17. Chapter 17 The Boots #2
The difference was immediate. She took two steps and her movement changed.
It was subtle, not a visible burst of speed, but her weight transferred from heel to ball to toe with a smoothness that her old boots hadn’t allowed.
She shifted her stance, dropped into a crouch, came back up. Her face lit up.
“Those feel incredible. I must have these in my life at once.”
“They should feel incredible. I spent six days on the enchantment.” Halsten leaned back against the shelves and crossed his arms. “The stalker-hide accepts the spell better than any other material I’ve worked with.
My daughter brings it in from Aldermere when she can find it.
It’s not cheap and I don’t apologize for the price. ”
“How much?” Sif said.
Halsten told her. It was more than I’d expected, but Sif didn’t flinch. She took three more steps, did something fast with her feet that I couldn’t follow, and nodded.
“I’ll take them.”
“I thought you might. They look good on you.” Halsten nodded.
Sif sat back on the stool to relace the new pair properly. Her fingers worked the laces with a focused precision. The ash-gray fur on the backs of her hands caught the light from the shop’s window, fine and soft where it thinned toward her knuckles.
“You’re staring,” she said without looking up.
“I’m watching you lace boots. It’s educational.”
“You’re a terrible liar.” She pulled the lace tight and tucked the end. She looked up at me from the stool, her chin level with my chest, her silver hair falling loose around her face because she hadn’t tied it back this morning. Her blue eyes held mine.
The woman on that stool wasn’t the same one who’d been making dick jokes in the apartment all week. Sif without the audience was much different. She was quieter, and the quiet suited her.
She reached out and put her hand on my forearm. Her fingers settled against my skin, the fur on the backs of her hands warm where it touched. Her thumb came to rest on the inside of my wrist, right over my pulse.
I put my hand over hers.
We stayed like that for a few seconds. She held my gaze, steady and serious, and there was nothing behind it except what was right there in front of me. The blue was pale, catching the light from the window, and her face was open in a way I’d never seen it.
She pressed her thumb against my wrist, once, and pulled her hand back.
“We should go,” she said. Her voice had changed. Something had dropped out of it.
“Yeah.” I cleared my throat. “We should, but you need to pay for those. We can’t go to The Splits if you are in jail.”
Sif put her old boots in her Ring of Holding and paid for the new ones with a big smile on her face. We walked out into the morning sunlight and she wore the new boots with pride.
She didn’t slip back into the sharp banter register right away. We walked a full block in a comfortable silence, her new boots making a different sound on the packed dirt, lighter, quicker. Her shoulder brushed mine twice and she didn’t move away either time.
“Thank you,” she said on the second block.
“For standing there and doing absolutely nothing?”
“For coming with me.”
I looked at her. She was looking straight ahead, her jaw set in a way that said she wasn’t going to elaborate. I didn’t push it.
“Anytime,” I said. “You’re a fun person to be around, not to mention you make me look a lot more impressive.”
“How’s that exactly?”
“People admire me for snagging a gorgeous wolf-kin.”
She bumped her shoulder against my arm, the same gesture she’d used the first time we walked through town together. It landed differently now.
“Flattery will get you anywhere.”
I cocked a brow and smirked. “Anywhere?”
“You’ve been around me too long. You have a dirty mind.”
We made it to the south gate with time to spare.
***
We exited the Halver’s Reach portal. The walk to The Splits took a few minutes. The pathway went through some tall dark woods, but otherwise was unremarkable.
Bjorna set the pace at the front. She wore the new breastplate, dark iron over boiled leather, and it fit her like it had been made for her body, which it had.
The blackstone shield rode on her back, the dark metal reinforcement catching the light along the rim even from behind.
Larg had done something impressive with it.
Liv walked beside me, her quiver restocked and heavy on her hip.
She was right about her new skirt. It was awfully short and she looked absolutely unbelievable in it.
She knew she did too. Nott was behind us, her dark cloak pulled up despite the sun, her book somewhere in the folds.
