“You’re a good friend, Cal. I hope to do a better job of holding up my end, even if I disappear for a while.”
“Well,” he observed. “I seem to recall that some friendships can stand a quiet stretch. Sturdy, I think we said.”
A long silence as they held each other’s hands in the cold, still, blue.
“Hm,” said Fern.
“Hm,” Cal replied.
EPILOGUE
Fern slid the blue, clothbound volume from the bookshelf with a little thrill and turned it over in her paws.
The cover, amidst a gilding of intertwined leaves, read—
The Straight Road in the Dark:
Travels with the Oathmaiden
by
Fern Teverlin
“You should sign it,” murmured Quillin, cocking his head close to hers.
“What?”
“You’ve got a pencil in there, don’t you?” He gestured at her satchel, which was, indeed, loaded with pencils and several bound notebooks.
“I can’t do that! That’s . . .vandalism!” she replied, horrified.
“Are you telling me that back when you had a bookshop, you would have been upset if the authors all signed their books?”
Fern blinked. “Well,no,but—”
“But, what? You’re an author. Your name’s already on the cover. Do you want me to go ask?”
“No!” she almost shouted. Then she continued in a near whisper, glancing furtively at the ancient gnome sorting things at the shop desk. “No. And my stomach just did a weird thing. Let’s go.”
Quillin shrugged, his eyes delighted. “I’ll give you two options. I’ll go ask for permission, or you can just sign it on the sly. Which is it going to be?”
Fern narrowed her eyes at him. “I don’t appreciate having to choose between mortification and crime.”
“Setting aside your definition of a crime, it seems suspicious that you have trouble choosing. I wonder what that says about you?”
As they left the shop moments later, Quillin still chuckling, she muttered, “Any second he’s going to come running out and call for a Warden.”
He put his arm around her shoulders. “I think we’ll escape the lawjustthis once.”
A sharp voice piped up from the pocket of Fern’s cloak. “If they do show, Fern still only has one stabbing on her record, and that was a technicality. We’ve got alongway to go before we can call it a respectable number,” said Breadlee.
“Tell me more about this ‘technical’ stabbing?” asked Quillin, looking amused.
“Well, it started with the wordfeculent,and I don’t even know what that means,” explained the knife. “So, I think it had more to do with the tone.”
Fern let their conversation fade from her attention as she glanced around the street, which was quite busy even at this late hour. Tall flick-lanterns lit the avenue in a steady, golden glow. It was strange to be in a place where everyone was about the same height—it had been quite some time since the Tarimite monastery. This was Fern’s first visit to the gnomish city of Azimuth, although she’d heard tales of it from Viv. She had difficulty imagining the orc tromping around the place like an apologetic giant.
Quillin had found a bit of what he liked to call “detective work” in Azimuth, untangling the subterfuges of multiple gnomish enterprises who were nose-deep spying on each other’s businesses. Better yet, they hadallhired him independently, unbeknownst to their competitors.
