Page 36 of Leviathan's Song
My breath caught in my throat. “What does it say?”
Levi closed his eyes for a long moment and swallowed before opening them to glance at my face. He set his jaw and shook his head briefly as he focused on the tiny paper. “I want to have Grim check my translation first. He’s always been better with languages than me.”
That might have been true, but I had a feeling he had a good idea what the note said.
“Let me take this home with me tonight and have him look at it. You should get some rest tonight, and I’ll bring it by your shop whenever you want in the morning,” he said.
I felt a little uneasy about letting it go. It was such a small scrap and easily lost. “I should probably take it to the Enforcement offices tomorrow.” He could probably see the reluctance on my face.
“I’ll take good care of it, I promise. I don’t have any jobs tomorrow, so I’ll go with you.” He leaned forward and brushed a kiss against the side of my mouth.
After I stepped through the Gate, I sent a spectral for Sidney—to check on her and let her know about the note. Her return message was too garbled to make any sense of. Not for the first time, I wondered at just how sentient the spectrals were and what, if anything, they made of our messages to one another.
Chapter 13
I gotto the shop early, wanting to get as many custom orders finished as I could to make up for all the time we’d been taking away from the shop. Since today was Friday and I’d be traveling back into Oar’s Rest today, I might even need to work over the weekend, depending on how long it took.
I made it to the shop just after six a.m. and lost myself in my list of projects, completing several by the time Sidney wandered in at nine. She had dark circles under her eyes and one glance at her grumpy countenance told me to let her finish the coffee she was carrying before engaging her in conversation. I watched her slump into her chair and drop her head back so her mouth gaped open like a goof. Her hair was mostly loose today, and her braids looked like she’d slept on them.
My self-control was never my best feature. “You know, someday the spectrals are going to rise up against us, and when they do, their first victims are going to be the people who made them carry drunken gibberish.”
Sidney cracked open one puffy eye and focused it on me. “You make it sound like they don’t have a choice in whether or not they deliver messages. We pay them.”
“Okay, well, I don’t have any idea what your response was trying to say last night.”
“That makes two of us.” She dropped her head over the back of the chair again, so I went back to work while she finished her coffee.
As I was finishing up an alchemist’s string of worry beads, Sidney tossed her empty cup in the trash can and set to separating out sections of her hair and braiding it back from her face. “Josh decided he was going to join me at the bar last night, and I was dumb enough to let him.”
Josh and Sidney were competitive in everything, and drinking was no exception. I bent back to labeling the worry beads when I lost the battle to contain my grin. The last thing we needed was Sidney grumping about me laughing at her self-inflicted hangover this morning.
“How’s his leg?” I asked, changing the subject.
“He’s fine. Good as new.” Shifter healing was the envy of nearly every species. “He was as surprised as we were when I told him about the sprite.”
“Mmm, do you remember my message about the note I found?”
“Vaguely.” She tied off her braid and turned to face me. “Do you have it with you?”
I shook my head. “Levi wanted to have his roommate translate it. He said he’d bring it back this morning.”
“Well, text him, already. Tell him to hurry up. I want to see it.”
I handed her my finished project to complete the paperwork for and retrieved my phone. Levi’s magic brushed up against me about an hour later, and I hurriedly finished setting the citrine stone in a hair ornament. I had the last clamp shut, and the stone powered up by the time the bell rang above the door.
I couldn’t help being a little embarrassed about the excitement I felt when he stepped into the shop. Truly, I’d only seen him just a few hours ago, but when he met my eyes and gave a little smile, I felt it in my chest. How was it possible to feel this greedy for someone I’d known for so little time? My eyes skimmed over his form, taking in his damp, tousled hair and his slouchy, casual, athletic clothes. They took me back to the bliss of falling asleep in his arms the other night, and I felt a disappointed pang at the knowledge that we couldn’t do it again any time soon.
If ever.
But then he pulled a plastic baggie with a paper in it out of his pocket and laid it on the countertop, one corner of his mouth turned down. “I didn’t want to risk losing the tiny note, so I put it in here along with Grim’s translation.” His eyes bounced back and forth between Sidney and me.
I stood and thanked him, taking the bag and returning to my desk. I retrieved the larger piece of paper from the bag first, unfolding it to reveal neat, slashing print. Sidney leaned over and snatched the bag to look at the tiny note left inside while I read.
Golemancer-
As I write this, it has been eight days since the kelpies attacked our homes. It has been eight days since my husband and our daughter were killed beside me while trying to flee The Deep. Eight days of discussions and no action by the council that claims to protect us but does nothing. Every moment they waste means more danger to my people and less chance that my only remaining child will ever live to see adulthood or that we will have a chance to restore my city someday.
The mer are deaf to our cries, and so I come to you. My only hope is that you will create something for us that will step in where our current protectors fail. I will bring you the largest heartstone I can hope to carry through the Void. I know I can’t return, but I have already died, eight days ago when my people fell. I do what I must to protect my son. Please don’t let this decision be in vain.
