"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I have at the moment." He looked at me sideways. "Does that bother you? The uncertainty?"
I thought about it honestly. "Less than it would have in Eirhollow, my next trail was never certain," I said. "But it still bothers me more than it should." I tucked my hand in my pocketas we walked. No gloves. So strange. “I think I’m used to living job to job, so I’m used to uncertainty, know what I mean?”
He didn't respond to that. Just walked, his presence beside me that solid thing it always was. Our breath didn’t mist in the air. It was another strange thing that I was so used to seeing, and the absence made me notice it more.
“It’s so strange to be walking around half dressed,” I murmured.
Nicco laughed. I don’t think he’d ever laughed. I stopped walking and watched the wide smile, the amusement on his face. It completely changed him.
“What did I say?” I asked him, fighting my own smile, a reaction to seeing him lighter.
“Farther south, where it’s warmer, or in Darysia and Cinderia, if you ever get there, I want you to remember this moment, when you said you were half dressed. Fashion farther south and east has a lot fewer layers and a lot more flesh on display.”
“Larana said that…” I looked down at myself. “Is it really fewer than this?”
“Gods, I hope I’m there to see your reaction the first time you see it,” he said with a rueful chuckle.
“Huh.” I couldn’t imagine fewer layers. On the road, I slept in my travel clothes, but when I was at home, before I left my father’s house, I wore a thick flannel nightdress, and even then, he’d told me to cover up in front of my brothers.
We turned down a quieter street. It was narrower than the one we left, the buildings looked older, and the light from the windows was more amber than yellow. At the far end, a fountain sat frozen in the town square, a decorative thing that existed because Florlunia towns had decided that beauty was worth the water it cost. Ice had formed over the basin in a thin, clear layer that caught the moonlight.
I stopped to look at it.
"Fountain," Nicco said.
"I can see it's a fountain."
"You stopped."
"I'm allowed to stop."
He stopped beside me. We stood in the square's quiet, looking at the frozen fountain. I thought about Crystallese, about ice as a function rather than a decoration, about all the ways this country used the same materials as mine yet arrived at entirely different conclusions.
“How is this frozen?” I looked around. “It’s not cold enough here for that. How is it happening?”
“An enchantment from the Verei Kahn I would imagine,” he murmured. “The town would have paid a fee for it.”
“They need to travel twenty leagues north, and they can see it for free,” I mumbled.
He looked around in amusement. “Yeah, some people like the illusion while enjoying their luxuries.”
I sniffed in distaste. “Never thought I’d see the day whenicewas considered a luxury.”
He made that huff of laughter sound again. I liked hearing it.
"Nicco." I kept my eyes on the fountain. "When we leave here. Where do we really go?"
He was quiet for a moment. "South."
"You always say south."
"Because south is always the answer." A pause. "For now."
"And after south?" I didn’t look at him. “When there is no more south?”
He turned to look at me then, and I turned to look at him, and we stood in the moonlit square in the coolness of a Florlunia evening, and his eyes were doing that thing, the warm brown thing, the steady, careful, not-quite-readable thing.
