4 - ???

All the eyes in Ike's Tavern had trained themselves on this woman—Jac, she'd named herself. Following Roger's defeat, fresh challengers jostled around her, eager to be the one to overpower her. And one enterprising bartender began taking bets and offering free drinks to anyone who could best this woman.

But, in the loft overlooking the crowd, his eyes were focused on the little companion who had followed Jac in, tufts of blonde curls bursting from within their plain brown hood. Even swallowed in that cloak, he could tell there was something strange about the way they moved, floating through the crowd seamlessly, aimlessly, like they were more liquid than solid. He knew movement magic when he saw it, even across a crowded room, but he'd never seen someone move like that. The practice of movement magic involved channeling and controlling magic through movement, but this? It almost looked like magic was moving them.

He glanced over at Bennen on his right to see if he'd noticed it too—but Ben, usually so stoic, was leaned forward slightly in his seat, peering over the railing to watch Jac below with a slight blush behind his dark-skinned cheeks. On his left, Lenna too watched Jac, who was on her third drink in as many matches now, and sneered.

"Attention whore," Lenna said, then sunk back in her seat as if suddenly bored with everything. But she sent a glance his way, hidden behind a curtain of red hair, to see if he was watching Jac too.

While Jac worked her way steadily through the line of challengers (and the drinks and food they provided as inevitable reward), her strange companion continued to move around the room, aimless and fluid and entirely unsettling—until the magic of the room tugged them closer to the loft, where he sat. They stopped.

One moment. Two. And then the little blonde turned and looked right at him.

Suddenly, she was stretching toward him across the table, close enough to send a wave of her warm scent over him. She blinked awed eyes at him, and her pink lips parted like she was as surprised by him as he was by her. He could see every freckle across her cheeks. But from the way those distant green eyes examined him, he thought she could see far more of him.

He blinked and realized she was still down below. She always had been. And his own hood cast his face in shadow, he knew. So why did he still feel like she was looking into him?

Like that, she turned away and slipped through the crowd back to Jac.

Adrenaline prickling up his arms and over his shoulders, he glanced around. Ben still watched Jac with wonder. Lenna still pretended she wasn't watching him. And the others chatted amongst themselves. No one had noticed anything odd.

The strange girl had made it to Jac's side, quite a feat considering all of the people two or three times her size packed around the table. But she didn't stay there long. She simply said something to Jac before melting through the crowd and appearing at the bar. After a minute of futile attempts to snag the attention of the bartender, who was too busy taking bets to take any actual orders, she simply dropped some coins onto the bar and slipped behind the bar and into the kitchen to get her order herself. She returned with what seemed to be a wrapped ham under one arm.

One handed, she poured herself a mug of water and drained it before lifting the ham on top of her head and melting once again into the crowd, now just a ham floating on the waves.

He stiffened. She was heading toward the door.

Just before she reached the door leading out into a very dangerous Urden night, she hesitated. And turned, ham and all, to glance at him. And then she was gone.

He hesitated. How she had captured his attention the second she stepped foot in the tavern, he didn't know. How she had known he was watching her, he didn't know. What the hell she was doing with a ham on her head, he definitely didn't know. But what he did know was: she was here to lure him out. Taking the bait would lead to trouble.

Fuck it. He hadn't had a fight in a while anyway.

He gestured for Lenna to move so he could exit the booth, and the instant he did, each of his companions snapped to attention. Lenna rose, and the others started to as well, but he just gestured for them to sit back down and left without a word. He glided down the steps and waved away the server waiting at the bottom of the stairs before taking the hallway that led to the back of the tavern.

Once outside, he took a slow, deep breath through his mouth to taste all of the scents of Urden. Most of them unpleasant—piss and shit and vomit and blood were the first to make themselves known. But under those was fresh air from the forest, roasting food and just-poured ale from the tavern behind him, and … there. A scent not five minutes old, sweet and warm and human, heading south. And, of course, the ham too.

He grabbed the nearest set of stairs running up the building across from the tavern and swung himself up onto the landing. Making himself quiet, he slipped across the bridge to the building south.

The catwalks and rooftops of Urden were dotted with many figures as dark and quiet as himself, and they didn't question him or what he was doing any more than he questioned them. He was there one second and gone the next.

It wasn't hard to keep track of her. She took the main road, straight to the southern gate. As he trailed her, he kept expecting her purpose to become clear, thinking there had to be some obvious explanation for all this that he was missing. Where was she going? Why was she going alone, at night, when she'd had an obviously powerful companion back at the tavern? And most importantly, what the hell was the ham for?

