Fern glanced around and at last spied a building she knew, a chandler’s shop only a few doors east of Legends & Lattes. She wasn’t lost. Hells, she could be back at Viv’s place in no time at all, if she wanted.
Fern imagined the warmth within, a cozy fire, the lingering scent of coffee underpinned by cinnamon.
She imagined Viv’s confounded expression when she opened the door to see Fern weaving on the step. Her easy smile when she ushered Fern inside.
The awkward silence, the halting, anxious beginning of the worst sort of conversation.
The way her smile would slip, and the light in her eyes would withdraw by degrees.
And suddenly Fern was moving, but not toward the shop.
In a trice, she lifted the tarpaulin on the cart and scrambled awkwardly inside before cursing herself—in a whisper, thank gods—for not removing the satchel first before she tangled in it on her way up.
Then she was on her back, hemmed in by crates and sacks, clutching the leather bag to her chest again. Her cloak was in rumpled disarray beneath her and wrapped around her tail. The canvas puffed up and down ever so slightly with every breath.
The horse stamped a hoof in surprise, but then fell silent.
She lay there for some minutes, holding every coherent thought at bay, focusing only on the rise and fall of the tarpaulin, the impossibly loud thudding of her heart.
No sounds came from without. Astryx did not return.
At last, the adrenaline leaked out of her, and the yammering in her head could not be staved off any longer.
“What in the hells, Fern! What in the fashionably fuckablehells! What is this? Really? Get your stupid ass out of this cart and march your paws down the gods-damned street like the grown rattkin you are andkeep your promise!”
Fern paused and listened. She heard nothing but the occasional shuffle of the draft horse a few feet west of her head.
“What were you planning anyway? To stow away and flee the gods-damned city? Are you so drunk that that seemsreasonable?”
She considered the idea. It seemed more reasonable than it ought to, actually, which was very distressing.Definitelydrunk.
Fern surprised herself with an enormous yawn.
“All right, that’s enough of that,” she whispered, and gathered her resolve. She braced a paw against the bottom of the cart and began to sit up—
—and froze as footsteps approached.
She lay back down as quietly as she could manage.
Shit. At least this time, she had the presence of mind to say it only in her head.
It was getting warmer under the canvas. The minutes ticked by as Astryx fussed with this and that. She heard the creak of leather, and the jingle of harness, an oddly soothing chime. The cart rocked on its wheels gently as Astryx adjusted something on the buckboard.
Fern waited.
And waited.
Andwaited.
And then she was asleep.
4
Fern awoke to the sight of an alligator grin and eyes the red of a harvest sunset in a round, green face.
And daylight. Painful,painfuldaylight.
Supine as she was in the back of the wagon, and boxed in on all sides by, well,boxes,there was nowhere to escape to but up, directly toward that fierce and deadly smile. A direction no right-thinking rattkin would choose.
