“What are the odds of that?” Zera asked.
Undeterred, Kreya scanned the basement until she spotted the missing leg: wedged between two crates. She freed it and held it up triumphantly as she climbed back to the crawler.
“Wonderful.”
Despite her sarcasm, Zera—with the use of a strength talisman—carried the pieces of the crawler outside and spread them out on the grass between the pine trees. Removing her coat, Zera cleaned the inside of the carriage, while Kreya worked on the mechanics.
Forgetting that Zera was there, Kreya sang to herself as she worked. She was on her third ballad when she realized that a voice was singing along with her, softly. She broke off and looked over at Zera, who then stopped singing.
“We had a nice harmony going,” Zera complained.
“I don’t...” She didn’t know how to explain that she’d never sung where anyone could overhear. She must have gotten even more used to being alone than she’d thought, if she’d so quickly forgotten that anyone else could hear her.
“I had no idea you could sing. You shouldn’t do the soprano bits, but your alto register is quite lovely.” Zera demonstrated a high trill, then a lower warble. “I’m a soprano. Guine has been helping teach me to harmonize better—I have a tendency to steal the stage.”
“I’d never have guessed,” Kreya muttered.
“Are we going to try to get along on this journey, or are you going to keep sniping at me? I recognize that you don’t approve of who I’ve become, but it will be tedious cooped up inside the crawler with you if you don’t try to hide your opinions.”
Kreya raised her eyebrows pointedly. “Like you do?”
“My opinions are truths.”
She almost laughed. Zera was still so... Zera. “Just help me attach the undercarriage.”
Working together, they lifted the orb onto the base, andKreya scurried around, connecting it. Finishing, she stepped back and surveyed their work.
“Much better than hiking,” Zera said, satisfied.
Kreya wondered if she’d still feel that way when the crawler was inching up a near-vertical slope and they were dependent on their handiwork for their lives. She hoped so.
It took a few more hours to load the crawler with supplies: dried venison, nuts, berries, jars of water, a cache of weapons, extra unused animal bones in case of repairs. Kreya said no to additional cushions, as well as no to Zera’s request to “just hop on home for a few items.”
She didn’t say no, though, when Zera insisted on anonymously gifting her horse Merridia to a local farmer, even though “local” was many miles away. There were too many wolves, bears, and other predators to safely leave the horse here untended. Zera promised she’d use a bit of a speed talisman to both deliver Merridia and return.
At least Zera isn’t so self-absorbed she fails to care for her horse,Kreya thought.
Climbing the stairs to the bedroom, Kreya retrieved the rag doll construct that Zera had tossed across the room. While she waited for Zera to return, she sat on the bed beside Jentt’s body and repaired the construct—the problem was the bone that animated it had been knocked out of alignment. She reset it, placed her fingertips on it, and closed her eyes. “Insa anira. Ori ranna. Insa anira-lee, anira-ra, anira-nee.”
It shuddered under her fingers and then sat up. Opening her eyes, Kreya noticed that the other rag dolls were clustered around, some on the bed and some by her feet. She gathered them into her arms, and they swarmed all over her, patting herhair and stroking her back. “I’ll be gone for longer than usual, little ones. You’ll keep him safe, won’t you? And yourselves?”
After she patted each of them, they dispersed, up into the rafters and back into the shadowy corners of the room. She turned to Jentt, still wrapped in linen, still motionless, still dead. “I know you won’t approve of this, but you don’t get a vote. Not until you live again. And then you can fuss at me all you want, and I’ll love it.”
She checked all the locks on the window shutters and repaired the locking mechanism on the front door, the one that had allowed Zera inside without any effort. After she was certain it was functional, she exited the tower.
Zera returned shortly after, and they were ready to embark.
“Go on,” Zera said, wiggling her fingers. “Do your thing.”
Getting down on the ground, Kreya lay on her back under the contraption. It was fueled by three bones: one from a goat, another from a mountain lion, and the last from a horse. The lion bone was cracked, and the horse bone had tiny fractures running through it, but they still had power vibrating through them. She wished she’d been able to afford a fresh river lizard bone—that would have really given the crawler a jolt. These would do the job, though.
“Do you have one more adventure in you?” she whispered to the crawler.Do I?she wondered.
She laid her hands on the bones, fingers spread to touch all of them, and said the spell to animate it. Through her fingertips, she felt it begin to shake. It hummed, vibrating, as its eight metal legs began to click and twitch.
“Watch out!” Zera shouted.
Kreya rolled to the left as one leg slammed down. Its point pierced the dirt where she’d been. Reaching under, Zera held outher hand, and Kreya grabbed it and scrambled up toward the tower, out of the way, as the crawler lurched side to side on its spider legs.
