“You called her theinfamousZyll. How infamous, exactly?” She popped a chunk of potato crusted in herbs into her mouth. Her eyes fluttered closed with pleasure, and she moaned in a way she instantly regretted.
The tapenti arcanist didn’t appear to notice the suggestive noise. He sat cross-legged again, patiently awaiting the use of a bowl. “Thievery? Skulduggery? Arson? Espionage? The tales are many. You have heard none of them?”
“Skulduggery?” Fern glanced skeptically at Zyll, who was now crouched very close to the Elder Blade, her pointed tongue out and a finger inching closer to his sheath.
“She appears in a place, and chaos follows. Magistrates deposed. Riots fomented. Treasures absconded with. Why, only two months gone, she made off with some kind of experimental relic from the college in Thune. You did not hear of this?”
“Before my time, maybe?” hazarded Fern. “I’m a recent transplant to the city. So, you’re after the same bounty as Astryx? It has to be a lot of sovereigns to go to all the trouble, right? Like, a hundred?”
The tapenti and the elf exchanged a meaningful glance.
“More?”Fern almost choked on a second piece of potato.
“It is not only the money,” Chak hastily amended. “There is the good of the Territory to think of.”
“The Territory,” scoffed Nigel. “You’re like all the rest, only out to gild your own name.”
“Nigel,” warned Astryx.
“But it’s true, my lady!” cried the sword. “Er, why is she touching me?” he asked in a worried tone as Zyll prodded the exposed steel of his blade.
“You’re hardly bothered by the gilding of mine,” replied Astryx, and with a sharp look at the goblin, she snapped Nigel’s blade all the way back into the sheath. He protested with an affronted—but muffled—grunt.
Fern returned her attention to Chak. “I guess I’m just surprised you won’t try this again. Never mind the fact that you invited us to dinner. For that much money, why wouldn’t you wait until dark and . . . you know?” She made a stabbing motion with her fork.
“Well. It would not be honorable,” he said, adjusting his vest. “I was bested fairly. Of course, there are many who would not see it that way, but I am not one of them. I will seek other adventures.”
Astryx nodded as though that was only obvious. She handed back her empty bowl. “And on that note, we should be going.”
“It is getting quite dark though, yes?” asked Chak, with a look of confusion. “Surely you will not set out until morning?”
Standing, and wearing a crooked smile, the elf replied, “Your honor is doubtless unimpeachable, but I still don’t plan to sleep within a league of you. Too many elves abandon common sense after the first few centuries.”
And with that, she folded up her camp chair and waved for Fern to do the same.
The bookseller stared forlornly into her own now-empty bowl, mourning in advance the loss of the warm glow of the cookfire and something that approached actual conversation.
Astryx didn’t appear to notice and made short work of hustling Zyll into the wagon and stowing her things.
Fern folded her chair and made to bid Chak farewell, when she found Zyll once again by the fire.
The elf turned from un-staking Bucket and started in surprise.
Her surprise, however, was nothing in comparison to Chak’s. He stared, bewildered, into the snaggle-toothed beak of the hazferou, which Zyll thrust toward him in a baleful bundle of feathers and fangs.
When he didn’t immediately move to receive it, the goblin waved it at him insistently.
The hazferou was not amused.
“I am sorry, I . . . do not want it,” Chak said.
If Zyll comprehended, she gave no indication.
Later, as the elf, the rattkin, and the goblin departed in the wagon—lit only by blue moonlight and the receding glow of Chak’s cookfire—Fern could just make out the tapenti staring after them with a hazferou held awkwardly in both hands.
11
When Astryx first mentioned Bycross, Fern assumed it would be some sort of crossroads of a village with an inn, a tavern—possibly one and the same—a Territorial Post–slash– carriage stop, and a handful of shabby buildings.
