They denned up and slept, and as they got packed the next morning, Finnvid kept an eye on Theos, making sure he didn’t slip off on his own to be a hero. Theos noticed, of course. “You’d be too sad without me,” he said with an understanding grin. “Wouldn’t be able to go on living. It would be cruel of me to leave you alone. I know.”
His joke was too close to the truth, and Finnvid was quiet as they walked the rest of the way down to the valley.
As they approached the sentry post, Theos turned to him, and now there was no humor in his tone. “If this goes bad, step back. I’ll be moving fast.”
Finnvid nodded mutely. He knew he wouldn’t be much good, not if this became a fight.
But before they made it to the final bend in the path, Theos stopped walking, so abruptly that Finnvid almost slammed into his back. “Andros,” Theos said, and there was a note of affection and admiration in his tone that made Finnvid squirm with jealousy even as he struggled to understand what was going on.
“He left us a message,” Theos said, and he reached up into the boughs of a nearby pine tree and grabbed a small brown bundle. It was the size of a pine cone, if that, but Theos was holding it as if it were something sacred. His smile was radiant as he said, “He made it back.”
Finnvid tried to feel good about that. HelikedAndros, he reminded himself. He liked him very much. Of course he was glad Andros had made it safely back to Windthorn. It was just hard to see the relief on Theos’s face and realize how worried the Sacrati must have been for the whole trip. Hard to know that Theos hadn’t bothered to share any of that with Finnvid.
“There’s a note?” he asked. He could worry about his pettiness later, or, even better, forget about it entirely. “What does it say?”
Theos unrolled the small bundle and pulled out a slip of paper. He squinted down at it and groaned. “Stupid code. I hate codes.”
“Code? Really? You write in code?”
“Sometimes. When we have to.” He looked toward the valley, then back up the trail. “I need to sit down and figure this out. We need to use numbers, and I’m even worse at numbers than I am at letters.”
“Can I help?”
Theos squinted at him, then nodded. “Probably. It won’t take long to explain it. Just hard to actually do the work.”
So Theos explained, and Finnvid was more than a little amazed by the complex blend of calculations they had to go through, but eventually they had the message deciphered.
Midnight watch. Temple. Second gate.
“A lot of work for not much of a message,” Finnvid said. “Does that all mean something to you?”
“It means we’re camping out a bit longer. I suppose the men on the midnight watch are on our side in whatever’s going on. And I guess he wants to meet us at the temple. The second gate is a way into the city; it’s usually barred, so I assume he’s done something about that.”
“So thereissomething going on.”
Theos nodded. He looked discouraged, but then he brightened. “Still, Andros is here! That’s good news.”
“It is,” Finnvid agreed, and by now he was sure he meant it.
***
The impatience that had been building in Theos as he walked home from Elkat was almost too much to stand, now that he was so close yet forced to sit and wait. He thought about trying to find another way into the valley, but the only other possible approach was a four-day trek through the mountains in the summertime. In the winter the route would likely be impassible.
He considered approaching the sentries even knowing they might be hostile. He’d rather fight than wait, and if they were on the warlord’s side they were his enemies. But maybe they weren’t really on any side yet and were just following orders. And maybe it would be better if Theos and Finnvid arrived unnoticed. After all, they didn’t really know what was happening.
So he waited. Finnvid tried to distract him in ways that would ordinarily have demanded all of his attention, and Theos tried to cooperate, but it wasn’t long before Finnvid sat up and said, “You don’t have to, you know. You’re notmybedwarmer.”
“I want to. In general. Just . . . not so much right now.”
“Because of Andros?”
“What? Andros?” Theos pushed away from Finnvid and then frowned at him, trying to make sense of the words. “What does he have to do with it?”
“Nothing,” Finnvid said quickly. Miserably.
“Andros is fine,” Theos reassured him. “He left us that message. I’m not worried about him anymore. Well, I’m much less worried than I was when I thought he was alone in the mountains, or maybe captured by Elkati.”
“I know.” Finnvid smiled, too bright to be real. “I don’t know what I was saying. Just babbling, I suppose. After guessing him, I probably would have said something about the phase of the moon, or there being too much snow. Or possibly not enough.”
