The Whitefire Crossing - By Courtney Schafer Page 0,133

we passed was identical to Simon’s, painted in unrelieved black with no markings.

When we came to the main riverside road, I stopped my horse, frowning.

“What is it?” Cara drew her horse alongside mine.

“They’re going the wrong way.” I’d expected them to turn north into the riverside district, heading toward the gate. I’d figured they’d pull into some deserted yard or alley down riverside to hide Simon and Kiran away. Simon would take his hennanwort, and we’d strike.

Instead, the charm signaled they’d turned south. That way lay the city’s border, a scant half mile off at the end of the river delta, and beyond, nothing but acres of cinnabar forest. The next border gate was down in Loras, a hundred miles distant.

Cara shrugged. “Maybe they decided the forest’s a safer spot to make their final preparations. Less chance of prying eyes, and no city guardsmen to call.”

“Yeah, but that’d put them an awfully long ride from the gate. Hennanwort lasts a while, but the herbalist told me the effects are strongest within the first few hours after the dose.”

“You think Pello knows we marked him? That he’s riding off separately, to draw us away?”

“Maybe, but we have to keep following the charm’s lead. We’ll never find Simon in time if he’s split off from Pello. We ought to know if Pello’s still with the carriage once we get outside the city. The guardsman loaded ten trunks of luggage onto the damn thing—it’ll leave serious tracks.” If we’d lost Kiran, as a last resort I’d send Cara to warn the Alathians a blood mage meant to pass their gate.

“Suliyya grant he didn’t mark us.” Cara tilted her head back to the sky, and sighed. “At least it’s a nice day for a southward ride.”

I’d been so intent on the charm I hadn’t even noticed, but she was right, the day was beautiful. The last traces of fog had burned off, and we’d passed far enough out of central Kost for the ever present woodsmoke haze to clear, leaving the sky a fresh, pale blue. Below the outlying storage yards, the Elenn River glittered green in the sunlight. Straight ahead, the dark cliffs of the gorge reared skyward, closing back in around the river as it rushed southward toward Loras.

The traffic thinned to almost nothing by the time we reached the Deeplink bridge and crossed off the river delta. A pair of deep wheelmarks showed plain as day in the loamy dirt beyond the bridge. My worry didn’t lessen. Had Pello set some kind of trap?

I held us back until the pulse of the find-me charm had almost faded. With so little traffic on the road, we’d be far too easy to spot if we stuck close. Maybe that was Pello’s aim. A short diversion down the southward road, to see if anyone followed. Thinking of that, I directed us just off the road into the shadows of the trees. As the gorge closed in, riding parallel to the road got harder, flowering kamma bushes filling in the space between cinnabar pines. The road had become little more than a glorified cart track, striped with roots and dotted with rocks. That carriage of Simon’s wasn’t meant for rough travel, yet the tracks continued along the dirt. My nerves ratcheted higher.

The charm’s warmth stabilized, then increased when we continued. Pello had stopped at last. On the road, the wheel marks took a sudden left turn onto an overgrown side track. Cara turned her horse to follow, but I motioned her back.

“We go on foot from here. Horses make too much noise, and we don’t know how close they are.” I spoke a whisper, peering warily over the undergrowth. I didn’t see any sign of Pello or the carriage, but they couldn’t be far. The river was maybe a mile away, and the border less than that. We led the horses into the woods on the other side of the cart track and tethered them behind a screening group of trees.

Cara nocked her crossbow. I put a hand on her arm. “Don’t try and shoot Simon, not even if he’s taken hennanwort. Even if he can’t cast actively, Khalmet only knows what defensive wardings a blood mage wears. This far out from the city, the detection spells are a lot weaker. He won’t have to worry so much about the Council.”

Cara strapped the bow onto her back, her face tight. “What if it’s just Pello?”

“Then we shoot the bastard, straight off,” I muttered. Gods, if