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

really done anything to her. Regardless of what Alyse had done to him, she was his sister. It was the same reason he struggled with his father’s disappearance. “And my mother?” he asked. He’d thought so little about her since he’d been sentenced to the mines. She had never stood up to his father and had never been willing to argue when his father drank too much, or said too much, or any of the dozens of other things that his father had done over the years. Like Alyse, she had never intervened on his behalf, almost as if she didn’t care what happened to him.
    “She remains in Lower Town,” Jessa said. “She’s safe, if dirtier than you remember.”
    “What happened?” he asked. “Where is Alyse?”
    Jessa looked over to Brusus and let him answer. “When Jessa sent word that she’d gone missing, I began my search,” Brusus said. “Lower Town can be dangerous, especially to someone who’s not prepared for it. Like you, she lived her entire life above us, sitting closer to Upper Town than the docks.”
    “I’ve been safe enough,” Rsiran said.
    Brusus smiled sadly. “You’ve had help. You have people who care about you, and who want you to do well. Do you think that your sister has the same? You came to Lower Town because you wanted to. Your sister came here because she had to. There is a difference, and it is not insignificant.”
    “How do you know that she’s gone?” he asked.
    He presumed that she was still working for whomever she’d been working for when he’d run into her, hidden in some part of Lower Town where they would never find her. What if Jessa had simply overlooked her?
    That didn’t change the fact that, something had happened to her, Rsiran wanted to know. She was his sister, even if she never managed to get past the fact that he could Slide. There was a connection there. One that she might not understand, but one that if Rsiran were honest with himself, he still felt.
    “Because the man she was working for hasn’t seen her in the last week,” Brusus said. “And the others working for him don’t know where she might have gone.”
    “You don’t know what that means,” Rsiran said. “We should go talk to the man she’s been working for together… find out what he knows—”
    “There’s no need to do that,” Brusus said.
    “But if he knows something about Alyse—”
    “He doesn’t. I’ve asked.”
    Rsiran pushed back from the table. “How do you know he’s telling the truth? What if he’s trying to keep something from you?”
    “I can be persuasive,” Brusus said simply.
    Rsiran stared at Brusus, realizing that Brusus could have Compelled or simply Read the person Alyse worked for. Brusus would know, even if someone didn’t want to talk. There weren’t many with his ability to augment their minds with heartstone, or even lorcith, to keep from allowing a Reader access. Some man along Lower Town would certainly not be able to protect himself if Brusus wanted answers.
    “What do you know?” Rsiran asked.
    Brusus leaned forward and rested his hands on the table. “She hasn’t been there in days. She’s considered reliable, a good worker, and has never not shown up for her work. The fact that she didn’t tells him that something either happened—not all that uncommon in Lower Town—or that she simply decided not to come to work for reasons known only to her.”
    “She needed the work,” Rsiran said.
    Brusus nodded. “That’s the way it appeared.”
    Rsiran looked to Jessa. “What do you think happened? Was it Josun?”
    But even as he asked, he wondered if maybe it might not be. What reason would Josun have to reappear in the city after Firell freed him? Rsiran doubted that Josun would risk coming after him so quickly, but what did he really know? And if it was Sarah and Valn…
    Jessa might not want to answer, but she would. For him, he knew that she would.
    Jessa sighed. “I don’t know. I thought maybe she’d moved on, gone to another