He noticed suddenly that she wasn't holding the ham on her head anymore—it was balancing there on its own while her hands trailed beside her.

By the time she was almost at the gate, she still hadn't turned off to any side roads. Surely she didn't intend to try to leave the walls? Even if she got through the gate, walking into that forest at night with a ham on her head, no less would get her killed. In minutes.

Finally, she turned off the main street. Normally-bustling Urden was empty here. No one dared stray this close to the wall at night, save the guards up in their watchtowers. He had to be careful not to alert her or the guards to his presence. He stayed out of the light of the Full Thunder Moon above and used his magic to quiet himself.

As confidently as if this was her regular walk home, the strange girl glided along the alley. Then she turned a corner and headed straight for a part of the wall that was newly repaired, scaffolding still reaching up the wood. She slipped from the shadow of the nearest building seamlessly into the shadow of the wall. He watched her glance around, double-checking she wasn't being watched. He almost expected her to look at him again. Into him.

When she began to climb, he could only stare. She flipped and swung like an acrobat, scaling the scaffolding with ease—all while passing the ham easily over and around her body, from hand to hand to head to knee, until she was crouched just below the edge of the wall. When no alarms had sounded, she hopped over the lip of the wall and disappeared behind it, safely atop the wall now. He couldn't see what she was doing for a moment, but next thing he knew, a rope was tossed over the far lip of the wall—whether she'd found it there among the scaffolding or brought it with her, he didn't know.

Ham under one arm, she vaulted off the wall and disappeared into the forest beyond.

He scrambled after her, leaping deftly from his perch onto the scaffolding and scaling it himself. Once on top of the wall, he peeked over the lip, hoping his black cloak would suffice to turn him into nothing more than yet another shadow to the guards' eyes.

The strange girl had lowered her hood to reveal a halo of moon-bright curls as she strolled toward the trees. She peered into the dark forest as if expecting a friend to come walking out. He listened for beastly footfalls, for the flapping of leathery wings, for a growl bubbling from the shadows. But instead he heard her speak.

The words—were they words?—seized his attention and refused to let go, so that he forgot himself for a moment. She was human, he knew from her scent, so how was she making those sounds? Her voice was almost sing-song, if the song was from hell. Again, he felt adrenaline prickle his skin, felt his pulse quicken.

For one moment he thought these sounds familiar, but the next knew that was wrong. Perhaps it was just that they reminded him of the sounds some monsters made.

She continued into the trees, almost out of sight now, but stopped at the same moment he heard the eager steps of a beast loping toward her. He tensed, preparing to jump down from the wall, but the girl's tone gave him pause. She had sensed the beast too, and seemed happy about it.

It occurred to him just then that she had actually bought that ham and carried it all the way through dark, dangerous streets into a dark, dangerous forest to feed a monster.

The monster, a scrawny, pitiful horselike nightbeast, trotted happily up to the girl, sniffing eagerly at the ham on her head. She reached up to rub its head, but it tried to snap at the ham with cracked fangs. Laughing, she pulled the ham out of reach and chided the monster in that odd language. In one smooth move, she freed the ham from its wrapping and tossed it to the beast.

While the beast tore at the ham, the girl brushed her fingers along its neck, over its withers, over its protruding ribs, talking all the while. Or maybe she was singing, it was hard to tell. The beast's tattered ears tracked her as she slowly moved around behind it and to its other side, keeping her hands on it at all times so it knew where she was. In no time, the ham was gone, and the beast, running its black tongue over its fangs, nosed the girl, searching for more. She held open her cloak, revealing a pale pink dress, and let it stick its nose all over her until it accepted that the ham was truly gone.

She spent a few more minutes talking to and petting the monster, and it listened to every warped syllable. Then she had to spend the next several minutes convincing it not to try to follow her back. Finally, it stayed put, but did send a few whining growls after her.

The girl didn't turn back, but she did place her palm over her heart, like it was causing her pain to have to leave the beast behind.

As quietly as he could, he slipped back over the wall and made his way back down the scaffolding. He had just returned to his perch a few stories up the nearest building when she appeared atop the wall. She dropped through the scaffolding even easier than she'd climbed it and with no less style, but when she reached the ground, instead of heading right, back to the main road, she took a left.

Not a single thing she'd done tonight had been what he expected.

He trailed after her, above her, as she took a strange, circuitous route deeper into the city. She took a left, then a right, then another left, another left. He would almost believe she was trying to shake anyone tailing her, except she seemed unconcerned and unhurried.

Then she circled one building—twice. And he realized: she knew she was being followed. And she was just fucking with him.

