And then Amma, the girl he had abducted, dragged across the realm, and threatened to murder, actually rolled her eyes at him.
Taken aback only a short moment, he grit his teeth. “You don’t believe me? Behold.”
Damien swept his gaze over the path ahead. There were two older men playing a game of dice outside a shop, a rotund woman trading goods at an elderly woman’s stall, and just a few paces farther from all of that, a child sitting on an upturned pail, clutching something that looked sticky and sweet in both hands, mouth open, ready to shove an entire pastry down his eager gullet.
Damien flicked a hand through the air, a nothing gesture for a nothing spell, and a shadow that had been only casting itself languidly in the very last rays of the sun snapped to life. Barely perceptible to the untrained eye, of which all in this town certainly were, the tendrils of airy blackness shot across the road, smacking the child’s hands. Even the stickiness of the disgusting morsel couldn’t keep it in the child’s grip, and into the dirt the pastry bounced once, then twice, and right into the road where Damien’s knoggelvi took a slightly longer stride to smash it into the earth. Just as they passed, the child broke into a terrible yet sweet wail.
Amma’s mouth fell open. “That was atrocious.”
He scanned the road behind them, but the villagers were occupied with their own work, none even paying attention to the sobbing child. Kaz’s body was still shaking, this time with laughter. Damien cracked a smile. “It really was, wasn’t it?”
“You need to replace that,” she said, twisting back to him.
Damien only scoffed, searching once again for the local inn.
“What if that’s the only food he has?” she snapped.
He refused to look at her, perfectly capable of imagining what kind of face she might be making, but a restless sensation crawled into his gut anyway. He pushed it away, slightly harder to do this time than the times before. “Well, then I suppose he won’t eat.”
“Fine, I’ll replace it myself.” She tugged on the knoggelvi’s reins to pull it to a stop, but predictably it kept right on going alongside Damien’s.
“With what copper?” he asked.
She struggled a moment longer with the reins, ignoring him, then exhaled harshly, leaning forward and swinging a leg over the mount’s side.
“Didn’t you learn your lesson the last time you fell off that thing?”
Amma had no effort to spare for him, focused wholeheartedly on dismounting the still-moving animal. With a squeak, she let go and hit the ground, but managed to stay on her feet. She planted her hands on her hips and grinned as Damien and the knoggelvi continued down the road.
“Get back here,” he called, a little less bored, and a little more incensed.
She acted as though she didn’t hear him, though the scrunch to her nose told him she did, and headed for the child who had devolved into sniffling and rubbing at puffy eyes. Damien would have been impressed with how little she appeared to care if it hadn’t been him she were defying, but it couldn’t stand. Plus, what would she do to replace the pastry—steal another? That would only cause a whole heap of trouble he would have to get her out of which was completely unacceptable. He was already running everything off course for her: there was no way he was getting tied up in the scheme of a rotten, little thief who just happened to get in his way. Again.
“Sanguinisui, get back on your mount.”
Amma’s form stiffened so abruptly she nearly fell right over. She turned on a heel and marched back up to the moving knoggelvi’s side, reached up to its back, and scrambled. It seemed for a moment she would never make it up, being jostled about by just the beast’s slow stroll, but then she finally made purchase against its side with a hand tangled in its mane and pulled herself over like she were saving herself from rushing waters at her feet.
Damien watched her panicked toil with a quiet amusement until she was finally draped over the knoggelvi’s back on her belly, falling lax with a sigh. She lay there for a moment, catching her breath, and he continued to stare at how she’d perched herself, hind end upward, the desire to bite her swiftly returning.
She pushed up onto her elbows and glared at him. “I hate when you do that.” Damien opened his mouth to protest that he had not actually been staring at her ass, and how would she even know, she wasn’t even looking, but then she flopped back down hard and moaned, “That word makes me feel awful.”
The knoggelvi snorted from beneath her, giving her another jostle.
Damien swallowed, and the guilt, which he was still failing to properly identify, snaked around in his stomach. “Well, do what I say, and I won’t have to use it.”
“I’m not talking to you anymore,” she grumbled into the knoggelvi’s side.
“What a terrible loss for us both.” He peeked over at her one last time. “And sit on that thing properly, you’re drawing far too much attention like that.”
The place that would serve as an inn was just ahead, so when Amma grumbled something pithy about how it wasn’t her drawing all the attention and didn’t actually sit up, he chose to ignore her tiny rebellion. Frankly, he might prefer her that way, and was at least a little disappointed when they were finally able to dismount.
Damien had the masked knoggelvi led to the stable at the building’s back by a young boy who had been sweeping the front stoop. He boy retched when they knoggelvi passed gas around the corner, even the increasing breeze of the coming storm not enough to save him. The two went inside, Kaz trailing behind on four legs, tongue hanging out.
A tired woman with a load of greying hair bundled atop her head and an apron covered in overfilled pockets was wiping down a countertop just by the door. She brightened when he offered her coin for two rooms and bustled them over to a small table in the corner of the cramped front chamber.
It had been some time since Damien had been in a human tavern in the realm, though this barely qualified. A small fireplace lined one wall, its flame the only light, and stairs ran up another over a low doorway into the back. The walls were covered in drying herbs and little, hand-painted signs with laconic yet syrupy sayings in misspelled Key.Karee on, mayk mary, adoor trooly, one read, beside it another with an image of an hourglass that had run out and the wordstyme for wyne.
The keep hustled away into the back room to fetch them meals as a quiet rumble of thunder let them know they had made it just in time. Amma stared down at the table, sitting with her limbs all scrunched up and her face drawn into a frown. Still angry—shocking. When the woman came back, she placed two bowls of lumpy stew before them, dug out spoons from one of her many apron pockets, and told them she would prepare the rooms upstairs, bustling off just as quickly.
