Chapter 32
“Whoof,” panted Maylee, flicking sweat from her forehead and flipping her braid over her shoulder. “How’d I let you talk me into this?”
Viv shaded her eyes and gazed out over the sea from their vantage atop the bluff. “The view is worth it,” she replied, smiling encouragingly. She didn’t mention the powerful need she had to survey the surrounding lands as far as the eye could see, to squint at every shadow and scrubby tree.
No advancing army on the horizon. No bloodless woman with eyes like splashes of ink. She felt some of her itch subside.
To their left, markers poked up from the long grasses of the graveyard like half-submerged boulders in a stream. Fern and Gallina shook out a green wool blanket and laid it across the bare expanse beyond the fence.
“Strange to say, but I’ve never been up here,” said Maylee, scanning north. “Huh, that’s quite the cottage, isn’t it?” She pointed to the sprawling estate visible from the promontory.
“Fern says that’s Zelia Greatstrider’s place,” said Viv.
“The one that writes all those books with the dirty bits?”
“They’re not that dirty,” protested Viv, although yes, they actually were.
“Didn’t say it was bad.” The baker grinned at her, a grin with something wicked folded into it. A grin that almost made Viv wish Rackam would take his sweet time.
Maylee set her wicker basket on the blanket. She’d insisted on carrying it herself. “Fern, you should have her come by the shop next time you’re thinkin’ about a sale. Scones and sexy books? Yes, please!”
“Ha! I’d be terrified to ask her. That mansion of hers is forbidding. But as ideas go …” Fern trailed off.
Viv unbuckled her saber and leaned it against one of the stone pillars at the corner of the graveyard.
She’d seen Maylee eyeing it the whole trip up.
She’d felt a frustrating combination of guilt and annoyance at that, and she was still doing her best to wrestle both of those feelings back into their boxes.
Nobody would be sneaking up on them at this height, but after her dream and her midnight conference with Satchel, there was no way in all eight hells she was going to troop out of town unarmed.
The greatsword—Blackblood, she thought—felt best in her hands, but she’d reluctantly left it in favor of subtlety.
Or at least as close as she could come to subtle.
This trip had been markedly less taxing than the previous one. Her leg felt stable, only twinging occasionally, and she was finally able to wear her right boot again. She felt almost herself.
“Well, it’s good to get some air, anyway,” she said.
“You did kinda bully all of us into comin’,” said Gallina as she removed her boots and dug her toes into the hot sand. “Lookit you. Big, tough, woman of action, organizin’ picnics.”
“Fern needed to get out,” replied Viv.
“Oh, is that what this is? I needed to get out?” Fern pretended to be affronted.
“Yeah, you did. Moping around, waiting for that shipment? The shop’s closed, the walls are painted. Everything’s done that can be done. You needed some air.”
Gallina lay back on the blanket, laced her fingers behind her head, and closed her eyes against the sun. “Long way to come for some air, that’s all I’m sayin’.”
“You know, Rackam really only has one rule,” said Viv.
Gallina cracked an eye at her. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. Complainers don’t eat.”
Maylee laughed as she finished unpacking the basket, arraying bottles and crocks and muslin-wrapped bundles on the blanket. Fern shooed Potroast away from them with moderate success.
“Oh, and speaking of not needing to eat.” Viv unslung Satchel’s bag and flipped it open, unstoppering one of the vials to sprinkle dust over his bones.
As Satchel clambered to his feet, he surveyed the area with interest. He held out a hand before him, wriggling his fingers as though he could feel the breeze. Perhaps he could.
“Marvelous,” he said wistfully, looking out over the tumble of blue ocean, at the tiny ships plying the horizon. “So many of my days spent in the dark,” he murmured. “So much time wasted.”
Viv reflected again that although he had no flesh with which to express his emotions, something about the set of his body and the tone of his voice communicated a great deal.
She thought of all those days, made conscious only to labor in some dire service she couldn’t even imagine, only to be returned to oblivion when Varine was done with him.
Seeing him in the sun, gleaming under its warmth, blew life into a cooling ember deep in her chest.
“If you don’t mind, I’ll wander a bit while you share your meal,” he said.
Viv thought it was the most relaxed he’d ever sounded.
“Be my guest. It’s about time you got out.” She thought about their conversation the night before. “We’ll try to make it something you can get used to.”
A rumbling sound, like stones tumbling over one another, issued from the vicinity of his jaw, and Viv realized that he was chuckling.
“I don’t imagine I’ll be strolling the streets anytime soon, no matter the outcome,” he said. “Some things are foolish to imagine.”
Viv couldn’t muster a reply that wasn’t insulting or false, so she wisely chose silence.
He strolled to the edge of the bluff, gazing after the seabirds that wheeled beyond.
