Zyll blinked lazily, which seemed like all the Oathmaiden was going to get.
“Oh, and before I forget,” continued Astryx, fishing in her wallet. She withdrew a few silvers and offered them open-palmed to Fern. “This should see you on your way. No sense washing dishes for the next few weeks, hm? Seems you earned your keep as a translator after all.”
Fern stared at the silvers in her palm.
And stared.
And went right on staring.
Astryx arched a brow at her. “Is something wrong?”
“No rocks at the bottom,” whispered Fern.
“What’s that?” asked the elf with a confused frown.
Fern took a deep breath, and felt the sapling split.
Dear Viv,
I’m alive. I’m sorry.
Fern
The letter was very short, scribbled on her last blank piece of parchment.
Every word stung to write, but she didn’t give herself time to equivocate or revise.
The Territorial Post station was stacked with crates and chests and bales, rich with the scents of horses and leather and paper.
When Fern emerged, it was without the letter and with an armload of fresh parchment and a fistful of pencils. She didn’t know if she was lighter or heavier or falling or flying, but by the fucking Eight she was inmotion.
Astryx raised a hand from where she was hitching Bucket to the wagon.
Zyll was already on the buckboard, sans helmet.
“No rocks at the bottom,” Fern repeated to herself.
And, stuffing the parchment into the satchel—the vacant home of a friend who’d found a new one for himself out in the world—she ran to join them, red cloak flying behind.
15
I can’t believe I’m delighted to be camping,thought Fern, warming her paws before the tiny fire with her tail draped across her knees.
And shewasdelighted. Giddy almost. She barely mourned the soft, warm beds they might have slept in if they’d lingered in Bycross until tomorrow.
A persistent chill crawled up under the hem of her cloak and teased the fur of her back, which only made the fire cozier somehow.
Ice-chip stars gleamed sharp in the sky, the red line of sunset long since erased in the west, where Bycross lay behind them. To the northeast? The city of Amberlin, their final destination.
Astryx sat across the fire from her, watching a soot-blackened travel kettle as it boiled nettle tea. Bucket formed a solid slab of night behind her. Zyll snored nearer to the flames than seemed safe, tucked up inside of her coat so that no skin was exposed, and she looked like a shabby quilt with a bedraggled orange cat sleeping on it.
Fern recognized atalklooming in the air above the fire—a needful discussion that would gather on the horizon until it broke. The tea seemed proof of that. Astryx had—in Fern’s opinion—a very unfair talent for rolling over and immediately falling asleep the moment the day’s duties were done. Obviously, Fern’s sample size of evenings was small, but the elf had never once bothered to sit up late and brewtea.
The Oathmaiden clearly had something to say. A question? A demand? Some set of conditions to lay before her?
Fern didn’t know, and the possibilities prickled her ears uncomfortably.
Thetalkjust kept growing until she could almost feel the weight of it on her fur.
