Climbing the tower took even more out of Tracou than it had previously. Before, he had at least had a good night's sleep. Now he found himself desperate for air early in the climb. He also yawned repeatedly, but that didn't help him catch his breath.
At the top, Tracou's legs quivered. He sat down, leaning against the cold wall of the tower, and panted.
"No stamina at all," Pendaer sneered.
Tracou ignored him. He had been right to deny Pendaer food the night before and he shouldn't have given him any this morning. Maybe then he would have some understanding of the stress Tracou dealt with.
The serving girl who had brought them upstairs had some decency at least. She hovered over him, eyebrows knit together, and kept mumbling what sounded like comforting words.
When Tracou felt ready, he stood, and gave the girl a thankful nod. Pendaer didn't even get a second glance as Tracou entered Yash's room.
After the pile of food from yesterday, Yash managed to be even less predictable than he had the day before. What did he want? Would he demand something from him as if he had already paid for it? What if he really wanted something illicit?
Hundreds of possibilities flitted through his mind—most of them ending with him not getting the keys at best and thrown into a cell below the castle at worst. His stomach churning, he made it all the way to the chair he had sat in yesterday before he realized that he was alone.
The ugly feeling in his stomach grew larger. This was his chance! But how long did he have? He couldn't just poke around in someone's office like it was nothing. He had no excuses ready if he got caught.
Tracou let out a slow breath. He didn't have to physically look. His wand, still in his sleeve, would be enough. Keeping his eyes on the thick curtain hanging from the ceiling, Tracou sent out a magical feeler. The tendril inched around the room. This feeler had no weight to it and couldn't be seen, but a good fright could cause Tracou to tense both himself and the magic, making it physical and a problem.
Moving as cautiously as he could, Tracou focused on Yash's desk, the one that still had a map of Dezmer resting on top of it. He didn't know exactly what he was looking for, though, so any bit of metal like a knife or the drawer knobs had to be examined thoroughly.
Then the curtain moved.
Tracou's entire body clenched in alarm and the tendril solidified, the tip falling to the bottom of one of Yash's drawers with a small tink. Pursing his lips, Tracou cut off his magic.
Yash strode into the room, wearing both a pleasant smile and gorgeous silver clothes. Food had been nice, especially considering Mirthal, but he would have welcomed a nice bolt of fabric as well. Yash's clothes appeared stiff like they hadn't been broken in yet.
"Dezmek Tracou! I see you've made yourself comfortable."
Tracou looked down at himself. "Is that all right? Should I be standing?"
"Of course not!" Yash moved over to his desk and sat on it, carefully pushing the map out of the way. "Is that what the Aodehsh demand from you? Poor thing."
Shifting in his seat, Tracou grimaced.
"By the way, I heard that you chose that man to stay rather than the woman. Did he threaten you?"
"N-No, but he's the one with my wand."
"So he did threaten you! Shall I have him detained?"
"Not yet." He hesitated. Yash opened his mouth, likely to ask him why. "I-I wanted to thank you for the gifts yesterday," he blurted out.
Mentioning the gifts seemed to please Yash. He leaned back on his hands. "Did you enjoy them?"
"The food was delicious." He punctuated his sentence with a stray yawn he tried to downplay.
"Did I call on you too early in the morning?" Yash asked, amused.
"Ah... no." Tracou closed his eyes for a moment. If this continued for multiple days, he needed some kind of explanation for why he would get increasingly sleepy. "Dezmek are nocturnal."
"Is that so!" Yash leaned forward like a child about to hear an expert's tips on how to win their favorite game. "Nocturnal! What time do you usually go to sleep?"
"Just before sunrise," he said, fighting off another yawn. This talk about sleep only made things worse.
"And you sleep until sunset?"
"Mm, generally."
"Very interesting. I suppose that's another point against those Aodehsh."
"You really don't like them..."
"Naturally. Not only were they rude, but they treat others, like you, poorly. I find myself rather astounded that they would be so brazen about it. Winlea doesn't treat people like that."
Those words made Tracou's face twist in disbelief. Thusfar a dezmek had made it through Winlea okay, but elves received terrible treatment.
"Hm? You disagree?" Yash asked with a lopsided grin.
"I heard that, ah... that there are two people in the dungeon here."
"And for good reason! They attacked our king. We can't allow people like that to go free and hurt others. One of them worked here for years... but she had always been difficult. When I replaced her, well, she vowed revenge. It's unfortunate that she took it out on the king instead of me."
"What about the other one?"
"An elf, if you can believe it. As if they didn't give us enough trouble by hassling us about the border."
The border. He had heard something about that before, but he barely had a grasp on relations between Dezmer and Winlea, let alone relations between Winlea and any other country.
