The tapenti shook her head.
“Well, I have. Lots, at this point. They smell like death. You’d figure that part, right? But there’s something else, like … frozen blood. The way your nose goes all dry in winter and you can taste copper when you breathe. If you get right up on them, they smell just like that.”
Viv gestured at the empty cell. “That’s the way he smelled.”
“He was no wight. He definitely had a pulse.”
“Yeah, I know. But I know that smell, and I knew something about him was wrong. All the way through me, I knew it. And if he has anything to do with Varine … ? Well, I was going to find out if that was true, one way or another.”
“That’s why the city has Gatewardens.”
Viv snorted. “Didn’t see any close at hand, or I would’ve flagged one down.” She patted her leg. “And I wasn’t going to run inside the fortress walls to find one, was I?”
“It didn’t stop you from leaping into the fray.”
Viv tossed her hands up. “And if I’d had my sword, maybe things would’ve gone different. What do you want from me? He slipped out of your cell, knocked out your guard, and it didn’t seem to cost him a lot of trouble. He’s a threat. If not to us, then to somebody else. You leave a snake in your tent, you’re asking to get bit.”
“Pretty shitty analogy,” hissed Gallina as Iridia’s expression darkened.
“How did he get out?” asked the tapenti, with a precision that bespoke a temper held in check.
“How the hells should I know? We were asleep!” Viv couldn’t help raising her voice. “Neither of us saw a gods-damned thing, but now he’s out there, and we’re in here, and I figure he has his stuff back to boot, yeah?”
“He does,” grunted the dwarf, massaging the back of his skull. “That satchel, the magestone, the daggers …”
“He didn’t swipe mine, did he?” asked Gallina anxiously.
The dwarf shook his head, and she breathed a sigh of relief.
“You’re both still alive. So is Luca here,” Iridia observed bitterly. “If our nameless visitor could escape, then he could’ve killed you in your sleep. Whoever he was, vengeance wasn’t on his mind.”
“Maybe we’re not as easy to kill as you think, and maybe he figured that too,” said Gallina, obviously feeling left out of the conversation. “And there’s two of us! Still in here, by the way. With him gone, what are you even holdin’ us for?”
“I don’t have to come up with a new reason,” said Iridia. “The first was perfectly sufficient.” But Viv could tell that something was shifting inside her.
“You wanted us to help you make sense of it,” said Viv, in as reasonable a tone as she could. With her leg screaming at her, it was harder than it should’ve been. “You know what we know. So? What’s the verdict?”
“I’ll tell you when I decide,” replied the Gatewarden. She spun on her heel to stalk out of sight.
* * *
Iridia let them stew another hour, but Viv thought that was just some bullshit show of dominance. It was Luca who released them, still looking pale and unsteady. He returned their things and passed on a muttered warning to stay out of trouble, but Viv thought he looked relieved to see the back of them. Gallina stroked the hilts of her daggers fondly as they left the building and stepped into the morning light. The scents of damp, smoky morning cookfires and boiling oats and bacon threaded through the air. The gnome’s stomach made loud, longing noises of protest.
They were otherwise silent leaving the walled enclosure of Murk, but each kept a watchful eye out. Predictably, there was no sign of the nighttime escapee. Viv would’ve been amazed if there were, but it didn’t stop her from looking.
The Gatewardens were looking, too. Iridia clearly hadn’t taken the man’s disappearance lightly, and they saw women and men with lanterns on their belts at nearly every corner. They all had a watchful, distrustful look about them, hands on hilts as often as not. Viv had supposed the well-garrisoned fortress was a precaution against an unlikely sea invasion. Now, the bored Gatewardens finally had something pressing to demand their attention.
Several even patrolled the sandy thoroughfare leading down from Murk’s massive stone gateway, although what they expected to find there, Viv couldn’t imagine.
A pair of schooners rolled at the dock in the morning mist, and waves roared in hard and loud. The sun gleamed on the sea, promising real heat later in the day.
She supposed the man in gray might be on one of those boats, but somehow, she doubted it.
With the aid of her staff, Viv limped her way up the slope toward The Perch. Gallina matched her pace, and Viv decided she didn’t mind that much.
“Think he’s gonna kill us in our beds, then?”
“Not where I plan to die,” Viv replied with a grunt. Although the fact that he’d disappeared from right under her nose disturbed her more than she cared to admit. She was going to sleep with her saber close at hand, that was damned certain.
“That’s where you’re spendin’ all your time?” Gallina asked as they passed Thistleburr Booksellers.
Viv snorted. “Planning to haunt that, too?” She saw the darkening look on Gallina’s face. “Joking. Yeah, I guess I like it. Especially now that there’s a chair. A comfortable chair.”
“Comfortable, huh?”
“Can’t fit your boots on the table though.”
Gallina stifled a chuckle. “I mean, I got things to do.”
“Uh huh.”
They were quiet for a while longer.
“You never did hear those chapters, though,” Viv mused aloud.
“Hm. Guess we did have a deal.”
“Yeah.”
“Suppose if I ever need to fall asleep again, I’ll call in the rest of it. Maybe in that comfortable chair.”
Viv didn’t dignify that with a reply. But she was still smiling as they mounted the steps of The Perch and headed gratefully toward collapse in their own beds.
15
Viv did lay the saber on the floor beside her that night, the hilt only inches from her fingers. Her imagination was unfortunately pretty good, and she even fancied she caught the man in gray’s scent once or twice. It was all too easy to picture him right outside her door, casting some cantrip on the lock, a silver blade in his fish-belly hands.
The day was hot, too, a real scorcher, and the wind had breathed itself out. She lay on the strawtick mattress, sweating and bone weary, leg afire, and running a thumb along the wrapped leather of her blade’s grip.
She was fed up with being injured, and furious with herself for setting back her recovery by doing something as stupid as brawling in the street. Viv resolved to try to follow Highlark’s instructions. Mostly.
While she was wrestling with herself over that, sleep crept up and seized her unexpectedly. When she slept, she slept hard.
Viv didn’t wake until late the following day.
* * *
“It looks good,” called Viv as she made her way carefully down the slope. A fresh breeze from the sea teased heat away from her skin, and her saber was back on her hip.
Fern held a broad bristle-brush in one paw, and crimson flecked her fur. Fresh paint covered half the door—the lower half—and a rope-handled pail sat beside it on an old scrap of sailcloth.
“Oh,” she replied, wiping her brow and leaving a faint smear of red behind. “Good. You can save me balancing on something to get the rest. Gods, I hate being short.” She blinked when she saw Viv’s scabbarded blade, but she didn’t say anything.
“Can’t promise I won’t muck it up,” said Viv, wincing as she climbed onto the boardwalk.
The rattkin made a hissing noise as though the wound were her own. “I’m surprised Iridia’s already let you out. How’s the leg?”
“It’ll mend if I ever let it.” She leaned against the newel, blew out a big sigh, and let the pain subside like the tide going out. When she looked up, she saw Potroast staring at her goggle-eyed through one of the windows.
Fern glanced around sharply. “And … if you’re out, then what about him?”