Chapter 11
When Astryx first mentioned Bycross, Fern assumed it would be some sort of crossroads of a village with an inn, a tavern—possibly one and the same—a Territorial Post–slash– carriage stop, and a handful of shabby buildings.
She was spectacularly mistaken.
The brambled folds of hillside through which they traveled by starlight had wholly concealed whatever might have been visible of the distant horizon.
Fern dozed off and on as the cart rocked and swayed, rousing occasionally to the same monotonous view of Bucket’s moonlit behind.
She woke again with the breaking of dawn as the earth sloped up to a small rise above a river valley, and Bycross came into resplendent view.
The valley itself seemed to have been dug from chalky stone by some titanic force, gouging deep while traveling roughly north to south.
A narrow river squiggled along its basin, the waters an arresting blue-green.
Directly ahead, a broad stone bridge crossed to the other side.
Far to the south, the land receded toward a marshy plain crowded with towering, ivy-choked trees.
Fern had spent almost her entire life in Murk, and the carriage ride to Thune hadn’t included much in the way of sightseeing, so the cliffs on the opposite side of the valley stirred a wonder she’d only experienced between the covers of a book.
They towered high above, tall enough that scraps of cloud striped them here and there.
Zigzagging up from bottom to top, a wide, white road was carved deeply into the sheer face.
At various points along the way, porticoes and spur roads had been chiseled out, symmetrically arranged like chunks of honeycomb. Complex sets of pulleys and cables studded the adjoining stone, with platforms depending from them. Fern thought some of these were moving.
Colorful banners fluttered from posts and pillars, and what could only be people and animals bustled and shuffled and shifted and strutted every which way. The cliff was positively alive with them.
“Assbiscuits,” said Fern, with feeling.
“Luffing shunks,” agreed Zyll cheerfully.
“You certainly both have a way with words,” replied Astryx. She had taken to striding along beside the cart, just ahead of the buckboard. Fern wondered why.
“You’re driving the cart up that?” asked Fern, pointing in frank disbelief at the cliffside.
“Bucket will have no trouble. You’re welcome to stay at the bottom, but if you want to book passage back to Thune, and you’re short of coin, I’d suggest you come along.”
Fern’s stomach twisted nervously, and she wasn’t sure if it was at the thought of the journey home and the mess awaiting her there, the precipitous climb ahead, or the looming unknown.
After gathering together with a few other tributary paths, their road ended at the bottom of the cliff, at a tall palisade constructed of quarried white stone.
Pennants hung from evenly spaced iron spears atop the walls, each swath of red stitched with the symbol of a black crossroads inside a yellow circle.
Their cart joined a line of other travelers awaiting entry, many of them stone-fey, their gray skin and pale hair a fitting match for the cliffsides above.
Fern also saw a few dwarves, a scattering of humans, a pair of tapenti tinkers with a carriage festooned with braces, buckles, and hinges, and a group of six rattkin penitents in gray habits belted around their waists with lengths of rope.
Beside Fern on the buckboard, Zyll drew more than a few interested glances, and Astryx provoked several muttered conversations as she led Bucket with a hand on his halter. Nobody approached them though.
Even so, Astryx produced a stained old cloak from the back of the wagon and fastened it around Zyll’s neck.
The goblin made no complaint, only grinned and snuggled into it as it fell across her shoulders.
When Astryx flipped up the hood, it obscured most of the prisoner’s features, as well as her bound hands.
Fern climbed down to stretch her legs, wincing at the prickle in her thighs and the creak in her back. “Is it always this long of a wait?” She squinted up at the Blademistress.
Astryx frowned, idly scratching Bucket’s ribs. “No. I don’t recognize the men at the gate, either. You see the symbol on their jerkins?”
Fern leaned to peer around the folk in front of them.
A black-clad man and orc flanked the passage through the palisade.
They wore kettle helms, were armed with long oxtongue spears, and had sabers at their hips.
