FOOTSTEPS FOLLOWED shadows and dark corners, moving from street to alley to street to tree-filled park and back to street again, always avoiding people and light and open spaces.
"I see now why you did not wish to introduce me to your father." Rankarus clutched the box with the codex to his side as he walked through the streets, his other hand firmly entwined with Kellatra's fingers. He had nearly lost her moments ago and would not countenance the possibility of it happening again, even if she did terrify him in ways he never thought possible.
"I am a shame to him, and he is a sorrow to me." Kellatra stared straight ahead as they walked, her face tight with the effort to restrain her emotions.
"Are you certain we should not have left the book?" Rankarus glanced at the box beneath his arm, the source of so much trouble in their lives.
"We risked our lives to return it." Kellatra tightened her grip on his hand. "I will not leave such a prize with my father after his betrayal."
"Surely they will hunt us now. The council. Your father." Rankarus considered that others might pursue them as well. If Jantipur did not take his coins in silence. If he sought to double his bounty with a second reward for revealing what he knew.
"They will not find us." Kellatra's voice did not sound to him as certain as her words implied.
"Where will we go?" Rankarus pondered this question as he spoke it aloud. They must flee Juparti. Punderra seemed a bad choice now. To hide in the Tanshen or Daeshen Dominion while their mindless war still raged would be foolish. They could try Atheton. The strict religious codes would be a burden, but ones beneath which they could camouflage themselves.
"The pilgrims." Kellatra walked a little straighter as she spoke.
"Again?" Rankarus considered the idea. "To what end? They head for the free city of Tanjii and mean to cross the ocean to the Forbidden Realm. Would we hide in Tanjii? Make it our home? I suppose that makes sense. They are neutral in the wars, and a little more open to non-Shen peoples. We might build a life there again."
"No." Kellatra turned to him as her steps continued to snap across the cobbles of the street. "We need to go to the Forbidden Realm with the pilgrims."
"That..." Rankarus blinked, momentarily unable to form a reply. "I don't understand."
"The codex and the dreams and the star and the pilgrims are all connected somehow." Kellatra shook her head. "I don't know how, but they are. I feel it. I see the book in my dreams of the star and the temple and the rest. They must mean something."
"Many have the dreams, Kell. Even me." Rankarus ignored her sudden frown. "Maybe they are merely dreams. Perhaps the star is only a coincidence. It is possible it is all some form of delusion."
"You don't believe that," Kellatra said. "Not if you have the dreams."
"I don't know what I believe," Rankarus said.
They walked in silence, crossing a street and following a thin cobblestone lane through a small park, the wide, full branches of the trees draping the ground in shadow. As they came into a pool of moonlight spilling across the grass of an open glade, Kellatra stopped and turned to face him.
"I know that I have deceived you, that I have broken your trust." Kellatra looked up to him, her eyes welling with tears. "But you must have faith in me in this. I beg you. It is important. I sense it. Not simply to me. Not for the solving of the riddle of an old book. It is important to understanding the dreams and all that has happened since. It is imperative to our future and the future for our children."
Rankarus released Kellatra's hand, seeing her wince as his fingers slid free of her own. He raised his hand to cup her chin in his palm as he so often did.
"We have both kept secrets." Rankarus stared into her eyes, his stomach suddenly tight with fear as he forced his mouth to form words he had avoided for years. "I used to steal things. Frequently. I stole back what the man who wants me dead had taken from me. Something I stole from someone else. I was not an innkeeper's son. I grew up here in the City of Leaves. My parents were poor merchants who died before I turned ten. I found a living cutting purses and stealing from drunken gamblers. As I aged, I got better at theft and wooing young maidens, relieving them of their virtue and their jewels. I was a thief. That is what I have kept from you."
Kellatra nodded, looking at the ground for a moment before lifting her gaze once more.
"I don't understand something." Kellatra bit her lip. "You killed the two councilmen in my father's chambers. You killed that man in the kitchen at the inn. I passed his body that night. Why did you not kill that man in the alley today? Or the man who wishes you dead?"
Rankarus frowned. They had not spoken of the body in the kitchen. Kellatra had never mentioned it, and Rankarus had hoped she had passed it unseen in the chaos of that evening.
"I could have killed him. The man who would kill me if he finds me. But to kill a man in defense is not the same as murder."
"No. It is not." Kellatra looked away. Her voice broke with emotion as she spoke. "I killed a man. It was not defense. I killed him for revenge. He took my mother's life, and I sought the only justice I could find. I violated the central oath of the Academy. I used The Sight to kill him. The punishment for such a violation is death. But the council did not want word of my actions becoming known for fear the people of the city would turn against them. If the public knew the full power those with The Sight wielded, none would feel safe. My father argued for adherence to council law, but Menanthus, the man who left me the codex, he spoke up for me. The other council members agreed to banishment."
