have expected her to understand from her previous comment. That, combined with his nerves, meant he was hiding something.
Anna considered this for a split-second. She was used to people hiding things from her. The end purpose of many of her company’s contracts was not always clear, which led to obtuse requests from Defense Department officials. She was accustomed to arguing for more information, which she often needed in order to create the deliverables.
What, however, would Jacob be hiding?
She had an advantage over him and decided to use it. Rather than continue, she smiled as though she had not seen the look on his face. “Well, you’re doing incredible work and I have to say, DuBois’s hunch about Justin’s friend seems to be accurate. They’re clearly bonding. Now, as much as I’ve enjoyed this, I do have to return to my office. Thank you all for indulging me.”
The look of relief on the young engineer’s face was all the confirmation she needed.
He was definitely hiding something. The question, however, was what he could be hiding when the experiment was indisputably going well.
Price intended to find out.
The bells in Insea’s gorgeous goldstone spire tolled midnight.
Unnoticed, Kural shadow-walked through the abandoned arena. The inner corridors and contestants’ chambers were locked and guarded, but the rest of it was open to the public. A few citizens slept on the long, stone benches and others sat in huddles and conversed. Dissidents, perhaps? Amateur philosophers?
The wizard felt a pang. It had been a long time since he was a young apprentice. He had been in Junor, of course, beyond the strait, but cities tended to have the same rhythms to them. The world had seemed so open to him when he was young.
He didn’t worry that Zaara would fail as a wizard, not at all. She had the talent and determination in spades. He suspected, also, that it would suit her better to stay in one place and cultivate it rather than adventure the world over. She had never been suited to life as a wanderer and had simply been stifled by her parents’ expectations.
But being a wizard was a bargain no one anticipated when they made it. To live in the world so long was to grow apart from it. Once you saw the same patterns play out time and again, you began to view them all differently. A human mind behaved differently at four hundred years old than it did at twenty—or even eighty, for that matter.
For one thing, he had not expected how tired he would sometimes be of himself.
Ah, well. He quickened his pace as he reached the far side of the arena from the Master of Ceremonies’ post.
The door was in Insea somewhere, and the more he read, the more sure he was that it was there in the arena, itself. He couldn’t explain the certainty, though. Doors between worlds tended to be remote and well-guarded. It was bizarre that one would be there in the most well-traveled venue in the city.
With his luck, it would be in the middle of one of the tiers and marked with a hidden rune. Kural rolled his eyes. He had been all around the outside of the arena and had found nothing. Then, he had checked the entire structure for the telltale signs of hidden dwarven doors and again, had found nothing. By rights, he should have given up and gone home.
However, after four hundred years, one began to learn to follow hunches—and one’s hunches got stronger and better.
He darted an annoyed look at the podium and stopped, suddenly thoughtful. It extended into the arena somewhat, and the front of it was carved in a beautiful elven pattern. It was remarkable, the wizard thought as his heart rate quickened, how much that large, rectangular panel looked like an out-of-scale door.
For a brief moment, he considered hurdling the railing to sprint across the arena. No one would stop him but he would be incredibly noteworthy—as would be the fact that his footsteps didn’t make little puffs of dust. He rounded the walkway at a brisk pace instead and took the time to try to recall elven symbology.
Elves were relentless when it came to organization, which could be hellish when trying to get them to do anything spontaneous but was helpful for archeologists. If the front of the podium were the door, he would see trees on either side and the rune trulya, which brought protection to wayfarers.
Kural moved closer and waited for the clouds above