Bucket whinnied as Astryx seized his bridle and brought him to an abrupt halt.
It was the first time Fern had seen surprise register on the elf’s face.
“How—?” Astryx stood with mouth agape, one hand still wrapped around bridle leather.
“—did it get here?” Fern finished for her, gingerly sliding several inches to the right and as far away from the bird as possible. “Yeah, I’d like to know that, too.”
Astryx’s expression hardened, and she reached for the haft over her shoulder, striding purposefully back toward the cart.
Zyll’s attention snapped to her approach, and she thrust her bound hands into the air and waved them significantly.
“The deal was that I’d let it live,” said the elf. “Not that I’d take it on as a traveling companion. Hazferou fancy the eyes of their prey, and I don’t like the idea of it fancying mine while I sleep.”
The goblin hissed something under her breath at the hazferou. It clucked throatily, and at a single insistent nudge from the goblin, hopped back over the seat and onto the tarpaulin in the cart, where it waddled in a circle and then settled down to roost in the valley where the canvas spanned two crates.
Astryx stopped and regarded both of them narrowly, hand still gripping the haft above the starburst pommel.
After a long moment, she dropped her hand from the sword.
“So . . . it’s staying?” asked Fern, hunched over and regarding the beast with distrust.
The elf stared at her levelly. “What’s a second stowaway, I suppose?”
“What was that you said about them fancying the eyes, though?”
“Perhaps you should have a conversation with Zyll about that,” replied Astryx with suspect cheer. She clucked to Bucket, and the cart got moving again.
To its credit, the hazferou made no menacing moves toward anybody’s eyes.
Their little caravan continued along the road as it curved northeast, up a series of switchbacks and out of the wooded valley, into an increasingly craggy series of bluffs. Stronger, colder winds tugged at Fern’s ragged red cloak, and low-lying mist poured slowly down the cliffsides until it tore away to form ribbons of cloud that glided above the valley below.
Fern stared back the way they had come, and for the first time could see the spare gleam of Thune’s fortress walls in the far distance, and the glittering path of the River Briar as it cut through the heart of the city and disappeared into the western haze. She’d hardly spent enough weeks in Thune for it to feel like a home, but after only four days away, her heart still ached for what she knew she had left there. Forwhoshe had left there.
“For the fucking mess I left behind,” she muttered to herself and dug her latest letter to Viv out of her satchel. Fern stared at it bleakly. “And now, I’m on a cart with a murder bird and a goblin with a mouth like a shark. A real improvement, Fern.”
It also wasn’t lost on her that every hour, every league they traveled, was one she’d have to painfully retrace at some point. There might as well have been a field of brambles behind them.
Her stomach growled loudly. Astryx had been free enough with the simple rations she had on hand, but the stone-hard bread and terrible cheese were a chore to eat, and none of it was a patch on Thimble’s cooking. Or, indeed,anyone’scooking. The elf didn’t seem to believe in the heating of foods. Fern was no chef, but she was increasingly appreciative of how many excellent ones she’d lived near.
The rattkin’s fur was grimy, and a network of scrapes and scratches stung beneath matted silver tufts. She prodded some of the longer wounds with a claw, hissing as she did so. “What I’d give for a gods-damned bath.”
She suddenly sensed Zyll’s gaze upon her and met crimson eyes with her own.
“Um,” she said.
The goblin cocked her head to the side, then shoved her bound hands into one of the many pockets that made up her coat. She fished around for a moment, tongue protruding, then, apparently dissatisfied, tried another. And another. Andanother,upon which she brightened and withdrew a fistful of what looked like aggressively moldy weeds.
Zyll extended them.“Gul tatuk.”
Fern glanced at Astryx’s back where she strode beside Bucket, and then at the tragic plants. “Um. What’s this?” She wondered whether Astryx had searched those pockets. She must have.
The goblin’s grin widened, and she waggled the handful significantly at Fern’s legs.
Tucking the letter back into her satchel, Fern tentatively reached a paw out to take the offered weeds, or herbs, or whatever they were. She sniffed. “Whoof. Smells like . . .” Actually, it smelled astringent. The scent tickled some memory in the back of her mind.
While the plants were truly dire in appearance, squeezing them between her fingers pressed some sort of sap or oil from the leaves.
She eyed Zyll one last time, and then muttered, “Oh, what the hells, it’s been nothing but bad decisions for days. The odds are in my favor for a turnaround.” With two fingers she rubbed some of the substance experimentally on one of her longest scratches. The smell intensified, heady and medicinal.
