Fifteen – 05

“Marin—”

Phelan sighed and put his hand on Matt’s arm. “It’s okay,” he said quietly. “Let her go. She’s in a strange spot right now and it’s best just to let her deal with it however she feels is best.” I’ll deal with her being out of sorts later. Right now, I have this particular wrinkle to deal with. Phelan turned his attention back to Leviathan, trying to ignore the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. “I take it that none of you noticed the dead lindworm?”

“Is that what that was?” Leviathan looked thoughtful. “We did notice something out of the ordinary, but I’ve been slumbering for so long, it’s hard for me to know what’s normal and what’s not.”

“Right,” Matt said, his tone dry. “Because they were common when you were running around wherever you were running around.”

Phelan barely suppressed a wince. Leinth didn’t bother to suppress hers. She looked at Matt.

“Mesopotamia,” she said quietly. “He figured a bit there.”

“A bit,” Leviathan agreed with a faint, wry smile. “Though I was chased out of Canaan soon enough.”

“That tended to happen when Jehovah’s followers began filtering in.” There was a trace of bitterness in Leinth’s voice—one Phelan noticed because he’d heard similar traces of bitterness in the voices of others.

“They weren’t common even then,” Phelan said, forestalling further discussion on the subject. “You know that as well as any of us, Yam, and I’m not sure why you would think things had changed so drastically.”

“It’s been a long while,” Leviathan said. “Things could have changed.”

Phelan was fairly certain he felt a migraine coming on. He suppressed the urge to massage his temples. “Not that much,” he growled. “Trust me on that.”

“Out of completely morbid curiosity, who reached that deep?”

“I did,” Phelan admitted. “I knew that I’d overreached, but I didn’t have a choice.”

“The lady said it was a matter of life and death.”

“It was,” Phelan said, shifting uncomfortably.

“Whose?”

“Thordin,” Phelan said quietly. “It was to save Thordin.”

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