The Whitefire Crossing - By Courtney Schafer Page 0,25

the poor guy alone, Cara. Can’t you see he’s tired after an entire day in the mountains?”

“Oooh, an entire day, and all he did was ride? Dev, you are going soft. As I recall, Sethan had you climbing laps your first day out.” Cara stuffed another fig into her mouth. A reminiscent grin spread over her face as she chewed.

“Yeah, up and down that overhanging crack near the second bend of the canyon. I thought my fingers would fall off by the time he finally let me quit.” I’d been mad as a stinkwasp. Later, I’d realized Sethan had been teaching me in his quiet way that endurance was as important as technique for a mountain climber.

“Gods, you were such a cocky little bastard, bragging that you could climb anything. Sethan had to shut you up somehow, or the rest of us would have strangled you by midmeal.” The look on Cara’s face said she was still savoring the memory.

Harken gave one of his low chuckles. “If we’re telling tales, I remember one about a blonde-haired little loud-mouthed chit who insisted she could climb the Darran Spire.” He leaned down to poke Cara’s shoulder with one wide finger.

To my delight, Cara’s cheeks reddened, an event nearly as rare as rain in the Painted Valley. “Oh yeah, let’s hear that one,” I said eagerly.

“Think I’ll save it for a special occasion.” Harken levered himself off the wagon’s outboard. “Would one of you be good enough to help me put the food away? It’s late, and this old man needs his rest.”

“Sure.” I jumped up. “Just show me where you want it, and Kellan and I’ll take care of it for you.”

Kiran scrambled after me with obvious relief. He darted glances my way as we stowed the food back in its warded container, but he held his tongue until we reached our tarp. “Pello’s trying to find out about me, isn’t he?”

“Oh, you noticed?”

He winced. “What are we going to do?”

And by “we,” he meant me. “Take care of that damn message charm of his, for one thing.”

“If you steal his charm, won’t he know it was you?”

“Who said anything about stealing? I’ll fix it so the charm seems to work, but any messages he sends go nowhere.” Deadblocking a charm was one of Red Dal’s best tricks, and one he held close to the chest. He’d always claimed no other handler knew the secret. I hoped a Varkevian-born man who’d never even been Tainted wouldn’t know it was possible.

Kiran was looking at me like he’d never seen me before. “You can affect a charm’s magic? How?”

“A little trade secret I picked up from a specialist. Nothing a highsider like you needs to know.”

Frustrated curiosity was all over Kiran’s face. His mouth worked, as if he wanted to ask a question but couldn’t think of how to phrase it.

“Disabling the charm’s the easy part,” I told him. “Finding Pello’s stash, that’s hard. But I’ve got a few ideas. Give me the night to think them over.”

“Anything I can help with?” Now he had the hopeful air of an eager young Tainter. It set my teeth on edge.

“Not unless you know how to peek an active hide-me ward.”

I’d meant to shut him up, but a thoughtful frown creased his brow. “Do you mean, reveal the ward’s location?” He fumbled in his hair. When he lowered his hands, the look-away charm lay glinting in one palm. “My...father once showed me that if a charm and ward are similar in purpose, yet have a different maker, the interference of their magic may cause visible effects if the charm passes too near the ward.”

He’d choked on the word “father” like he had a mouthful of cactus spines. Bad blood there, perhaps? I pushed speculation aside. I knew what Kiran meant. Every kid in Ninavel knows that party trick, though it’s not very useful in practice. Crawling all over a house waving a charm takes hours; somebody’s sure to discover you before you’re done. Pello’s wagon was a more reasonable area to search, but a bigger problem remained. “Yeah, a look-away’s enough like a hide-me, but that charm’s way too small to flash the ward.”

“Didn’t you say the cliffs here have carcabon stones?”

My mouth dropped open. Boosting the look-away charm with carcabon could actually work. I wouldn’t get anything so obvious as sparks, but all I needed was the tiniest shimmer of air over the ward’s location. No, wait, I didn’t have any silver to properly bind