2. Chapter 2 The Errand
The apartment was half-empty by the time I'd finished my coffee.
Bjorna had gone down to Larg's before sunrise, something about the buckle on her shield mount that needed reshaping before the run.
Sif left after breakfast without saying where.
The quarter, probably, making rounds with people she didn't talk about in front of me.
Liv kissed me on the cheek, told me she had three stops to make before noon, and took the stairs two at a time with her ears bouncing.
That left me and Nott.
She was on the bench under the east window with a book open across her knees, the same spot she sat every morning. Her cloak was folded beside her. She hadn't looked up when the others left, and she didn't look up now.
"We need portal scrolls," I said. "For tomorrow. Bjorna said three minimum."
Nott turned a page. "Mildred's."
"I figured. You want to come with me, or should I go on my own?"
She closed the book with one hand, set it on the bench, and stood up.
That was the entire negotiation.
The avenue outside was bright and cold. The morning had burned off whatever fog had been sitting in the lanes overnight, and the air had that clean bite to it that meant the temperature was going to stay low.
Larg's hammer was already going in the smithy below, the ring of it carrying up the stone face of the building in steady intervals.
A woman with a covered basket crossed the street ahead of us, and a boy with a hand-cart was coming down from the market at a pace that said he'd already made his delivery and wanted to be done.
Nott walked beside me. I got my first real look at her.
I'd been in a room with Nott for a while.
She'd sat across from me at the Brown Hen, fought beside me in Cold Hollow, walked the same corridors and eaten at the same table.
But the party was always around, and when the party was around, Bjorna took up half the room.
Liv moved like the air owed her a favor.
Sif made sure you were paying attention.
Nott didn't compete for attention. Nott read her book.
She was six feet tall. My height, or close enough that the difference wasn't noticeable when we walked side by side.
But she carried the height differently than I did.
I was built square, wide at the shoulders, built for horizontal space.
Nott was vertical. She had a long neck, long arms, long legs under the dark wool of her robes.
She moved with a precision that wasted nothing, every step landing exactly where she intended, no bounce, no sway.
Her stride was smooth and unhurried and covered ground without effort.
Her hair was true black. Not dark brown, not almost-black.
It was the color that ate light instead of throwing it back.
It fell loose past her shoulders and down between her shoulder blades, straight and heavy, and where it lay against the dark collar the color of her hair and the near-black of the fabric blurred into each other.
The feather-patterning started at her temples, fine dark lines that traced along her hairline and ran behind her ears and down the sides of her neck.
The lines were delicate, almost decorative, like pen-strokes on pale skin. They disappeared under her collar.
She had high cheekbones and a jaw that came to a point that could have drawn blood.
Her skin was pale, a cool tone that made the dark lines of the feather-patterning stand out sharper.
Her eyes were dark, with an edge to them, a focus that made you feel like she was reading the back of your head from twenty feet away. She didn't blink much.
She was gorgeous and more exotic than the other girls.
I'd never put that together before, and the fact that I'd spent weeks in a room with this woman without noticing it said more about how well she kept herself behind the book than anything else.
Her collarbone sat at the neckline of her robes, a clean line under pale skin.
Her shoulders were narrow and the robes hung from them like they'd been cut for someone built exactly this way.
Her waist went in and her legs went on. All of her was long and clean and angular, sharp at every edge.
I pulled my eyes forward and kept walking.
"Have you been to Mildred's before?" I asked.
"Sure, several times. Mainly for identification and for components." Her voice was level. She didn't elaborate.
"What kind of components?"
"Crystallized mana for amplification work. Mildred keeps a limited stock of material-grade goods in the back. Most of her business is finished product."
"Do you do your own amplification?"
"When the materials are available."
We turned at the market corner. The stalls weren't up yet, just the empty frames and the canvas bundles stacked against the stone wall.
One vendor was already laying out produce on the near table, a dog-kin man with gray in his muzzle who gave us a nod without looking up from the turnips he was arranging.
