They had moved off to one side, safely away from their prisoner’s hearing, standing close with heads bent so they were almost touching. The day around them was growing steadily brighter with the rising of the sun, and the meres were shimmering with dampness and shifting mist. Waterbirds called to one another, and in flashes of brightly colored feathers they appeared and then vanished like ghosts in the haze.
“I don’t know,” Panterra admitted. “But I can’t see what lying to us gains him. Why would he make this story up? He knows we’re not going to let him go, even if we don’t take him to Arborlon.”
“He doesn’t sound like he’s lying,” she agreed.
“Even if any part of it is true, we don’t want to risk what might happen if we deliver him to the Queen without first knowing the truth. Even if we go before the High Council and let him tell them what he’s told us, we could be in a lot of danger. The Queen could find a way to turn the story around on us. She could make it out that we’re somehow involved in what’s happened. There’s no reason the High Council should choose to believe us over her. We don’t have any proof about any of this. It’s Bonnasaint’s word against hers, and that’s not enough.”
“But we have to do something. We have to help Phryne, no matter what.”
He nodded. “Well, we can’t help her if we’re locked up with her.”
As if of the same mind, they glanced over at Bonnasaint, who sat staring off into the distance, distracted. “Too bad we can’t leave him here,” Pan muttered.
“If we did, he couldn’t tell his story. Somehow we have to find a way to let him do that, and we have to make the Elves believe it.”
Pan looked at her. “Well, that shouldn’t be too difficult, should it?”
They smiled as one. “So what are we going to do?” she repeated.
He thought about it. He was still shaken by the events of the previous night, still rattled by the idea that someone wanted them dead badly enough to send an assassin.
Certainly, Skeal Eile had no love for them. But even so, this seemed a bit drastic. What could killing them gain the Seraphic?
“What if,” he suggested, “just one of us goes into Arborlon to find Tasha and Tenerife and then brings them back for a meeting? Maybe then we will have a better idea about what we should do.”
She cocked her head. “But you swore we wouldn’t let ourselves become separated again. No matter what.”
He looked at her uncomfortably. “I haven’t forgotten. But what choice do we have?
We can’t leave Bonnasaint alone. We can’t even leave him unwatched.”
She glanced over at the assassin and then back at Pan. “All right. Just this once. But not again, Pan. Promise me.”
He put his hands on her shoulders and squeezed gently. “I promise.”
Getting Bonnasaint back on his feet, Pan tied his hands in front of him, then lashed them to his waist and, using a length of cord, fashioned a leash by which he could be led. Bonnasaint grumbled about being trussed up, but the boy and the girl ignored him.
“Where are you taking me?” he asked finally, watching them shoulder their packs in preparation for leaving.
“To Arborlon,” Pan advised. “We have friends we can ask for help. They might have a better idea about what to do with you. Don’t worry. We won’t take you to the Queen.”
“You would be wise not to for your own sakes.”
Pan walked over. “Don’t think for a moment we won’t give you to the Queen if we find out you’ve been lying to us. We don’t have any reason to care about what happens to you. We only care about Phryne Amarantyne. To the extent that you can be of help to her, then you are useful to us. Otherwise …”
He left the rest unsaid and turned away. Bonnasaint snorted derisively, but otherwise didn’t respond.
The boy and the girl shouldered their backpacks, and with Bonnasaint in tow they set out. Both knew the meres well enough to navigate them safely in daylight, but even so they chose a route that kept them close to the northern edges of the lakes, angling their way east toward Arborlon. The sun was fully risen now, and the mists of early morning had begun to diminish, although patches still lingered here and there, thick and smudgy against the mix of daylight and shadows, trapped within thick stands of trees and along the shores of bodies of water that glimmered like mirrors.
“I wish this were all over,” Prue whispered to Pan, keeping her voice low and the conversation between the two of them.
He noted the scowl on her face and smiled. “So things could go back to being the way they were? Just you and me and tracking?”
She nodded. “Just you and me and tracking.”
He shook his head. “Maybe things won’t ever go back to how they were, Prue. Have you thought about that? I mean, after this is over, however it gets resolved, maybe things will have changed so completely that they can’t ever be the same. The valley isn’t a safe haven like it was. The outside world has found us, and nothing can change that.