He let out an irritated sigh and settled into a squat to just watch her for now. Someone one window down blew out a long stream of riseberry smoke and blinked slowly at him for the third time in five minutes while he'd been following this girl around the same building.

"Mother Light," the stoner said. "How many of you are there? Triplets is three—what are you, fourteenlets?"

And then they dissolved into giggles.

In just that brief moment of distraction, she had melted into the night. He took another slow breath to pick out the freshest of her scent trails to follow. There.

When he'd found her again, she was standing still in the middle of an empty alley, her back to him. He heard her heart pounding even two stories below him, caught the anxiety and excitement in her scent. They each knew the other was there, waiting. But he wasn't going to show his hand first.

Finally, in a quiet voice riddled with nerves, she spoke as if he were standing right next to her. "Mother Dark. All the time I've been trying to track the Traitor Prince, only to discover his footprints lead right to my back."

Daivad would never question his instincts again—she had been looking for him.

He straightened, crossed the landing, and dropped into the alley behind her, but said nothing. He watched her figure shiver, heard her breath catch.

Without turning, she whispered, "Your magic is … beautiful. What I'd give to watch you practice…"

The statement made little sense to him, so he ignored it.

He'd been following her long enough to know she was alone, but he waited for a trap to be sprung anyway. It never sprang—the alley stayed quiet. That was far more unsettling. She was far more unsettling.

In a growl that bubbled out of his chest, he said, "Name yourself."

At the command in his voice, she straightened a bit. "Nyxabella. But everyone just calls me Belle." She hesitated a moment and then added, "Uh, do you still do the prince thing? Should I call you 'Your High—'"

Daivad growled a hard, "No."

"Okay." She relaxed only momentarily before hesitating again. "So, just, like, Daivad? Or, ah, Mr. Earthbreaker … or, I don't know, does anyone call you 'Dai?'"

"Who sent you?"

She paused. Blinked as if considering how to respond. Then pointed to herself.

"What do you want?"

She perked up. "Only an ear. Your ear."

He narrowed his eyes. "And how did you know where to find it?"

"It must have been the Dark Mother's guidance," she said, like she was amazed at it herself. "It took years of thumbing through rumors, plucking out the right words and stitching them together to form a map pointing to Urden—but then all I do is step within the walls, and you find me? Mother, the first place we went to… I don't know what to name that if not Divine."

"That explains nothing."

She mashed her pink lips together and furrowed her brow, trying to put together a response. When it came to her, she released her lips with a small pop and said, "People talk to me or … mostly they talk around me when they don't realize I can hear, so I catch a lot of stray information. Most of the time it just becomes useless nonsense piling layer upon layer in my head, but sometimes I'll catch something specific I'm listening for, you know, like the locations of the labor camps you've freed, or maybe the names of cities where your very large figure has been sighted."

He was conflicted. It sounded like sweet shit—but Daivad had grown up with the world's most manipulative mother, surrounded by a revolving cast of sycophants just trying to use him; he knew how a lie nudged the heartbeat, warped body language, tainted a scent. This girl's big, green eyes were earnest, if nervous.

Her freckled cheeks flushed under his gaze, and she fidgeted, but didn't look away. He wasn't sure when or how it happened, but they were just a few feet from each other now. He parted his lips and let her scent bloom across his tongue, sweet like berries.

Daivad had just sworn to trust his instincts, and they told him she wasn't lying, but his logic just couldn't accept it. "For eight years the queen and all her dogs have hounded my trail and only ever found more trail. But you feed me the idea that a mad little girl who talks to monsters strung together some pieces of gossip that led her right to me and expect me to swallow it?"

A smile crinkled her eyes. "Mad little girl? Guess those royal manners didn't stick for you any more than they did for your mother and brother."

He opened his mouth to correct her—they weren't his family. But then her words sunk in. He stiffened. Nyxabella sensed the change in him, and the smile dripped slowly off her face. She leaned back ever so slightly.

He growled, "You know them."

Now that he was searching for it, the traces of the scent of the brother he'd never wanted were obvious, wound in her curls. He had touched her. Recently.

They had finally found him.

Her pink lips parted as she realized her slip. Watching him warily, she said, "Better than I ever wanted to. But they didn't send me—"

He lunged, but his hand grasped empty air. Daivad could count on one hand the number of people he knew who could anticipate a move like that from him, much less manage to dodge his magic.

On instinct, he tracked her movement—under his arm and around his back. Again, she started to speak, and again he cut her off with a lunge. But as he'd spun, she caught the hem of his cloak and pulled it over his head. He shrugged off the cloak immediately, but by the time he could see the alley again, she was already swinging up onto a landing above.