the memory. She let her hands drop from Shade’s face at her own weak whisper.
“No . . . no.”
“What did she find?” Chane rasped.
Wynn was too crestfallen to face him. Shade had found nothing. But when Wynn tried to lift her head to answer, Shade huffed. The dog dipped and wriggled her muzzle until Wynn’s fingers slid down her neck.
The memory began again.
Down the shore, the port seemed nearer, but not by much. And Wynn—Shade—climbed higher up the shore to pass over a deep inlet. Then she stopped, pricked her ears, and listened. The sound of the water below seemed wrong.
She heard the undulating sea breach the inlet’s shallows, and she crept dangerously close to look down. Waves broke out near the inlet’s mouth, and below, she couldn’t quite see the inlet’s back.
A second memory flashed over this moment, from sometime much earlier during the night.
Wynn saw an inlet from along its southern-bordering rock ridge. At the back was a wide overhang barely a few feet above the water. She—Shade—listened as the water hit the cave’s back somewhere in that deeper dark.
Then she was back in the previous memory.
She stood atop the overhang, and the sound had changed. It echoed. Not the soft reverberation of water undulating against the cave’s back, as in that second overlaid memory. It was more rolling and extended, amplified in the space below.
The water in the inlet was shallower now, revealing the inlet’s rocky floor.
Wynn scrambled across the inlet’s top and down the backbone. She didn’t stop until she was all the way along its inner slope and staring into the inlet. At low tide, the overhang was now well above the water’s shifting surface. The change of the waves’ sounds increased, becoming clearer. Wynn leaped off the backbone’s edge into the cold water.
She sank chest-deep as all four paws fought for sure footing, and she heard . . .
A soft trickling, water flowing . . . out between sluggish inward surges.
She froze, waiting as water rolled inward, rising halfway up her hips and soaking her tail. When it receded, again she heard the hollow echo of water trickling out—as if from a deeper space.
Wynn lunged in beneath the dark overhang. When her nose finally struck the back wall, she recoiled, snorting and shaking her head. The dim light of predawn wasn’t enough to see, but the water was now only halfway up her legs. She nosed carefully along the rough stone until . . . it wasn’t there anymore.
Wynn—Shade—pulled back, startled, but the echo of trickling water was now loud in her ears. She glanced back to get her bearings and found she had shifted far to the right of the overhang’s opening. Whatever space she’d found would never even be seen from outside.
She extended her snout.
Poking about, she found an opening’s edge. One careful paw step after another, she crept inward.
It was a tunnel. By her best guess and the echoes of her splashing steps, the passage was not tall. The farther she went, the less water surged inward, until it barely splashed under her paws. Then her head bumped sharply against something hard. Somehow it had missed her nose and caught her on both sides of her face. She retreated as the thump echoed, sounding dully metallic.
Wynn sniffed about until she found something.
It was upright and round, thicker than her foreleg. She carefully closed her jaws on it. Indeed, it tasted like metal. The next vertical bar was too close to slip her head between them.
Shade had found a hidden passage, but it was barred against entry.
She was already shivering from cold, but it didn’t matter. She had found what Wynn needed.
Shade wheeled about, lunging back down the passage, into the ending cave, and out from beneath the overhang. By the time she scrabbled over the rocky backbone, she was hurrying for port as fast as her footing allowed. When she reached it, full daylight had arrived.
Fishermen and sailors glanced over as she trotted between the buildings, but none approached, giving her no reason to growl. She was alone and cold, longing for the blanket at the inn. She stopped outside the door, hesitated, and turned aside. Then she spotted a small shed filled with netting and piled canvas.
Shade slipped inside and burrowed into the pile.
The memory ended suddenly.
Wynn’s head ached from such a prolonged exchange, but she knew the rest of what had happened. Shade had waited out the day, having no way to reach Chane. Close within sight of the