your life. Quindor is going to find out, and he will hold you accountable for letting her go.”
“I didn’t let her go—she escaped. I chased her as far as I could, but unfortunately, the side effects of last night’s … adventures kept me from catching her.” He pressed a hand to his chest and grinned. “I feel quite winded. Perhaps I should sit down.”
Bercola’s face tightened and she crossed her thick arms. “So you’re going to just let her go? No matter the consequences?”
“I’m going to let her go for now. It isn’t as though she’ll get far.”
“Why let her go at all?”
He shrugged. “You know I’m a sucker for a pretty face, Bercola.” Then he waved a hand at her. “Head to the palace. Tell Malahi I’ll be there shortly.”
The giantess gave an exasperated shake of her head but departed without argument, leaving Killian standing at the top of the stairs.
It was true, the girl had been strikingly beautiful, but that was only a convenient excuse. It was what she had said that was making him hesitate.
I’m not a liar.
The words were a haunting echo of what the corrupted woman at the wall had said just before his men shot her down. That damnable moment when he’d ignored his instincts in favor of the King’s laws. He didn’t intend to make the same mistake again.
Who are you?
Celendor, that had been where Lydia had said she was from. A name that didn’t ring any bells of recognition in him, despite the fact that he’d been north and south, east and west, across the entire kingdom and beyond. She had the look of the North about her, but her unusual accent said otherwise, and even that he couldn’t place.
No healers marked in over a year.
And yet Lydia had been, or at least claimed to have been, which would mean that Hegeria had returned to the mortal plane after a year’s absence to mark this girl so that she might save his life. And if that was true …
You need to get back to the palace.
Malahi is waiting for you.
You’re shirking your duties.
Killian ignored all the thoughts spinning through his head, instead striding down the hallway to his study, bypassing his sleeping dog and the shelves of books on his way to a cabinet. Inside were dozens of maps, which he extracted, laying them flat on the table. For the next hour, he scanned through them, searching for the name. Nothing.
Sitting back in his chair, Killian unrolled an enormous map that showed all the known world. The Northern and Southern Continents, plus all the islands, big and small. Derin was a blank space, as were the Uncharted Lands in the center of the Southern Continent, but otherwise, this was the sum of the world.
It was possible, he supposed, that she was a Derin spy, but nothing about that felt right. She was too unprepared and the deimos had been just as keen to kill her. Never mind that it seemed unlikely that Hegeria would be marking a girl who paid tribute to the Seventh. Frowning at the map, Killian idly traced a finger over the angry-looking sea serpent in the corner, the symbol of the Maarin people. The map had been a gift to his father from Triumvir Tesya of the Quincense years ago. One from her personal collection, he recalled her daughter Teriana telling him, though they’d filched a bottle of rum, so his memory of the conversation was blurry.
As soon as I can find a Maarin ship …
The Maarin don’t take passengers—
They’ll take me.
What was Lydia’s connection to the Maarin? Obviously they knew where this Celendor was, which meant it was likely coastal, as the Maarin were never off the water for long. Perhaps an island in the middle of nowhere?
An island with a xenthier stem that terminated right outside Mudaire’s gates.
He grimaced at that. It was common practice to encase known stems in tombs of stone, and a morbid part of him had always wondered how many corpses would be found if the tombs of the terminuses were ever opened.
Most of his questions could easily be answered if any Maarin ships were in the harbor, but they were both too wise and too gods-damned wealthy to be incented to risk their ships and crew to Mudaire’s dark skies. Huffing out a breath at the time wasted, Killian rolled up the map, only to pause as his eyes landed on the edges of the paper. Three sides were worn with