"I don't know much about how your casting works." I stepped around a puddle that had frozen overnight at the edge of the cobbles. "The [Ember Bolts]. Where does the fire come from?"
Nott was quiet for a step. Two. I was starting to think I'd asked something she didn't want to answer when she spoke.
"The mana is ambient. It's in the air, in the stone, in the wood. When I cast, I'm reaching into the ambient field and pulling heat from it. The bolt isn't fire that I'm creating. It's fire that I'm concentrating from what's already there."
"So the heat exists before you mold it."
"Correct. The ambient field in a dungeon is denser than topside, which is why combat mages operate better underground. More raw material."
"Does it feel like anything? When you reach for it?"
She turned to me. Not a glance, a full turn. She studied my face for a count, as if she were deciding whether the question was genuine.
"It feels like a current," she said. "Faster than water, heavier than air. When I pull it, there's a moment where I can feel every thread of it at once. The temperature of each thread, the density, the speed. Molding what I receive is the complicated part. The reaching is the easy part."
"That's incredible," I said. "I had no idea it worked like that. I just see the bolt and it looks like you're pointing and shooting."
The corner of her mouth moved by a fraction. It wasn't a smile. It was the Nott version of one.
"Most people see it that way. The visible part is the smallest part. The bolt is the result. Everything that matters happens before the bolt leaves my hand."
"What about [Static Shock]? The lightning thing. Is that the same principle?"
"Different discipline." Her hands came up as she talked, the first time I'd seen her do that.
She held one palm flat and the other curved above it, fingertips almost touching.
"Lightning is a split. You take the ambient current and break it into forks.
The energy wants to travel the shortest path, so the forks find targets on their own.
The skill is in the initial split, not in the aim. "
"So you just break it open and let it go."
"In the simplest terms." Her hands dropped back to her sides, but her stride had loosened.
She wasn't walking like she had when we left the apartment.
"The control is in deciding how many forks, how much energy per fork, and how wide the spread.
Too many forks and each one is too weak to kill.
Too few and you leave targets standing."
"You had it perfect in that second chamber." The memory was sharp, the white-blue forks finding their targets in the dark. "The one with the club-bearer and the group behind it. The forks caught the whole cluster and only left the two big ones standing."
She was looking at me again. The edge was still there, but closer to surprise than anything else.
"You were watching the split pattern."
"I was watching everything. I just didn't know what I was watching until now."
Mildred's shop sat tucked back from the storefronts on either side.
The hand-painted sign above the door still read ENCHANTMENTS in blocky black letters, and the display window still held its sparse arrangement on the faded velvet.
The items were different from last time, a pair of leather bracers and something that looked like a compass made of bone.
The bell chimed when I pushed the door open.
The air inside was the same as I remembered. Beeswax and raw wool and that cold metallic smell of craft-altered materials. The light came from oil lamps set at intervals along the walls, warm and steady.
Mildred was at her long counter near the back, her gray hair pinned up, the canvas apron in place over a dark wool dress.
She had a small brass fitting in front of her and the magnifying lens flipped down over her right eye.
She looked up when the bell sounded, took in the two of us, and flipped the lens onto her forehead.
"Daniel. Come in."
"Morning, Mildred. We need portal scrolls for a Cold Hollow run tomorrow. Three at minimum, probably four if you've got them."
She came around the counter, her eyes moving from me to Nott and back. "I have six in stock. How deep are you going?"
"Boss floor, if things go well."
"I would go ahead and get six. It will be a few days before I get another shipment and I expect more adventurers to come through town looking for them.
" She crossed to a wooden cabinet on the side wall, opened it with a small brass key from her apron pocket, and pulled out a flat leather case.
She set it on the counter and opened the flap.
Inside, six scrolls lay in individual cloth sleeves. Each was sealed with a wax tab.
"Here are the six I have in stock at the moment," she said. "I'd recommend getting them all if you have the coin to spare."
"What does four run?"
"Fourteen lewen total."