“Gods,” breathed Viv.
She rushed to fiddle with the counter door, which stuck, so she gave up and vaulted it, reaching Fern in two strides.
The orc scooped her up and crushed her in a back-cracking hug that made Fern squeak.
“Gods,you’re all right,” Viv said.
Then she set her down and stared at her in consternation. She opened her mouth, but couldn’t seem to decide which question to ask first.
Instead, she turned to the rest of the shop and called, “All right, we’re closing early. Everybody out!”
There was a great deal of grumbling and a few hasty refunds, but in minutes, Legends & Lattes was empty but for the two of them.
Viv turned back to Fern and put her hands on her hips. Her cheeks were flushed, and she was breathing heavily, barely containing an inner turmoil. “I’m alive?I’m sorry? That’s all you could write?” she demanded.
Fern slowly opened the satchel at her side and withdrew a huge bundle of papers.
“Well, notall.”
Viv set aside another wrinkled page, glancing up at Fern where she waited across the table. A couple of Thimble’s cinnamon rolls languished on a plate nearby, but the bookseller couldn’t imagine taking a bite of one.
Fern hadn’t been silent for the two hours it took Viv to work her way through the letters, which she’d arranged mostly chronologically. Viv had plenty of questions, and there had been a lot of the journey Fern had never written down that she filled in on the fly.
“You got a lot wordier over time,” said Viv, with a quarter-smile.
Fern couldn’t find even that much of one. She shrugged helplessly. Viv hadn’t said a harsh word since taking a seat, but it still felt like a slow-motion flaying to watch her face as she absorbed every word Fern had poured onto paper.
Finally, Viv set the last page atop the pile and sighed.
They studied each other in silence, with the gnomish coffee machine hissing and ticking along in the kitchen as it cooled.
At last, Viv said, “You have no idea how pissed off I was. Just . . . leaving like that, without a word? I thought you were murdered in an alley. Drowned in the river. I pestered the Gatewardens forweeksuntil that first letter showed, and then, sure, I was relieved—but also a different sort of pissed off.”
“Yeah,” said Fern, miserably.
“It was aspectacularlybad four-word letter, as letters go,” said Viv, leaning on one arm and lowering her brows.
“Yeah.”
“But.” She rubbed her eyes. “Now, I think I know how Gallina probably felt when I quit our crew without even a backward glance. So, I guess that makes me a hypocrite. And seeing you again—alive and fine? It pushes almost all of that to one side. What’s left will die down. I know that. It’ll just take a little bit of time.”
Swallowing, Fern ventured, “Thank you,” in a very small voice.
“You didn’t write the end of it, though,” continued Viv, tapping the pile. “What happened with Astryx?”
“She wanted me to be her squire. Got down on a knee and formally offered and everything.”
Viv blinked at her. “Eight hells. And?”
“In . . . fewer words, I said that it wasn’t what I needed or wanted right now. And it was okay. Hard, but okay.
“Which is what I should have said to you before I got drunk and wandered off the map.” Fern gestured in the direction of Thistleburr. “I can’t dothis—the bookshop—anymore. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to again. I tried, and itshouldwork, anyone with eyes can see that, but I shrivel like a dead leaf inside to think thatthatis my life. Not because it’s wrong, or bad, or that it’s not worthy of me. That dream is just . . . notmineanymore, if it ever was, and I’m not even sure of that these days.”
She swallowed. “None of that would be so bad if I hadn’tpretendedit was. If I hadn’t led us all so far down that road. Let so many people I care about invest in it, until . . .”
“Hey, look—”
“No, I have to finish. Because that’s the part I need to apologize for.”
