“Yes,” I hear myself say. “I know.”
“It’s better this way.” Her eyes drift down me, lingering on my underskirts. “Once Thale gets involved, if you have any regard for your husband, it’s best he moves along.”
Crossing my arms over my heart, I turn away and walk back down to my room. This time, as I close myself in, I throw the bolt even though I’m no longer worried about my safety here. Thale’s authority, like Merc’s, precedes me among the patrons and anyone else who might seek to harm me.
And my own reputation precedes me with Thale.
As I glance around the room, the whole of Anathos seems barren, and I can’t believe it all happened so fast. The sex. Merc’s leaving.
My return to solitude in a dangerous place.
That’s my final thought as the oil in the lamp runs out and everything goes dark.
Fifty-EightMy Solo Journey Begins.
When I wake up the following morning, I’m curled on my side facing the door, my hands tucked in at my heart as if I’m praying. The grit in my mouth abrades my tongue and the insides of my teeth as I try to swallow, and this comparatively small unpleasantness makes me feel all the big pains to an unbearable degree.
Forcing myself to sit up, I—
There’s something in my hands.
His journal.
I glance back at the window seat and try to re-create why I have it. That’s right, he left the thing behind, taking only his pack. So sometime during the night, I must have gone over and picked it up.
As I put the journal down on the bed-sheeting, the small, leather-covered folio opens to the last picture he sketched, of the gates and the meadow beyond. I touch the edges around the drawing, not intruding on the depiction of the stone pylons or the curling pattern of the iron…
With a frown, I look up. Listen hard to all the silence.
Shifting off the bed, I go to the window seat. There are a series of hooks securing the sash in place, and then the shutters have inner locks as well. I finally get it all open, and stare out over the gray sprawl of the Outpost’s shops and homes.
The rain has stopped.
Overhead, the cloud cover remains low and thick, and everything is dripping, from the rooflines to the porch corners to the fences, suggesting that the cessation is recent. Maybe it will start up again, but surely all of the water in the sky is wrung out.
As I regard the town sprawl, I can’t help but wonder where Merc is. I doubthe would have left in the night, and I have to wonder if he stayed with the blond. But with the storm moving along and daylight arriving, I’m guessing he’s well departed by now. Did he take our horse, I wonder.
That is no longer my concern, though. And besides, I’m not going anywhere, so what do I need a horse for—
“No.”
The word comes out of my mouth, but I check over my shoulder because it certainly seems like it was spoken by someone else.
When I turn back around, the clouds part and a beam of sunlight pierces through the congestion. As it zeroes in on me, shining like Mare’s royal coins, I am swamped by a feeling that I do not belong here. And not just the lodging house, but this whole town. Even as the most reasonable side of me points out that this has been my destination, and maybe with people like Ronl and Lena, I could find work and a place to stay… something in my soul tells me otherwise.
This is not where I am to end up. I’m meant… to keep going.
“Not the plan,” I say aloud as I look to the horizon.
But the protest doesn’t matter now, and it’s not going to mean anything later. As much as I want to fight it, I know that this is a way station to somewhere else. Something else.
My true destiny is calling.
It’s as this conviction sinks in that the commotion starts.
The first of the shouting ripples through the still morning, and not long thereafter, a man comes running down the muddy lane toward the lodging house. Going by his brown felt dress, he’s clearly a resident, and with that staff in his hand, I’m guessing he’s a farmer or herder of some kind—and I’m not surprised when he leaps up onto the pub’s porch and then I hear one of the doors slap shut.
A moment later, there are all kinds of feet pounding on the porch. A group of men emerge and take off in the direction the herder came from.