The rest of them sat together on the blanket and worked their way through the bounty that Maylee had assembled.
There were long, narrow loaves with flaky crusts.
These she sliced lengthwise and spread with a soft goat cheese and pepper preserves, sweet and smoky.
Green bottles of summer beer tasted of lemons and wheat fields.
Thin ginger cookies snapped pleasingly between the teeth, and there was a crock of sugared cream to dip them in.
Potroast snatched up hunks of bread that Maylee tossed his way, although he stared most longingly at Gallina. Viv never saw her share any of her food with the gryphet, but he followed each of the gnome’s bites so avidly, it seemed impossible she wasn’t slipping him something on the sly.
Viv caught herself snatching glances at Maylee’s knees again, bare and soft as the cream in the crock.
A mild northerly breeze made the air sweet and pleasant, carrying the scent of the thistle flowers and only the faintest hint of salt from below.
When they were replete, Gallina fell asleep almost immediately, and Potroast curled up beside her, his chin resting on her belly where it rose and fell with every gentle breath.
Maylee leaned against Viv’s arm, with her own looped through it. Viv liked being clung to. It made her want to cling back, to bury herself in the scent and the warmth of her. She settled for squeezing Maylee’s arm in tighter to her side.
Fern had unpinned her cloak and sat with it folded across her lap.
Viv followed her gaze down the slope toward Murk and the tendrils of smoke curling from within its fortress walls. “What’re you thinking about?” she asked.
Fern returned from woolgathering, blinking at her in surprise. “That I ate too much,” she said with an embarrassed grin.
“Really, though. That was deep thought if I ever saw it, hon,” said Maylee.
“Thinking about my father.” She ran her fingers along a fold of her cloak. “You know, I never asked him why.”
“Why what?” asked Viv.
“Why a bookshop? Why here? Was it what he always wanted? I don’t even know.”
“Does that matter?” Maylee sat up straighter, but kept her arm curled around Viv’s.
Fern shrugged. “It shouldn’t, I guess. But I never bothered to ask myself that question either.
Maybe if I’d asked him, I’d have my own answer?
All this work. All your help. All this, and …
” She raised her paws, and then let them fall back into the tangle of red cloth.
“You do something for years and years, and the only reason you continue is because once you stop, you won’t really have anything. ”
She knotted her paws in the cloak. “At least it sometimes seems that way. I’m sorry.
What a stupid thing to say, after everything you’ve done.
And all this.” She gestured at the remains of their feast. “I sound ungrateful. But I’m not.
You’ve probably never felt that way about anything, have you?
” She said it jokingly, but Viv thought there was a tiny thread of hope in there, too.
“No, I suppose not,” said Viv. “I know what I’m made for. Pretty sure I always did.” She might even have believed it.
“I have,” said Maylee, and her arm tightened reflexively for a second. “D’you really think you’d feel better if you stopped?”
Fern thought about that seriously. “No, I guess I wouldn’t.”
“Any idea why?” pressed the dwarf.
“I guess … I guess because I’d miss the moment.” She made a frustrated noise, casting around for the right words. “That instant when you know that someone sees the same thing you see.”
Viv was surprised when Maylee nodded, shifting to meet Fern’s gaze squarely. “When they see you. When you know that at least right then, you’re really not alone. Somebody else feels exactly what you do. Or you hope so, anyway.”
“Yes,” said Fern, sounding surprised. “Every book is a little mirror, and sometimes you look into it and see someone else looking back.” She reached over and dealt Viv’s considerable forearm a slap. “I even saw this one a few times.”
“Hidden depths,” said Maylee with a laugh.
“I feel like you’re both acting more surprised about this than you should,” said Viv dryly.
“So. That’s why you do it, hon,” said the baker firmly. “And to be honest, it’s the same reason I do what I do.”
Fern stared back at her thoughtfully.
Viv was still turning the idea over in her mind when a hollow voice rose from beyond the fence, grave and sonorous. “I think that you had best see this, m’lady.”
It was the “m’lady” that prickled the hairs on the back of Viv’s neck.
“Everybody stay put,” she said, her voice flat and low.
She tapped Gallina awake, and the gryphet hooted irritably at her. Then she snatched her saber and located Satchel amidst the grave markers. Gallina trailed barefoot behind her, rubbing her eyes and grumbling under her breath.
The grass of the graveyard switched against the homunculus’s ribs as he stared at something Viv couldn’t see.
When she drew near, looming over his shoulder, he looked back up at her with his flickering blue gaze.
The earth was blasted black in front of him, as though from a lightning strike or a carefully controlled flame. Shreds of grass curled and twisted into charcoal ribbons around a barren circle the size of a shield.
Etched into the fine black powder was a diamond with branches like horns.