Wayfinder by C. E. Murphy Read Free Book Online Page B

entirely new.
    He wasn’t
lying
. It was simply that his expectations lay so completely opposite her own as to be astonishing. Lara worked past the emotion to respond with cool certainty: “No. You won’t.”
    “I—” Ioan, as astounded by the refusal as she was by the ultimatum, broke off, then scowled in an excellent mimicry of Emyr. “You are alone, Truthseeker, and in the heart of my city. How do you expect to stop me from taking it?”
    Lara heard Emyr’s guards shift, closing ranks, preparing to fight. That was answer enough, but the staff thrummed with anticipation that warmed her spine. Emyr had said it abhored a Seelie touch. Even if Lara herself couldn’t stop Ioan with words, the staff itself seemed likely to reject him. “Do you really want to test me, Ioan?”
    His lip curled and smoothed again very quickly, as if he’d hoped threat alone might cow her into giving up the staff, but he was wise enough not to press the matter. Lara nodded, satisfied, and went on. “I don’t trust any of you with it. Not you, not Emyr, maybe not even Dafydd. You all have your own agendas. I’m the only outsider.”
    “My agenda,” Ioan said through his teeth, “is merely the survival of my people, Truthseeker.”
    “By which you mean the Unseelie, despite having argued that Seelie and Unseelie are all one race not two minutes ago.”
    Chagrin flushed Ioan’s cheeks. Lara rolled her eyes. “I’m hardly going to give you the staff so you can commit genocide. What I will do is collect every puzzle piece I can and put them together to make the clearest picture possible before doing anything.”
    “What gives you the right,” Aerin murmured from the sidelines.
    Lara splayed a hand in exasperation. “Dafydd does, by asking me to come here and solve Merrick’s murder in the first place. You all do, by your word for what I am.
Truthseeker
. You can’t give me that title and then not expect me to go seeking the truth. And you may have thought I would fetch and deliver this staff to you, Ioan, but you yourself named it Worldbreaker. I don’t believe any neutral truthseeker with a weapon like that in her hands would be inclined to offer it to an individual with an ax to grind. What does it take to bring someone back from the … healing waters?” Lara chose the less ominous phrase deliberately. “Is it a spell? Can we bring Hafgan and Dafydd here like the worldwalking spell brought me here?”
    Aerin, softly, said, “No one returns from the Drowned Lands,” but Ioan raised a hand to silence her.
    “No one returns without help,” he agreed, “but that doesn’t mean no one returns. There are trials to be faced, but they must be faced even when bringing someone to the healing waters. The petitioner must be found worthy.”
    “And if they’re not?” Lara wished she hadn’t asked even as the words slipped out. The pitying expressions around her answered as fully as she might need. “Well, you were trying to save Dafydd’s life and you were found worthy. I’m trying to find the truth of what happened to this world, so hopefully that’ll be enough to see me through. I want you to agree to a cease-fire while I’m gone.”
    “What makes you so certain we’ll allow you to go?” This time it was Emyr with the half-made threat.
    Lara’s eyebrows rose. “Aside from me intending to bring back your son and heir?”
    “And my old enemy,” Emyr pointed out. “Perhaps the loss of one is worth the loss of the other.” Aerin’s face tightened, but she held her tongue as Emyr continued. “You are an outsider, Truthseeker, with an agenda of your own. You returned the staff, a dangerous weapon, to the Barrow-lands, and I have no way of knowing you won’t offer it to my enemy or destroy my lands if you’re allowed to run unchecked.”
    The staff was suddenly warm again, eager to fulfill Emyr’s expectations. Lara reached for it, moving slowly because she knew the action could be seen as aggressive, and