Chapter 10
The Keeper of Maps
The advice Jesstin had received from the Southerlands man had been to simply think of the Forum Obscura and signs would appear.
The first time, it had happened almost right away.
But he’d been thinking of little else since they’d left Everspell nearly an hour ago, and there’d been no sign of anything.
Elloven was alert to their surroundings, but now and then he’d catch a dreamy smile that made him think dirty thoughts.
He confirmed his discipline was still intact when he managed to keep his hands off her.
But he had never felt more alive than he did walking beside her, in awe of everything she was and could be.
Of course this sensation would happen to him in the realm of the dead.
He kept revisiting her question about regrets, because though he’d answered her right away, it wasn’t actually simple at all.
Did he? Not about loving her. Not about the choice to surrender his self-defeating ethics to share with her an intimacy that was still tearing through him like lightning.
But no matter what she’d said, there was something he could do to destroy her love for him, and he’d already done it.
He loved her more with every second that passed, rivaled only in his loathing for himself, but the prior night would never have happened if she’d known the truth about Gennady, and that was the problem.
Jesstin glanced at the bright sky. It was impossible to know how many hours of daylight they’d get. He needed the market. He needed a map. And he needed his fucking soul fragment back.
“I haven’t stopped thinking about this market, Jesstin, but nothing’s happening. Is there something else we need to do to make it appear?” Elloven asked. She shifted her satchel to the other shoulder, and he grabbed it instead, joining it with his own. “I can carry it.”
“I know,” he answered. “No, nothing else. Least there wasn’t last time.”
“Maybe it’s for the best.” She sounded relieved. “We’ll find this spiral another way.”
He had to tell her what he’d bargained away, but it didn’t have to be then. “Unless Daire miraculously appears to offer his erudite wisdom, then we do need the market.”
“Maybe Daire can’t contact you because you’re not actually dead.”
Jesstin slowed. It seemed so obvious, but he’d had plenty of other competition for his thoughts. “You, uh, might be onto something there.”
“Did anyone tell you how to open these doors, once we find them?”
He started walking again. “Mon didn’t know. Ryquin didn’t know. I don’t think anyone knows.”
“I’m still surprised Estelar actually locked away his own son.”
“Don’t be too impressed.” Where the hell was the market? Was it closed? Did it even have business hours? “Your uncle is only mad his own plans for you were spoiled.”
“Opening a door is one thing, but...” Elloven seemed to choose her response carefully. “I’m dead whether I’m here or there.”
“I told you to stop using that word,” Jesstin replied, rougher than he’d intended.
“Saying it or not has no difference to its truth.”
“Can we worry about one problem at a time?” He wondered if it was time to be concerned that the market was rejecting him, that it had what it wanted and no longer had use for his patronage.
If he couldn’t retrieve his soul fragment, he’d return to Riverchapel a stranger.
They couldn’t go back to the Forum Obscura where he’d met the Conductor.
Not together. But if he could find another device like the especular. ..
“Even if you could, this...” She swept her hands along her body. “This isn’t real. Here, maybe, but my body, my actual body, is gone.”
“Don’t worry about that. I’ve taken care of it.”
It was several moments before her exasperated response arrived. “How? How exactly have you taken care of it, Jesstin?”
Bringing up Lexsea seemed imprudent, but he could tell the truth without mentioning her. “Your body is unchanged. It’s been preserved through magic, and it will be waiting when we cross back over.”
She didn’t seem to know what to do with that and went silent.
“Hey, El, it will be fine, all right?”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because it’s true.”
Elloven sighed. “And if it is... Ryquin cannot get in here, Jess. He simply cannot.”
He perked as they came upon another sign, but the market was nowhere on it.
“Did you hear me?”
“Ryquin can’t get in. I know.” If the nearest market had anything like the especular, he could handle whatever they asked of him. Then he’d just travel back, steal his fragment, and be back before she realized he was gone.
No, that won’t work either. The only time she won’t look for me might be moonrise, but I can’t travel at moonrise, and besides, what am I going to tell her when I need to sneak off to barter?
Elloven stopped in the road. “Even if it means I can’t go with you.”
