1. Saige #3
“I’m fine,” I assure her, thinking of the trays of food they brought when Leo died, the offers to mind the shop, the stream of visitors checking in on me.
I didn’t know what to do with that kindness.
I still don’t. A poisonous part of me questions whether I even deserve it.
I shake the thoughts from my head and meet Raven’s eyes.
“Thank you though. You know I appreciate you. And everyone.”
Raven looks like she wants to say more, but she doesn’t. Instead, she turns back to the topic at hand. “Leave plenty of time to get to the tavern tomorrow. It’s the Reclaiming festival.”
“Already?” The last thing I feel like doing is pushing my way through the drunken crowds on their way down the high street to the ruins of the old battlements.
It’s where the main celebration is held to mark the anniversary of the war’s end two hundred years ago.
Us mortals don’t usually acknowledge much about the Azkari, but the Reclaiming is the exception.
Hundreds will gather around the plaques and memorials, drinking to the legend of the Black Flame, and telling stories about he sacrificed himself to destroy the Silver-Tongued Deceiver.
Raven mirrors my look of distaste. “I know. The streets will be packed with revelers. Keep your coin purse close—not that there’s much in there.”
“Very funny,” I say, deadpan, but I don’t want to let my friend down. “I’ll see you at the Kettle tomorrow night then?”
Raven makes a show of looking aghast. “Are you kicking me out?”
“I’m simply encouraging you to continue your day elsewhere,” I sing.
“That’s a yes,” she grumbles, heading for the door. “If you’re not there by sundown, Yevna, Grim and I will come and wreak havoc. We’ll crack book spines, dog ear pages… we’ll ask for that incredibly obscure title we can’t remember with the blue cover… You won’t know what hit you.”
I laugh a beat too quickly, offering her a mock salute. “Understood.”
“It’s a deal then,” she declares before she gives me a wink. “Don’t worry, I won’t ask you to seal it with a kiss.”
“I’ve likely had worse kisses.”
“Haven’t we both,” Raven cackles. “See you tomorrow, Saige.”
When the door clicks closed behind her, my shoulders sag, and my cheeks drop from the tight smile I plastered on.
I go to the display shelf and take the notebook she had been eyeing earlier, setting it aside for her under the counter where the pile of envelopes snags my attention.
It’s like I want to punish myself as I sift through them.
Some are letters I’ve written that never found their intended recipient; others are rejections to my requests for consultations with various healers throughout Lorevael.
Sometimes it’s hard not to feel like a list of symptoms, cycling over and over again, to feel constantly exposed and vulnerable.
I drop the correspondence into the waste basket at my feet.
I’ve been searching for answers for decades and it’s the same as it has always been…
women telling the truth and the world ignoring or not believing them. And yet, we persist.
As I set the kettle atop the wood burner to boil, my gaze catches on the alley across the street.
For a moment, I’m a decade in the past. I’d been suffering a pain episode, hiding from the others when I felt something—or someone.
I couldn’t get enough air in my lungs as I tried to understand it.
That feeling. A current of contradictions.
Familiar yet otherworldly. Safe but full of danger.
The past, present and future coiled into one space in the dark.
For a second, there was a flicker of movement.
And a pair of emerald eyes. I was so startled I threw my paring knife at what I told myself later was a trick of a pain-addled mind.
For a while I tried to convince myself I had imagined things.
Only…
I’d never forget those green irises, flecked with gold flames.
And my paring knife… when I looked at it the next day, there was blood on the blade.
But there is no one in the alley now. No emerald eyes staring back at me.
So, I go to the wooden chest beneath the shelves in the corner of the shop and rifle through the tools for the one I mentioned to Raven: an agate stone burnisher from the Azkari House of Reveries, perfect for gilding and smoothing out leather covers.
Luckily, it’s one of two in my possession.
When he travelled more often, Leo used to do business all over Lorevael, telling me that curiosity was an artisan’s greatest asset, that, and a willingness to learn.
He took those platitudes seriously, often trading techniques and tools with folk from abroad, mortal and Azkari.
I glance back to the stack of unpaid bills on the counter.
I weigh the agate burnisher in my hand. It’s a pretty thing, but right now, my need for money exceeds my need for two of the same tool.
It’s my chance to earn a few gold marks—coin I can put towards my debt with Thorne, debt I can’t seem to get out from under.
Are you sure you want to do this? I hear Leo’s voice ask gently as I tuck the burnisher into my satchel to take with me later.
My tea is cold when I return to the book press at last, but I straighten my shoulders and lift my chin, “It’s not like I’ve got much of a choice, old man.”