“Now, we turn around.”
“And travel the whole way back? But that’s—” Fern broke off with a yelp as Astryx urged Bucket forward,towardthe gap.
The elf cocked a thumb back the way they’d come. “You’d both better wait farther down the road.”
Zyll gamely hopped from the cart and trotted along the path, and Fern sidled past the cart to join her.
Then she watched, huddling close to the chalk wall, while Zyll perched on the cliff’s edge. Fern couldn’t bear to look at the goblin dangling her feet over the drop. It made her head go all woozy.
Astryx unhitched Bucket and led him carefully back past the cart, rubble clacking and skipping down the cliff face with every hoofbeat.
Parking the horse near Fern and Zyll, the elf then returned to seize the traces of the cart in both hands.
What followed was a delicate series of maneuvers during which Fern’s heart never left her throat. Astryx laboriously turned the wagon by first rolling forward a few feet, then back, then forward again in a dozen tiny arcs. For the first time, Fern saw her look out of breath. Her ragged silver hair glistened with sweat.
The moments when the cart faced outward toward the drop-off were the worst. Fern had to shut her eyes tight, but even then, she could vividly imagine Astryx suddenly dropping out of sight to plunge over the cliff’s edge, with the cart not far behind.
At last, their cart was turned around. Astryx, still dripping, rehitched Bucket, and they began the depressing journey back the way they’d come, except that Fern was now on the side nearer to the drop.
Zyll patted the buckboard next to her. “Closey-close,” she said, with a sympathetic, razor-sharp smile.
Fern obligingly scooted over.
It turned out they didn’t have to journeyallthe way back. After half a league, the chalk walls that rose to their left sloped away into a gentle rise studded with a cluster of three water-watchers in various states of decay. A hawk perched atop one of them, cocking its head at the cart in annoyance while it waited for the voles they’d frightened off to chance the open ground again.
Zyll eyed the bird and licked her lips.
Astryx led Bucket off the road into the tall grass and then stared up the rise with her fists on her hips.
“Woof,” breathed Fern, as the muscles of her shoulders and back unknotted in a tingling wave. “Now what?”
The elf glanced over her shoulder. “Now I find another way. If I remember, the cliff road opens up a league or two past where it was destroyed. I’m going to scout ahead to see if we can make our way around to rejoin it, up this rise and behind the bluffs.”
“And we—?”
“You wait here.”
Fern frowned. “Remember when you said you took this road because some of Taltus’s goons might be following us?”
“Followingme. You should be fine here alone for a few hours. They’ve got no quarrel with you. You can watch her until I get back.” She pointed at the goblin.
“I just think that if one of themwereto have mentioned you, they mightalsohave mentioned a suspicious rattkin and the goblin that stole all of their money. Actually . . . whereisthat money?” She narrowed her eyes at Zyll.
The goblin patted her coat as though searching for the purses she’d purloined, and shrugged.
“Yes, very convincing,” said Fern dryly. She returned her attention to Astryx. “I feel a little exposed here in the middle of nowhere with maybe a bunch of angry bandits on the way and no defense. I don’t think we can ask Bucket to kick them for us this time.”
Zyll jammed a hand into a pocket and withdrew it to brandish Breadlee with great fervor.
“What’s happening now?” asked the knife, sleepily.
“No,” said Fern.
“I feel hurt, but I’m not sure why,” complained Breadlee.
“There’ll be no need of that,” said Astryx, with a weary species of patience. “If they were following us, we’d have seen them already, especially now that we’ve backtracked. You won’t need a . . . weapon.”
“Why’d you pause before you said ‘weapon’?” asked the knife.
