Dawn Study (Soulfinders #3)(49)

Ari just stared at me.

“Ari,” I warned.

“I’ll talk to Janco.”

A vague response. He could talk to him about the weather and still keep his promise. As I set up my bedroll, I decided to wait for Janco, but once I slipped under the warm blanket, I struggled to keep my eyes open.

Janco woke me at dawn. I growled at him for waiting so long, but he batted his eyelashes at me, trying and failing to look innocent.

“I’m able to stand watch,” I grumbled.

“What a coincidence. So am I.” He beamed at me, then leaned in closer and lowered his voice. “What I can’t do is grow a baby inside me. Nor can I hatch an egg by sitting on it. I’ve the stained trousers to prove it.”

“Do you have a point?”

“I thought it was obvious.” Janco’s expression softened. “Take the rest when you can, Yelena. For the baby. There aren’t any guarantees that you’ll get a chance later.” He gestured to the rising sun. “Besides, it was a short night.”

He had a point. I gathered branches and made a small fire. In the daylight, the flames wouldn’t attract as much attention. The rest of the group woke and stretched while I heated water for tea.

“I already scouted the farmhouse,” Janco said. “It’s empty.”

“How can you tell?” Esau asked. “It was night, and the occupants could have been asleep.”

“No one was in the house, sleeping or otherwise engaged.”

Ari shot Janco a look.

“What? I was bored, and now we don’t have to tiptoe around.”

“Did you find anything?” I asked.

“The place has been abandoned. Not much furniture. Lots of dust and spider webs. Otherwise it was too dark to see.”

We ate a quick breakfast before heading to the cluster of buildings in the center of the fields. Weeds and a few small corn plants grew among the leftover brown stubble of last year’s harvest. Sunlight glinted off the drops of dew on the leaves. As the air warmed, the earth emitted a fresh scent of grass and dandelions. The heating season started in less than ten days, which meant the baby was about sixteen weeks old. I pressed my hand to the small bulge underneath my tunic. Soon I would start to show, and I’d no longer be able to hide my condition. Not that it mattered at this point. The Cartel found out about the baby when I’d been Bruns’s prisoner. And it certainly wouldn’t stop them from killing me.

A large porch wrapped around the two-story stone farmhouse. A wooden stable, a barn and two sheds huddled behind it. They all needed repair and a fresh coat of paint.

We split into three teams to search for any information on the glass panels and the location of a glass hothouse. Onora and I tackled the farmhouse. Like Janco had said, it was unoccupied. No squatters had taken up residence while Bavol was gone.

I started in the office while Onora checked the rest of the house. Reading through the files that had been tucked away in the desk’s drawers, I only found an invoice for services rendered, made out to Bavol Zaltana. It confirmed Bavol had used this address to send the glass panels. I’d been hoping for more information, but perhaps there would be some when we found the glass hothouse.

Onora shook her head when I asked if she’d discovered anything. Outside, we conferred with the others. Nothing.

“The soil is generative,” Esau said when I asked him. “Lots of worms.”

“Does this mean we’re at a dead end?” Mara asked.

“No. We’ll travel into the Avibian Plains and let Kiki sniff out the glass hothouse,” I said.

“Why didn’t we just do that instead of stopping?”

“There could have been valuable clues or information here. We still don’t know who the Master Gardener is or what else the Cartel’s been growing.” I peered at the horses. None of them except Kiki were Sandseed horses. Would they have trouble with the protective magic in the plains? What about the riders?

“I think I should go into the plains while you wait—”

“No,” Ari said. “We stay together.”

Janco tapped his chest. “And aren’t we immune? Ari and I have null shields, and Mara and Esau are distantly related to the Sandseeds.”

“I’m not sure that covers the horses,” I said.

“Kiki will take care of the horses,” Ari said with conviction.

“What about Onora?” I asked.

“Let her ride Kiki; she’ll protect Onora.”

I glanced at my horse. She bobbed her head in agreement. Outsmarted, I conceded defeat, and we filled our water skins before mounting and heading south into the plains. It didn’t take long to reach the border. The fields with their squat growth ended, and a blanket of long grasses spread over the rolling landscape. The mounds weren’t big enough to call hills, but there was nothing flat about the ground under Horse’s hooves.

Pulling up beside Kiki, I asked her, “Can you find one of those glass hothouses?” I imagined the structure in my mind, recalling the sweet smell of the white coal.

Unable to use her gust-of-wind gait because of the other horses, Kiki broke into a gallop instead. She set the pace, making wide, curving sweeps over the plains, each one dipping deeper into the interior. After two days of this, she stopped on the crest of a small hillock. In the distance, a glass structure reflected the sunlight.