She nodded as she listened, and when he’d finished, hoisted herself off the bench and addressed Fern. “It seems your friend the Oathmaiden will survive the night, and I’ve kept you from rest for long enough, I suppose. They’ve corralled the green one in the dormitory. I find her story vexing. A prisoner? It seems unlikely.”
“It’s very confusing,” Fern agreed.
“Brother Rhubarb will escort you there, and you can sleep and recover.”
“Can I see Astryx first?”
“Let’s leave her to rest,” replied Bluebriar. “Never fear, Brother Burdock is an artist with a needle and a poultice. We’ll see what tomorrow brings, eh? These things always feel more hopeful in the light of day.”
Removing her spectacles and tucking them back into her habit, she moved for the door. With one hand on the pull, she added, “I don’t expect we’ll suffer an assault from this Tullah person before dawn, unless she’s sprouted wings. But let’s not tempt fate and wander, shall we? Best not to get lost and fall asleep in any wagons.”
“Asleep already,” whispered Rhubarb as he cracked the dormitory door and eased his candlestick into the windowless room, revealing orange pigtails and a riotous coat of pockets in a pile on a narrow cot, like a heap of shabby laundry. He gave Fern a significant look. “Brother Yarrow is still counting the spoons.”
As he opened the door wider, she caught sight of another cot against the opposite wall, and at one end of it, a foot-stove freshly topped up with coals.
Rhubarb passed her the candle, bobbed a short bow, then scurried down the door-lined passage of old, dark stone, presumably to his own room for the night.
Fern hauled herself, her satchel, and cloak into the room and eased the door shut behind her. The goblin didn’t so much as rustle.
Tiptoeing to the empty cot, Fern set the candlestick on a small writing table along the wall, hung her still-damp cloak on a hook, and tossed her satchel on the floor.
As she slithered under the wool blanket, she briefly considered the latch on the door and whether she should engage it, but the effort of thought and action was too much.
“No blood sacrifice to Tarim tonight,” she mumbled into the darkness.
27
“Oh, fuck,” said Fern.
Astryx lay with a crisp, clean sheet covering her to the chest, bare arms pinning it to her sides. Her hair clung to her forehead in damp clumps like waterweed, and her shortened ear seemed somehow more cruel in the light of a wintry morning. The elf’s skin looked bloodless but for a feverish blush in her cheeks, although her breathing had lost the terrifying whistle Fern had fretted over in the Tarimite shelter. It was even, if shallow.
They’d had to push together two rattkin-sized beds to accommodate her, which made her seem gigantic. Nigel stretched beside her on the sheet, her right hand protectively curled around his sheath, as though to keep someone from attempting to remove him while she slept. Fern reflected that they probably had.
Zyll had been predictably missing when Fern had risen to a chilly darkness, with little sense of time in the windowless room. The nature of Zyll’s “captivity” seemed a peculiarity hardly worth dwelling on anymore. She’d opened the door to peer into the hallway and startled Brother Rhubarb, his paw raised to rap on the oak.
Now, he waited behind her with Brother Burdock, the physician, who was drying his paws on a cloth.
“She’s remarkably sturdy,” observed Burdock, with a surprisingly gruff voice for a rattkin. “Stitched her up last night and managed to get a bit of broth into her this morning. It’s clear she’s recovered from worse. Scars like she was rolled down a hill in a barrelful of knives,” he added with a disapproving shake of his head.
“How—” Fern’s throat clicked. “How long ’til she recovers?” She wondered, possibly uncharitably, if they’d collected any of Astryx’s blood for some unsavory practices honoring Tarim while they were at it.
The black rattkin shrugged and tossed the rag on a table. “Never physicked an elf before. Your guess is as good as mine.”
Fern glanced back at Astryx and found her ghostlight eyes slitted open and staring back.
“Little . . . squire . . .” she whispered, almost inaudible. Fern flushed with a sensation halfway between embarrassment and pleasure. Quillin had called her something similar, although of course Astryx couldn’t know that.
One corner of the elf’s lips twitched up just a hair, and she swallowed laboriously. “Looks like . . . you can manage . . . a fire . . . after all.”
Fern tentatively reached out a paw to lay it on Astryx’s hand where it rested atop Nigel, the wire bracelet still tight around her wrist.
“You’re going to be all right,” said Fern, hoping she sounded like she believed it.
“Do something for me?” mumbled the Blademistress.
“Yes?” Fern leaned closer.
“He’ll . . . never let me hear the end of it, unless he can . . . say his piece.”
