With that, he rolled up the map and stowed it, slipping some mittens (another of Vic’s whimsical and fleeting attempts at domesticity, much like the old black scarf) over his hands as he added, “We should press on through the night and make camp tomorrow evening instead. Cover more of the plains. I don’t like how open it is out here. This place could be crawling with Wardens at any time, and it’ll be easier going unnoticed by dark.”
It would also help them get some more distance under their feet early, which he hoped would satisfy Kage and his queen and whoever else she had set to watch their progress.
Griff, who didn’t seem to have packed any mittens, rubbed his hands together for warmth as they waited. There were little scars all over them that Mal couldn’t recall seeing the last time they’d fought. But then, he hadn’t been looking. “These are the things you think about, then?” the foreman muttered between blowing on his chilled fingers. “Keeping your distance from those who keep us safe?”
Mal’s shoulders tightened a fraction. There was that un-asked-for judgment again. It was going to be the longest trip of his life if Griff kept that up, especially when he was only out here risking his neck to protect this ungrateful man in the first place.
Rather than indulging a question he knew was meant to sting, he took a sip from his flask and asked one of his own instead. “What happened there?”
Griff followed Mal’s gaze to the backs of his hands, where the scars were faded mostly to white, and drew himself a little deeper into his cloak as he sighed and said, “Work accident. Accidents. One of the risks of doing physical labor for a living.”
It was an answer that invited no further questions.
As Mal reached for his flask again, a spark of silver darting in and out of his cloak’s breast pocket at not half past ten in the morning, Griff glanced pointedly at the dark lines of ink that trailed down his wrist, the start of the design of falling raven’s feathers that now ran the length of his forearm. “Who gave you that? And why’s it so red?”
Mal trailed a hand over his sleeve that concealed most of the flaky, itchy image within, a gesture that was becoming habit. He was silent for a long moment, resentful at having been asked something in return, and when he finally spoke, it was in a tone as unwelcoming of questions as Griff’s had been moments earlier. “My boss. It was just business.”
“I don’t know—a tattoo seems pretty personal to me. Seems like the kind of story you might want to tell when someone asks.”
Mal turned to study Griff’s face more closely, not sure what he was going to find there. More judgment, probably, if history was any indication. Or maybe … was Griff really curious about him? About the stories he could tell? Not that he would be explaining the real reason for their treasure hunt when they had barely left Linden.
When their eyes met, Griff immediately glanced off in the direction Alys had disappeared as another rush of wind flattened the tops of the pink-red fireweed, and Mal dismissed the notion altogether. Of course Griff didn’t want to hear about his life. If he did, he would have asked a long time ago.
Mal was relieved to see Alys’s white-blond head bobbing back toward them at top speed a few moments later. As she got closer,he noted something clutched in her fists, the dark-purple flesh of berries peeking from between gaps in her fingers.
“Anyone else feeling peckish?” she asked with a gleam in her cornflower-blue eyes as she distributed handfuls of berries to Mal, then to Griff, saving plenty for herself as well. “Vic taught me some about foraging this year,” she added proudly. Mal suspected she was trying to impress Griff.
“Thanks, Alys,” he said with more enthusiasm than he felt, flashing her an indulgent smile to match. The berries were exceptionally bitter, which made not grimacing a challenge. “They’re really … fresh.”
“Vic taught me some about foraging too,” Griff told them as he tried a berry, not bothering to hide his wince as the taste hit. “Not sure I know about these, though.”
They pressed on into the mist, following the edge of the road for now, the day growing oddly bright though they were still heading toward that dark horizon.
Mal, who had initially set a grueling pace to try to impress his employers, began to lag slightly, and when Griff eventually caught up to him, Mal noticed a sheen of sweat slicking the other man’s face, more than just mist dripping from the curly ends of his raven hair.
He dropped his own hood as well, too warm to continue on otherwise.
“As your hired healer, I feel a certain obligation to tell you that you don’t look so good,” Griff confided lowly to him, just out of earshot of Alys, who was walking on the opposite side of the road and seemed to be whispering to the occasional nodding flowerhead.
That’s when Mal realized his heartbeat had picked up an unusual cadence. A hand pressed to his forehead came away slick, too, though the mist had let up in the past hour or so. He stopped in his tracks, blinking as if the world’s colors had just shiftedfrom rose to gray, and let out a familiar grumble. “Alys … what did you say those berries were again?”
She turned, her eyes suspiciously bright, and said, “I didn’t. I don’t know the name. One of Vic’s favorites, though. At least, I think. I was … sort of … already high when I picked them. It’s possible I got the wrong ones.” A flush darkened her cheeks as she admitted, “I ate a couple of those dried mushrooms you brought me from work before we set out this morning.”
Now Mal knew why Alys had seemed so at ease with the three of them back together again when there was so much still unsaid. She’d been too out of it to think about all the bad times, the things Mal couldn’t even drink away.
Beside him, Griff had started frantically scratching at a spot just beneath his shirt collar as if it itched worse than Mal’s tattoo. Quickly the foreman’s hands moved down over his torso, all the way down to his pant leg, which he pulled up as if expecting to see something there. He swiped a hand across his back, into one of those hard-to-reach-places, his eyes growing wider and more panicked by the second.
Mal’s lips quirked, amused, as Griff started unbuttoning his dark linen shirt. “No one’s paying you to put onthatkind of show,” he commented dryly, but he wasn’t sure Griff even heard him.
The other man was too busy muttering, “Get them off me. Just need to get them off.”
“Getwhatoff?” Mal asked, a bite of impatience in the words. “I don’t see anything.” And he, of course, was used to seeing things others couldn’t.
“Firespiders,” Griff breathed, his voice hushed, as if he thought talking loudly might upset the dime-sized, bright-red creatures that, as far as Mal could tell, weren’t even there. Clawing at his shirt, he added, “I can’t remember how many bites before the venom paralyzes someone my size …”
Far be it from Mal to pretend he knew the first thing about healing. Still, he leaned a little closer to Griff to observe with some urgency in his tone, “You’re about the same color as the curdled milk I threw out last week. How many of those berries did you eat?”
Alys giggled as Griff tried and failed to wriggle out of his shirt with his pack still slung over his shoulders and his cloak still fastened.
