After me? The thought rocked her. Is it? It was outside my window, wasn’t it? “I didn’t until just now. Thanks. I’ll never sleep again.”
“Sorry.” He looked guilty, which only made him more handsome. “What did it say? What did you hear?”
“The raow said it was hungry, and the other one insisted it was too dangerous, and it had to wait. Said he would bring the raow something to eat. That he would arrange it.”
“Arrange it?”
“Like he did with Jada.”
“What’s Jada?”
“No idea.”
“And they weren’t both raow?”
“I don’t know. Only one of them had a voice like the one I heard in Neith. But maybe not all raow sound alike.”
“What did it sound like?”
“A raspy, dry whisper.”
Tesh looked less convinced. “Maybe it was just an old man with a cold.”
She shook her head.
“I’m just saying—I mean…” He looked around again. “What would a raow be doing here? Raow live in remote places where they can keep their piles of bones. They need them to sleep on. At least that’s what my mother told me. Raow roam the countryside looking for victims because once they wake they can’t sleep again until they feed, until they add bones to their pile. So, how could such a thing live here? Where would it keep its pile? People would notice.”
“Well,” she said, figuring it out as she spoke, “maybe someone is hiding it.”
Tesh looked skeptical. “Someone is hiding a raow?”
“It sounded that way.”
“That’s like saying a lamb is hiding a lion. Why wouldn’t the raow just eat the person keeping it?”
“I don’t know.”
Tesh scratched his head and narrowed his eyes. “Unless that person was Fhrey. Maybe raow don’t eat Fhrey.”
Brin shook her head. “They were speaking Rhunic.”
Tesh looked skeptical.
Brin shrugged. “Maybe it was just an old man with a cold.”
Tesh looked up at the house again. “Maybe you should keep your window closed and bolted just the same, huh?”
“Yeah,” she said.
An awkward silence followed. Finally, she said, “Well, when I see Roan I’ll mention you were looking for her.”
“Right, and I guess I’ll check back at the smithy.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Brin said. She was torn. On the one hand, she didn’t want him to go, but on the other, she didn’t think she could endure more self-inflicted humiliation.
Brin watched him walk down the road and around a corner.
Tesh, she thought. Not a bad name. She had expected something more like Spencer or Stanton. He looked like a Stanton, or maybe a—
“Brin!”
She turned to see him coming back into sight, waving for her to join him. She trotted down and followed him around the corner. There, in another, muddier, bed of would-be flowers, Tesh pointed to two sets of footprints. One was clearly made by a pair of common sandals. The other was barefoot, and had just three toes…and long, sharp claws.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Tetlin Witch
I think we accept all too readily what we are told by those we love. It is not that our friends and family lie, but that they do not know the truth.
—THE BOOK OF BRIN
Gifford sat in the corner on a small stool, his usual place when visiting Roan. She had a staff of more than twenty, and a cripple anywhere else in the workshop was a roadblock to progress. He watched her work and hoped to be on hand if she paused to eat the meals that Padera made and Brin carried up. The weather being so nice, he even dreamed of persuading her to go out to the courtyard for a picnic. He figured his chances were about the same as beating Brin in a foot race, but if there was one thing Gifford had in abundance, it was dreams.
Leaning back against the wall of the smithy, he watched Roan beat sparks out of a brilliantly glowing glob. She didn’t hit very hard and had to take frequent rests, but there was a single-minded clarity of purpose behind each stroke. When beating metal, Roan was more authoritative, decisive, and sure of herself than Nyphron when he gave a speech at the general assembly. Even the three dwarfs took direction from her.