broke ranks and ran up to him, brushing past the silver-skinned Wilder without a glance. "Rel, what have you done?" The Four Knot's - the ex-Four Knot's - eyes were wide, and more than a little red-rimmed. Rel reminded himself he'd had every right to say the things he'd said. She glanced past him, and when her eyes met his again, there was no trace of her old intensity. "What is this place?"
"I don't know," he said, heavily. "What I've done is my job."
"Where is Rissad?" Taslin's sharp tone knifed through the air, but the Sherim failed to respond. Sweat glistened on her face as she pushed her way deep into the Warding around the Stable Rod. Where the silver-skinned Wilder showed no sign of human discomfort in its fight to withstand the Ward, Taslin's face twisted, and her voice came muffled by a clenched jaw.
Rel jerked his head at the Sherim. "He's as safe as I can make him. Don't come any closer."
"Rel, what are you doing?" Dora's voice held fear, not scorn.
"Look around yourself, Dora." Raising his voice, Rel drowned out whatever Taslin was trying to say. "This is the First Realm. It's our business. They've kept everything here a total secret from us. Is that right or fair?"
Her eyes flicked sideways, to Taslin, and she gave what might have been a hint of a cringe. "No... I mean, we need to work out what's happened."
"Yes, but only when I know Rissad is beyond their reach." He couldn't help glancing over his shoulder. "It's our job to protect him."
Taslin delivered a vicious Second-Realm curse, long and fluid. "That's a Sherim, isn't it? Where does it go?"
"Not the Second Realm." The silver-skinned Wilder finally spoke, its voice toneless and stiff. "We have been unable to discover what it connects to."
Impaled on the points of Taslin's violet glare, Rel took a step back. "Rissad chose the risk over staying to accept another round of your handling. Don't dare deny your kind have a lot to answer for."
Their eyes stayed locked for a long moment, but it was Taslin who looked away first. "First you must answer for your belligerence."
"Belligerence?" Rel almost choked, his chest and throat tightening in outrage. "I'm not the one violating the peace!"
"And what of the guardian you attacked?" The other Wilder forced a step forward, leg shaking.
"He attacked me. It was a clear attempt to impede my performance of my duties as a Gifted."
"Relvin, you will stand down." Dora spoke as if the last fortnight had rolled back and she was Four Knot again. Rel found a little piece of himself trying to agree with her and stamped it down, mercilessly. She went on like a bow shot. "You've been rash and aggressive. I don't believe for one second you needed to fight that guard, self-defence or not. You've messed with dangerous forces that could have gotten everyone in Vessit killed."
Rel held steady while every muscle in his body tensed, shuddering as he suppressed the urge to lash out. "Do you even know what those 'dangerous forces' are? Do you know the secrets they've kept about this place?"
"The situation was under control." The voice that flowed out from the Abyss held the laziness of a southern drawl, welcome in its humanity. It sounded more than a little like Rissad. A willowy, slender man followed it out of the gloom, wrapped in a loose brown robe whose v-neck accentuated his thin neck and bony frame. Short-cropped silver hair fuzzed his crown, his hairline receding towards his ears. His eyes sparkled as he went on, "Those who needed to know knew. Spreading the truth would have spread panic, perhaps even led to the abandonment of the North, something neither Realm can afford."
The man's act was perfect; teacherly calm, the friendly pose of an old man's wisdom, a hint of an underlying ferocity of devotion to peace between the Realms. But even with his head pounding, trying to watch every other figure before him at the same time, Rel didn't miss the man's shiver as he stepped into the close embrace of the Stable Rod's effect. A Wilder, one even more potent than Taslin.
"I am Keshnu, and the Children of the Wild here are under my command. The concrete door was left undisturbed because we could not tell what was behind it, beyond the fact that Realmspace here is twisted. There was and still is no way of knowing how this Sherim will interact with the stresses on the Abyss. Had you but approached Vessit's Four Knot, as the law requires you to do, all this would have been explained. This is the transgression you must answer for."
Rel could feel the heat rising in his cheeks. Maybe he should have talked to the Four Knot, but Rissad had been getting away. Someone needed to confront him, learn what drove him. Never mind this Keshnu's power, he had no right to lecture Rel like that. "What about Rissad, then? What excuses his treatment?"
"Mistakes were made." A look of regret slipped across the Wilder's face, then vanished just as quickly, as if he realised how inappropriate his insincerity was. "I was away when he was taken, and only returned this morning. Had I been here, the confrontation would have been handled better. But Rissad, too, neglected to inform the Four Knot he was in Vessit. The laws exist for a reason."
"In that case the Four Knot should be here," Rel snapped. "You can't arrest me without him in the First Realm."
Dora stepped forward, half-raising a hand, her eyes telling him just how much a Stable Rod wouldn't protect him from her. "Am I invisible? Am I not here or something?"
Through clenched teeth, Rel said, "You're not a Four Knot anymore." It wasn't going to knock her back this time the way it had earlier, but if they were going to stand on the formalities of the law then so was he.
"We can stand here and wait however many hours it takes Wolpan to return from her call-out if you insist, Relvin." Keshnu's voice hadn't changed, exactly, but Rel couldn't shake the sense of being twelve again, on the wrong end of a telling-off from his father. "Or you can resist us and give up your last chance at a fair hearing. Or you can cooperate, accept your friend as stand-in Four Knot, and we'll discuss these important matters with the detail and gravity they deserve."
Rel set his jaw, met the Wilder's eyes. Even in the darkness, they were a clear, deep blue; not glowing or shining, but rich enough in colour to show despite the flickering yellow of the torches. "I stand by my decisions. If you're going to bring me up on a technicality, then we'll wait for all the technicalities."
He held Keshnu's stare while Dora turned away, trembling, into Taslin's embrace.
***
About the author
R. J. Davnall has been telling stories all his life, and thus probably shouldn’t be trusted to write his own bio. He holds a PhD in philosophy and teaches at Liverpool University, while living what his mother insists on calling a 'Bohemian lifestyle'. When not writing, he can usually be found playing piano, guitar or World of Warcraft.
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