“Yes, woman.” He laughs a little. “Very real. You don’t think I’d let that bunch of uglies keep us apart, do you.”
“Fates, how did you get away?”
Merc leans forward, his face emerging, the specter made real. His black and white eyes search for mine, and as they lock on, his half smile is arrogant as always.
And like the ocean, so beautiful, I will not forget it.
“I just told myself your friend Thale was up here for the killing. The motivation was more than sufficient.”
I’m shaking my head as I too tilt out of the saddle. He meets me more than halfway, our lips brushing before our horses fidget and the contact is broken.
“Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?” I breathe.
“The spiders or the admission,” he replies dryly.
The way he looks off into the fog shuts the door on all that. But my heart is singing for so many reasons, I don’t even care.
“I think your compass should be helpful,” he says. “We’re all turned around—and if we so much as poke our heads out of this cover, those spiders are waiting for us.”
Before he finishes, I’m already taking off my pack and going in for the instrument. As my hand closes on its satchel, a piercing sadness has me turning and looking back—not that I necessarily find the direction we came from.
It dawns on me that I lost Mare’s coins. I had to drop them to get the crystal knife.
It’s not really the intrinsic value—it’s all they represented: Her last request, her attempt to take care of me, her kindness in return for my own. I feel as though I’ve left her behind in those ruins with those eight-legged predators, even though she’s already died.
“What’s wrong, then?” Merc demands.
“Nothing, sorry.”
Once in my palm, the compass top flips open on its own and the map jumps out at me as it does. It’s wheeled around once again, the landmarks that I now readily recognize oriented at a different position. Immediately, the arrow and the directional headers start on their counter-spins.
Spin, spin… spin…
As the turning continues, I worry that my disorientation has been transmitted into the instrument. Or maybe the fog is enough to do that on its own.
“No reading?” Merc says. When I don’t reply, he curses.
I’m feeling the same frustration—
The halting comes not with the definitive stop of before, but more a sliding halt with the arrow pointing to our rear.
As I twist around and look over Lavante’s rump, every instinct in me tells me it’s the wrong way. That that is going to take us back to the ruins and to our deaths.
I glance down again, in case the compass shows me something else. It doesn’t, and I try to take some confidence that the directional headings are south and a little west, just as before.
“What does it tell you?” Merc coughs as if the salt is in the back of his throat, too. “Where—”
“That way.” I point behind myself. “But always forward, never back, so it feels all wrong.”
“Back is relative, however.” He reins his horse about. “And it took us to the water—besides, what else do we have to go on?”
Lavante swings his big butt around, as if impatient with the pause.
“True,” I murmur as I put the compass away.
I’m not sure what exactly I’m agreeing with, but off we go, through the mist and the infernal, slapping branches. As a chill settles into my bones, I am grateful for the red felt skirting. It really makes for a terrific cloak, especially with my arms out through the pocket-holes.
Predictably, I feel like we go forever, and I wonder whether time, like our own senses of direction and even the compass’s ability to see, isn’t confused.My brain continues to scream that we’re going the wrong way, and I swear I can feel the constriction of the webs once again.