"What do they do, exactly?"
"Every twenty years they come to us saying that we have somehow moved the border between us into their territory—even when they approved of the border last time. But what can we do? The Elven Kingdom dwarfs Aodehn, let alone Winlea." Yash glared at some imagined enemy in front of him, his eyes far away. His expression, so open and jovial before, made the atmosphere in the room drop ten degrees. "We can't retaliate and they know it. So, every few decades, they take a bit more of our land. It will be hundreds of years before they make it deep into Winlea, but they have time. They're elves. We can't call on Aodehn for military aid over a few haths every twenty years."
All at once, Yash came back to himself. He turned a critical eye towards Tracou. "And then there's the pressure from the dezmek to keep away from the ocean. The elves erode us to the west, the mountains block the north, our only ally holds the south, and the dezmek patrol the waters to the east. A single nation can't own the seas, Dezmek Tracou... Don't you agree?"
Tracou, sunk deep into his chair, nodded.
Yash eyed him as if he could see Tracou's sins tallied up on his forehead.
"Dezmek think they are as untouchable as elves, don't they? They put great pride in their magic."
"...We are very proud."
"Without it, though, you're helpless. Isn't that right?"
Tracou said nothing.
"If you had your wand, you wouldn't be forced to accompany those Aodehsh. Am I wrong?"
"No... You're not wrong."
Pursing his lips, Yash looked over Tracou again. All at once, he discarded his anger and returned to his cheerful visage.
"But if we establish this trade route, perhaps things will change. You'll help me, won't you?"
"I... don't have the means to commission a ship."
"Ah, I suppose it does come down to that. Here is my proposal, Dezmek Tracou. I—..." He paused, then patted the desk. "Come sit next to me."
Tracou did so, but maintained a couple of feet of distance between the two of them.
"Good. I propose that you leave those two Aodehsh... and stay with me. I will retrieve your wand for you and I will make sure you return to Dezmer." A smirk pulled at Yash's lips. "We'll send you with a merchant ship and you will convince the patrol to let the ship through."
Again, Mirthal prevented this offer from appealing to Tracou. He needed to help Mirthal—anything else came second. Still, if he refused Yash here, he might never get to investigate the tower for the cell keys.
He only had one choice.
"All right. But leave Pedr alone for now."
"Why?"
Why. Tracou bit the inside of his cheek.
"I would prefer he be dealt with shortly before I leave. I don't know what he might do..."
"I could have him join the elf and the traitor in the dungeon. He couldn't get you in there."
"A-Are you sure? I don't see anyone guarding the door. Even at night."
"We have keys for that. One of my— One of the head knights has the key to the dungeon door, but I have keys to the cells. Even if someone got a hold of one set, they wouldn't get the other."
Tracou bristled, his heart thundering in his chest. Strike. Strike now. He focused his entire being on Yash, who flinched.
"Your pupils... They've gone wide, like a cat's," Yash said with a certain breathless quality that could indicate fascination or alarm.
Tracou blinked a few times, trying to fix something he couldn't control. "I'm sorry. It means that I'm interested. We dezmek have no use for locks or keys. If we wish to restrain someone, we remove the door entirely."
Yash let out an impressed hum.
"Can I see this key? I don't understand how it can hold someone back."
"Is it that hard to believe?" Yash asked, eyebrow raised.
"Yes. Last night I spent a lot of time wondering why you would allow prisoners to have a door in the first place."
Silence hung between the two of them.
Had he failed? If he had blown his opportunity, Mirthal would have to sit in that dungeon for who knew how long. The cold grip of anxiety closed around his heart.
But Yash got up and stepped behind his cloth divider, returning with a black key that stuck out from between his fingers. He presented it to Tracou with one hand, but Tracou took it with two.
The key, made from the same dark, frigid rock Mirthal's bars had been made of, spanned from one of his palms to the next. Tracou's first instinct told him to copy the key, but his magic had no effect. He could only look at it and, with immense reluctance, hand it back to Yash.
"Does it make any more sense to you?"
Tracou shook his head. Yash launched into an unnecessary explanation of how locks worked, but Tracou had more important things to worry about.
Now that he had seen the key, how could he get his hands on it? Yash sometimes left to deal with his uncle, but Tracou couldn't simply hang around in the tower until that happened. Maybe he could make it sound like someone had knocked from the other tower, making Yash leave to investigate...
He yawned, making Yash stop mid-lecture.
"Ah, that's right. I don't suppose you can get any sleep during the day down below with everyone stomping around."
"No."
"Why not take a nap up here? I'll lead you to my bed."
Tracou flushed. Bed. His bed. But he only meant it for sleeping... didn't he?
"You would let me sleep in your bed?"
