“No,” Kell said. “Don’t—”
Verandil ignored him and said, “Thank you.”
Kell spluttered.
Verandil smiled down at them. “I owe you. I swear you are safe.”
Saeldian was too tired to control their expression. Verandil owed them?He said it out loud? Why?
“But—”
“Hush.”
Verandil sang softly as he carried them to a wagon. It soothed Saeldian’s urge to cry, to lash out at people, to bottle themself back into an uncaring idol of beauty and allure and never show anemotion that wasn’t flawlessly performed. Saeldian relaxed and let Verandil carry them.
He leapt to the wagon bed easily as climbing a stair; Saeldian’s eyes shut as he lowered them to lean against a barrel sack of yarrow and set a smaller one under their knees. Saeldian breathed in the smell of dry green herbs and let reverie fold over them, the wagon rocking like a cradle.
It didn’t feelreal, but it was. Verandil Merrynote drove a wagon heaped with dried herbs for beer—yarrow, mugwort, rosemary, and juniper, to Kell’s nose—pulled by badgers who were smaller than ponies but stout and eager. Verandil sang a bit of one song as if it played endlessly in his head and pointed out the landmarks as they went by one business or another, through groves left wild that pulled at Kell’s senses, and through the aura of the weaveglass spire, which felt like a minor chord on a half-tuned lute.
No one lingered near the thing. The magic of it vibrated inside Kell’s ear, and Verandil didn’t sing again until they’d cleared its range.
“I knew you’d come back,” Verandil said. “I prayed to Skerrit that you would find us quickly—that wherever you made your return to the Feywild, your path would bring you to Eightbridge, and it would be close to here. Or that you would hear my seeking song.”
“Your what?”
“I wrote a song about you.Finder, find me, come back true, all the refuge waits for you…”
“You’re joking.”
“Don’t be like that,” Verandil mock-scowled. “It’s a bit rubbish, but the vocal range is one octave, beginner chords, sentimental…everything you need for a song to go far and wide.”
“You penned doggerel in my honor.”
“I’ll write you a masterpiece now that you’ve come home,” Verandil said, and his grin moved the scar on his cheek like it stretched the skin too tightly.
Kell looked at it until his brother looked away.
There was a bridge on the road ahead, but whatever lay on the other side wouldn’t stay still. Thatched-roof stone cottages became an aspen wood became a pass between mountains, and its refusal to stay still made Kell a bit woozy, so he turned back to his brother and the ragged pink curve that came too close to his eye.
“Do I already know how you got that scar, Verandil?”
“Probably.” Verandil let the team of badgers pick up speed once they reached the open road. “I’d rather know how you found us at last, since it wasn’t my song.”
“How bad was it?” Kell asked.
Kell didn’t have to ask when it happened. He knew.
“It was a war, and we were children in it,” Verandil said. “I have a scar on my face, and I lived.”
“You don’t want to tell me,” Kell said. “Who lived? Did Dad—”
Verandil glanced Kell’s way. “He lived. He’s in the village. Let’s wait to speak on it until then.”
“But—”
“I promise you, it’s fine. How did you find us?”
Verandil’s hooves were dug in, then. “It’s kind of a long story.”
