Ryan

Ryan was hovering on a stool at the edge of his bed, watching his friend with a decade of pent-up anxiety, when he heard the door to his room open and close behind him.

“Look, Mom, I told you,” Ryan said, without looking up, “Saeby could be dying—look at her! I got Callie Ebbs to take over. I already sent Jac to go get her—I’m paying her out of my wages from last month.”

“I’m not your mother, boy.”

It was the old man who had tried to get Ryan to come talk to him when Ryan had been delivering the fish. The man had been emphatic, even offering to pay Ryan for his time, but Ryan had been desperate to follow Saeby into the kitchens. He had told the old man he’d chat with him later, just to shut him up.

Ryan’s hackles went up and he turned slowly, already calculating the chances of kicking the old man’s ass. Though Saeby had been comically averse to saying it out loud, it was plain to him from her descriptions of the ‘sippers’ and their ‘liquid’ that Ryan had at least a little Auld in him, and Aulds were notorious for taking—or killing—bastard auldlings they found in the common folk. “Why are you in my room?”

The old man gave him a long, appraising look. “Not that you will remember this in the morning, but my name is Auld Wynfor Ganlin, and you are the bastard son of my insatiably promiscuous younger brother, Icel Ganlin. I’ve come to protect you until you can come into your own and avenge your father and his family, who were killed by a conspiracy of Vethyle and Norfeld Aulds. You will be accompanying me into the Idorion, where you will be safe until you’re ready to return and claim the rank of Auldheim.”

Ryan, who wasn’t stupid, and who helped run an inn where bored, wealthy people drank and talked themselves to sleep every night in the adjoining tavern, had figured out quickly enough which royal family line he had probably descended from, so he wasn’t as fazed as the old fart obviously expected. This was probably accented by the fact Ryan kicked back his stool, grabbed the nightstand in both hands, and broke it against the side of the old man’s head, then threw Saeby over his shoulder and bolted for the outdoors.

He got maybe twenty feet down the hall before his whole body went as rigid as a stone. Behind him, he heard booted footsteps approaching at a run.

“If you think I haven’t dealt with Icel’s undiscovered bastards in the past,” Wynfor growled, wiping blood from his face, “you are sadly mistaken. I meant you no harm, but do that again, boy, and you’ll be pissing out your own asshole.”

“Mom,” Ryan whispered, staring down the hall at the stairs to the tavern. It was as loud as he could make his voice go. The hallway was dark, since several of the inn’s patrons had already gone to bed, but there was still a glow from the common room, where his mother would be serving ale and mead until the early hours of the morning.

“So you knew you were an auldling,” Wynfor said, circling him, looking both irritated and curious as he dabbed at his bloody temple. “How? Are you already working with veoh?”

It took an enormous act of will, but Ryan took a step towards the common room and the witnesses he would find there.

Wynfor’s bushy gray brows tightened into a frown. “Put down the girl and come with me.”

And, oddly, the Auld’s command was almost impossible to resist.

Almost.

Feeling the unnatural way he wanted to do what the Auld was telling him, Ryan gritted his teeth and started thinking about Saeby dying without him, alone and afraid in a world filled with people who didn’t understand her. He managed to resist putting her down, but he couldn’t punch the Auld in the face like he wanted to.

Still, the look of surprise on Wynfor’s face was enough to make up for it. The old man cocked his head at the girl, then back at Ryan. “Put the girl down.”

Ryan ignored him, thinking about Saeby’s corpse, mauled by sippers.

“You pig-headed…” The Auld gave a frustrated look at the common room. “Drop her.”

This time, the pull was so strong that Ryan’s arm twitched of its own accord. Ryan ignored the Auld and took a step away from him, instead. Just twenty more, Ryan thought, focusing on the room where his mother and her guests were waiting. Just twenty more steps…

The Auld stepped between him and the common room, his bushy white eyebrows tightened in a frown. He did not, however, try to tell Ryan to drop Saeby again.

Ryan took another step, going chest-to-chest with the old man. They were, he noticed, of a height.

Unfortunately, the Auld didn’t move, and Ryan didn’t have the control to walk around him.

Glaring, Wynfor said, “You know you’re an auldling. That means you’ve got royal blood. It means you’ll get stipends, lands, servants… What do you care about the girl? She your sister?”

