Den of Thieves - Shannon Mayer Page 0,8
faint, barely visible, yet I was sure they’d been there. Were they what had taken our powers? Or were they what I’d felt watching us?
Maybe both.
I shook my head and urged Balder into a trot. This part of the desert was softer with loose sand and more than a trot would put more strain on the horses’ legs than I wanted to right then, no matter that they were fit and used to different surfaces.
The last thing we needed was an injury when we had no way of healing it.
I shut down that thought as soon as it came up, part of me horrified that by thinking it, I would make it happen. Just like Maks had said talking about our abilities had jinxed us.
I wanted to ask Maks what his Jinn knowledge knew about the eastern side of the realm. Then again, he might actually know all on his own. He’d been raised by the Jinn and they were all about taking over territories and controlling other creatures. But again, I hesitated.
I couldn’t even say why, and I didn’t like it. I forced myself to speak.
“Maks?”
He turned his head and lifted his brows. “Yes?”
“Do you know much about this area we are going into?”
“You mean as we head toward the far eastern wall?” He sat deep in his saddle, his back slumping a little. “Probably not enough to help us.”
I waited, knowing him well enough to see he was gathering his thoughts. Lila, on the other hand, was not so patient.
“Come on, Toad! Spit it out!” She leapt between the two horses, landing on the pommel of Batman’s saddle so she could reach out and grab Maks’s shirt. “We haven’t got all day.”
“That’s not true,“ Maks said with a grin. “We actually do have all damn day.”
“You know what I mean!” She snapped her claws up at him as if that would hurry him up.
He sighed. “What little I know could fill not even a single page of paper. Marsum, when he was looking at territories to conquer, never looked at the east. I asked him once why. His answer was that some pots were better left unstirred. And the memories of the others are similar. Almost as if . . .”
My eyes widened, as did Lila’s. “Marsum was afraid of what was in the east?”
Maks rolled his shoulders as if that thought made him as uncomfortable as it did me. “He never came right out and said it, but yeah, I think that was the case. Or he knew he was outmatched maybe. Maybe that was why Davin was trying to gather more power? There are mountains between us and the far eastern realm. Wide ranges that are extremely dangerous, full of wild creatures looking to hunt and kill. Not like the desert you cross to get to the base of the mountains.”
He let out a deep breath and ran a hand through his hair.
I considered for a moment, gathering my thoughts. “You think that memories of the other Jinn masters could have been tampered with to keep the knowledge about the east from getting out?”
“I think the only other person who might be able to tell you anything is your grandfather,” Maks said. “You think you could walk in the dreamscape to find him?”
I grimaced. “The dreamscape broke apart when everything went down.”
And that left us with nothing to go on, our abilities stripped, and an unknown realm to face.
If only we’d truly understood then what we were up against, we might not have been so fucking flippant.
4
As we trekked through the desert beyond the Blackened Market, Lila flopped to the side of Batman’s neck, hanging from his mane with one set of toe claws, her wings limp, her other arm flung over her eyes. A case of the dramatics that was good even for her. “Like a dull actor now, I have forgot my part, and I am out, even to a full disgrace.”
“I know that one,” Maks said, grinning wide. “Coriolanus. I think even I can say that it was scene five. And really, rather fitting with the poor acting there.”
She rolled up to her feet and flew to me, blowing him a wet raspberry as she went by. “Fine. Mock my pain, Toad.”
I caught her with one hand and tucked her in close. While she was making fun by being ridiculous, she was also shaking hard. Because once more, we were at the mercy of the world with no big guns to back us