On the breast of each, four white streaks radiated from a central point like rays of morning sun rising over a horizon.
“Guards?” asked Fern.
“Bycross never had them before. The walls, cliffs, and Gatewardens on hand have been defense enough against fools causing trouble. Strange not to see a Warden at all.”
When they reached the front of the line, the orc stepped in front of Bucket and planted the butt of his spear in the road. Astryx stepped forward to meet him, and Fern hopped back into the wagon beside Zyll, who examined the guards with narrowed eyes.
“Morning,” the orc said, his gaze drifting over Astryx’s shoulder to linger on the now-cloaked Zyll. “Business in Bycross?”
This close, Fern could see that his black clothing was travel-worn. Dried red earth caked the boots of both men.
“It’s afternoon, I think,” replied Astryx. “After the long wait. And my business is my own.”
“Do I recognize you?” He gripped his spear tighter.
“I wouldn’t know. Is there trouble here these days? I don’t remember things being so complicated.” Astryx shaded her eyes to look up the cliffside, Nigel’s hilt winking in the sun.
“Trouble? Definitely. Ever hear of Taltus the Venger?” The orc smiled at her in a knowing way.
“Can’t say that I have.”
He seemed taken aback. “Taltus? The bandit warlord?” When Astryx offered no further hint of recognition, he continued, sounding a little wounded.
“Anyhow, he’s moved into these parts, and the roads aren’t as safe as they used to be.
After it got a bit bloody a month back, Bycross hired the Four Fingers to set things to rights.
” He proudly tapped the four lines on his tunic.
“Well, that’s fine,” said Astryx, with profound disinterest. “At any rate, we’ll be heading inside now.”
“Afraid you’ll have to pay the toll first. It ain’t cheap to field an ongoing defense, and the Four Fingers have to make ends meet, too.
Entry’s thirty bits a head. That’s . . .
” He looked them over again in a performative way.
“Ninety. And no questions about the hooded one in the wagon puts it at an even silver,” he added with a magnanimous smile.
There was a long, quiet moment during which Fern could almost feel Nigel protesting from within his sheath. She held her breath, clutching the buckboard, and waiting for steel to be skinned and for the two guards to be decisively outmatched.
But Astryx slipped a hand into the wallet at her belt and withdrew a silver piece. She bounced it on her palm once, and then flipped it at the orc’s face. He only narrowly caught it before it struck him in the nose.
Without another word she began moving forward. The orc fell back and gestured for the other guard to let them pass.
They rumbled through the gate and up the white road hacked into the cliffside. Fern watched over her shoulder as the two guards exchanged a glance behind them.
Fern slid the copy of Ten Links in the Chain across the countertop with both paws. Her fingers lingered on the cover before they withdrew, thinking of Viv and the hands she should have been placing this in.
She swallowed against a lump in her throat.
“I’m hoping to get at least sixty bits for it. It’s an original printing, the spine is in perfect condition, and with the gilt edging and foiled embossing, you’d have a hard time finding a more pristine copy anywhere.”
The bookshop in which she bargained was dimly lit by a variety of glass-hooded lanterns.
Fern had been surprised to discover that much of Bycross was invisible from outside.
Long hallways tunneled deep into the stone of the cliff, layers sandwiched one atop the other, accessible from the exterior road.
Tareben Booksellers was situated far from sunlight, where no errant breezes or blowing rain might spoil its stock.
When she crossed the threshold, Fern experienced a surge of nostalgia at the familiar weight of the books surrounding her, and the spice of ancient paper. That sensation was joined by a suffocating panic that she tried to wrestle down.
Bookshelves chiseled into white stone were stuffed with volumes and scroll-cases.
Well-trod carpets in ornate designs covered the cold floor at odd angles, mirrored above by more carpets affixed to the ceiling.
It conjured images of some exotic desert tent on a dune-scalloped island, the air rich with incense.
