Free Blood of the Watcher (The Dark Ability Book 4) by D.K. Holmberg Page A

when they returned. They must have known to follow you.” He looked at the walls of the mine. The walls seemed to have something like a faint glow to them. Rsiran suspected it was his newly enhanced Sight that allowed him to see the change, but he still didn’t have nearly the skill Jessa did.
    “Damn,” Jessa whispered.
    “Did you learn who they were?”
    She shook her head. “Not well enough to know who might have chased you to Elaeavn.”
    “Not just me,” he reminded.
    “You don’t know that they were the same ones that took Alyse. For all that we know, they’re separate issues.”
    The likelihood that there would be two different attacks at the same time seemed unlikely, but then again, the idea that there were multiple groups trying to gain access to the Elvraeth and what they stored in the palace would once have seemed equally unlikely. Even the idea of one other group trying to reach the palace would have surprised him, but that had been before he knew what he did now. In that way, he had been protected living in Elaeavn.
    “If they’re separate, then I still need to find out what happened to Alyse,” he said.
    “Only Alyse and not these other two?”
    They had to be connected, why else would Sarah and Valn appear in the city at the same time Alyse went missing?
    And he needed to know if they were the Forgotten or Venass. Though both wanted to use him, knowing changed how he approached them.
    He sighed, took another look at the mine, feeling the pull of the lorcith, before grabbing Jessa’s hand. “Are you ready?”
    “Where now?”
    “The smithy. I think that it’ll probably be safe to return from here to there. The alloy should shield us.”
    He hoped that it would, but what if it didn’t? What if he couldn’t be safe anymore? What if even Sliding had been taken from him as a way to keep Jessa and his friends safe?

Chapter 9
    “ T ell me again why you want to walk?” Brusus asked.
    Rsiran shook his head at his friend as they made their way along the street. It was true that Rsiran rarely walked anywhere. Why walk when Sliding took him all that much faster? More than that, he had the need to practice, to improve his Sliding. Or, he had, until he began to fear the safety of Sliding.
    “I told you what I saw.”
    “You don’t know that they can track you. Didn’t Della tell you that ability was rare?”
    “I don’t know much about that ability,” Rsiran said. “Only what I had heard. Why risk it?”
    Brusus sniffed. “Because you have me walking through here ,” he said, pointing at the alleyway in disgust. “This place… If we could have found you a smithy anywhere else, I think we would should have.”
    Rsiran glanced back down the street, toward the old smithy he’d taken over and made his own. He had to admit that it felt good in some ways to actually walk. “This location has its advantages. I mean, who in this neighborhood would bother reporting the noise to the constables? And why would the constables bother to believe them even if they did? Besides, this keeps me out of the eye of the Smith Guild.” He wondered if the guild even knew of his smithy. They had to have kept records of all the smiths in the city. Would they continue to track the ones that had supposedly shut down?
    “That was part of the appeal at first.”
    “Where else would we find a smithy like this?” Rsiran asked with a laugh.
    “No place safe,” Brusus answered. They turned onto a wider street and started down toward the docks. “You sure this is what you want to do?” he asked.
    Rsiran had thought about it for the last few days. “I think this is what I need to do.”
    “And Jessa?”
    “She isn’t convinced.”
    Brusus watched him a moment, his face pulling into a broad smile. “Not convinced? You didn’t tell her, did you?”
    Rsiran didn’t answer right away. What was there to say? That he hadn’t told Jessa he intended to come down to this part of Lower Town, or that he wanted to know