“Well,” she said, angry at being misread, angrier still at being read at all, “you’re no good to me without your magic.”
“You’re right. But I do have other assets. I never paid you anything up front for your services.” He paused, meaningfully. “You never asked.”
His gloves felt tight against her skin. Did he begin to suspect her treachery? “I don’t know what you’re implying, but I’m a woman of my word. I mean to honor our agreement. I trust you to do the same.”
“Here.” He dug within his rucksack and withdrew his velvet purse. He tossed the entire thing to her; she caught it against her chest. It was heavy. “The rest will come when we’re through.”
She tossed it back, as if it was a slime-covered insect and not more money than she usually earned in half a year. “If you want me to keep my thoughts to myself, fine, but I won’t have my tongue purchased. I want what I was promised, no more, no less.”
The sounds of the other camp began picking up. Chattering, laughing, the clink of cups and silver on porcelain. The smell of fresh coffee. The sun was rising; they were readying to move on. Any moment, they would discover moving on was going to be more difficult than they anticipated.
Anya glanced at the bilberry patch nearby. No one would suspect her right away – except Aquila, perhaps – but if anyone happened to look for their missing rear axles in the low-lying shrubs near her and Sy’s camp, they would find them. If they didn’t find the axles, they would surely take their horses and return home, safe and sound in their comfortable manors. She had done them a favor.
Sy sat still, holding the coin purse, shifting it in his fingers, the metal clinking inside its velvet pouch. Eventually, finally, he put it away. He pulled out the bottle of water he kept in his kit and began to clean his pen, flushing it clear in silence. The only sound in their camp was the scrape of Anya’s gun brush against the inside of her barrel.
When she finished, she left Sy with his trinkets and crept into the bilberry patch, filling Johanna’s hat to the brim with berries, eating as she went. It wasn’t enough to sustain them for more than a few hours. It was also far more than her fair share.
The forest has no mind, and its only moral is balance. Something Johanna used to say. One of her rules; her code, as much as she had one. It kept her alive, delving deeper than others dared, for nearly eighty years. Eat no more than your hunger, take no more than you can give in return, step only where the path was trod by others long before you.Remember that, girl, and you won’t step wrong.
But it doesn’t work that way, Anya thought, feeling vines twining up her throat as she plucked. Sometimes a person stepped exactly where they were supposed to, and it was into the path of someone who had the power to unravel their life. To unravel her.I am unraveling.
Proof of it: she should not have shot at the bear, not with so many people close by. In that moment, her mind had fled her completely.
The forest had no mind. It had no moral, not even balance. It had no moral at all.
But like all things alive, it did have an appetite, and after the blood soaked into it on this dawn, its appetite had surely awakened.
She took her knife, lifted her shirt sleeve, and made a small cut on her wrist. As blood welled, she crouched beside the nearest bilberry bush. “In return for your aid,” she said softly, turning her arm. A thick drop of blood rolled down her skin, dripping upon the trunk.
Sensing eyes on her back, she turned. Sy had removed a magnifying glass and had been inspecting the nib of his pen. Now, he held it aloft and watched her, expressionless.
She rose, meeting his gaze as she pulled down her sleeve. “My apologies; awfully barbaric of me. I ought to have sprinkled it into a teacup first.” Not giving him a chance to reply, she handed him the berry-filled hat. “Breakfast.”
“I brought my own food.” Even so, he took the hat, staring dismally at the small blue fruits.
“Don’t eat them, then,” she said with a shrug. As she began to pack up, she wondered if berries were good for restoring blood. She wondered what good a city bred spellscribe with no blood to spare for his golden pen was to her in the Lichtenwald.
What had begun as a partnership, false pretenses or no, was now laughably one-sided. He was stronger – braver – than she’d ever suspected. Even braver than most hunters she knew. But without his magic, he could do nothing for her but slow her down. She had five days, if someone else didn’t find the phoenix first.
He still thought she only wanted half the prize money, but his distrust was palpable. He likely suspected her of wanting more than half. All of it, even. The others thought she was a liar, a fraud after his money. They weren’t entirely mistaken. She wondered if refusing his coin, if refusing to abandon him, made her more suspicious, or less.
It certainly made her stupid.
The curse, she thought with venom, yanking tight the cord of her bedroll. Mira’s curse, making it harder to hunt, making it harder to do what she needed to survive. She needed to be safer. Smarter.
Smarter meant breaking the other camps’ axles with her hatchet rather than merely hiding them in the brush. Smarter meant leaving Sy behind – trading him for someone else, someone who could actually help her. Someone stupider, cowardly, easier to trick and abandon when the time came, as it inevitably would. She had her pick of the camp nearby.
Safer meant going alone. Like she always had.
She watched Sy over her shoulder. Gingerly, he plucked a berry from the hat. He stuck it into his mouth as if he expected it to bite him back. When it didn’t, he visibly softened. He reached for another. When it touched his tongue, his sharp eyes fluttered shut. For the barest moment, his fixed, wooden expression blossomed, awash in unvarnished delight.
Face heating, she turned quickly away, stuffing her gun brush into her bag. She should be on the phoenix’s trail by now, not gawking like a bowlegged fawn at some fine-fingered, golden-haired spellscribe.
The curse, she thought again, urging her thorn-swaddled mind to clear.Foul magic. Thick-headed fool.
Then, gloved fingers resting on the latch of her bag,One more day wouldn’t kill me.With this dawn, she did have five until the solstice.
Only five.Five to spare.