Sif ranged ahead and to the left, testing the new boots on natural terrain, her movement noticeably smoother on the uneven ground.
Mildred’s scrolls sat in Bjorna’s ring. Six of them, sealed in wax tubes, each one a one-time portal back to camp. Bjorna had counted them twice and Nott had counted them once more after that.
The staging area came into view as we crested a low ridge. It was bigger than Cold Hollow’s had been. A broad, cleared flat of packed earth at the base of a cliff face where the mountain’s interior opened up.
There were people. More than I’d expected.
A dozen camps were scattered across the flat, some with proper canvas shelters, others just bedrolls and a fire ring.
Gear lay in organized rows. Weapons leaned against packs.
A registrar’s shed sat off to one side, wood-framed with a canvas roof, a Crown banner hanging limp from a pole.
“It’s busy,” I said.
“Good sign,” Bjorna said. “When the staging area is empty, it means the dungeon is too dangerous or the loot isn’t worth the trip. When it’s full, there’s money to be made.”
She led us toward the registrar first. We checked in, confirmed our party, and Bjorna handled the paperwork with the efficiency of someone who’d done this at other dungeons before.
The registrar, a thin human man with ink stains on his fingers and a bored expression, stamped our entry form and waved us through.
We were picking a camp spot when the portal into the dungeon flashed, a bright hard pulse that made everyone nearby look up. Three people came through. Two on their feet, barely. The third was being carried between them, his arms draped over their shoulders, his feet dragging.
They cleared the portal and one of the two standing ones went down on a knee. She caught herself with one hand, her armor scored with deep gouges that had cut through the plate into the leather underneath. The man carrying the wounded one staggered sideways and lowered his friend to the dirt.
The carried man wasn’t conscious. His left arm was wrong. The bone was broken above the elbow and the limb hung at an angle that made my stomach clench. Blood had soaked through a bandage wrapped around his thigh, the cloth dark and stiff. His face was gray.
I was moving before I thought about it.
“I’m a healer,” I said. “Let me look at him.”
The woman on one knee looked up at me. She was cat-kin and young, with a gash along her hairline that had bled into her left eye. She looked too tired to be surprised and too scared to say no.
“His arm,” she said. “And his leg. Something got him from behind on the fourth depth and we couldn’t stop the bleeding. We don’t have a healer in our party and we really regret it now. A good healer is an absolute must.”
I knelt beside the unconscious man and put both hands on his chest.
[Mend.]
The golden light came up and went in. I found the broken arm first. The bone was a clean snap, the ends displaced but not shattered.
The gold set it, pushed the ends together, and sealed the break.
The thigh wound was worse. Whatever had hit him had gone deep into the muscle and nicked something that bled freely.
The gold found it and closed it and the blood flow stopped under the bandage.
He was probably unconscious from a brain bleed so I placed a hand on his forehead.
His color started coming back. The gray faded and something closer to life moved into his face. His eyes opened.
“Don’t sit up yet,” I said. “You had some bad injuries. Give it a minute.”
He blinked at me. His mouth opened and nothing came out. The cat-kin woman next to him stared at me, then at the gold fading from my hands, then back at me.
“How much?” she said. “We were able to get some gold before we had to turn back. Also, it turns out that portal scrolls are vital as well. Walking back out with him wasn’t easy or fun. As you can see, we’re not planners.”
“You owe me nothing. You just came out of there looking like you needed help. Your friend’s going to be fine. The arm is set and the leg is closed. He should rest tonight.”
She sat back on her heels. The tension in her face cracked and what came through was relief so raw it almost looked like pain. “We thought he was going to die in there. We couldn’t get the bleeding to stop.”
“Well, he didn’t die, so don’t be so hard on yourself.” I looked at the gash on her hairline. “Come here. Let me get that cut. May I?”
She nodded and I put my hand on her forehead and the gold closed the gash in two seconds. She blinked and touched the spot where it had been.
“Thank you,” she said. “I didn’t even know it was there. I was so preoccupied with getting him out.”
“You’re welcome. Be careful in the future and try doing some of that planning you talked about.”