It was as though the telling had knocked all the rust off her memories, and she’d lived them again. She leaned back on her paws, panting, eyes locked on Astryx, who stared back just as intensely.
There was a glimmer in the elf’s face. Of recognition? Or longing? Maybe both?
Then the Oathmaiden’s eyes shifted, the lines of her body came alive, and the spell was broken.
“Zyll.”
Fern followed her gaze to the cushion upon which the cloaked goblin had sat slack-jawed only moments before.
Empty of all but crumbs.
Also, all the silverware on the table appeared to be missing.
13
In the bewildering maze of Bycross, Fern had no idea how Astryx could possibly locate a goblin in a cloak who didn’t want to be located, but the Oathmaiden moved without hesitation. She surged to her feet, snatching up Nigel and hurling a fistful of coins onto the tabletop, and then she was across the restaurant and through the heavy curtain shrouding the doorway.
“I, um . . . S-Sorry?” stammered Fern, shrugging an apology at the bewildered patrons gawping at them. She scrambled off her cushion and darted after the elf.
Fern was already puffing by the time she’d ducked out of the curtain and into the lantern-lit hallway lined with brightly painted arches, handcarts, and bins of exotic vegetables.
Astryx’s shadow stuttered in the brighter light reflecting around a far corner, and Fern hurried to follow. “Why the fuck am I doing this?” she panted, hitching up her hem with one paw. A crazed giggle wanted to climb up her throat.
She’d managed to close some of the distance when Astryx paused to scoop something up from the stone floor.
The oilskin cloak.
Tossing it over her shoulder and without a backward glance, the elf was off around another corner.
“Wait!” cried Fern, but Astryx didn’t bother to reply, or didn’t hear her. “Hells. I’m too old for this!”
Which was depressing, given that the elf was over twenty times her age.
After several wrong turns and hallways much longer than she remembered on the way in, Fern arrived at the exterior road and stumbled to a stop in the thicker traffic there. Her lungs seemed packed with ice, and her vision had gone all swimmy.
Astryx was nowhere to be seen.
“Godsdammit.”
A jostle from behind nearly sent her sprawling, and she spun to stare at the back of a long-haired orc warrior whose broad shoulders seemed familiar.
“Viv?” murmured Fern.
But of course it wasn’t. As the orc turned, it was clear that she was younger, with a score of black braids and a frosty gaze.
“Watch your tail.” The warrior gave her a dismissive once-over, before striding off into the crowd.
Fern stared after the departing orc momentarily, before a rising commotion from up the cliff face met her ears. She spied a group of black-clad Four Fingers mercenaries hustling toward it, and it became obvious which direction she needed to go.
“Chaos follows,” she muttered, and with a groan, began the weary jog upward, satchel banging at her hip.
Fern’s jog had devolved into an urgent stagger by the time she reached the source of the fuss, about three quarters up the ascent to Bycross’s peak.
A massive concavity in the otherwise sheer cliff face created something akin to an open town square, if that town square happened to feature a deadly drop on one side. At least thirty strides above, enormous red banners bearing the Bycross symbol snapped and crawled across the vertical stone.
A statue of some important, famous—or very wealthy—stone-fey dominated the square, one hand upraised in supplication, the other clasping the shoulder of a slumped figure at her side.
A mass of people blocked Fern’s eye-level view, so she wormed her way forward until she emerged with a gasp into sudden open space.
