Viv turned and saw Rackam’s Ravens trooping down the road to Murk, and until that moment, she hadn’t known you could feel dread and relief at the same time.
“There she is,” said Viv, sliding Varine’s book across the table. The slit in the cover was surgically clean, a testament to Blackblood’s preternatural sharpness. It was strange to think, but to Viv, the bookfeltdead. The unnerving vitality it once possessed had fled. All that remained was leather, paper, and the faint whiff of blood on a frozen lake.
Rackam sat across from her in The Perch, and near a dozen of his Ravens stood crowded around the table. He drew it toward him, furrowing his brows at the symbols on the cover. Then he opened the book.
The pages were still black, but they were no longer depthless, and each was split crosswise.
“Not much of a trophy, is it?” said Rackam, sighing. “Weeks of false trails and backtracking, snow and mud, scores of blueeyed corpses—and this is how we catch up to her.”
Sinna tossed her red hair back and skeptically examinedit. “Nobody is going to pay us for this. How do we know she’s even dead?”
“Oh, she’s dead, all right,” replied the old dwarf. “Or whatever passes for dead for her kind. Malefico saw her thralls drop like sacks of flour all at once, and we haven’t seen one since.”
Malefico nodded but didn’t say anything.
“Still not clear on how you stuffed her in a book, though,” rumbled Rackam.
Viv had briefly considered mentioning Satchel, but introducing an animated horned skeleton to a group of folks who’d been bashing them to bits for a few months straight seemed like a surpassingly bad idea.
“It was complicated. And lucky.”
He held her gaze with his flinty blue eyes, but eventually he slapped the cover of the book and handed it off to Sinna to take care of.
“Well. Nothing in all eight hells that can be done about it anyhow. They’ll pay us, or they won’t.”
But, knowing Rackam, Viv thought they would. He was a persuasive man.
The conversation shifted on to another sort of business altogether.
“So, who’s this now?” he asked, gesturing toward the gnome seated beside Viv.
Viv waited a moment for Gallina to introduce herself, but when the knife-studded gnome only sat with mouth slightly parted and eyes wide, she took pity and intervened.
Smiling, she slapped Gallina on the back. “This is the girl that saved my ass in a street fight.”
Viv didn’t have much to pack, but she supposed Brand would appreciate having the mattress heaved back onto its frame. Just as she let it fall with a thud and a protesting creak, a knock rang out at her door.
It was Maylee.
Without asking, she entered and closed the door behind her, and simply stood with her hands at her sides.
The walls of the room seemed to float away in the silence, and Viv couldn’t stand to let it extend any further. She opened her mouth to speak.
“Hush,” said the dwarf. “I know you wouldn’t leave without sayin’ anythin’.”
Viv wanted to believe that was true about herself.
“I just couldn’t do this out there, in the world.” She gestured vaguely behind her and met Viv’s gaze for the first time since she’d entered. Her eyes glimmered at the corners. She sniffed and then roughly ran her forearm under her nose. “You’re too gods-damned tall,” she complained in a thick voice.
Viv sank down onto her knees, so they were nearly face to face.
“That’s better,” Maylee whispered, and put a hand to Viv’s cheek. Viv could smell yeast and sugar and warm skin. “I know what I told you at the beginnin’. About knowin’ you for a while. And I even believed it. Guess I still do. But here’s the part where I pay for it. And maybe you too, but I won’t ask about what it costs you. I’m not sure I want to know.”
The lump in Viv’s throat was too big to fit words around. Instead, she mirrored Maylee’s gesture and laid her huge hand along the side of the dwarf’s cheek.
“I’ll probably never see you again,” continued Maylee, and one tear overspilled, tracking through the fine flour on hercheek. She leaned into Viv’s touch and added fiercely, almost angrily, “But I don’t regret it.”
She pushed forward, and her lips pressed against Viv’s, warm and lush and longing. And all too brief.