“She’s…a…friend…” Ryan managed, having to fight for every word.

“You screwing her, then? She pregnant?” Wynfor snapped, looking at Saeby’s unconscious form like he was going to rid them of the problem right there.

Ryan flushed, and this time couldn’t find the control to speak.

Wynfor seemed to find that uproarious. “Oh, I see. So she’s your one true love. Your destined. The mirror to your soul. The perfect companion granted to you by the very gods themselves, because you somehow did something with your uninspiring life slopping pigs and serving tables to deserve their individual attention.”

“Saeby’s…special…” Ryan gritted, still fighting the urge to drop her.

Wynfor made a snort of pure disgust. “Let me guess. At the ripe age of nineteen, you, having read enough fairy tales and knowing you’re of an Auld’s blood, think you’ve found your Auldbluut.” The old man snorted bitterly. “Please. They don’t exist. Not anymore. I looked, for centuries, and I ended up settling for an insipid Vethyle harlot. The last Auldbluut died in the days of Ariod. So just drop the wench and grow up, boy. Once you’re in the Spyre, you will have girls from across the lands fawning over you. Some homely kitchen scullion at the local tavern will be small sparks compared to what’s to come. I know my younger brother was an insatiable whore, but try to think a little bigger.”

Ryan felt his teeth gritting so hard his jaw hurt. “Get out. Of my way.” He took another step, and this time pushed the Auld backwards.

Auld Wynfor narrowed his eyes and made a dismissive wave of his hand.

For a hopeful moment, Ryan thought the Auld had given up and was banishing the spell holding him in place. Then Ryan’s legs went out from underneath him, and there was absolutely nothing he could do to stop the pull of darkness.

Saebrya

Saebrya woke swaddled in bandages, her head pounding. To one side, the stable boy, Jac, lunged out of a chair, eyes wide. “She’s awake!” he cried, the noise like a hammer shattering her tender thoughts. “Mum Omstead! The fisher-girl’s awake! Come quick, she’s awake!”

Saebrya tried to reach out and stop him, to ask where Ryan was, but Jac bolted from the room with the single-minded enthusiasm of a ten-year-old, screaming that she was awake to anyone who would listen.

When four of the inn’s helpers came rushing into the room, however, Saebrya recoiled back into her bed nervously, knowing from their faces that something was definitely wrong. Mum Omstead was at their head, worry all over her face.

“Saeby,” she said, dropping to her knees before the bed, “who were you fighting in the hall?”

Saebrya pulled away in suspicion, old habits dying hard. “I didn’t do anything.” In the back of her head, she was already beginning to plan escape routes. She was in Ryan’s room—she could tell as much by the disgusting thronging of sippers all over the walls, furniture, and floor—but she didn’t see Ryan. Without him, she didn’t feel safe in the village, and her survival instincts were already screaming at her to run.

“We know!” Mum Omstead cried, grabbing Saebrya by the hand, smearing a tiny droplet of blue ether into Saebrya’s wounds there, making them sting. “We found you unconscious in the hallway. There had been a fight—the furniture was broken. Ryan’s gone. Who were you fighting, Saeby?”

Saebrya frowned. “I wasn’t in a fight.” Meeting Mum Omstead’s worried brown eyes, however, it was clear to Saebrya that the woman thought her son was dead, probably buried in a shallow grave in the sand out by the river. And, in truth, if Ryan was gone, Saebrya could see very few other scenarios where he would simply disappear without a word. “Ryan wasn’t fighting another boy over me, if that’s what you think,” she muttered.

Mum Omstead glanced at her employees, then back at Saebrya nervously. “But where’d you get those cuts, Saeby, sweetie? Did Ryan decide to go beat up the guy who did that to you?”

“Yeah, who hit you, girl?” Miysha, the baker, said. “You look like someone took after you real good. You stealing again?” Irritatingly, Miysha was old enough to remember the days when Saebrya had been forced to steal to survive.

“I fell,” Saebrya said. It had become her gold standard whenever an excuse was needed for the many times her secret realm actively affected her everyday life.

Miysha snorted and turned to Ryan’s mom. “Little tramp’s lying.” Shaking her head, the baker walked from the room, probably back to her bread.