However, the only thing this air was rich with was the smell of cats. Of which there were at least five. A tortoiseshell tabby purred on the countertop, eyes half lidded.
The stone-fey proprietor—Tareben, presumably—gently opened the red cover and perused the interior, his other hand stroking the cat. He couldn’t stop darting glances over Fern’s shoulder at the imposing elf with her arms crossed, or at the very short be-cloaked figure by her side.
The hem did drag on the ground rather a lot.
“Yes?” prompted Fern, recalling his attention.
The stone-fey stopped stroking the cat to attend to his beard instead. “It’s certainly a nice copy. But, sixty bits? There’s hardly much demand for the works of Geneviss these days. I don’t think I could go higher than forty.” He smiled apologetically and pushed it back toward her.
Fern hadn’t missed the man’s obvious interest in the Blademistress, though. Honestly, how many one-eared elven warriors could there be? And with a bookseller’s keen ability to seize any advantage in the face of insolvency, she looked back and said, “That seems a bit low, doesn’t it, Astryx?”
The elf shrugged. “Could be.”
The man paled. “Ah. The, er, Oathmaiden, is it? It’s an honor, madam.”
When they departed the shop five minutes later, Fern slipped sixty bits into her satchel with great satisfaction.
She did her best to ignore the pure relief she felt at putting this bookstore behind her, too.
“That won’t be enough to get you back to Thune,” advised Astryx, as they stepped back into the light and wind of the cliffside road.
Red banners snapped in a fresh breeze, and a river of traffic swept by them on both sides.
The sounds of footfalls and voices echoed off the weight of white stone above their heads.
Fern noted that the Oathmaiden reserved extra attention for anyone armed and kept Zyll close. Various ragged-looking individuals with the Four Fingers symbol on their tunics received even narrower glances.
The mercenaries didn’t seem to be causing any trouble, though.
They were only three turns up from the base of the cliff when they paused by the rough-hewn railings, but still, looking directly downward brought on a wave of vertigo in Fern.
Paired with that dizziness was the queasy realization that reaching civilization made her feel even farther from home. And that she wasn’t even sure what home meant anymore.
She stared out over the valley back the way they’d come, to the brambly hills and the lands lost in the haze beyond.
“I’m sure I’ll think of something,” she replied, although she felt as far from sure as it was possible to be.
“But, thanks for staying with me long enough to wring a few extra bits out of a haggle.” Frankly, she was amazed that Astryx hadn’t already cut her loose.
“You might make up the difference by selling the satchel,” suggested the elf, as she moved to untether Bucket from one of the hitching posts along the broad avenue. They’d parked the wagon in a guarded enclosure farther down the way, apparently designed for the purpose.
Fern clutched the strap of the bag on her shoulder. “Fuck no!” she cried. “. . . I mean, no, I couldn’t do that. It’s . . . it belonged to someone I used to know.”
Astryx paused in the act of untying the horse. “Someone who’d want you stranded far from home?”
“Ever heard of Varine the Pale?” Fern enjoyed a rush of satisfaction when she saw the elf’s face pass through surprise to arrive at honest curiosity.
It was nice to feel a little smug. “Ha! I guess so. Well, you might be interested to know that this bag was the home of her homunculus. Have you heard of osseoscription?”
Astryx considered her for a moment, rubbing at her ruined ear. “Just a bookseller, hm?”
“Some interesting things have happened to me,” replied Fern as casually as she could manage. “I was there for the necromancer’s last moments.”
The Oathmaiden scratched her ear a little more aggressively.
“It’s been a long journey,” said the elf. “There’s a place I always stop for a meal when I pass through. Why don’t you come along and tell me about it before I go? I’m buying.”
“No bread and cheese?”
“No bread and cheese.”
“Deal,” agreed Fern.
Although, given the warm glow that Astryx’s invitation had sparked, bread and cheese wouldn’t have been a dealbreaker.