“Afternoon.” Baylen waved with his tail from behind the shop’s counter, a book open before him. “Did Halfrida send you to help out with the plumbing while Geezer’s away?”
“Yes!” Celeste beamed at the shopkeeper.
It was the first time she’d truly smiled that morning, and while Reeve was glad to see it and his stomach fluttered like it had the night before when she’d been so cheery with the others, dread crept in right behind the bliss. Had he done something to keep her from smiling at him?
“We just need to get into your basement,” she said, squeezing the strap of her satchel, the apotrope inside. There—there was her anxiety, bubbling under the surface. She must have made some bargain with Halfrida the night before to do this job, and, like many things about the night, Reeve failed at recalling the conversation.
Baylen tipped his horned head, and an ear flicked slowly. “All right, but if you see anybody down there, best to just tell them Skulltail sent ya and let them be on their way.”
“Skulltail?” Reeve’s own voice brought back a thump in his head.
Baylen vaguely pointed to himself then lifted his finger to his lips.
Celeste was nodding, the corners of her mouth still curled but filled with fidgety eagerness. Reeve chalked up his lack of understanding to the half-melted way his brain felt, and a few moments later they were standing at the bottom of a steep set of stairs in a cool, dark chamber beneath Baylen’s shop, sans the keeper but surrounded by crates.
Reeve took a deep, grounding breath. The sooner they were finished with the task at hand, the sooner he could puzzle out what had happened the night before. A series of pipes ran along the closest wall that gave off an arcane pulse when he raised his hand to them. “The water looks like it comes from here.” Reeve called up divine arcana into his palm, and the pipes vibrated angrily. “And something’s definitely wrong with it.”
“We’re not really here for the plumbing.” Celeste had darted to the other side of the room, pulled open a crate, and was sticking her head inside.
But they were, weren’t they? Well, she wasn’t—she was looking for something. Reeve’s heart sank. “Did you lie to Baylen?”
“I didn’t intend to,” she said, pulling out a soft-looking, blue cloth from the crate and marveling at it with an appreciative noise before shaking her head and dropping it back in. “I was just going to ask if we could go into his basement, but I didn’t know how I was going to answer any of his questions about why, and then he set me up with the perfect reason, so Ihadto lie.”
“That’s a terrible excuse.”
She continued to poke along the wall, moving things on shelves and lifting lids. “Well, if we do end up fixing the plumbing, maybe it’s okay?”
“No, it’s definitely not.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, the headache coming back with vengeance. Maybe now was not the best time to chastise her when he was queasy with the thought he had done something disgraceful himself.
“Still feeling bad, huh? Here, have this.” As she crossed the room, she offered him a small vial. He didn’t bother to ask what it was, just uncorked it and threw it back. She hustled to the other side of the basement. “And if the worst thing I do is bend the truth a little, then maybe I’m not so evil after all.”
“Celeste, I don’t think—” He cut himself off as an arcane tingle ran down his throat. Clarity, at least a bit of it, washed over him, and then the very stark memory of the night before when he had decided he was going to kiss Celeste. Oh, by all the gods of light,had he?
“I knew it!”
Reeve spun to find her pulling back a tarp, revealing a tunnel into the deep darkness of the earth. She was smiling broadly, and it was such a nice smile with lips that he wanted to press his own to…for the first time? Or again? By Valcord’s Radiance, had he evenasked?
He meant to ask—Celeste, may I kiss you, it was that simple, certainly—but if he’d failed, or she said no, she would definitely be angry at him for pouncing on her anyway. But gods, no, no, he would never if she declined. Yet the desire had been so strong, and as much as Reeve strove to be virtuous, he was not perfect, he knew, he’d been told many, many times…
“You look upset.” Celeste frowned.
Upset was one word for it—upset at himself because the point of drinking all that ale that now made him feel so wretched was so he could work up the courage to ask, and he’d been fairly sure she was going to say yes, especially the more he drank. There were things he remembered plainly, the feel of her skin, touching her hair, speaking so softly and asking…askingsomething. But if they indeed kissed, why could he not remember that?
Valcord, take pity upon me and let me remember.
The god was silent, which wasn’t really different, but it especially stung in the face of his desperation.
Reeve swallowed, too many terrible possibilities swirling in his all too slowly unraveling mind, and whatever the truth, it wasnot good. No wonder she was acting so odd, though it probably didn’t help that she was speaking to him, and instead of responding, he was having a silent theological crisis.
“Okay, hear me out.” Celeste held up her other hand, fingers splayed. “I had a thought this morning—well, a bunch of them, actually—so I did some reading about arcana and dreams and the history of the town. Apparently, Briarwyke did used to be run on sieves, sort of how Geezer was saying it could be done, but they just stopped using them a couple hundred years ago. Something went wrong, but the journal only said that they sealed up the sieves and moved on.” She swallowed hard. “Halfrida mentioned last night that the buildings in Briarwyke have basements, but most haven’t been used for years, so that means there are many places that are dark, quiet, andundisturbed by timebeneath the village.” Well, if something had happened between them, she wasn’t saying, but she was filling up the void with a lot of other words.
Reeve cleared his throat when he realized it was his turn to say something. “Under the village. Right. And that’s a place wewantto go?”
“Probably not, but a sieve in need of nesting would.”
Oh, right, the sieve. The sieve they were meant to be catching. The danger he should have been focusing on instead of his own moral failings.
Reeve strode toward the opening behind the tarp, cooler air hitting him. The edges were roughly cut into stone and earth, but it was more than wide and tall enough to be passed through. “I thought we weren’t going to disturb his nest. At least not until Geezer showed back up.”
