Chapter 31
Durlain was gone when I woke in the morning.
A fire was burning in the stove again, painting the windowless hut in shades of gold.
The bags stood packed and ready to go by the door; the blankets I hadn’t used had been neatly rolled up as well.
Two buttered raisin rolls and a steaming mug of chamomile tea were waiting for me on the primitive table …
but the prince of many faces himself was nowhere to be seen.
My heart should have skipped. My guts should have constricted.
Instead, I found myself blinking somewhat drowsily at the door, from where his boots and coat were missing as well – and then heard Smudge’s grumbling whinnies below the hut, followed by Durlain’s quiet but unmistakable admonitions.
Ah.
Of course.
Horses. Travel. All those things I was supposed to be worrying about.
I untangled myself from the blankets – Durlain’s blankets – and stretched the stiffness from my limbs for a minute or two. Then, having donned tunic, belt, and knives, I dropped onto the low bench by the table to eat my raisin rolls and contemplate my life.
I’d almost fucked him.
I would have, if he hadn’t held back, and even in the clarity of morning, I couldn’t find it in me to regret anything.
It was equal parts thrilling and unnerving, to observe myself turning into this person I didn’t know in the slightest – some reckless creature flirting with darkness for nothing but the fun of it.
There were so many reasons to turn back.
So many reasons to redraw the lines and safely retreat behind them.
But a dangerous man had kissed me and moaned at the taste of it, and somehow that eclipsed all other, more rational considerations: the heady exhilaration of being wanted for strength rather than weakness.
He was still a scheming arsehole. He might well break every single one of his promises once we’d pulled Cimmura from Lesceron’s dungeons. He might leave me homeless and penniless and stuck in a kingdom I didn’t know, abandoning me to deal with Belloc and the birds by myself.
On the other hand, I suspected he’d be a bloody good lay.
Decision made, I gulped down my tea, pulled on my boots with my last half-eaten roll still in my hand, and clambered down the ladder of the hut.
He was there, indeed, grooming the horses beside the trickle of sweet water that ran down the rocky coast. Windswept hair. Rolled-up sleeves. I couldn’t pretend I minded the sight.
‘Morning,’ I said.
His shoulders tightened.
The movement was small but unmistakable, but it was visible, and coming from Durlain Averre, that was as much as a howling cry of alarm. It took another long moment before he lowered the brush he’d been applying to Pain’s flanks and turned. ‘Morning.’
And now my heart did skip.
I’d seen that tightness around his eye before. I knew the set of his jaw. I’d been shown nothing else for four whole days after an ill-advised minute of handholding – that look of a heart closing over again, of one step forward and two steps back.
Oh, balls.
I may have decided not to redraw any lines after tonight’s kiss, but of course, what was to stop him from doing it instead?
‘Sleep well?’ I said.
He considered me with some caution. ‘Perfectly fine, thank you.’
And that was all. No How are you feeling? or Perhaps we should have a word about this or even just a Had a bit of an excitable night – you? Just blank silence, a face like arrow-loaded battlements, and the rocks and the rushing sea laughing their arses off at us.
‘Let’s be clear,’ I said, because my mood had been excellent until a moment ago, and he could go to hell.
‘You’re obviously under no obligation to repeat any of last night’s escapades, you’re free to regret whatever you want, but you’re not going to pretend again that none of it ever happened.
I’ve had enough of that. Behave, or I’ll spend the rest of the day reciting your own words back at you and see if that refreshes your memory. ’
His slow blink suggested he hadn’t seen that coming. ‘Noted.’
‘So?’
‘So I had a most enjoyable time,’ he said tersely, ‘the matter of regret is still under deliberation, and regardless, we need to start moving. If we make some good progress, we’ll reach the actively volcanic zone by nightfall. We should be safer there.’
Safer.
The memory of that little poison bottle slammed back into my mind like a bucket of cold water.
Durlain was a strong mage, by his own account.
But so was Belloc, and I didn’t have the faintest clue which of them would win a direct confrontation.
I did know that Aranc’s birds were sneaking bastards and that they’d had plenty of time to prepare for the complicating factor of my magic by now; if they caught me by surprise, if they chose their battlefield right, I didn’t dare to assume I’d be the one to survive.
