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A gorgeous monochromatic arrow blossomed beneath it.
“What in all eight hells?” breathed Viv.
“Too much?” Satchel looked worried.
“Don’t change a thing,” said Fern. “It’s perfect.”
Satchel sighed longingly at the handbills. “I do wish I’d been able to make the Lady Greatstrider’s acquaintance.Sinner’s Isleis a marvelous work.”
Fern and Viv exchanged a glance over his head.
Viv laid a hand on his shoulder. It still felt odd to touch the bone of a living thing. “Maybe you can? You know, if you’re comfortable with that.”
“No,” he replied firmly. “I couldn’t abide the risk.”
“I have a feeling she’s open-minded enough to adapt to you, Satchel,” said Fern. “She seemed pretty unflappable.”
He tapped his skull. “I mean the risk toher, if ever the Lady were to find out we had spoken.”
Viv grimaced and tightened her grip on the hammer. “Varine has a lot to answer for,” she said.
They tacked the handbills throughout the town—on corners, on the side of the livery, and on any surface that would support a nail. Highlark even allowed one outside his tidy office, after examining it with raised brows and a thoughtful expression.
Viv passed Iridia on the street and gave her a careful nod. The tapenti stopped to watch her pass, and as Viv hung one next to the door of a hostelry across from the Gatewardens’ garrison, she could feel the woman’s eyes on her back.
Iridia made no move to stop her, though.
Maylee affixed one to her door and set another on her countertop.
Viv saved her last handbill for The Perch.
“All right if I hang this outside?” she asked Brand, sliding it across the bar-top.
He looked it over. “I reckon that’s just fine. Huh. You got Greatstrider to grace us with her presence, eh?”
“Surprised?”
“Hells, yes. Spied her once only, in all my years in Murk. Keeps to herself, mostly.”
Viv shrugged. “I liked her. She’s sharp.”
“You know, that was my thinking too. Shame she stays away. Now, Berk, seenhima time or twenty.”
“Haveyouread her books?” asked Viv.
Brand returned his attention to his ever-present copper mug, his tattoos lively as he scrubbed it. He cleared his throat. “Maybe a piece of one.”
Viv leaned both arms on the bar-top, lowering her voice. “So… Berk and Greatstrider. They’re basically alone up in that big house. And her books… I mean, she has to get those ideas from somewhere, right?”
“I reckon writers got to have a good imagination,” observed Brand, “because they can’t all bethatlucky.”
On Freyday, Viv set the sandwich board out on the beach, in sight of where the passengers would debark. The air was chill and slow, and the mist curled high up the bluff, like a frozen wave breaking. It blanketed the surf in a silvery hush.