Kellatra turned back to face Rankarus, clearly seeking out some sign of his reaction. He looked into her eyes, the eyes of the woman he loved, the mother of his children, a seer, a fugitive, a murderer. He could not fully imagine her acting in anger. She rarely so much as raised her voice, even in the heat of an argument. She had never been anything but loving and tender and kind to him and the children and everyone who walked through the door of the inn. How could that woman be the same one who set those councilmembers and her father aflame? How could that woman have killed a man?
"You broke the neck of that soul catcher." Rankarus thought back to that night their lives changed so completely. The night that set both their secrets climbing up from the graves of their past where they had been buried. "You set that man on fire."
"No." Kellatra shook her head, looking concerned. "I killed the soul catcher, but I have no idea how the fire started or how the third man came to be aflame."
Rankarus frowned in concern as well. If Kellatra had not created the fire at the inn, how had it begun? Had someone else been tracking the book? Could that person be following them in hopes of retrieving it? He shook his head and returned his attention to the questions that gripped his soul rather than those that teased his mind.
"If you say the man you killed took your mother's life, and you say he deserved to die, then I trust you." Rankarus's heart beat fast in his chest. "If you say this book has something to do with the dreams and we need to follow the pilgrims to figure out what, then I trust you."
She said nothing, grabbing his neck and kissing him forcefully and passionately, her fingers clutching at his thick hair. He clasped his free hand around her waist and lost himself in the kiss, forgetting the cares of what his wife might be or not be, what she might have done or not done, what she knew or did not know about his past.
She smacked his chest as she released him from the kiss, her eyes narrowing.
"I told you to stay with the children." Anger and gratitude warred across Kellatra's face.
"When do I ever listen to you about the children?" Rankarus smiled that cocky grin that always made her smile in return.
"When do you ever listen to me?" She kissed him again quickly, then looked at him quizzically. "A baker's dowel?"
"I followed you in through the servants' entrance at the back and grabbed the first thing I saw as I ran through the kitchen." Rankarus thought back to following Kellatra through the streets and breaking into the estate house, worried something would happen to her before he could find her again. So much had happened in such a short time. "I'd hoped for a cleaver."
"And the knives?" Kellatra asked. "Were you lucky?"
"I've always been good with knives. Somehow, I always manage to cut myself with swords." Rankarus frowned at the memory of retrieving his blades from the necks of the dead councilmen before they fled her father's house. He hated killing, but when he realized they intended to execute Kellatra, he had not hesitated to throw his daggers. Thoughts of how differently the evening might have transpired drove him to hold her tight and kiss her deeply again. She held tight to him, returning his passion, expressing without words the fear attendant to the recent events.
"Love birds lost in the night. How sweet is that?"
"She looks tasty, friend. Is she juicy like a plum?"
Rankarus turned from Kellatra's kiss to see three men standing abreast in the lane, blocking their path. He glanced to the opposite side and found two more men impeding any possible escape. He turned back to find Kellatra glaring at the men.
Rankarus noted the odd sensation associated with understanding he faced no real danger while standing beside his wife. A man ought to be the protector of his wife and family. Knowing his wife posed more threat to any potential attackers than he could ever muster aroused not a sense of inadequacy, but a strange and growing longing. He had always been attracted to Kellatra's sharp mind and her willful nature, but seeing her stare down violent-looking men without flinching, having recently seen the consequences of her wrath, left him overwhelmed with desire. He found himself wishing he could pull her into the darkness behind the bushes and show her the extent of that yearning. Instead, he let the more practical side of his mind find expression.
"Fire might bring unwanted attention," he said.
"Walk with me." Kellatra took his hand and pulled him off the path.
"Ooo the love ... What?"
"Dark gods and spirits!"
"What have ya done?"
"Dark Sight!"
Rankarus walked hand in hand with Kellatra, circling well away from the thugs in the lane, their cries of terror ricocheting off the trees, their feet sunk deep into the stones of the path, held tight as though planted there ages ago.
"Quiet now," Kellatra said to the men. "Or I will do more."
The men fell silent, watching as Rankarus and Kellatra stepped back onto the lane and continued on their way. Rankarus smiled broadly in the moonlight filtering through the leaves of the branches arcing over the lane.
"I think I'll rather enjoy having a seer for a wife."
"I think I'll rather enjoy having a thief for a husband."
"I'm not really a thief anymore." Rankarus wondered at that statement, realizing that he had not thought of himself as a thief in many years.
"No, you are not." Kellatra squeezed his hand. "But we may both need to rely upon the skills of our past on the road ahead."
"The pilgrim road." Rankarus worried about Kellatra's plan, but he did trust her. The book arriving on the night of the new star's birth might merely be coincidence, but sometimes, coincidence meant more after the fact than at the time. Ripples flowed from events in unpredictable ways, the way stealing from a wealthy merchant girl's family led to a wife and children and an inn and a journey across the realm.
"Yes, but we need to take a different road first." Kellatra quickened her pace. "There is a woman I know who may be able to tell us more about the codex. If we're lucky, we'll be able to find her."