Now, for the first time, she planned to make her way to the top of the bluff that overlooked the city, the one with the small structures she hadn’t been able to discern when she first spied it. A sandy path ribboned over a series of stacked humps covered in long grasses, clusters of thistle with bright purple flowers, and windblown, scrubby trees.
Viv settled a good bit of her weight onto her recovering leg as she stepped, and while the ache was unpleasant, it was a far cry from the sharp jags of pain she’d endured only days earlier. She kept her walking staff in play but leaned on it less and less.
Sweat made her shirt cling to her back, and she had pinnedher hair up in a mass of dark curls to let the breeze cool her shoulders.
She’d planned to make the trip alone, but it hadn’t worked out that way. With Viv’s limited strides, Gallina didn’t even have to struggle to keep up.
“Not a bad view,” said Gallina, shading her eyes against the sun. She had her sleeves rolled up and her boots slung over one shoulder by their laces, feet bare and sand-caked.
The ringing of a bell echoed around the cove, sounding incredibly distant. Well past noon, the sky was flat and clear, the morning fog long burned off, and all of Murk seemed to doze in the heat. A schooner drowsed against the pier as though too exhausted to sail. The remote tumble of the waves hushed into nothingness.
Viv saved her breath and kept moving. She’d finally had the good sense to rig up another solution for carrying her saber around. The scabbard lay belted slantwise across her back, where it wouldn’t foul her gait.
As they crested the top of the bluff, she stopped to take in the hilltop. Her leg quivered but held. Some of the burn was even pleasant, although that sick throb of a deep wound was hardly absent.
“It’s a graveyard,” said Viv.
A low iron fence surrounded the old cemetery. The grasses grew just as long within it as without, rustling around stones and pillars. She even spied a few dwarven graves marked by hunks of quartz.
Viv made her way through the gate and found a stone to rest her weight against. Any inscription was long since scoured away by rain and salt, so she didn’t feel too bad about it. Her leg thanked her too.
Gazing off to the north, she could see an estate on a high hill. It was surrounded by real, old-growth trees—not the scrubby, tenacious things that flourished everywhere else—and what looked like hedges. Manicured hedges. Fern had mentioned that Zelia Greatstrider lived near Murk. Viv wondered if the place was hers.
Gallina surveyed the cemetery skeptically. “Seems like a bad idea, you ask me.”
“You’ve got a problem withburyingpeople?”
“I’ve got a problem with buryin’ ’em way uphigh. Look at this place. It’s all sand! One bad washout and somebody’s grandpa comes slidin’ down on top of the city.”
Viv glanced at the markers. “These have been here a long time. I figure if that was going to happen, it already would have.”
“Still. Anyway, that’s not what I wanted to talk about.”
“Oh, you have an agenda? Here I thought I was coming up here to train, and you were tagging along to take the air.”
“Aw, youknowyou need a trainin’ partner. You just gonna wave your sword around in the air by yourself? And who else are you gonna ask—Iridia?” The gnome tested the firmness of the open ground outside the fence, which was ringed by thistles that curved down the soft edge of the bluff.
Viv thought about explainingexactlyhow much time she spent training on her lonesome, but the circular conversation that would follow unspooled in her mind, and she decided to avoid it entirely. “Fine, I’m curious. You’ve got something you needed to ask me out of everybody’s earshot, so let’s hear it.”
“Maylee.”
Viv blinked. If she were listing subjects of interest to Gallina, that would’ve been at the bottom. “Okay. That’s not a question.”
“You’re sweet on her, huh?”
“I… Where are you going with this?” Viv pushed away from the stone, her wind recovered. Her thigh no longer twitched beneath her like an animal set to flee.
“Well, are you?”
“What if I am? Are youjealousor something? I don’t get what you’re after here.”
“Jealous? Nah.” Gallina turned to look at her, her hands on her hips. She took a deep breath and then launched into it. “I’m just tryin’ to figure you out. You hang around in a bookshop, diggin’ in real good as far as I can tell. Paintin’ doors. Sellin’ books. And you’re out on evenin’ walks with the baker, real cozy-like. Are you plannin’ tostayhere or somethin’? Settle down?”
Viv frowned. “I just hiked to the top of this bluff to sling a sword around. What do you think?”
“That’s why I can’t figure it. Does she know you’re leavin’?” She tried to ask it offhandedly, but there was a keenness to her gaze that Viv didn’t miss.
“Of course she does. Why are you so interested in this? Worried you’re going to lose your shot at joining up with Rackam if I decide to stick around?”