Jesstin’s shoulders crimped taut. “Why would you say something like that?”
“You’re only frustrated because I’m willing to talk about this and you’re not.” She rankled in exasperation. “Don’t roll your eyes at me, Jesstin. You’re very good at picking fights when you let yourself feel a little too much.”
Jesstin recoiled. She had no idea what he was dealing with. “Or maybe I’m focused on finding this fucking market—”
“Why, why does it have to be a place like that? What about searching for Mon?” Elloven shoved her hands out at her sides. “He could still be useful. Maybe he knows someone.”
Jesstin bristled at how easily she’d backed him to a wall, and he could feel the ill-fated words before they flew from his lips like spittle. “Mon’s about as fucking useful as this conversation.”
Elloven’s scoff was soft, trapped in her throat. “I know what you’re doing.”
“Do you?” What was he doing, trying to hurt her? Trying to get her to declare the prior night a terrible idea, so he could allay his own guilt? Looking for a fucking spiral, Jesstin? Look no further than yourself.
“And so do you.” She seemed like she might go to him but crossed her arms over herself instead. “There’s no reason we can’t at least try to find the spiral some other way.”
“The reason is we don’t know where it is, and no one we ask will know either.”
“We haven’t asked a single person!”
“And I won’t, Elloven, because the information we need isn’t fishwife gossip or tavern banter, is it? Like traveling across the Infinitum through a mirror, it’s the kind of thing you trade your soul for.”
She blinked hard. “Excuse me?”
He hadn’t meant to, but he wasn’t in his right mind. At all. He couldn’t stitch together how fast his ease with her had mutated into such bottomless anxiety.
Jesstin led her to the side of the road. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m acting like this.”
“Yes, you do. But right now you’re going to explain yourself, and I won’t move another inch, not another step, until you do,” she asserted.
“You don’t need to worry. I’m handling it.
” He hung his head with a shake. “You wanted to know how I got here so quickly. Well, there’s this.
.. magic mirror that can transport you, but I had to offer a.
.. a fragment of my soul. Not all of it.
Just a piece.” He emphasized his words with his best attempt at reassuring hands.
“But it’s fine. I’ve already planned to steal it back. ”
Elloven gaped at him, thunderstruck. “No. Jesstin, no, it is not fine, because if it was, you would have just told me this when I asked. How does trust work between us if it’s only conditional?
” She yanked him farther off the road when a group of travelers came by.
“After last night, I thought we were beyond this.”
“This” required no definition. He sighed. “Will you let me explain?”
She pressed her mouth tight and held out her hands.
Jesstin waited for two women to pass. He caught the trailing end of their conversation about visiting a place called the Infantorium, which gave him a few extra seconds to consider his words.
Softening dishonesty was still dishonesty.
There was only one secret he would keep, and only until she was safe and alive again.
“Everyone who doesn’t have an underhanded motive for sending me here thought I was insane for even considering it.
Even Taven tried to stop me. You too. I could see it in the Night Soul. I can see it now.”
Elloven shrugged with her brows. He supposed he deserved her guardedness.
“I came for you, to bring you home. Hell, I’d have come just to see you, but Lexsea told me Ryquin believed I could do more.
These necromancer abilities I have are not like Daire’s or his friends’, and according to them, they’re strong enough that I might be able to bring one person back with me. Back to life.”
“And you believed them? Ryquin and Lexsea, who, as you say, had underhanded motives for sending you here?”
“I can’t explain why, but yes, I do.” He wanted to reach for her—hold her, reassure her of the love she’d asked of him in the night. To do so now, though, would feel calculating. “I’m here because they believe I can save you, and anything less than that, for me, is unacceptable.”
She shook her head at the sky. “Either you’re trying to deceive me, or you think I’m too fragile to handle this.”
Jesstin started to say “neither,” but it stopped short of the truth. “I worry if you stop believing in me, Elloven, you won’t follow me.”
Elloven stared in astonishment. “Jesstin, you followed me across the kingdom—”
“I didn’t really have a choice with the bond, did I?”
“And now here? You certainly had a choice about coming here. Why would you think I wouldn’t believe in you?”