16. Bickering to warm the soul #4
If I could’ve seen the mage’s entire face, I’m sure he would have looked right perplexed with how quickly his attention snapped over. “I don’t believe so…?”
“What a relief.”
I left that to the mage’s interpretation.
Assessments of the physical variety were something I could handle in stride, but a written examination?
Nightmare material. Ask me to scale a rock wall a thousand times over, or gear myself up mid-gallop, but never ask me to document a correct chronological enactment of Odessa’s history, or determine the missing alchemical compound in a basic tincture.
Things I’d been told a thousand times over in my life, but which vacated my mind entirely in the presence of ink, parchment, and pressure.
“Where are you taking me today for this assessment anyway?” I asked, a little eager to switch topics to one steeped in more immediacy.
We’d long since cleared the garrison grounds—and the outcropping of buildings that made my chest ache for home—and were approaching a gatehouse set into the Keep’s fortified outer wall.
And while I didn’t want to assume my future husband or his right hand were about to take advantage of the situation at any point and wander me off to have me killed, I couldn’t help the prickle of unease that climbed up my neck the farther we ventured.
“We’re almost there, I promise.” The mage nodded to the gatehouse. “I figured a bit of privacy wouldn’t be objected to, and there’s an outcropping a short distance from the Keep that will serve our purposes perfectly for this morning. We’ll head back to the garrison this afternoon.”
“So you’re not getting me outside the Keep to let the wildlife kill me and then bury my body?”
Jasper slipped out a rough beat of laughter. “No, I promise you that much.”
I tried my best to believe him. When we’d finally reached the gatehouse, Jasper exchanged a few hushed words with the ruby-eyed dark fae woman posted within.
She cast me a scrutinizing glance from behind the barred window before she vanished.
A moment later, the gate let out an agonizing screech before the panels pulled out.
Despite what the mage said, the outcropping was not a short distance away.
We walked and walked and walked down a dirt pathway framed by inconsistent bursts of foliage, some of which were colors I’d never seen in Odessa.
Leaves of deep navy blues and purples, so dark they were almost black, hung from trees with tenebrous bark cracked with veins of ashy silver.
Nyte-laurel trees, Jasper mentioned as I gaped at them and the well-paired underbrush.
And it was during that walk that a memory made a slow crawl into my mind, so slowly that I doubted its authenticity.
There were canopies and gnarled roots, black bark.
Above me, I thought, different from the trees above us now, yet so damned similar.
But the memory was gone as quickly as it came and felt like nothing but a dream once we reached our destination.
I immediately understood why Jasper had brought me there.
Just beyond where our path had taken a sharp bend, a steep incline shot up ahead, framed at the top by foliage, and supported by a rocky outcropping that jutted out from one side of the rise.
I’d imagined it had been a waterfall in another life, or when the rain was merciless in Grimmoria, from how sloping vertical pathways were hewn into the layers of stone and from the crumbly basin at its bottom, half reclaimed by grass.
“Our home for the morning,” Jasper said before he turned his attention to the ridiculous number of folds and pockets built into the somehow loose yet also structured layers he wore. He swore quietly twice and surfaced a folded square of paper on his third attempt.
I’d thought the pockets in my guard-issued pants were generous, but his were another thing entirely.
Not only did Jasper have three or four pockets sewn into each leg, but a couple of pouches hung on a belt around his waist, and his jacket had so many I lost count after nine between the inside and out.
I wasn’t above assuming his boots and the draped folds of his shirt or hood weren’t loaded with pockets either.
I glanced at the piece of parchment as the mage unfolded it, bearing a hastily written list, before I looked up at him, tipping my head.
“The details of your assessment,” he said quickly, definitely with a bit of embarrassment in his low voice. He didn’t give me long to steal a glance before he was folding it back up.
“Do you have a bad memory, mage?” I chuckled, and his stubbled jaw flickered with a bit of tension.
He’d recited an abundance of history to me on our walk like it was nothing, so I couldn’t help but find it a little strange he’d feel the need to write something as simple as an assessment. Far be it from me to judge the condition of someone’s short-term memory, I supposed.
“Sometimes.” He stuffed the paper back into his pocket and tipped his hooded head towards the incline ahead of us. “Start with a sprint. Top and back, as fast as you can.”