Viv raised her brows at that.
Maylee tore it in half with a brisk crackling sound, and shards of crust sprayed in all directions like wheat chaff. She handed one piece to Viv, who held it up with a quizzical expression. “Not for us?”
With a secretive smile, Maylee plucked a chunk from the center of her piece and flicked it overboard to float on the water.
Viv started when the bread almost immediately disappeared. A silvery form breached the surface with a sound like a stone dropping into a still pond. “You come here to feed the fish? Feeding Murk isn’t enough?”
“These customers are quiet,” replied Maylee, her voice low. “And look.” She pointed, and just beneath the surface, a swirl of pink and silver made broad, sinuous curves before doubling hopefully back.
“Oh,” breathed Viv. The fish moved like a single organism, and as they turned, the sunlight scattered across their sides in a gleaming flash. “There must be a hundred of them.”
“Peachgills. Yeah. Well, what are you waitin’ for?”
They took turns picking the loaf apart, tossing morsels to the fish and a few brave gulls who swooped down to inspect the proceedings. The slap of the water against the hull and the glips and glops of the hungry peachgills lulled them both.
Viv sometimes paused to watch Maylee’s face and the way her cheeks squeezed her eyes nearly closed whenever one of the fish received her offerings. The ache in her leg drifted far away.
When they’d satisfied the appetites of the undersea diners—or at least run out of stale bread—Maylee rummaged in the basket again, withdrawing a green bottle and a pair of glass tumblers.
“When we fed the stale bread to the fish, I figured you’d have a fresh loaf in there for us,” observed Viv.
“Oh, you thought this was a picnic? Nope. I just got you alone so I could liquor you up.” Maylee pulled the cork without visible effort and poured something clear into both of the glasses where they balanced on the seat between her knees. Viv caught a whiff of juniper that made her think of solstice wreaths and snow.
With cheeks rosy, Maylee offered a toast. “To chance meetings.”
“To chance meetings.” Viv knocked their glasses together and sipped. The dry taste unfurled across her tongue into what seemed a hundred different herbal flavors, followed by a tide of warmth that crept down into the center of her. “What is this?” she asked.
“Gin,” replied the baker, sipping her own. “Smells like winter. Tastes like summer.”
They drank companionably, and the warmth of the gin overtook the cool of the shaded cove. Viv could imagine it slowly heating every part of her like hot water poured into cold. She felt loose and easy in a way she hadn’t in some time.
She gazed at Maylee while liquor burnished the edges of everything. At the dwarf’s bare knees below tucked-up skirts. At a soft stretch of flesh beside her neck that made Viv think of Raleigh and Leena in the sea cave and what it would feel like to slide her fingers under the fabric and trace Maylee’s collarbone.
The flush of the gin became a different sort of flush altogether.
Then she noticed she was staring and flushed hotter.
“So,” she said, clearing her throat. She settled in and let her back rest against the stern. The boat canted a little in that direction, but not dangerously so. “Years out on the road, you said. You still got that mace lying around?”
Maylee sipped idly at her second glass of gin, and the corner of her mouth tucked up. “In a box upstairs. Couldn’t get rid of it.”
“So you might go back.”
“Nah. I never will. But just because I’m done doesn’t mean I have to forget, right? I can be a little sentimental sometimes.”
“Okay. So, tell me a good memory. Something you miss. Obviously, not sleeping on roots and burning biscuits.”
“You’re makin’ me feel old,” said Maylee, gesturing with her glass. “You baby mercenary.”
Viv laughed at that, and Maylee swirled what remained of her drink, pursing her lips in thought. After a few long moments, she said, “This goblin girl. Red hair, sharp teeth, the whole thing.”
She paused again, and Viv was about to press for more when the dwarf continued. “Anyway, we were south of Cardus. There was this bandit, Voss, causin’ a lot of trouble, and we were mostly in this little nothin’ of a village tryin’ to track him down and collect on the bounty. We’re camped on one side of this little hill, a river on the other, and it’s mornin’, and I’m takin’ the pans over to scrape ’em in the water.”
“Burnt biscuits?” asked Viv, smiling.
“Who’s tellin’ this? Anyway, the river’s kind of wide there, but shallow at the edges, bushes all along the shore and mornin’ mist sittin’ on the water. And I’m scrubbin’ this pan with some sand. Then somethin’ tells me to look up, and when I do, there she is on the other bank.”
“The goblin?”
“Yeah. And she’s one of Voss’s, I can tell. They wore these red armbands. Real silly. And she’s scrubbin’ a pan.”
Viv barked a laugh.
“She looks up at the same time, and we’re both crouched there, wet to our elbows, cleanin’ up after the cookin’. Voss had to be over the next hill, not quite shoutin’ distance. And we just sat there. The river’s too wide and deep in the middle. No way we can get across. There’s no bridge for miles up or down stream, and we’ve got no horses.”
Viv gazed at her through half-lidded eyes, warm and content. “And what happened?”
“We stared at each other for maybe a minute, which doesn’t seem like long, but it is. And then, like we both agreed at the same time, we just went back to washin’ our pans.”
Another long pause, during which Viv studied Maylee’s face and her wistful expression.
“I think that was when I knew I was done,” she said. “But also, I wouldn’t trade that moment either. I can still see her face right now.”
Viv nearly asked whether Maylee had seen the goblin again—perhaps when and if they caught up with Voss’s crew. Had their campaign been successful? She found herself wondering what that goblin’s ultimate fate was.
But in the end, she thought better of the question.
18
As Viv’s leg healed, she began gradually rebuilding her endurance. The speed at which she’d sensed her body soften and slow was a source of real anxiety for her, and she’d be damned if she’d put her conditioning off further. She kept at her sword forms in the lot out back of The Perch, but she had also commenced longer and longer hikes into the hills behind Murk. She was careful and pressed only as far as her mending wounds allowed, but she was methodical and persistent, and thoughts of the man in gray hardened her resolve.
Now, for the first time, she planned to make her way to the top of the bluff that overlooked the city, the one with the small structures she hadn’t been able to discern when she first spied it. A sandy path ribboned over a series of stacked humps covered in long grasses, clusters of thistle with bright purple flowers, and windblown, scrubby trees.
Viv settled a good bit of her weight onto her recovering leg as she stepped, and while the ache was unpleasant, it was a far cry from the sharp jags of pain she’d endured only days earlier. She kept her walking staff in play but leaned on it less and less.
Sweat made her shirt cling to her back, and she had pinned her hair up in a mass of dark curls to let the breeze cool her shoulders.
She’d planned to make the trip alone, but it hadn’t worked out that way. With Viv’s limited strides, Gallina didn’t even have to struggle to keep up.
“Not a bad view,” said Gallina, shading her eyes against the sun. She had her sleeves rolled up and her boots slung over one shoulder by their laces, feet bare and sand-caked.