Stolen Compass (The Painter Mage Book 4) by D.K. Holmberg Page B

were many, each difficult to put together. I didn’t know exactly why my father had chosen Conlin, or why the shifters made a point of working with him, but I was well aware of Jakes’s refusal to do anything that he considered going against the Trelking. Was it that he feared the Trelking, based solely on his reputation, or was there was some other reason?
    “Pretty nice guy, isn’t he?” I shot Devan a look. She had remained mostly silent. It wasn’t like her, not around her father, but I think she worried about him trying to force her across the Threshold. Both of us knew we wouldn’t have been able to stop him if that’s what he wanted. Maybe stopping him wasn’t what we should be focused on. If we could stay away from him, at least away from his reach, we could buy time to learn, maybe even enough to keep him from forcing her to marry the Druist Mage.
    “He is one of the Protariat. That does not require him to be a nice guy.”
    I started to smile, thinking Jakes was making a dumb joke, before I realized that he was completely serious. “What’s the Protariat?”
    “If you don’t know, then that’s not my place to answer.”
    I snorted. Great, another freaking magical mystery, only this one was about the Trelking. It was one I might have to ignore. There was no way I was going to try to learn more about the Trelking. I needed to know how to stay away from him, and I needed to know about how to stop the Druist Mage. Anything other than that didn’t really matter.
    “Why did the Trelking make the crossing?” Jakes asked.
    I considered not answering. Maybe I could trade the reason why for more information, but seeing the way Jakes stared at me, the focused and intense expression on his face, made me decide it would be better if he simply knew. Devan and I needed Jakes on our side. “He wants me to find something my father protected for him.”
    “The Elder held many things here.”
    That was news to me. When Jakes had called my father the sort of magical defender of Conlin, I hadn’t realized that he meant it so literally. “Things required by the Protariat?” When Jakes didn’t answer, I smiled and tried a different tact. “Where did he keep things? Because what the Trelking asked about wasn’t in the shed or in the house.”
    “Are you certain? There are hidden places that only the Elder would know.”
    Yeah, of course there would be. The house was pretty clear. Reaching the basement had only required that I had gained the necessary skill with arcane patterns. The Elder hadn’t made it so difficult that the basement was off limits, not like some of the challenges he’d left around the city. Taylor had solved the mystery of the statues in the park, though Jakes had known about them—at least about the doorway buried in the park—without needing the book for answers. We’d learned of the shed only by chance. Without the golden key he’d left me, I wasn’t sure we would have discovered the shed. What else might be out there? The pattern Taylor had discovered in the trees was part of yet another mystery. I’m sure my father had other things scattered throughout Conlin, but they were probably too difficult for me to find, at least on my own.
    “How many hidden places in Conlin do you know of?” I asked Jakes.
    “I was never privy to that. My father knew the Elder, I only knew of him.”
    And his father had died in the hunter attack. I wondered if he still held that against Taylor. Jakes never really made a point of saying it, but how could he not? Had Taylor not come to Conlin, and had she not attempted to open the doorway, the elder Jakes would still be alive. And then I could have some of the answers I needed.
    But there was another person in Conlin who might know, the one person I really hadn’t taken the time to question. Tom had trained with my father. It would only make sense for him to know something about what my father might be hiding here, especially since the Elder had placed