“Who were the boys who hurt you?” Ryan’s mother tried again. “Saeby, I know you like my boy and would do anything to protect him, but whatever he did, we need to find him before something horrible happens to him, you understand?

Of course. Because Saebrya was just the lying crazy girl that Ryan had taken a weird liking to—the stray dog that his mother had decided to pity with a bone here or there.

“I fell,” Saebrya said, this time more violently. She tossed the covers from her body and stood, and, despite the fact Mum Omstead was a big woman, the innkeep got out of her way, as did the serving wenches.

Seeing Saebrya was about to leave, Ryan’s mother quickly backed down. “Okay, Saeby,” she said quickly, “you fell. Ryan said you’re different than other kids, so I believe you. Please. Just help me find my son, okay? Anything you can do. Anything.”

And it was as Saebrya stared into the older woman’s desperate brown eyes that she knew that Ryan had told his mother of the sippers that Saebrya saw. In the same moment, she felt both a deep betrayal and total relief. Betrayal, because Ryan had promised not to share their secret world. Relief, because the woman obviously believed her.

“Oh give it up,” one of the older serving wenches snorted. “She’s just a crazy little forest-imp.”

“Get out, all of you,” Ryan’s mother said, without looking. To Saebrya, she said, “Anything, Saeby. Somebody took him. I know it. Mothers know these things, you understand me? Someone took my son, and Ryan tried to fight back.”

As Mum Omstead continued to hold her gaze, waiting, Saebrya’s eyes reluctantly fell to the floor, where pieces of the broken nightstand had been shoved into a pile on one side of the room. They were smeared with silver ether of…two…different shades. She frowned, remembering her brief glimpse of the common room as she had staggered through the night before.

“What about that old guy who had been sitting in the corner?” she asked. “The one that was eating a meat pie.” Meat pies were more expensive than, say, cheese and bread, and were usually only ordered by nobility or merchants.

Mum Omstead just gave a little frown. “I had thought I’d made ten pies…” She shook herself. “But there was nobody sitting in the corner last night. All we had was that group of merchants from up the Idorion, and they were gathered around the main hearth.”

Saebrya felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand. Tentatively, making sure Mum Omstead would allow it, she walked past her into the hallway outside.

Silver ether coated the area, again of two different shades. There was the deeper silver that was unmistakably Ryan’s, so rich it was almost a black, and then there was the lighter silver of the old man, almost a white. At a distance, she hadn’t been able to tell, but here, Ryan’s essence had mingled with the old man’s, creating definite swirls in the remaining pools of energy—the majority of it Ryan’s, but a good amount belonging to the old man, too. Much more than she had seen running from the Auld with two faces in her youth.

All over her body, now, her skin was covered with goosebumps. He was taken by an Auld, she thought. He’s probably headed to the Spyre…

But Saebrya had to rule out some sort of delirium-spawned hallucination from her wounds the night before. Without a word to Mum Omstead, she went down the hall to look at the common room.

The chair in the corner, as well as the table, were still shimmering with the lighter silver energy of another Auld. She gestured to the table to Ryan’s mother, who had followed her to the entry. “No one sat there last night?” she asked. “All night? No one?”

“No one,” the innkeep confirmed. She was frowning at the chair. “Why, child?” she whispered. “What do you see?”

Saebrya turned to look at the hallway behind her and narrowed her eyes at the way the two-toned silver rivulets continued out the side door, towards the stables. Remembering the way she’d broken Auld Rhydderch’s hold on her, eleven years before, she said, “I’m going to get your son back.” She bit her lip. “But you have to make sure nobody follows me.” She was, after all, about to assault royalty, and someone who assaulted royalty needed to make sure no one survived the assault.

But Ryan’s mother just nodded. “I can do that.”

Grimacing at the idea of the task at hand, Saebrya went back into the bedroom and pulled Ryan’s coat off the wall. Wrapping herself in it, she said, “Can I use Old Hag?”

Old Hag was the only horse in the stables that didn’t kick and bite when Saebrya got near it.

“Of course,” Mum Omstead said. “I’ll go have Jac get her ready for you.”

“Thanks,” Saebrya whispered. Because, while Ryan had taken her riding a few times, she still had no idea how to assemble and prepare the tack. Then, as Ryan’s mother hurried away, she turned towards the side door, took a deep breath, and went to find her friend.