"Why not? We're trade partners now, aren't we?"
That made some sense. Tracou had allowed Mirthal to sleep in his bed at the inn because he pitied the stupid elf, so this had to be similar. Hopefully Yash didn't think he was stupid.
"I would be grateful. I'm so tired," Tracou said, hopping off the desk.
"Think nothing of it."
Yash ushered Tracou toward the curtain. Holding his breath, Tracou grabbed the divider and, after a nod from Yash, lifted it.
A bed, wardrobe, and a door stood as the only inhabitants of the room behind the curtain. Basic was an understatement. Tracou glanced up at Yash. Why hide something so bland?
Shrugging his shoulders, Yash made a noncommittal noise.
But if all Yash kept here was a bed and a wardrobe, the keys had to be in one of them. Even the mosaic here had lessened its intensity, now presenting the image of a single stag on the ceiling with only swirling colors as a background. Tracou gazed up at it, knowing he had seen similar before.
"Are you interested in the Dorssur stag?"
"Dorssur has a stag?"
"It's a fairy tale." Yash paused for a moment before a smirk took up residence on his face. He looked at Tracou almost mockingly, his lips occasionally going flat in an attempt to stem any chuckles.
"Get into bed and I'll tell you a bedtime story."
Tracou quirked an eyebrow. Was he being serious? His mother had stopped telling him stories at his bedside before he had hit puberty. If this was some kind of Winlean joke, he didn't get it.
"Go on," Yash prompted.
Suppressing a sigh, he slunk into the bed. After a night of sitting up on the hard stone floor of the castle, Yash's bed felt heavenly, but he had to resist. He got on his side and stared at the nearest wall.
"Long, long ago, each race only had one country," Yash began. "The elves lived in the west, the dezmek in the east, and the humans lived in between them in what is now Aodehn. But humans tend to quarrel.
"It was time for the humans to choose a capital. One faction hated the idea of having a capital or having permanent dwellings at all. They argued that the proper place for humans was nearly the same as animal's—moving with the seasons, finding food where they could. The other humans disagreed. This led to many fights before the southern faction, now called the Zeibr, broke off from the rest of humanity.
The rest of the humans were happy to build their capital in Shalen. But then came the question of who would rule...
Half of the remaining humans said that no one person could rule. The other half, married to the idea of having a king, found the thought of not having a single ruler frightening. One person can make decisions, though some may be bad. Multiple people bicker and struggle over nonsense. Better for things to get done, even if they're done poorly, than to hope a group of people get along."
Tracou huffed. So far he hadn't heard anything about a stag and the storytelling cadence of Yash's voice made it incredibly difficult to keep his eyes open.
Ignoring him, Yash pressed on.
"So again the humans split. Our ancestors went north. When we settled this land, we didn't understand the depth of the winters that would come to us. We wandered from place to place, huddled together for warmth. But the barren, frozen land gave nothing to us and our ancestors nearly perished.
"When the days were their darkest, our first king, King Vivaan spotted a stag in the distance. This stag, a gorgeous chestnut brown, with fruit hanging from its antlers, silently appraised our king. It then beckoned to him, gesturing with his antlers. He led us to what would become Dorssur and shared its fruit with us." Yash shrugged again. "That's the story, but I've never seen a stag with fruit growing on it."
Tracou yawned again. Stag with fruit on it. Dezmek liked snakes and Winleans liked stags. But what did elves like?
"I see you're still awake."
"I was nearly asleep," Tracou said politely.
"Well, you may here a knock on the door from time to time. That would be my uncle, King Ekayavan. I hope he doesn't disturb you, but his ill health has me concerned as you might imagine..."
"I understand."
Tracou scanned the area again. As he did so, Yash approached the bed. Leaning over it, he took a hunk of the mosaic tiles out of the wall, placed the key inside the hole lengthwise, and put the mosaic back.
There! He didn't even have to look for it! The spot on the wall, a dark honeycomb shape about as big as his head, hung right above the bed, Tracou couldn't keep a smile off of his face.
Yash turned around. "Oh, you look pleased. Go ahead and nap. I'll be working at my desk." He left Tracou alone behind the divider.
Tracou stiffly lay on his side, feeling his wand through his sleeve. He only had one chance here. If Yash caught him going through his things, everything would end. He had to take the key and leave without raising suspicion.
But he had to resist. Pendaer needed the disguise. Hopefully he hadn't left the tower or at least hadn't gone far away from it, otherwise he might not be able to maintain the disguise even if he was awake. And yet, if Yash decided to check up on him, Tracou had to look like he had fallen asleep.
He closed his eyes and bit his tongue hard. Now, finally, the end to this Winlean nightmare was within reach.