Chapter 239: A Shroud of Lace
Siobhan
Month 9, Day 12, Sunday 1:00 a.m.
Siobhan stopped on the wide street in front of the canal entrance through the northern white cliffs and looked around for anyone out late enough to notice her.
Pain prickled up through Siobhan’s shoulders, into her neck and the base of her skull. With a wince, she rolled her neck and rubbed at her muscles, trying to relieve some of the tightness. Her eyes were dry and faintly gritty, but neither blinking nor yawning soothed them. It had been a week already since she refreshed her sleep-proxy spell, and the fact that the fatigue was slipping through so clearly showed Siobhan just how far she still needed to go to catch up to Liza’s skill. ‘All the stress today was as bad as casting for a few hours straight. And it wasted my time and kept me from actually casting the sleep-proxy.’
She resolved to do so in the morning, after she got back to Liza’s and had a chance to take a nap. ‘Next time, I need to refresh the spell earlier, before it gets so strained that I need to rest first.’
Siobhan crossed the street, and over the bridge at the base of the cliffs, and then passed under the towering white stone. When she got to the place where they had convened before, only Kiernan was there.
He had been pacing back and forth, and jumped when he noticed her, then nodded formally and put his hands in his pockets. After a second of silence, he pulled his hands out of his pockets and instead crossed his arms.
Siobhan eyed him curiously, but when she determined he had no intention to speak, she turned to press her back against the wall and closed her eyes. After a few minutes of waiting for Thaddeus, her scattered and anxious thoughts grew too uncomfortable to remain cooped up with, and she turned her attention to her shadow instead. First, she practiced sensing through it, which had grown much easier than when she first attempted it.
She made it harder by sending it back the way she had come, and then around a few corners, over the bridge, and into an alley on the other side of the street to explore around. In the past, she wouldn’t have been able to do this. Originally, she couldn’t send the spell around blind corners or beyond the range of her vision. She wasn’t sure why it was easier now. ‘It could be that I’ve memorized so many of the details of the city that my grasp on its location remains firm. But it’s probably the fact that if I can see with my shadow where it goes, I do not need to see with my eyes to direct it. Very useful.’