Chapter 18
The backcountry route Astryx charted did indeed bring them back to rejoin the old road.
Eventually.
It certainly wasn’t conducive to travel by wagon, though.
Zyll and Fern trooped alongside the Oathmaiden on foot while Bucket drew the cart, rattling and crashing, over lumpy terrain and hillocks hidden under the long grass.
The going was slow, and more than once Astryx had to lend Bucket her shoulder to force the wagon over a stubborn fold in the land.
When at last they returned to the nominally paved road, even Bucket whickered in relief.
Two days later, as they arrived in the shabby, tumbledown village of Turnbuckle, it was amidst a sheeting downpour. Fern reasoned that at least she could be grateful that the storm had held its peace until roofs were visible in the distance.
She shivered miserably on the buckboard with her hood up and water pattering on her nose and whiskers, with Astryx crowded between her and Zyll, wearing a belatedly donned oilskin cloak.
The elf almost never rode in the cart, but was willing to make an exception to avoid the ankle-deep mess of the roadway.
Watching Bucket slog ahead, chin tucked, his massive hooves hurling great gobs of mud in all directions, Fern didn’t blame her.
It was tough to make out much of Turnbuckle through the heavy curtains of rain, but lantern-lit windows suggested a handful of buildings hugging the road. They materialized one by one with the cart’s approach, looking as sad and wet and bedraggled as Fern felt.
“We’re stopping here, right?” asked Fern, doing her level best not to sound desperate.
“Gods-blast-it yes,” replied Astryx, combing water out of her hair and off her brow. Apparently, given enough precipitation, even her stoicism could be washed away.
“Oh, thank fuck,” breathed Fern.
The elf grunted in agreement, which felt like some kind of miracle. Fern was perversely pleased.
Zyll had her head thrown back and her mouth open and was making gargling noises.
At last, they spied an inn, which spilled more light into the street than any of the other buildings and featured a battered wooden sign that read The Slippery Trout. Fern reflected that the badly executed fish carved into it was at last underwater, where it belonged.
Astryx drew Bucket to a halt, then stood and picked Zyll up one-armed before leaping down into the muck. She grumbled something beautiful in elvish again, which Fern was now certain she reserved for anything impolite.
Planting the goblin under the awning, she turned and held her hands out to Fern. “Come on, then.” She made a get-on-with-it gesture.
“I’m not a toddler,” said Fern, peevishly, standing and flapping her cloak in a failed effort to shed some water. “I can get down.”
“Do you want mud up to your armpits?” Astryx squinted at her, hair plastered to her forehead and shin-deep in muck. Behind her, Zyll shook herself so vigorously that her orange pigtails slapped against her cheeks.
Fern muttered something ungrateful under her breath, clutched her satchel to her chest, and managed a begrudging, “Fine.”
Astryx caught her easily and set her down next to Zyll. “Besides,” she continued, “as far as I’m concerned, you are a toddler. I’ve had boots that were older than you.”
“That’s very funny,” replied Fern. Then she blinked. Is she bantering with me? But she was too wet to seriously consider the possibility.
“Get us a room,” said Astryx. “I’ll see to Bucket and the wagon.” Without waiting for a reply, she slogged through the mud to investigate the smallish stable that adjoined the inn.
Fern flipped back her sodden hood and heaved an enormous sigh of relief as she led Zyll into the great room of the inn.
The door thumped closed behind them, subduing the roar of the storm to a low mutter.
A fire snapped merrily in an enormous, misshapen hearth.
The taxidermied head of a massive prairie-ox regarded them with sleepy alarm from above it.
A crooked stairway at the back led to a second story.
Water leaking from the roof dribbled into a scattering of mismatched tin pots, which threatened to over-spill onto the flagstones.
There were no patrons amidst the sprawl of old tables and chairs. Along the wall to the right, a counter ran in front of a line of cubbies and stacks of plates and cutlery, with a burlap curtain obscuring a doorway to a kitchen or office in the rear.
“Hello?” called Fern.
“Just coming!” hollered a rough voice from beyond the curtain. After a series of clatters and thuds, the broad back of a man preceded the rest of him through the burlap.
When he turned to face them, bristle-bearded and expectant, his face experienced a tortured journey which began with confusion, took a sharp detour into shock, and eventually arrived at outright dismay.
