Bearers of the Black Staff

And he had known from the beginning what was expected of him, which Panterra did not.

The nature of their relationship was at the crux of his exasperation, he supposed. For he had come to a slow and painstaking conclusion since meeting this boy that he was the one who should bear the staff after him. He had the necessary skills, required temperament, and sense of responsibility. He had something indefinable, too—something that set him apart, that marked him. Sider could not have explained how he knew this; he just did. Panterra Qu was the one he had been looking for. It had taken him a while to come to terms with this, but now it felt like a foregone conclusion.

The difficulty, of course, lay in explaining it to the boy and in persuading him that he should make the choice Sider had made all those years ago—to abandon his plans for his old life and form fresh ones for his new.

“We will ask her for her help,” he answered the boy, keeping it short and vague. He wasn’t sure himself, after all. But he would know when they found her.

“But what can she do? You’ve already seen how they have put her aside even as a member of the village council. If not for her marriage to Pogue Kray, she would have been banished or worse a long time ago. If she helps us now, Skeal Eile will look for a way to correct his earlier mistake.”

True enough, Sider thought. “We won’t let that happen.” He glanced over. “My word on it.”

The boy seemed to accept this reassurance, and they proceeded in silence, wending their way down the narrow path that took them into Glensk Wood the back way out of the mountains, avoiding the main road. Sider saw no reason to advertise their coming just yet. What he was hoping was that Aislinne would have something to say about how to proceed. She knew the village and its leaders far better than he did, and she would have a sense of what might gain their support while avoiding the machinations of Skeal Eile.

Darker thoughts took hold. He’d had the chance more than once to put an end to the Seraphic, to make him disappear as if he had never been. But he was not trained as an assassin, and his code of conduct did not allow him to harm those who did not directly threaten him or those he protected. Skeal Eile was skirting the edges of that distinction if he was responsible for the attempted assassination of Panterra and Prue at Pan’s home. But the Seraphic’s involvement remained only a suspicion, strong as it might be. There were many at the council meeting when Panterra spoke; one of them, aroused to the point of mindless rage, might have acted on impulse.

Still, he would have to find a way to assure himself that the Seraphic would not try to harm Aislinne after he and Panterra left. That he hadn’t done so before was no guarantee of what he might do in the future. Especially after he heard what Sider had to say. Things would be changed irrevocably after that.

And with that thought completed, the answer to what he would do came to him in a flash of inspiration.

Even so, he kept it to himself. They were at the edge of the village now, passing close enough to cottages to see lights in the curtained windows and movement behind the curtains. A few villagers walked the main road off to their right, too far away to be recognized, but easy enough to avoid. He motioned the boy to stay close and slipped from tree to tree, from thicket to woodpile to outbuilding, steadily advancing into the heart of the village. Not long now, he thought. Her home was not more than several hundred yards farther on. He wondered if she would be alone or if Pogue would be there. In a way, it might be better if he was.

But he knew he didn’t want that. For what brief time he was allowed, he wanted to have her alone.

The path they were following ended at a small copse of trees bordering the rear of a semicircle of cottages, and Panterra suddenly took hold of his arm and stopped him.

“My home,” the boy whispered, pointing at one.

The cottage was dark and silent, and there appeared to be no one living there. But the grounds were neatly kept and the exterior of the house looked cared for. The boy stood where he was for a moment, studying the home as if he had never seen it before, and Sider wondered what he was thinking. Then the boy nodded and gestured that they could go on, apparently only wanting to take a quick look at it.

Minutes later, they were standing in the shadows outside Aislinne Kray’s home while Sider studied it and waited for his instincts to tell him it was safe to go inside. He couldn’t be certain who was there; no movement within was discernible from where they stood.

But he sensed that the house was not empty.

“Wait here,” he told Panterra.

He left the cover of darkness, walked up to the front door of the cottage, and knocked. Now he could hear movement inside, the sounds of footsteps, the lifting of a latch, the creak of hinges.

The door opened, and Aislinne was there.