Chapter 18: Misguide

“Hey, Mira?” Ness peeled away from the door and floated behind Mira’s elbow, careful not to touch her.

“Not now, Ness,” Mira muttered, waving her away dismissively, and ignoring Ness’s answering scowl.

“What language is she speaking, anyway?” Phaine was looking curiously at Ness, now that the moment was marginally less urgent. She had a calculating look in her eyes.

“English. Don’t worry about it,” Mira replied, mangling the pronunciation of the word English. “Do you have something we can use to track Hender? A lock of hair, her favorite sweater, or perhaps one of her fingers? Maybe a toe?”

Mira had sorted out how to knot the sheet over one shoulder, so that she at least had both hands free, but it swayed as she moved, occasionally revealing a long expanse of skin from armpit to ankle. Ness noticed Rist leering when he thought nobody was looking. She couldn’t really blame him.

Phaine rolled her eyes.

“We tracked her to one inn in all of Terok, can’t you just,” she wiggled her fingers illustratively, “say one of your little spells and look through the walls?”

“It’s not that simple,” Mira muttered. She massaged her temples with one hand, thinking through the possibilities. “Okay, okay. I think I’ve got something. Let’s see..”

She placed one hand on Ness’s bare shoulder; Ness shuddered, eyes widening, but did her best to control her reaction. She couldn’t help the twitching in the furry ears on top of her head. Phaine watched them both suspiciously, her eyes narrowing further.

“Hunted, bearer of guilt, beset by fear,

“Haven reveal, my eyes shall see thy place.

“Smoke and smolder, a path to thee show clear

“In Goddess’ name, justice shall thee embrace.”

The half-dozen lit candles in the room flared up, the flames growing from their calmly flickering inch to something that reminded Ness more of a welding torch. Smoked poured off of them, heavier than air, pooling on the ground until it obscured the wooden floor. Ness gasped, despite her best efforts, and Mira snatched her hand away.

The candle flames settled back down to their previous level, but the carpet of smoke only very slowly thinned.

Everyone in the room looked to Mira expectantly— Rist seemed impressed, even awed. Ness stared, glassy-eyed, breathing heavily, and wondered if Mira would put her hand back, if asked. Phaine was smirking knowingly.

“Well?” Phaine spoke first.

“That… should have worked,” Mira replied. She kicked at the smoke ineffectually; it swirled and eddied around her bare foot.

“Don’t tracking spells normally… track?”

“I guess she’s prepared for you,” Mira muttered.

“You’re not exactly earning your fifty percent,” Phaine replied, folding her arms with a bland expression.

Ness shook her head as though clearing out cobwebs, and consciously slowed her breathing.

“Hey, Mira?”

“Ness, not now.”

“What was that supposed to do?”

Mira made a guttural sound a little like a growl.

“The smoke should have lead us to Hender, the room’s previous occupant.”

“Oh. It doesn’t look like it’s doing that…?”

“I noticed.”

“I can smell her, though,” Ness noted, with a shrug, and gestured back toward the anteroom and the hallway beyond.

“Not now, Ness— sorry, what?”

“That’s why I came in here in the first place,” Ness explained, and gestured toward Phaine and Rist, “I woke up when the window creaked and I could smell someone was in here. And I can smell the people that were here before. A woman and a man. She’s wearing too much cheap perfume and he smells like body odor, leather, and steel.”

Mira turned and stared at Ness for several moments, perturbed. She sighed, and turned back to face Phaine and Rist.

“My associate here can lead us to your target, if she’s indeed still in the inn.”

“How, exactly?” Phaine replied, crossing her arms over her chest. “And how do you understand her? I’ve never even heard of eengish.”

Before waiting for an answer, Phaine turned to Ness, and pointed at her.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Ness looked over to Mira with a questioning expression. Mira drew in a deep breath, and let it out in a long sigh.

“Would you believe me if I said a wizard did it?”

Mira addressed the question, somewhat rhetorically, to Phaine, who simply folded her arms and scowled back.

