“Afterward,” said Astryx, as though stepping delicately from stone to stone, “if you find you’re still . . . hungry. Perhaps you’d like to continue onward. With me.”
Fern was seized by several different emotions at once—gratification, relief, fear . . . Excitement and trepidation in equal measure. And all with the sour aftertaste of her anger from earlier in the day. In other words, a real fucking mess.
“Afterward?” she said, more archly than she’d intended.
Astryx glanced at Zyll, who stared back at her with that savage smile and what Fern had no doubt was absolute comprehension.
To her credit, the elf maintained eye contact as she said, “After the bounty is delivered.”
And the rotten egg rolled off the plate.
“Why do we have to do this?” demanded Fern.
Astryx frowned. “I’ve already told you, I—”
“Yeah, yeah. You keep your covenants, youdo what must be done,” said Fern, unable to keep the exasperation from her voice. “That’s shit. That’s aslogan. What would it cost you to forget all thatjustthis once? What changes?”
“Everythingchanges! My life is built on principle because it has to be. It’s the only thing that keeps it stable after all these years. Every chip in that foundation leads to another, and another, and soon it’s cracked in two, and everything falls down around you.” The elf was trying hard to keep the heat from her voice and only just succeeding. “People come and go. Moments likethiscome and go. Live to five hundred, and then you’ll understand.”
Fern leaned forward over her crossed knees and planted her paws on the ground. “Bullshit. We’re not Tarimites. There’s no mad god that’s going to descend and consume the world if your principles get a little bent for a good reason.”
“And the alternative is what? Tossing everything aside because I don’t feel perfectly fulfilled at every moment? How is that working for you?”
The fire suddenly seemed overwarm.
“I guess well enough that you want me to stick around,” retorted Fern.
They gazed balefully at one another across the fire as the air between them distorted with the heat.
Zyll abruptly stood, letting her pocket-coat fall back to cover her shins and interrupting their staring match.
She glanced between them, mouth closed, annoyance glittering in her crimson eyes.
“Tua shunkata,”she declared, then marched away from the fire.
Before Astryx could ask, Fern sighed and explained, “She said we’re both fuckheads.”
Later, as she lay with her back to the fire and her eyes open, bruised and aching from Staysha’s battering, Fern realized she hadn’t answered Astryx’s question.
She wondered what the answer would have been.
38
The last leagues of the prairie were characterized by regretful quiet. Words were exchanged, but precious few, and those mostly practical.
As they drew closer to Amberlin, the gentle swells of the grasslands grew in amplitude, the mountains to the north melted away, and bastion oak began to appear, first in lonely ones and twos, then in copses, and finally conservative stretches of forest. Early autumn zealously burnished their leaves.
Other, larger roads materialized to join and widen their own, and they saw and passed their first fellow travelers since leaving the monastery. Most seemed to be farmers or merchants, but several fine coaches made an appearance as well. Astryx awkwardly asked Fern to loan her cloak to Zyll, which she did without complaint. The goblin didn’t protest, either, and kept the red hood up to shade her face.
The terrain rose gently over several hours into the first blush of dusk, increasingly wooded, until the trees drew away from the now wider and more trafficked road. Stone markers began to crop up at regular intervals beside the way. Little cottages and farms dotted the distance when the view was unobstructed.
When the slope began to descend again, Amberlin itself became visible in the violet haze of the horizon, a vast sprawl of white stone, red slate, and glinting copper, sprinkled with sparks of torchlight, that sprouted a thousand twists of chimney smoke. Satellite villages ringed it at irregular distances, all webbed together with a network of roadways, framing a patchwork of green-and-gold vineyards between. A white road broader than all the rest ran north-south between Amberlin and their own vantage point, meeting a spur of the city that extended like a finger to touch it.
A gorgeous twilight vista, framed by delicate shreds of cloud.
Fern couldn’t appreciate it in the slightest.
Now their imminent arrival was a painful inevitability, flanked by remorse on either side.
