore the people staring at him while Rin actually waved at them, beaming as if she couldn't be happier. “Doesn't it feel like we're newlyweds?”
“Not exactly,” Trace said, sinking under the weight of the many stares directed at him. It took longer than he remembered to get to Liza's family's inn. He didn't like the idea of just showing up there and asking for help, but he didn't know where else he could turn.
When he finally got to the Lyre Inn he found it completely empty. He checked in the kitchen and the store room too, but there was no sign of the inn owner or his wife.
But just as he came back to the lobby the door opened and Liza walked in, still wearing her gray mage-knight uniform. “Hiya Trace,” she said with a smile, “need something?” Before he could say anything the girl caught sight of Rin and her eyes widened. “Is this her? She really is a--Where are my manners?” In a flash her hand shot toward the bewildered Rin. “I’m Liza.”
“I’m--”
“Rin,” Liza finished for her, shaking the leonid girl’s hand vigorously before hurrying back behind the counter. “I’ve heard. So what can I do for you?”
“We need a room,” Rin said happily, pouncing on Trace’s arm. She would have grabbed it and squeezed if he hadn’t already guessed what she was going to do and stepped out of the way. But there was nothing he could do but cringe at her loud declaration.
Liza lifted her eyebrows at Trace. “I see. Well we definitely have a room or two to spare.”
“Two then,” Trace insisted, uncomfortable with the way Rin was purring to herself. “We’ll help out around the inn to pay for it. Are your parents around?”
“Sorry, they’re out of town for a few days.”
“Oh.” It shouldn’t have come as any surprise to Trace that his plan hadn’t worked. He hadn’t even thought it would to be honest. But it was the only thing he could think of.
“What’re you looking so gloomy for?” Liza asked. “They left me in full control of the inn. If you want a room--or two--it’s yours no questions asked.”
“Thanks,” Trace said through a heavy sigh of relief. “You’re a lifesaver.”
“Anything I can do to help. So how did you two--?”
“I thought you said no questions,” Trace said.
“Sorry.” Liza fished below the counter and pulled out two sets of keys. “Two rooms on the west side. Away from the other guests.”
Trace got the feeling she was misunderstanding something, but couldn’t say he blamed her since Rin’s eye lit up when she said that.
Rin tried to cling to him the whole way to their rooms, parting with him only reluctantly. Trace wasn’t sure why she was so obsessed with him. She called herself his fiancé, but what kind of sincere feelings could she really hold for someone she’d only met a couple days before. Trace wanted to ask why she clung so desperately to him but couldn’t think of a tactful way to do it.
Liza left the two of them at their rooms and went back to her own room to change out of her uniform. “She’s a good person,” Rin said about her once she’d left.
“Yeah. I don’t know what we would’ve done if she didn’t let us stay here.”
“So this is where we’re living?” Rin dropped onto the straw bed. It sank under her, but only slightly. She looked everything over, her golden eyes sparkling. The room was small and sparsely furnished, but it was adequate. It may not have been the most luxurious inn in Vanadrin, but it was certainly better than the cave she’d been living in before Trace and Zephyr found her. She fell back all the way, purring contentedly as her head found the pillow. “I haven’t slept on a real bed in forever. This is great.”
Once again Trace was tempted to ask where she had been sleeping since they got back to Vanadrin, but decided he really didn't want to know. Now she had a bed to sleep on and a roof over her head and wouldn't get herself arrested for sneaking into the mage-knights barracks. That was enough.
She still tried to sneak into his room once the sun set, but he had prepared for that. Rin had proven herself adept at getting past locks, but Trace had taken a few extra padlocks from the storeroom. No matter how good she was at picking locks, she couldn't open them if she couldn't reach them on the inside of the room. He even locked the window, hoping all the while that such a measure wouldn't be necessary. As it turned out it was, but his countermeasures were enough to keep her out. She scratched and mewled pitifully outside his door until after midnight, at which point she finally gave up and went to sleep.
The next morning Trace woke up to a sharp banging on his door. He was out of bed by the third knocked and undid the lock on the door as fast as he could. There were four mage-knights in gray uniforms waiting for him on the other side, all armed and with serious expressions.
“Trace,” the one in front said, “please come with us.”
“What’s wrong?” Trace asked, fastening his white uniform and grabbing his sword from where he’d left it the night before.
But all the guard would say was, “You’re to report to Captain Shaw immediately.” He kept his tone stiff and all three watched Trace with a carefully-measured indifference. Trace thought he recognized the one on the end from around the barracks, but he didn’t know him by name.
