to keep away from the more direct questions. She said, "How did they know it was you at Af?"
If anything, his frown deepened. He shook his head, slowly. "I don't know. I was in the town, just looking- Well, planning what I was going to do. How to get in. You know what I mean." He looked away, obviously pained by the admission. "The rumours in town already had my name in them before I took their rods. I don't know why. No-one knew it was me before then."
Af had been Van Raighan's third robbery. Before that... Pevan struggled for the memory. Had it been Edarrin before Af? Polten had been the first. She could see the map in her head, the map that the Sherriff had used to track Van Raighan's progress, with its bold pencil line connecting the seven towns he'd hit, but she couldn't make out the names. The best she could do was make a vague gesture and hope he'd fill in. "You're sure you didn't leave any clues at Polten, or...?'
"Fosket?" He shook his head, while Pevan kicked herself. "It would have had to have been Fosket, or word would have reached them from Polten. No, I think I was betrayed."
"Betrayed?" By who?, she didn't add. Too close to what she really needed to know.
His eyes flicked up to meet hers, narrow again with suspicion. "By the Wildren who were Coercing me. Or blackmailing me, whatever you want to call it." At that, his frown turned bitter, outright angry. What could she say to placate him? Before she could think it through, he pushed on. "No-one else knew I was involved. No-one."
"But why would they betray you if you were doing what they wanted?" It was, she reflected as she finished, a stupid question. Asking after a Wilder's motives was as futile as trying to Gate to the moon.
Van Raighan's expression reflected a similar judgement, his frown softening just enough to allow him to raise a sardonic eyebrow. "I don't think they actually wanted the Stable Rods. Or to have the towns made vulnerable. They were making a point."
"What?" Her turn to squint at him. She blinked, tried to relax. "What point? Who to?"
"Hell if I know. I think it was aimed at the Gift-Givers somehow." He pressed his lips into a flat line, cocked his head on one side to inspect her face. "You wouldn't happen to know what 'Talerssi' is, would you?"
"I've never heard the word. It sounds Second Realm-ish?"
He nodded. "They said they were trying to take Talerssi from the Gift-Givers, but they either wouldn't or couldn't explain what it was."
Silence stretched out between them as Pevan tried to figure out how to extend the conversation. These were real answers she was getting, real progress, but was it enough? Would a Gift-Giver be able to explain Talerssi? It sounded like a place name, despite the fact that the Wildren never named places.
It occurred to her that she was taking his honesty for granted, however implausible. Whatever his loyalty to his brother, he was a trained Gifted and he'd turned on mankind in the most dramatic way possible. Could Wildren manipulation explain that? What would she do if it was Rel under threat? Well, that much at least was obvious; he'd have no truck with her breaking the rules for him, and probably wouldn't even thank her for the rescue.
On the other hand, there was no obvious motive for doing what Van Raighan had done, which meant a Second-Realm logic explanation was the most likely. He was staring at her, she realised, waiting for her to ask another question, or maybe to pass judgement. She looked away, in no position to do either, but her eyes went back to his face of their own accord all too quickly. His lips and eyes were tight with some complex emotion she couldn't read or understand.
"I'd like to show you a Witnessing, if I may?" He got to his feet, almost stumbling as he rose, and approached the bars. "Though you'll probably not believe it when you see it."
She frowned. "Why not? Isn't the point of a Witnessing that it can't be false? I'll believe it."
"I'll hold you to that." He smiled and put his hand out between the bars. A bubble formed on it, swelling to a little more than head-sized. "You may want to come a little closer. I can't make it as large as I'd like here." His voice sounded strained already. Probably just the Stable Rods upstairs, unless his Gift was really weak.
Within the bubble, colours sprayed across the surface, swirled, and began to shape themselves. A lumpen green-and-brown blur became a couple, kissing. The woman seemed all straight lines that even her elegant skirt couldn't make shapely; the man was barely taller than her, raven-haired and rodent-faced. Despite the plainness of both figures, ardour radiated from them. Her gaze smouldered as she drew back a little way, lost in his eyes.
Recognition struck like a thunderbolt as the woman turned her head a little way toward the Witness, and the image froze. Pevan knew her own face, and that was it. But she'd certainly never kissed anyone like that. Had she? She felt herself frowning, trying to remember if any of the times she had snuck off with a boy she'd gotten careless. A Witness could only show things he'd seen with his own eyes, but Pevan was good at finding hidey-holes.
