It was just a hand, after all. Just a job. Just a man.
He had someone to hold him through his nightmares already, someone he trusted. He would be a fool to risk that over answers about a man long gone, an artifact that might or might not still exist, and a shadow of the boy whose carefree grin and reckless ambition did funny things to his heart. A boy who certainly didn’t exist anymore.
Griff Sayer-Blackthornhad such a nice ring to it.
Chapter EightSpiders
It was fine, really, that Griff hadn’t shown up to depart from the cottage with them as the sun peeked over the horizon. Mal didn’t care one way or another what the man did. At least he was consistent in being a letdown. That was one thing Griff could apparently commit to.
He would simply have to take his chances with Kage and Wills and the others who had failed to kill him before, and Mal and Alys would go risk their necks to buy his safety in the meantime. And maybe learn something about where Rhun had really gone all those years ago. Mal’s money was on desertion rather than death, though he had packed enough whiskey—two large bottles, one in each of their packs—to keep his flask refilled no matter the outcome.
Surely that would be enough to sustain him for four weeks. Less. Now that he had Alys with him, he would make it back with the treasure so fast Kage’s head would be spinning as he watched Mal walk out the tea shop door for the final time.
Maybe they could even keep a little of what they found for themselves, just enough to persuade the Wardens to forgive someof the stupid things they suspected Mal of before he split town again. Assuming they could be bought.
He walked briskly in step with Alys through the unseasonably cold, cloudy morning, making good progress down the road with it being just the two of them. How it should have been in the first place. Alys was unusually quiet, and Mal gave a rare smile in her direction—grateful she wasn’t berating him for not trying harder to make sure Griff came along, because he had done his best. Even if his best was never enough for Griff.
They were on the outskirts of Linden when footsteps approached rapidly from behind, and Mal’s heart gave a sudden kick as he recognized the cadence of the panted breaths that accompanied them. “You’re late,” he said by way of greeting, not bothering to turn and look at the other man. “I think you’ve already forfeited your share of the profits.”
“Fine by me. I don’t need a big pile of gold just to feel something,” Griff huffed between breaths, the redness in his cheeks making it clear how hard he had worked to catch up. “Ran into a little delay with packing—as in half my shit was still on the front lawn when I left. So you’ll understand why it took me a minute to catch up.” His pack was straining against its ties and the kohl around his eyes was smudged as if he’d been crying, but Mal wasn’t about to pry for personal details he didn’t really want to hear, and apparently, neither was Alys.
They simply slowed their pace until Griff fell into step with them more or less without issue. And for the first time in nearly a decade, they strode along the road leading east as a trio.
All three were tall and spindly. Alys, breaking from the others to wander closer to the sagebrush and colorful fireweed that lined this section of road where houses and trees were growing increasingly sparse, easily had the palest hair, while Mal’s was more a burnished gold, and Griff’s was inky dark. All were armed—Alys with her father’s old sword and her collection of knives, Mal with hisdaggers and fists, and Griff with a humble-looking sword that must have been a Warden’s hand-me-down and his wood-splitting maul.
Mal was surprised he had brought it, but even more surprised by the calm he felt upon seeing it. Maybe he had underestimated Griff as just a helpless victim.
Alys smiled and sang something under her breath as they walked, as if she were completely unaware (or otherwise deeply pleased) that the three of them coming together again like this was rarer than an eclipse. She struck him now, as she did some days when she wandered into the cottage with a handful of flowers that she hadn’t checked for bugs and their eggs, as a stark callback to her elven ancestors. One foot in this world and one in some magical otherplace that only she could see or access. Sometimes he wondered about all the things she saw that no one else did.
Griff, meanwhile, seemed to keep his eyes mostly trained on the horizon, though they occasionally turned skyward, as if questioning all the gods and spirits that had ever been described to him as to the nature of his purpose here.
Not that Mal was paying him much attention.
The rank mist lingering slightly to their north took up most of his focus. The foul weather inspired him to dig out a scarf and wrap it around his neck before pulling his cloak hood back up and adjusting the toggles. The cloth was knobbly and black, a humble homespun affair, but Mal suspected Griff might recognize it.
The scarf had been his once. But somehow, in the years before they both left home, Mal’s red one had made its way into Griff’s laundry pile, and the black one had found its way to Mal. And was still keeping him warm today.
Scarves weren’t cheap; it would have been a waste to just burn it.
Further east, the way was even less inviting, to Mal’s keen eyes, with the breeze becoming a howling wind that shook thedark treetops. This far north, mornings and evenings still carried a bite sometimes even in early summer. Yet this was something more. It had the look of an unnatural storm, a few snowflakes even swirling on the gray horizon in the distance where the clouds crouched in thicker, closer to the earth.
A spell gone awry, perhaps—magic in the wrong hands. Mal wouldn’t have been surprised. Wardens saw things like that sometimes, being out here. Enough for him to have heard plenty of their stories circulating in the taverns where he drank back in Mayfair. Wardens really couldn’t shut up about themselves.
“Be right back, you two,” Alys announced suddenly, cheerily, putting any such stories far out of Mal’s mind. She turned and let the tall brush swallow her lithe form, grass whisking against her canvas pants as she strode away from them.
“Where are you going?” Griff called after her. It was clear from a quick look at his face that he didn’t want to be alone with Mal.
“I have to pee!” Alys’s playful voice drifted back in a light gust of mist. “Give me a minute. If you’re both good, maybe I’ll even bring you back a treat.”
Mal had no idea what kind of treat Alys might find on the outskirts of Linden, though he knew it was bound to be something that excited only her. He decided to take the pause as a chance to study the map, pulling the hopelessly wrinkled old parchment out and attempting to unfurl it, its torn edges fluttering in the rising wind. Maybe four weeks there and back was, as it seemed on paper, an impossible task. Another unforeseen complication of living a cursed existence. But he had done things that felt impossible before, and this would be no different.
“What’s our course?” Griff asked haltingly, as if against his better judgment.
Mal arched a blond brow but didn’t glance up. “Well,” he said evenly, “right now we’re heading east. At some point we have to turn north, but there’s no footpath that close to the Mire. I thinkit’s likely we’ll have to carve our own way forward, following what’s outlined on this map, until we see the lake.”
“And the treasure? The armor, the swords, the barrows of the old elven kings—they’re just floating out there?” Griff asked, edging closer for a better look at the map.
“Yeah, and since you were late, you get to fish it all out, gem by gem and coin by coin,” Mal said, unable to keep a touch of sarcasm from his voice as he pointed to the little island marked in the middle of the lake.
