The elf blinked and seemed to come back to herself. It took her a moment to find words. “We should get the horses, before someone makes off with them.”
Not “I,” but “we.” Fern clung to that like salvation, however temporary it might be.
She glanced at her satchelful of letters, then caught Quillin’s earnest gaze. “I’m not ready yet.”
He nodded. “Well, if that changes someday, I take my summers in Cardus. Ask for me at the Red Roost.”
“I’ll remember,” she said.
They stood awkwardly for a while, before he bobbed his head and departed slowly down the street without a backward look.
“Are you sure?” asked Astryx, when he was beyond earshot.
“I’m sure.”
A long pause.
“You let her go.”
“I did.”
When they emerged from the town again to the forlorn cries of night birds, Astryx led them through the field, still mangled by battle and blood. The windmill stood stark and shadowy and still in the failing light.
They both stopped dead, lost for words as someone emerged from behind it leading two horses.
Someone small, in a coat made of pockets, wearing a huge grin.
She approached without hurry, halting a few paces away and studying them with crimson eyes.
“We goes when is time to be somewhere else,” said Zyll.
42
They briefly considered camping under the windmill, but by unspoken agreement, continued until they were out of sight of the place where Tullah had fallen.
Instead, they stopped a league or two onward in a copse of oak, and didn’t bother lighting a fire. Fern lay back on a bed of leaves with her torn cloak for a blanket. She stared through the shadows of balding branches at a sky salted with cold stars and did not sleep for a long time.
Tullah would not leave her mind, and when she tried to think past her to tomorrow, she found only a void.
When they rose before dawn in chill blue light, sniffling with the cold, Fern briefly considered asking Zyll why she was still there.
She knew what sort of answer she’d get, though—cryptic and short and deeply unsatisfying.
The last, brief leg of their journey was uneventful as dawn claimed the sky and revealed their destination creeping ever closer. They stopped once at a stream so that Fern could wash the blood from her cloak.
Then, at last, Amberlin’s gates ushered them inside.
Fern reckoned the city was at least thrice the size of Thune, all plaster and ruddy tiles, with not a thatched roof in sight. She’d never visited a place so huge, where nearly every structure had a second or third story. The Summerdusk festival was still in evidence, with bunting and ribbons and vendors aplenty, although the celebrations were winding down. Some stalls were shuttered or packing up, and there was a general air of the morning after a drunken carouse.
Astryx guided them through the streets in solemn procession. The roads were wide enough that they continued to ride side by side the entire way. The decorations, stages, and craft stands dwindled away as they passed into quieter districts.
When at last they arrived at the bounty office—Fern realized she had no idea what it was actually called—she studied the building. It looked like a small prison, with brutal, utilitarian construction and iron-barred windows. There wasn’t even a sign.
“Are we really doing this?” she asked.
Astryx dismounted and hitched both horses to the post out front. “I’m going to walk in the door and complete the journey. Beyond that . . .” She shrugged and glanced at Zyll in helpless perplexity. “I’ll do nothing at all.”
Making good on her words, she passed through the doorway and into the shadows beyond.
