“This remains humiliating,” complained Breadlee as Fern rasped him briskly across a river stone, shaving blue sparks on a cone of dry needles. “You’re going to dull my edge!”
“Oh, hush. You’re not telling me Elder steel isthatfragile?”
“AnElder Blade?” cried Staysha, nearly dropping her armload of branches.
“‘Blade’ might be spreading it on a little thick,” observed Fern, drawing the knife across the stone again and making a satisfied noise when the tinder popped with sudden flame. She pretended to think about it. “Pocketknife?”
“Shankling!” shouted Zyll.
“Hells with all of you!” grumbled Breadlee.
“He’s a greatsword that has experienced diminishment, I’ve been told,” said Astryx with a wry smile, as she unbuckled the longer Elder Blade from her back. Fern saw the skin around her eyes tighten as she did it, but she made no noises of pain.
“Thankyou,” whispered Breadlee, his tone pathetically grateful.
Then Astryx spoiled it by skinning an inch of her longsword’s steel.
“Ahem. I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure of meeting yet,” declared Nigel. “I am called Nigellus Primus.Undiminished, as you can plainly see.”
“Eight hells,” breathed Staysha, and this time she did drop her armful. “I need my lute.”
Staysha forewent breaking into song. At least long enough to prepare a makeshift dinner in a stewpot she produced from her wagon. The Tarimites had provided beans and heavily salted bacon and beef, as well as a dozen hard, yeasty biscuits. The dwarf settled the pot at the fire’s edge and built a stew of beans, hunks of meat carved off with her belt knife, and a few of the biscuits, which dissolved in the boil and thickened it. She tossed in a handful of herbs and peppercorns from a jar.
Zyll appeared beside her, rummaged around in a pocket, and then held both fists over the stewpot. Before the dwarf could open her mouth to protest, she’d dropped in handfuls of mystery mushroom.
Staysha gave Astryx a questioning glance. “Those aren’t deadly, are they?”
The goblin fished one back out of the pot. She crammed it into her mouth, swallowed, and bared her teeth at the dwarf, who recoiled.
“Guess not,” observed Fern.
Astryx looked up from oiling Nigel’s length. She nodded at the pot. “I’m afraid we lost our bowls at the bridge.”
“No fear,” said Staysha brightly, and scurried to her wagon. They heard a series of clatters and bangs, then a long pause. “Where are my spoons?” she cried.
Astryx and Fern both looked at Zyll, who stared innocently back at them.
Grumbling, the dwarf returned with a stack of wooden bowls and a tin ladle.
The stew was tasty, even though the beans were still chewy, and they all had to slurp noisily from their bowls. Zyll’s mushrooms turned out to be meaty and fragrant. Night fell fully as they ate, and the darkening blue above the firs became star-flecked by degrees. Crickets chirred in the deep woods, underscored by the snap and rustle of something ponderously bedding down in the underbrush.
When they’d finished their meal, Fern scoured the bowls in the river by the light of Staysha’s lantern. She returned to find the bard tuning her lute while Astryx stripped off her sodden socks and laid them across a pair of stones close by the fire.
“Oooh, a little entertainment,” said Breadlee.
The bard cleared her throat. The gold thread of her burgundy doublet gleamed in the firelight. “Look, it’s not lost on me that you seem reluctant to share your stories.”
Fern gave herself credit for managing not to snort a laugh.
“But maybe I haven’t done enough to reassure you that they’d be in good hands,” Staysha continued, expression earnest. Her dexterous fingers danced over the lute strings, tickling out a musical flourish. “You may have heard this one before.” She grimaced. “Or maybe not, but it’spossible,anyway. If this is the first time, though, perhaps it won’t be the last. I’m proud of it. It’s called ‘Kingfisher’s Blue Cloak.’”
She strummed, her opposite hand busy on the frets. Fern had to admit, she was a hells of a lute player. Then she opened her mouth and began. Her singing voice was lower than expected, like sweet pipe smoke.
Fern set the bowls aside, pleasantly surprised. She sat cross-legged between Astryx and Zyll, leaning back on her hands.
“In the end, she found the beginning,
In the beginning, she saw the end,
