It was hard to ignore that symbol, though. The mark of some scout? A kind of arcane wayfinding? Gods knew. Satchel said he didn’t, and she believed him. He rode along silently, tucked into his bag, bouncing against her hip.
She hadn’t caught that evil scent again on the way down. That was something, at least.
“I’ll tell Iridia about it tomorrow,” Viv promised the others. “She’s already got the Wardens on watch. It’ll be fine.”
When they reached the foot of the hill, Gallina split off from the group at The Perch with a salute and a defiantly chipper “G’night!”
Viv walked Fern and Maylee down the path between the dunes to the boardwalk, where shadows gathered underneath the awnings. When they reached the door of Thistleburr, the somber mood broke suddenly as Fern spied a note tucked into the doorjamb, fluttering like a trapped leaf.
“The shipment!” She seized the message and scanned it. “It’s here! They’ll drop it off tomorrow. Gods, finally!” When she glanced up at them, eyes glittering, it was immediately easier to shrug off the dark cloud that had clung to them.
“I’ll be here,” said Viv. Reluctant to spoil Fern’s excitement, she patted the satchel. “I’ll keep him with me another night, though. You know, considering.” She tried to make her voice light.
Fern sobered just a little. “I guess … that’s probably for the best.”
Viv and Maylee waited until Fern was inside and they’d heard the click of the latch before they continued onward. Their heights were too different to hold a hand or interlink an arm, but they walked close together, brushing against one another in delicious accidents.
After the commotion around the symbol and that blasted circle of earth, Viv felt grounded in the present now that they were alone. The sound of the surf tumbled in the distance. Maylee’s warmth radiated beside her, gentle in the cooling evening air, still smelling faintly of bread and ginger.
She couldn’t stop thinking of their conversation on the bluff, before things went sour. Viv felt a growing need, like something expanding in her chest, to ask a question she thought she might regret.
Not to voice it, though? That was cowardice. And she was no coward.
Or maybe that was just when it came to blades and blood, because this was harder than it had any right to be.
Clearing her throat, she finally managed, “What you said before. About … about somebody seeing you.”
Maylee glanced up but said nothing. Neither stopped walking.
“Fern was talking about her work. Her shop. That wasn’t all you were talking about, was it?”
The dwarf considered her answer. “No. Not all.”
Viv took a big breath. “Do you think we’re both seeing the same thing?”
“I’m pretty sure we aren’t,” replied Maylee. Viv opened her mouth to speak, but the dwarf continued before she could. “It’s like bein’ up on that hill. One of us is at the top, and the other is down here. We both look out to sea, but we see somethin’ different. One of us could climb up, or the other down, and if we did, then maybe things would be different … but we haven’t. Or can’t.”
“Maylee—”
Maylee shrugged, moving the basket to her other arm, the one between them. “If we’d met in another few years, who knows? Maybe we’d both be lookin’ out from the same hill. Doesn’t change that you’re still somebody I want to know. Doesn’t change what I can do with the days I have. Doesn’t make those matter less.”
“No, it doesn’t change that. But …” Viv struggled to find the right words as her face flushed hot. Her throat felt almost painfully thick, every word dragged out forcibly. “If I’m … careless when I hold on to somebody, I can … I can break bones. And I feel real careless right now. Because I don’t think you—”
“You don’t have to say any more,” replied the dwarf quietly. “I know what this is.”
“Knowing isn’t the same as accepting,” said Viv, and then wished she hadn’t.
“No. Some things are worth a few cracked ribs though.”
They reached the door of Sea-Song, and Maylee laid a hand on Viv’s belly, warm through her shirt. “Come here, hon,” she said.
Viv got down on a knee and gently ran her fingers along Maylee’s braid. The dwarf stroked one cheek with her knuckles, then leaned forward and kissed her on the corner of her mouth.
“I won’t break when you’re gone. And neither will you. I could wish we would, because then you might stay to keep that from happenin’.” She smiled. “But that would break you. So instead, I’ll see you tomorrow. And we won’t talk about this again, because nothin’ will change the way things will be, and it’s a waste of hours.”
Then she unlocked the shop, entered, and closed the door quietly behind her.
* * *
“Don’t look like you slept much,” observed Brand as he slid a plate of oatcakes and smoked bacon onto the bar-top before her.
Viv hadn’t. She’d dreamed of Varine again, and she hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that the necromancer was actually seeing her. She’d awakened over and over, until in desperation she’d stretched out with Blackblood lying lengthwise on top of her, both hands folded across the blade.
After that, she’d snatched a few hours before sunlight lanced in through the window, and she’d groggily risen to face the day. Her leg ached as though she’d been running on it all night.
She washed her breakfast down with an enormous mug of hot tea and wished it did more to wake her up. Reluctantly, Viv left Blackblood up in her room and carried Satchel down the hill to the bookshop. The day was going to be hot, and every inch of sand the shadows relinquished swiftly bled out the nighttime damp. At least the heat seemed to do for her head what the tea hadn’t.
When she reached Thistleburr, Fern was sitting on the edge of the still-shaded boardwalk, fingers wrapped around her own mug of tea. Potroast stretched out beside her, licking one of his forepaws.
“Anxious?” asked Viv as she approached.
“Mmm. About whether the crates full of books that I spent most of my remaining funds on are actually going to show up at my door? Not at all.” She put down her mug. “By which I mean to say, fuck, yes.” There was an edge of excitement to her obscenity though.
“Hey, Potroast,” said Viv. The gryphet startled and looked at her, his eyes huge. “Yeah, I’m talking to you. Remember, I hauled you down that hill last night?” She crouched in front of him and pulled a scrap of bacon from her pocket, holding it out to him between thumb and forefinger. “Gallina never gave you bacon, did she?”
He eyed her, then very gently extended his feathery neck and nipped it out of her grip.
Fern smiled at them both. “Well. That’s a good omen, I guess.”
Viv eased to a seat beside Fern and the gryphet and gently ran a finger along the silky feathers of his head, down past the point where they transitioned to short fur. His hide twitched and quivered behind her touch, but he didn’t protest.
“Huh,” she said. “How about that.”
They sat in comfortable silence while Viv scratched behind Potroast’s pointy ears. She even managed to wring some leg thumps out of him.
“There it comes,” breathed Fern, and leapt to her feet.
Clattering along the road from the fortress walls came Pitts, laboring under a bigger load than Viv had ever seen him pull.
When he rumbled to a stop in front of them, she spied three crates in his cart.
“Got somethin’ for you to sign,” he said, digging papers and a stylus from a pouch on his belt. While Fern attended to the paperwork, Viv began sliding a crate out the end.
“I’ll get ’em,” called Pitts as Viv hoisted the first off the buckboard.
“I got this one,” she said. She grunted as her muscles bunched hard against the weight of it, but she still hauled it to the door without too much difficulty. “Who knew a box of words could be so heavy?”
“Small stones tossed in the river. A thousand tiny prayers. The course is turned,” observed Pitts.
Fern furrowed her brow. “Is that from one of the poetry books? I don’t remember it.”
“Nope,” replied Pitts simply.