Chapter 31: Surprises.

“It’s not here.” The words left me before the thought had fully formed. My hands were still inside the satchel, fingers pressing into the cloth where the warmth should have been. It was warm there. It should not have been warm without the egg inside it.

The Requiem answered before I called it. Wisps of black fire bloomed from my right hand, curling upward from my fingers in tendrils that drank the firelight around them. The table greyed beneath me. The wood aged in a heartbeat. A crack split the surface and spread. The satchel itself thinned. The people closest to us went silent, looking around apprehensively. I crushed the flame in my fist, and the black receded.

“What?” Ash said.

“The e-egg.” My voice cracked on the second word. “The egg isn’t here.”

Silence followed between us, cut only by the sounds around us. My hands would not leave the satchel. They kept pressing into the cloth, as if the egg might simply appear again, might resolve itself from nothing the way a spell once would have. It did not.

Ash froze beside me. I did not see her reaction. I was staring at my own hands, buried in empty cloth, and the room had gone very bright and very loud and very far away all at once. Then I turned toward the table where the men who had approached us had been sitting.

The two were still there, slouched over their cups. The third chair was empty. I crossed the common room before thought could form. I did not want it to, not now. I seized the first man -the one who had sat beside me- by the collar and hauled him upright. His cup hit the floor. Wine spread across the wood in a dark stain of red. “Where is it?” I demanded.

“What- what’re you-” His eyes were unfocused, his breath was thick.

“The egg. You took it from me. Where is it?”

“I didn’t take anything! I don’t know what you’re-“

I shoved him aside and rounded on the second. He was already backing away, hands raised. “I swear, I swear I don’t know, we didn’t-“

I yanked him in the air and glared into his eyes. “Where is the egg?” I hissed.

His eyes almost rolled into the back of his head from the fear. He did not have it. Neither of them did. Their fear had too much shock in it, I could see that much. My grip loosened and the second man fell to the ground and did not rise.

The inn had gone quiet. Every face in the common room had turned toward us. The fire crackled in the silence. The Inker stood from his table across the room. He crossed the floor in four strides, his robes swishing against the wood. He had the decency to look mildly concerned. “What happened?” he said.

“The beast egg was stolen from me.” My voice carried further than I intended. “It was in my satchel and someone took it while we sat here.”

The Inker’s face went hard. Whatever the man was, he was not slow. He turned to the nearest silver soldier who had stood up “You, seal the doors. Nobody leaves this building until I say otherwise.”

The innkeeper started forward, his broad face reddening. “Now see here, you can’t just-“

“I can,” the Inker said, and the marks on his forearms glowed. The innkeeper went quiet.

Two of the silver soldiers moved to the exits. Another stepped out of the inn and into the pouring rain. A woman near the hearth stood and protested. A man at the card table demanded to know what was happening.

The Inker met my gaze and held it for a moment. No doubt, he wanted me to see what he was doing for my sake. I ignored him. I was scanning faces and counting heads. I was running through every moment of the evening. The bump against the table. The strange weight that had followed it. I turned back towards the two men who had approached me. I looked at their table. Two men. There had been three, I was sure of it. The third man wasn’t there.

Then I looked at the chair beside mine. The chair where Ash had been sitting. It was empty. I looked around the inn, and did not see her. I grabbed the satchel, swung it over my shoulder and then pushed through the crowd and past the two men who now guarded the door. It took them a moment to remember that their orders likely did not extend to me. They stepped aside without comment, though they cast me wary looks.

The rain hit me the moment I stepped outside. It was cold, and it took all of three steps for it to soak through my clothing. The street was dark, the only light leaking from the different building’s shuttered windows in thin lines or from the feeble lanterns strung about. I glanced around.

What did I expect to find? Ash? I did not see her, and did not know how I could in this darkness. The third man? Doubtless he was already gone. Something stabbed at me from the inside. I put a hand on my left breast, and felt it tremble. I tried to steady it. A Queen’s hands had to be steady. It was the bare minimum. It would not obey.

Then I felt it. Heavier than mana, and denser. It was Essence, and it carried an impression with it. The taste of things being cut from other things. Severance. For half a heartbeat, I did not connect it. I had been so focused on my own powers, that I had not considered that Ash might have practiced the same thing I had. I felt the weight again, there and gone in moments. I ran toward it.

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I found them behind the inn, in a narrow space between the back wall and a stable. I heard Ash’s breathing before I saw her. It was ragged and uneven, and the rain almost swallowed it.