Fifty-Six Stormlight, Shadow, and the Veil Between Worlds

FIFTY-SIX

Stormlight, Shadow, and the Veil Between Worlds

SAMUEL

I ducked under a low beam and peered through the shadows. I was in what might have been the wardroom, with a long table, toppled chairs and a scattering of hammocks illuminated by several fae dragonflies. Their shattered lantern rolled across the deck as I lingered just inside the doorframe, blocking my quarry's escape.

"Mr. Hae," I called. "Shall we continue to chase one another like children, or face one another like men?"

Hae shifted on the other side of the cabin. His signature in the Other was particularly murky now, more brown than green, and it cast little illumination.

I slipped more deeply into the Other. He must have done the same, for his form solidified—masculine and clad, like me, in billows of Tide-amplified power. The walls of the ship thinned around us, retaining only a vague ghisten glow, and the lights of other mages and creatures beyond took on greater strength.

"Where is Enisca Alamay?" Hae asked. His voice was still foreign, though I had seen his face many times in my memories and visions. "She fled with you. I sensed it."

"She is well. She proved to be a valuable ally."

Hae's expression turned stormier, and I knew I had struck a chord. But precisely why eluded me, chased by vague visions of a partnership and travel, side-by-side. I sensed nothing romantic between them, but there was a loyalty, an expectation now thwarted and worthy of the worst of punishments.

"She is still aboard your ship with the documents," Hae concluded, straightening slightly. "No matter. I will see to her once I am through with you."

I kept my expression composed. The documents? Alamay had stolen back Faucher's documents, and they had been aboard my ship the entire time?

Whether or not he sensed my line of thought, Hae's lips twisted smugly. "It has been a fine chase, Mr. Rosser. But the Tide will not last, and I have much to accomplish."

A pistol cracked—not now, but in the moments to come. In the present I dodged, seeking the protective shadows outside the cabin and farther up the passage, but Hae was a breath ahead of me. He surged across the space with preternatural speed and filled the passageway behind me.

I had the briefest of moments to register a new glow, outlining the shape of a pistol in Hae's hand—its ghisten wood the palest indigo and its metals infused with a Sooth's faded green.

Then Hae's finger closed on the trigger. There was no visible muzzle flash, not on this side of the worlds. But there was pain.

And a spreading stain across my shirt.