So Gandrett spoke. “Someone tried to breach our walls this afternoon.”
The Meister’s eyebrows rose, but he still didn’t blink his eyes open or release Gandrett from the bow. A punishment, perhaps, for disturbing him in his ritual.
“When I confronted him, he attacked, and—” she searched for words, avoiding mentioning she had laid in the dirt before the man, “—when I was able to disarm him, I brought him into Everrun and locked him in a cell.” She stopped, waiting for the Meister to react, but he didn’t. Her bent back was starting to bother her even if it had been only a minute. It was the weight of the Meister’s disapproval that made it so uncomfortable. Anything to not let him know his best warrior had almost failed to contain a threat’s potential attack against the Order of Vala. “According to protocol,” she added, shaping her words in a steady breath.
For a moment, the low sound of water trickling from stones set in all four corners of the courtyard was the only noise. Then, the Meister lifted his hands from his knees and folded them in his lap. “Did you ask him what business he has breaking into Everrun?”
Gandrett nodded to herself. Of course she had. It had been her first question, long before he had delivered the first blow with his sword. “Yes, Meister.”
“And what did he say?”
Gandrett stifled a groan as the muscles in her spine began to hurt.
“He didn’t tell me,” she truthfully answered.
At that, the Meister’s eyes burst open, icy cold burning in the blue of his irises.
“Rise,” he commanded, his voice not inferior to a military commander, the only thing giving away his wrath. The wrath Surel had warned about, the wrath every one of the acolytes got to know sooner or later. The temper of the Meister who demanded nothing but impeccable performance and manners. The Meister who had replaced her loving home.
Gandrett straightened, almost releasing a sigh of relief, but at the expectant gaze boring into her eyes, she repeated what Nehelon had instructed her to. “He told me to tell you Nehelon is here.”
The Meister leapt off the dais in a gazelle-like hop, his cold eyes melting at the sound of the name. “Why didn’t you tell me right away?”
Despite the relief that the Meister’s anger had passed, Gandrett felt a certain unease creep up on her in its wake.
He stood, the hem of his linen robes still on the rock behind him, face expectant for her to continue.
There was nothing to continue. So she stared at the Meister, unsure if his momentary change of mood was going to backlash.
“What are you waiting for?” He beckoned with one hand, dismissing her. “Bring him to me.”
The cells were nothing unusual. Nothing he wouldn’t be able to find a way out of, Nehelon decided as he assessed the iron-barred windows with professional fingers. Sunk into the rock front more than a couple of inches. Not solid but hollow, a tap of his index finger informed him.
Outside the windows, Everrun was as busy as he remembered it. Even the same, dull clothes on the acolytes as he remembered. The girl swaggered over the cobbled path she’d escorted him along. He couldn’t help but notice that despite her young age, her body was—as far as he could judge through those linen garments—that of a fully-grown woman. He rested his shoulder against the wall, observing her movements as she disappeared from view, studying, he told himself, what it was about that girl that made her the best fighter Everrun had to offer—
And came up blank.
Average height. On the lower end of the scale, even. As he had fought her outside the wall, she had impressed him with her feline movements, her focus as she had tackled him from below, bringing him to the ground the way hardly any opponent had been able to. Not even the strongest of them. And she, for Vala’s sake, was only a girl. Trained by the best instructors in all of Neredyn, but still a girl. Something in his male pride curled up and licked its wounds, bracing itself for her return.
As some of the acolytes assigned to farm-work strode by, carrying rakes and shovels and buckets of seedlings, he couldn’t help but feel a little bit homesick. How many years had it been since—
But that wasn’t why he’d come here. He’d come to get the best from the order’s stable and convince her to help him. However, he needed to do it now that she already hated him. He had seen it in her eyes—as skilled as she was with disguising it, he was better in reading it.
Nehelon stood like a statue and watched, watched the sunset. Watched as the last of the acolytes hurried off the small fields and vegetable patches. Watched the cobblestones as they emptied of life with no sign of the girl returning. Watched the last rays of sun sink behind the wall, the waterfall of the citadel a hum in shades of purple, as the first doubts bit at him.
What if he had misread her? What if she wasn’t curious at all regarding what he had to share? What if the Meister didn’t truly care after all these years…
“You seem awfully cheerful.” Her voice, heavy with sarcasm, startled him.
He growled.
Nobody startled him. No one. If anyone startled anyone, it was him. Him, who crept up on people, surprising them when they assumed they were unobserved. Him, who had the advantage of having his sword ready when others were still comprehending what was going on.
“No need to get all worked up,” she flashed her teeth. “The Meister says if I don’t get your ass over to him before the sun sets entirely, I’ll have a problem.”
Nehelon returned her gesture and bared his teeth. “It was starting to get a bit frosty in here…”
Gandrett raised her eyebrows as if daring him to have meant that she was the source of the frost. Then, she grabbed the key from her pocket to unlock the cell.
“Stay back.” The girl balanced her sword in one hand as she lifted the other to open his prison.
He watched her with a frown. “You still need this,” he asked and gestured at the blade, “even if the Meister confirmed he knows me?”
The girl didn’t seem convinced. “The Meister may have been delighted to hear your name,” she said, smoothing her expression over once more. “Doesn’t mean I trust you.”
Her attitude almost made him bark a laugh—almost. Then he remembered he needed her.
Nehelon’s face was tight except for that tiny pull on the corner of his mouth that made Gandrett want to shut the cell door in his face the moment she had opened it.
“So I am not getting back my sword?”
Was he honestly asking that? She felt the reassuring weight of Nehelon’s weapons, which she had strapped to her belt, leaving her to carry her own sword in her hand. “Not if it is up to me. You might backstab me the second I turn around.” She stepped back to let him march out the entrance and cocked her head as he stopped right where she was holding the door, less than a foot from her. “You surely tried earlier,” she added with a shrug, referring to their initial encounter.
“And… is it up to you?” he asked, unimpressed.
Gandrett mentally stomped a foot in response and beckoned him to get moving. “The Meister can’t wait to see you.” Her smile was as false as she believed herself capable.
As she escorted Nehelon back through the now-empty street of the priory, the winds of the Calma Desert had turned the sky thunder-cloud gray, laced with the first shades of night. Small windows in the residential quarters on the western side of the citadel flickered on as the acolytes and priests returned to their rooms to clean up and change for the common dinner they had every night.