“I could make us breakfast if they have eggs and bacon,” Griff panted, still clearly stalling as he swept an appraising gaze over Mal from head to toe. “I’ve seen you hit that flask more often than I’ve seen you touch hardtack or jerky or any of the rations since we left home. Do you even know about the joys of being adequately hydrated? You—”
“You’re delusional from the pain, you fuck,” Mal snapped. He hoped the threat was clear: He would only let the comments slide so far, no matter how much Griff was hurting, before he added to the pain.
Not that he really would. He couldn’t imagine ever laying a hand on Griff again, not since the stabbing in the woods. He knew sorry couldn’t fix a damn thing, but he was going to be sorry for the rest of his life regardless—even if his life was doomed to be remarkably short if he didn’t get to that treasure soon enough. Even if Griff was still a hopeless dork with questionable loyalties.
“Oh, I hope they have cake,” Alys murmured as she helped Mal carefully haul Griff onto the mule’s back. “I think dessert might be just what we all need.”
Mal stifled another yawn as he stuck his still-bloody hunting knife back in its sheath at last and began to lead the mule toward the now-abandoned camp, where the fire still crackled and offered warmth to the three bodies sprawled on the ground: the archer Mal had strangled, the man he had stabbed, and the one Alys had been forced to kill. The cook was nowhere in sight. He was probably halfway to the festival in Cardraine by now, screaming to the hills about bandits.
Maybe Alys was right and some sugar would do him good too. He needed to wake up, needed to get that arrow out of Griff’sleg. He was going to make sure it healed better than whatever the elves had done for his stab wound, which clearly wasn’t enough.
“If you need a little something before we do this,” Alys murmured to Griff from the other side of the mule, where she walked with a hand on his back, making sure he stayed propped up as the pain steadily increased, “I have mushrooms, and a few of those berries left.”
Griff, who seemed to be just clinging to consciousness with the same stubbornness with which he’d held on to the fleeing mule’s lead, barely managed to shake his head.
As they neared the fire, the strangled archer groaned, then coughed softly.
Out came Mal’s bloody knife again. And once again, he yawned, bone-tired. His work was never done, even with two business partners along for the ride. “Look away, Alys,” he cautioned before he quickened his steps and knelt by the man who had only been playing at being dead.
“Tell me about your kids, then,” Griff said a little loudly, apparently more alert now and hoping to distract her. Mal hadn’t expected the help, but it was welcome. “There’s—the boy is Rodric, is that right? And then Margred? And …?”
“Your nephew turned six this year,” Alys answered him, her voice wavering only slightly. Mal nearly glanced over, surprised. As far as he knew, Griff hadn’t even met the children. She must have really missed him, too, to be using such terms already.
“And be sure you don’t call him Rod,” Alys added thoughtfully. “Leo Raintree did that last month, and Rodric scattered a box of pins all over the floor of his carpentry shop so he would step on them.”
Griff laughed, and even Mal snorted appreciatively at the story as he finally cleaned some of the gore off his knife. “Leo probably deserved it anyway,” Griff said of their childhood antagonist, and Mal’s chest warmed for the first time since he’d seenthe arrow pierce Griff’s leg. It seemed they still had a few enemies in common who weren’t each other.
“Next is Margred, you’re right, but she goes by Mags,” Alys continued, a smile in her voice that Mal knew well. She was proud of her brood, in her way. “She’s been asking me for a dagger for her fifth birthday if she learns to spell her full name. And she’ll talk your ear off if you give her half a chance, and probably even if you don’t. She wants to be just like Mal when she grows up.”
Mal smiled to himself a little at the thought of the girl as he searched through the seriously dead archer’s pockets, though he was bracing himself for some cutting comment from Griff. When one didn’t come, he had no idea what to do with his hands but touch the flask in his jerkin pocket for reassurance.
“And then there’s Deryn. My Derry-bird,” Alys said fondly. “She’s two. She talks to all sorts of things. Spiders. Her doll. Shadows.”
This had struck Mal as vaguely concerning for some time—he wondered if the littlest girl also had the ability to see things most couldn’t, but it wasn’t like he was going to ask a toddler about her experiences with the shadow world.
“They sound great. I can’t wait to get to know them,” Griff said, though his voice was hoarse with pain. “Although I don’t think I’ll be walking barefoot over any floors in rooms where Rodric has been. Never knew you wanted to be a mother, Alys.”
She tilted her head to the side, like he had just struck a chord she’d never heard before or whispered a bit of elvish. “Neither did I,” she said plainly. “I thought it was just … something I was supposed to do. It’s in almost every story and song. But I’m really glad I get to be their mom, and it’s much easier raising them with Wynnie and Vic than it was with Theo—their father.” Dropping her voice, she growled, “He wanted me to be alady.”
“Sounds like he didn’t really know you, then,” Griff remarked softly, earning an appreciative noise from her. “But it must benice, having the children around. I’m not planning on any myself, of course, but—sometimes I think about what it might be like to have a couple kids to dress and send off to school. Playing on the weekends. They must keep you busy.”
Mal glanced over again at that. “Makes sense you’d like kids,” he remarked in what he thought was an offhand tone. “You’re just a big kid yourself, aren’t you.” Because who else but a child would bolt after a mule like that, completely forgoing any semblance of stealth? That was how he meant it. He hadn’t intended for so much warmth bordering on fondness to creep into his voice, but Griff gave him a small, slightly bewildered smile in answer.
A hint of color washed over Alys’s cheeks too as she considered Griff’s words. “Sometimes they’re my whole day, when I’m not on a business trip like this one or foraging in the Wood. But sometimes I don’t see them as much as I think I ought to—or maybe not as much as I’d like to. I’m not sure which it is,” she confessed softly as she balled a cloak behind the foreman’s head like a pillow. “Hey, Griff?” she whispered as she settled in near his head, holding tight to his shoulder as Mal prepared to snap the arrow shaft. “You’re sure you don’t want one?”
Mal stayed focused on their quiet conversation, trying not be sick with the knowledge that he was going to cause Griff even more pain in a few moments. When he glanced up, he saw that Alys held a dark berry in her free hand, slightly squished from being in her pocket.
“You know what—why the hell not,” Griff agreed, sounding unusually grateful.
Mal tried his best to be gentle, even though he didn’t know how.
But no amount of careful hands or funny shapes in the clouds could keep Griff from screaming in the end.
Chapter ElevenDaggers
Progress was slower for the next few days with the lower part of Griff’s right leg now packed in salve and wrapped in a heavy layer of bandages that barely fit in his boot. His limp was greatly pronounced as he held the mule’s lead and dragged himself along at its side. At least the creature had taken to his change in ownership as placidly as if this were routine, but no amount of small things going in their favor seemed able to raise Mal’s spirits. He kept snapping at everyone about how little time they had left out here, like he had another business venture lined up the moment they got home and he needed to hurry back.
Finally, there was a smear of blue-green on the horizon—the Mire—and a pocket of warm air enveloping them as they traveled just out of sight of the road. Still, Mal and Griff kept their scarves wound around the lower halves of their faces, as each gust of wind was now something of a game of chance: Would it bring the cooler, dry air of the plains, or a whiff of the warm and fetid stench of the Mire?