“She’s… my familiar.”

“She’s your—” Phaine started to repeat, glanced between the two of them, and then up slightly at Ness’s extra set of ears. She burst out laughing. “Oh, goddess fuck me, girl, what did you do?”

“Is this what you want to be spending time on right now?”

Phaine, still chuckling quietly to herself, shook her head wryly. She made a sort of carry on gesture that even Ness could understand.

They filed out of the suite quietly; Ness and Mira left their boots behind, for the sake of stealth. They circled the floor, Ness sniffing the air gently as they walked. She stopped, doubled back, and gestured silently to a door. It was around a corner and on the opposite side of the structure from Ness and Mira’s rooms.

Rist did, in fact, prove to be a deft hand with mechanical locks, opening the inn door quickly and quietly. He even produced a small flask of oil, which he spritzed onto the hinges to let the door swing silently open. Ness heard a faint, high-pitched whine emanating from the room, which grew louder as the door fully opened.

The layout of Hender’s rooms was the same as Ness and Mira’s, and, similarly, a man was asleep on a cushion in the antechamber, just as Ness had been.

Just as Phaine was about to step over the threshold, Ness rushed forward and hauled her back by her cloak. Aside from a breath gasped out in surprise, they kept their heads enough to stay quiet. Phaine gave her a look of simmering fury, and Ness wondered if the woman was about to open her throat with one of her claws.

Ness gestured for her to wait, a single finger raised, one second; and didn’t pause to wonder if the gesture would have any meaning to Phaine. She waved Mira over, and crouched next to the threshold, pointing at the floorboard, where tiny silver lines, like circuit traces, glowed with faint, uneven magical light. As she got closer to it, Ness could tell it was the source of the high-pitched whine.

Mira waved Ness and the other two back, and crouched carefully, one hand flat on the floor to stabilize herself as she dropped to a kneeling position, freeing both hands.

She carefully pushed her right forefinger against the floorboard until her fingernail was just touching, but not crossing, the nearest silver trace. With her left hand, she bridged over the iron bracer around her wrist, pressing her left thumb against her right forearm and two left fingers against the back of her right hand.

She took a deep breath; Ness got the sense that Mira was not excited for what she was about to do, and was steadying herself in preparation for it.

Mira whispered so softly that Ness, even with her enhanced hearing, could barely make out the words.

“What words untwist so tangled a knot?

“Magic, in thread; trapped, tied up, and bound:

“Run and run free, chained power, rune-caught;

“Seek clear thy path, and thy guide be this sound.”

The silvery traces flickered and dimmed, and Ness watched the light flow out of the runes, up along Mira’s right hand, arcing through her left hand, over the bracer, and finally up Mira’s right arm and across the surface of her skin like lightning spreading across a night sky.

Ness smelled burning skin and hair and nails; the silvery light left behind angry, bright red lines everywhere they had touched, from fingernail up around Mira’s shoulder and across her chest and back.

Mira half-collapsed, half-stumbled backward into a tangle of long limbs and knotted bedsheets. She was shaking, but she kept her jaw clenched tight to avoid making any noise that might wake up the guard. Ness could tell even without their connection that Mira was in immense pain, and it took every ounce of self-control she had to not throw her arms around the sorceress in an effort to protect and comfort her.

Phaine rushed over instead, slipping an arm round Mira’s waist to support her and whispering urgently into her ear. Mira, shakily, nodded her head; and gently pushed Phaine away. She untangled her limbs from the bed sheet and stood, careful to keep herself at least mostly covered in the process.

Mira gestured for Phaine and Rist to move into the room, and followed behind, holding her injured arm close to her body.

She glanced back at Ness with a look that the girl could not fully decipher, all annoyance and gratitude and frustration and something warmer that she could not, or was not willing to, put a name to.

The moment seemed to stretch far longer than Ness expected, but then Mira turned away and stepped over the threshold, and Ness followed the three into the room beyond.