As he stepped into the hall, he saw that Rin had been woken up by another complement of gray uniformed guards, only hers was twice as strong and they had subdued her with chains around her wrists and neck.
Trace tried to go to her side but the four guards in front of him wouldn’t let him through. “What’s going on?” Trace asked again, as much to Rin as to the guards who were dragging her down the hall.
“Captain Shaw will tell you everything. Please come with us.”
Trace did, falling into step next to Rin. “What did you do now?” he whispered into her ear as they reached the front door of the inn.
“Nothing I swear,” Rin whispered back, but obviously the other mage-knights disagreed. Trace expected them to lead the two of them back to Shaw’s office in the barracks, but instead they went in the other direction toward the fields on the far side of the city. Trace was about to ask their escorts where they were going, but as they reached the top of a hill overlooking the fields even from that far away Trace could see why they were there.
Trace had passed those fields before and seen them used to raise livestock, pastures for goats, sheep and cows. Only now there were no herds spread out on the hilly fields grazing. There were only three animals down on the fields, none of them moving. In fact even from that far away Trace could see dark red stains in their white fur. Next to him Rin saw the same thing and cringed slightly, not enough for the guards to notice.
Captain Shaw was standing in the field among the carcasses along with nearly a dozen other gray-uniformed mage-knights. As they got closer, Trace saw that the animals hadn’t just been killed but butchered, literally torn apart. It looked more like the work of a wolf or bear than something a person could do.
“I take it you know why you’re here,” Shaw said without looking at them.
“You think I did this?” Rin demanded, her voice equal parts disgusted and indignant restrained only by the chain collar around her neck.
“Yes,” Shaw said coldly. Even Trace, who had started getting used to Shaw’s cold demeanor was shocked by his blunt answer.
“Well I didn’t,” Rin said.
“Can you prove that?” Shaw asked, fixing his ice blue eyes on her.
Rin had no answer to that, but that wasn’t going to stop her from saying something.
“Why do you think it was her?” Trace asked, stepping without thinking between Shaw and Rin before she could say anything else. He didn’t think about whether he was defending her because she claimed to be his fiancé or because he was responsible for her every move.
“Just look at this,” one of the gray uniforms blurted out. “No person could’ve done this.”
Shaw glared so harshly at the man who had spoken out of turn that he tried to withdraw his head into his uniform like a turtle. “First of all we already know she’s a criminal.”
“She only stole because she thought she had to,” Trace interjected. “And even then she never hurt anything.
Shaw turned his glare on Trace and it was his turn to shrink back. “Do you expect us to believe it’s a coincidence something like this happened just a couple days after she got here?”
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Trace argued.
“Maybe not, but we have a witness,” Shaw countered coldly. “It was dark so he didn’t get a clear look, but he saw a figure with a tail running back into town.”
Trace tried to argue that but it was a compelling piece of evidence. Rin was the only leonid most of the people of Vanadrin had ever seen, there was no way there was anyone else in the city with a tail. The best counter argument he could come up with was, “There has to be another explanation.”
“There may be, but for now she’s our primary suspect and will be taken into custody.”
“But she said she didn’t do it,” Trace said.
“All the guilty do,” Shaw said matter-of-factly. “All that matters is what the investigation says.”
“Then let me be part of the investigation.”
Shaw didn’t even think about that before answering, “No. You’re too close to this.”
But Trace was unrelenting. “That’s exactly why I should be a part of it. If she’s guilty then I share the responsibility for bringing her here in the first place. Either way I’ll try to prove her innocence, so why not let me help instead of doing it on my own?”
This time Shaw thought carefully before answering. “Very well. I’ll leave the investigation of this incident to you and Zephyr. But she stays in our custody until you can give us a reason to release her. Understood?”
“Yes sir.”
While Shaw rounded up all the gray uniformed knights Trace went to talk to Rin one last time before she was taken away.
“You’re going to fight for me?” she asked. “A little bit old fashioned, but romantic anyway.”
“You really didn’t do this?” Trace asked hesitantly. He didn’t want to think she was capable of doing anything that horrible, but he had to face the truth that he didn’t really know anything about her.
She looked him straight in the eye when she responded. “Of course not,” she said with none of the contempt she’d had when Shaw asked her the same thing.
Trace smiled at her. “Then it’s my job to prove your innocence. Don’t worry, we’ll figure this out.”
Next Week- Chapter 9: In the Dark of Night