Secrets of the Swords, Book 1

Chapter 18: Deep Breaths

Suthe awoke with a start. Her dreams had been filled with women-warriors using arrows as swords to duel a faceless king and Calatar tinkering with metal machines shaped like men, with eyes that glowed as red as the inventor's hair. She found that the nightmare had dimmed her curiosity of clockwork soldiers a bit.

Blinking away the memory, Suthe glanced up to the small window above her. A soft golden light was just creeping through a crack in the curtains and illuminating the dust motes that floated through the otherwise-still room.

Suthe turned on the sleeping platform, wincing at the soreness in her muscles. She must have become too accustomed to the stuffed mattresses in Sylterra. Here, the few padded blankets that Nem Koel had provided were not enough to cushion the hardness of the wood beneath.

"Ulsper—" Suthe broke off when she realized the spy was not in the corner where she had last seen him. She tried to ignore the jolt of panic that shot to her stomach at the realization, but the thought of being alone again, in yet another foreign land, still had her throwing off her blanket and jumping to her feet. Has something bad happened? Did General Yenh betray us, after all?

She couldn't seem to jam her feet into her boots fast enough. The laces fumbled in her fingers, and she finally just tucked them inside each shoe before racing to the other side of the room, stumbling a bit at the looseness in her steps.

Suthe took a breath and cracked open the door. The small hallway outside was empty, and she strained to hear anything beyond the silence ringing in her ears. Somewhere outside, there was the rumbling of a wooden cart, but inside, the air was still and undisturbed.

Creeping down the hall, Suthe tried to breathe as silently as possible and not let the wooden floor creak too loudly beneath her steps. When she opened the door to peer out into the main area, however, there were no bodies or broken-in doors that awaited her. The two long tables were still there, surrounded by the dusty carpets on the floor and the greenery hanging from the rafters.

Hesitantly, Suthe stepped out, careful to keep in the shadows of the balcony of the upper floor. She followed along the perimeter of the room, trailing her hand along the wall for guidance as she went. The light was only just starting to trickle through the windows in the roof, and it was still difficult to see clearly.

Her fingers bumped over a wooden frame, and Suthe paused. Something wasn't right.

She turned to the wall, peering through the dim light at the watercolor painting of an Andilirish harbor beneath her fingertips. Boats with crooked sails and rough wooden piers dotted with people undulated in her vision like the waves of the ocean. Things were starting to get blurry at the edges of the image, and it seemed like the longer she stared, the dizzier she became. It was just like when—

Suthe yanked her hand back with a gasp and stumbled out from beneath the shelter of the second-floor balcony. She had almost disappeared again, and she hadn't even been thinking about it, that time!

Shaken, she clutched her hand to her chest.

"Is everything all right?"

Suthe whirled around, only to nearly smack into a leather jacket. She recoiled with a yelp and looked up, only to realize that the jacket was Ulsper's, with him in it.

He frowned down at her. "Is something wrong?" His eyes flicked down to the hand she cradled. Not wanting to expose her concerns, Suthe immediately dropped the traitorous limb to her side and went on the offensive.

"Don't sneak up on me like that!" she snapped. "Where did you go, anyway? We aren't supposed to leave this place until Nem Koel or the general says it's safe, right? Just because you're a spy doesn't mean you have the right to—"