Where were the couple in the Witnessing, anyway? The background was an indistinct swirl of silver-grey, and though the couple were seated, she couldn't see what on. It didn't have the precision and clarity of an ordinary Witnessing at all. Pevan glanced up at Van Raighan's face, noted the sparkle of laughter deep in his eyes, and bit back a surge of anger, instead turning her attention back to the bubble.
The man was Chag Van Raighan. Even tiny and blurred, the elfin cast to his features was unmistakable. Trying not to lose herself in the impossibility of what she was seeing - she'd certainly never kissed him! - she reasoned out the rest of the puzzle. If Van Raighan was in the Witnessing, then it couldn't be one he'd seen himself. A Witness could Witness another Witness's Witnessing, with some loss in clarity. That might account for the fuzzy background, though if it did it was a particularly bad case.
But how had anyone Witnessed her kissing Van Raighan? She'd met the man two days ago, and wouldn't have touched him with a bargepole before or since. She met his eyes again, and he lowered his arm, banishing the Witnessing. His gaze wavered first, the tension slowly draining from his face. Slack uncertainty replaced it; he looked like his plans were coming apart. But what plans?
A bell rang, loud and close by. The room seemed to tremble with the peals; vibrations through the floor made her feet itch. The alarm bell, hanging by the entrance to the Warding Hall. A Wilder was attacking the town. Pevan took another look at Van Raighan. His anxiety had vanished under a mask of calm, his narrow eyes resting gently on hers.
She cursed inwardly. With all the questions she needed answering, his rescue chose this moment of all moments to arrive. Her duty to the town came first. She'd be needed in the fight outside, so Dagdan would be coming to relieve her. She focussed, pressing her mind to the floor and reaching outward to the Warding Hall's entrance. Fixing both places in her head, she spun thought into a bridge between the two, felt the whole thing snap into place as the Gateway opened, just behind her feet. The whole process took less than an eye-blink, but her awareness slowed with it so that even after years of practice, it still felt painfully slow.
The Gate would only save Dagdan half a minute, but the sooner she was out there and knew what was going on the better. The Warding of the Stable Rods pressed against the passage she'd tunnelled through her mind, a tingling sensation like pins and needles of the face. Van Raighan's calm hadn't shifted, so she forced her adrenalin rush down. Nothing she could do until relief arrived.
Van Raighan said, "You know the attack must be a distraction for my rescue." A hitch, almost a stammer, marred his placid demeanour. Was he trying to taunt her?
"I didn't exactly think it was a coincidence," she snapped. "Don't think I won't come after you."
"I'm counting on it." He frowned, his face going from rat-like and a little sad to a ferocious intensity that made Pevan's guts quiver. "I mean you to know where my Witnessing came from, why it's important. There isn't time now." Behind Pevan, shouts drifted through the Gateway, Dagdan's voice among them. Van Raighan glanced down, then met her eyes again. "Your town won't
be harmed, I swear it. All I ask is a chance to explain myself to you."
"You've had two days already."
"It's-"
"'Ware the Gate!" Dagdan's cheery shout cut Van Raighan off. Pevan spun on the spot, closing the Gateway beneath the Witness as his headlong dive delivered him, upright and almost banging his head on the ceiling, into the jail. His feet landed flat on the paved floor with barely a sound, no sign of the stumble that anyone less experienced would make. Dagdan might be getting on towards forty, but he was barely out of breath. Still smiling, he said, "Wildhawk, Pevan. Get going."
Good job Rel wasn't here to see the man smiling in the middle of a crisis. A Wildhawk was nothing to laugh about, but there was little in either Realm that could break Dagdan's cheer. She pointed over her shoulder at the cell and Van Raighan. "They're here for him. Don't blink."
The Witness - Federas' Witness, anyway - disobeyed her instruction almost immediately as she forced open a Gate beneath herself and dropped away from him, but he'd do his job. All he had to do was see some clue to where Van Raighan's rescuers took him. Her Gateway popped her out into bright spring sunshine and a blast of cold wind, just beside the entrance to the Warding Hall.
Her colleagues were already there, waiting for her. Jashi, Federas' senior