The volcanoes, though …
Fireborn couldn’t easily take control of each other’s fires; Aranc was all-powerful at the Estien court for that simple reason, with an entire mountain’s heat to back him up.
Once Durlain had woken any of the volcanoes along the Garnot coast, he’d have that additional power at his disposal as long as we were close to it – and I’d seen in the Brainne marshes how much damage he could do with a little geothermal assistance.
We just had to make it to sunset alive.
Surely we could do that?
My light-hearted mood seemed suddenly nonsensical now. Handling a maybe-locked door and denouncing Lark did not solve any of our other pressing problems, for hell’s sake – and speaking of Lark …
I should probably tell Durlain.
I really, really did not want to have that conversation shouting on horseback, though, and we did need to leave. Once we’d reached our safe place to stay for the night, he could interrogate me about my choices as much as he liked.
‘Alright,’ I said. ‘I’ll go get the feedbags and the saddles.’
His nod looked a fraction relieved.
We were on our way within fifteen minutes, northward over the narrow black beaches, the sky an ominous slate grey above our heads.
Every fleck of colour seemed to have been drained from the landscape, not even some last glowing algae or blood-tinted moss to lend a hint of life to the view; just the brittle obsidian rocks and the lead-grey ocean, spewing sickly white foam across the shore.
‘Does Niflheim look more or less cheerful than this?’ I asked as we turned around yet another outcropping of volcanic glass to find yet another desolate bay stretching out before us.
‘Just about the same,’ Durlain said, then paused a moment. ‘Although if Muri were here, she’d remind me it’s at least more beautiful. So you can take that as a comfort.’
‘Is it?’
‘I’m not the person to ask,’ he said curtly. ‘I loathe the place. She can stand it better.’
He’d mentioned that before. I’d have asked more – about the cold, his scars, his feud with the god of death himself – if not for his face, which was as pale now as the foam beneath the horses’ hooves.
Perhaps, two days’ riding away from Mount Garnot and its dungeons, the topic of his sister wasn’t the most considerate one.
We rode on in silence, scanning the rocky stretches of land for any sign of hostile movement.
I shouldn’t have been counting my knives after Durlain’s theorising of last night, and did it every other minute anyway; if I had to practise leaving my weapons alone, I’d rather do that on an occasion where losing them wouldn’t be so fatally disastrous.
By noon we were still alive, and the landscape was changing.
The scent on the air was the first giveaway – a first whiff of that acrid rotten-egg stench souring the brine of the sea.
The plumes of steam came soon after. Small puffs at first, trailing from cracks and crevices in the rocks, but swiftly growing larger, until they were proper steam vents belching clouds of sulphurous vapour across the beaches.
Pools bubbled in the surf by that time, emitting more noxious gasses, and my eyes stung whenever we passed a particularly active one.
We were a day and a half away from Mount Garnot itself. I spent half my time in the saddle looking over my shoulder, and the other half trying to work out a rune sequence that could prevent our lungs from dissolving by the time we reached the palace.
It was close to sunset when the landscape finally lost some of that eerie flatness we’d spent the last week riding through.
No more flood huts here – there were ridges of stone now on which one could take shelter from highwater, and either way, I doubted drowning would be the first danger on anyone’s mind, surrounded by rumbling earth and poisonous air.
Durlain rode on with a confidence that suggested he knew a safe place to sleep, and I followed as the sky lost its brightness, the sun a pale golden dot surrounded by the green-and-orange glow of dusk.
Just when I was about to ask whether he was planning to ride through the night, we turned around a towering stone arch – and I knew at first glance we’d reached our destination.
It was a shallow bay, black sand tucked between equally black cliffs, the sea bubbling peacefully in the amber-coloured light.
Behind the steep slopes, more hills rose into the sky, their blunted tops suggesting they were or had been active volcanoes.
And in the cliffside farthest from us, the hollow outlines of a cave beckoned – deep enough that I couldn’t see the back of it from where we brought our horses to a standstill.
Next to me, Durlain didn’t speak, even though he’d been the first to slow down.
‘Useful,’ I said.
‘Very useful.’ His voice was low, his face tense. ‘Approach with caution. It’s the only decent place to sleep nearby.’
It took me a moment to make sense of that warning.