They trudged on quietly for a while longer, but Clay could see his friend growing restless. Gabriel had never been one for keeping to himself, which was essentially the reason he and Clay had become friends in the first place.
“You still living in Fivecourt, then?” If they were going to talk, Clay decided, then he could at least steer the subject away from his wife and daughter, whom he was already beginning to miss with a longing he’d never imagined possible.
“I was,” said Gabriel. “But, well, you know how it is.”
Clay didn’t know, actually, but he got the sense Gabriel wasn’t planning to elaborate.
“I left the city maybe two years ago now. I lived in Rainsbrook for a while after that, took on some solo gigs to pay the rent and put food on the table.”
“Solo gigs?” Clay prompted, shuffling sideways to avoid a treacherous pothole. All through spring and summer wagons burdened with fresh-cut timber ran the road south to Conthas, leaving deep ruts and gaping holes that no one ever bothered to restore.
“Nothing I couldn’t handle,” Gabe was saying. “A couple of ogres, a barghest, a pack of werewolves that turned out to be, like, seventy years old in human form, so … they went down pretty easy.”
Clay found himself torn between horror, amusement, and genuine surprise. Generally the closer you got to Fivecourt, which was pretty much the dead centre of Grandual itself, the fewer monsters you tended to find. “I wasn’t aware Rainsbrook had a monster problem,” he said.
Gabriel’s lips twitched toward a smirk. “Well it doesn’t anymore.”
Clay rolled his eyes. You walked into that one, he told himself. Then again, it was nice to catch a glimpse of Gabe’s old self-assurance beneath the humble fa?ade. There may be a blade beneath that rust, after all.
“That’s where I saw Rose last,” said Gabriel, and just like that a sombre cloud returned to darken his mood. “She came to visit on her way out west. I tried to talk her out of going and we ended up getting into this huge fight over it. We yelled at each other half the night, and when I woke up she was gone.” He shook his head, chewing his bottom lip and squinting at nothing in particular. “I wish …” he said, and left it at that. Eventually, he asked, “What about you? What was the plan before I came along and fucked it all up?”
Clay shrugged. “Well, we’re hoping to send Tally to school in Oddsford when she’s old enough. After that … Ginny and I were thinking of selling the house, opening up a place of our own somewhere.”
“You mean like an inn?” asked Gabriel.
Clay nodded. “Two stories, a stable out back, maybe a smithy so we can shoe horses and repair tools …”
Gabriel scratched at the back of head. “School in Oddsford, an inn of your own … who knew standing a wall paid so well? Maybe I should ask the Sergeant for a job when we get back. I’ve always thought I looked pretty dashing in a helmet …”
“Ginny trades horses,” Clay divulged. “She brings home five times the coin I do.”
“Ah. You’re a lucky man,” he said, glancing over. “Gods, your very own inn! I can see it now: Blackheart mounted on the wall, Ginny pouring drinks behind the bar, and old Clay Cooper sitting by the fire, telling any with an ear to listen how we had to walk uphill in the snow to slay dragons back in our day.”
Clay chuckled, swatting at a wasp buzzing in front of his eyes. Considering that most dragons he’d ever heard of lived on the tops of mountains, walking uphill in the snow in order to kill one seemed like a forgone conclusion. He was pondering this when Gabriel stopped so abruptly Clay nearly ran him over. He was about to ask why when he took note of where they were.
Beside the road, the remnants of a modest house lay overgrown by decades of tangled brush and waist-high yellow grass. An arching oak grew among the ruins, shedding a steady rain of vibrant orange leaves. Its grasping roots curled around soot-blackened stones as though attempting to drag them, season by turning season, into the ground below.
It had been several years since Clay had last laid eyes on what remained of his childhood home. He rarely had cause to travel this far south of town, and even then he tended to ignore it, or avoid the place altogether. Standing here now, Clay told himself he couldn’t smell ash on the breeze, or feel the heat of flames buffeting his face. He couldn’t hear the screams, or the dull slap of pummeling fists—not really—but he remembered them vividly. He could feel those memories clutching at him like roots, threatening to pull him under.
He nearly jumped when Gabe laid a hand on his shoulder. “Sorry,” Clay mumbled distractedly, “I …”
“You should go see her,” said Gabriel.
Clay sighed, staring at the ruins. His eyes tracked the spinning descent of leaves, falling like embers toward the shaded earth. Another wasp, or the same one, droned in the air around his head. “I won’t be long,” he said finally.
Gabriel’s assuring smile came and fled like a gust of wind. “I’ll wait here.”
Clay’s father had been a logger by trade, though he would often brag of his brief stint as a mercenary. Leif and the Woodsmen were a band of little renown until they’d taken down a banderhobb that had been snatching children outside Willow’s Watch. Unfortunately, the creature’s acid bile did a number on the frontman’s legs, and Leif was left crippled, unable to walk without a stumbling limp. His band, known afterward as simply the Woodsmen, rose to fame without him.
Clay’s mother, Talia, had supervised the kitchen at the King’s Head. She was an artist when it came to food, and her husband often complained she provided better meals for strangers than she did for her own family. On one such occasion, she pointed out that Leif spent more time drinking at the pub than he did with his son. This was her way of calling him a drunk without actually calling him a drunk, and though Leif wasn’t quick enough to catch her subtlety he didn’t much care for her tone, so he hit her.
Rankled by his wife’s words, Leif had brought his son with him to the woods the following day. It was bright and cold—a winter wind had come prowling down the mountains and turned the leaves crisp, so they crackled beneath Clay’s boots as he scampered along behind his father.
What are we looking for? Clay remembered asking.
And Leif, carrying the axe he sharpened every night before bed, stopped where he was and peered at the trees around them—white birch, red maple, pine still cloaked in green. A weak one, he declared finally. Something that won’t put up a fight.
Clay had laughed at that. He hated that he’d done so, looking back.
They found a narrow birch, and Leif put the axe in his hands. He showed Clay how to plant his feet and set his shoulders, how to grip the axe low on the haft and put all his strength into a swing. Clay’s first chop was a feeble thing. It sent a jolt up his arms and left his elbows aching. The birch was barely scratched.
His father snorted. “Again, boy. Hit it like you hate it.”
Eventually the tree fell, and Clay got a rough slap on the back for his effort. Leif led him home afterward; the birch was left where it lay.
And there it remained, though almost forty harsh Agrian winters had come and gone since that brisk autumn day. The tree was white as bone beneath the dappling sunlight. Clay knelt, setting his pack aside and shrugging Blackheart to the ground. The scent of the forest filled his lungs, a comfort. He reached out and placed his hand on the trunk, picking idly at the curling bark, grazing the tips of his fingers over its rough knots and creases.
No one else besides Gabriel and Ginny knew that Clay had buried his mother here. He had meant to bring Tally around one of these days, but hadn’t quite summoned the courage to do so just yet. His daughter was insatiably curious; she would want to know how her grandmother died, but there were some things a nine-year-old girl had no business knowing.
There was nothing to mark the grave, no headstone upon which Talia Cooper’s single mourner might lay a wreath, or set a candle. There were only the words be kind carved into the birch’s brittle skin, as if whoever did so had been crying, or a child, or both.