I helped Penny up onto the bench seat as Thoma made his way toward Reimond. The gate opened, and the two parted with one last kiss before Reimond took the reins and led the instantly compliant Flint out of Ashpoint with Anders hopping into the bed of the cart to sulk behind them.
I climbed up next to Penny and clicked my tongue, setting Betty into motion to follow the others. We brought up the rear, barely clearing the heavy wooden gates before they swung shut behind us.
We formed a line along the path leading down the mountainside, traveling together until the road split. Otis and Isla turned off first and headed west. Anders called after them, something taunting that I didn’t catch. Neither of the pale siblings responded as they flicked the reins and set their horse off at a brisk trot and out of sight.
At the next split, the couple Penny and I had yet to meet headed east, and I turned Betty to follow. Rosie waved from where she and Tessa continued behind Reimond and Anders.
I couldn’t help but wonder if we’d see any of them again.
Ahead of us, the man in the other cart turned in his seat. Sandy brown hair hung like a mop over his blue eyes, and a battered old straw hat hung against his back from a cord around his neck.
“Where are you headed?” he asked.
“Hoping to make Elsfield for the night, and then on from there,” I replied.
The woman turned as well. Her dark hair swung againsther cheeks as a wide smile spread across her face. “We’re headed toward Elsfield too.”
“You should come with us,” Penny piped up from beside me. “It’ll be nice to have company.” He shifted in his seat and glanced over at me as an afterthought. “If that’s okay?”
It wasn’t, but it felt rude to say as much, and as we were heading to the same place, it was unavoidable. So, I bit my tongue and nodded. I knew he’d be glad for the chance to get to know more people from Ashpoint, and his increased enjoyment of the first leg of our journey would make up for the unwanted tagalongs.
“Guess that makes us traveling companions then,” the woman said. She gestured first to herself, and then to the man beside her. “I’m Cait, and this is my husband, Edgar.”
“I’m Penny. This is Kit.” His hand grazed over my back. “It’s good to meet you.”
As the trail widened, we took over the lead and Penny crawled into the back of the cart so he could more easily speak with our company while munching on jerky and doodling in his sketchbook.
Over the course of the next half hour, the three of them dove into conversation that thankfully didn’t require my input. Penny told them about our work in the forge, and Edgar told us abouthiswork as a carpenter, including his crowning achievement: helping his uncle carve the intricate designs on the Ossuary doors. When Penny found out Cait was the daughter of a farmer and helped tend Ashpoint’s crop fields during the growing season, they fell into easy conversation about their shared experiences growing up on farms.
Cait was in the middle of recounting a story of the time she helped her brother rescue a wayward lamb from a rushing river when she trailed off. I glanced back to findher leaning forward in her seat with her head cocked to the side and a smile curling one corner of her mouth.
“I think he fell asleep.” She chuckled.
Sure enough, Penny was out cold and snoring softly, propped up on our packs. His freckles looked dark on his abnormally pale cheeks, and I felt his forehead again.
Still no fever.
“Sorry about that,” I told her. “He’s been fighting a cold, and he’s been prone to dozing off the last few days.”
“Well,” Cait said, looping her arm through Edgar’s and leaning against his side, “best let him rest, then.”
I’d expected Penny to fill our travel with his usual chatter, and I found myself missing his comments about the fat squirrels crisscrossing the road, or the lone red fox that disappeared into the trees as we passed. More than that, I missed him serving as a buffer between me and the pair of near strangers we found ourselves stuck with.
Concern gnawed at me. I’d slept poorly since the night of the first Oath, and my intermittent nightmares had gotten progressively worse after starting back on a daily regimen of hemlock, but evenIwasn’t so fatigued that I couldn’t make it a few hours without falling asleep wherever I was. The longer Penny’s cough lingered and the worse it got, the more I worried.
As the day stretched on and still he slept, it was all I could do to feign interest in whatever inane topic Edgar and Cait were talking about, and focus on getting us where we needed to go.
It was a small blessing that they seemed like decent folk, and their presence wasn’t as irritating as I’d expected.
We reached the outskirts of Elsfield as darkness descended from the west. We pulled the horses up in front of a three-story building with a sign boasting a local puband inn. After Edgar and Cait tied off their mare, I waved them on ahead.
As the door swung shut behind the young couple, Penny sat up, groggy and blinking away sleep.
“We’re there already?” he asked, scrubbing a hand through his hair and making it stick up in the back.
“At our waypoint for the night,” I informed him while smoothing his mussed locks.
Blush darkened Penny’s cheeks. He scrambled for his sketchbook and pencil, tucking the latter behind his ear. “I slept all day? Why didn’t you wake me?”