He nearly dropped the tray of tankards he was carrying.
“You!” he cried.
It only took a second before Fern realized that he wasn’t talking about her.
Zyll grinned at the man and then made a curious motion with both hands, hooking her thumbs together and flapping them like a bird’s wings. “Howdy howdy,” she said.
“Do you know her?” asked Fern.
“Aye,” he replied sourly. He slammed the tray down on the counter and pointed one thick finger accusingly at the goblin. “Ain’t got no grackle pie this time, neither!”
Fern didn’t know what to do with that, and she was too wet to want to sort it out. “We just need a room for the night. Three of us, actually. Our, uh, companion is out in the stable, so, a night for the horse, too? I don’t know how that works.”
“Can’t help you,” said the innkeeper, crossing his arms. “This’n’s nothin’ but trouble, and I’ll be damned to all eight hells if I’ll have her under my roof for one night more.”
Staring back and forth between the two of them, Fern couldn’t help but ask, “What sort of trouble?”
“Chairs shattered to flinders. Gouges in the wall. Cutlery missin’,” the innkeeper railed, flinging his hands toward all corners of the room. “And I only just got the damned ox head clean enough to hang again!”
“She did all that?” Fern eyed Zyll with skepticism.
“Well . . .” The man looked uncomfortable. “Maybe not personally.” But then his resolve firmed. “She’s an instigator. And I won’t have it.”
The goblin chose this moment to withdraw a fistful of spoons from a pocket, which she used a wet pigtail to polish.
“My spoons!” bellowed the innkeeper, at which point he became incapable of further speech. His mouth flapped open and closed, and Fern thought he might actually be approaching detonation.
They were all saved from the explosion by the door behind her banging open, whereupon a very soggy, very muddy one-eared elf entered the room. Nigel’s pommel gleamed menacingly over one shoulder, and she had a leather haversack slung over the other.
“Good evening,” said Astryx, in a dangerous voice. “You know, I feel absolutely confident that we can come to an agreement.”
The innkeeper’s open mouth snapped shut, and he gulped.
The chilly room had two beds, a rag rug, a small fireplace, and a wardrobe, all dimly lit by lantern glow through the rain-battered window.
Upon shutting the door behind all three of them, Astryx strode to the opposite wall, kicked off her boots, unbuckled her baldric, tossed Nigel onto a bed, yanked open the haversack, and grabbed a bundle of dry clothes.
She then immediately began shucking the ones she was wearing in a series of short, sharp motions.
Fern glimpsed a pale, heavily muscled back latticed with old scars before whirling around to give her some privacy, although the Oathmaiden clearly couldn’t have cared less.
The goblin began wriggling out of her own soggy coat, revealing a moth-eaten nightshirt underneath. Zyll calmly wrung out the coat onto the floor, enlarging the puddle already soaking into the wood at her feet.
Fern joined them in disrobing, hanging her cloak and satchel on pegs to dry. Then she remembered Breadlee, and retrieved him from the interior pocket.
“Gah, thank the Eight. That cloak’s wet all the way through. Aww, am I getting tarnished? I am, aren’t I? And on my good side, too! Could you just give me a little buff? But not the kind where you breathe on me, that’s disgusting.”
“You’re drier than the rest of us. Besides, I don’t think Nigel ever has to be polished,” replied Fern. “But maybe he’s just especially well-crafted.”
“That’s not how—did he tell you that?”
“Mm,” said Fern, noncommittal. She cast around for something to do with him, then deposited him on the mantel above the fireplace.
There was already wood in the grate, and a clay jar of long matches beside the hearth.
“I can start this fire,” she muttered to herself, crouching. She fiddled with the logs and stuffed some splinters of kindling beneath them, before rasping a match alight on a sandpaper-wrapped brick and touching it to the tinder.
As the first tongues of flame crawled to life, a long sigh made her turn around.
Astryx finished lacing up her shirt, then sat cross-legged on one of the beds with her eyes closed. She breathed in through her nostrils, then out her mouth in a slow, meditative rhythm.
“You okay?” ventured Fern. “You seemed a little . . . put out.”
The Oathmaiden opened her eyes and stared at her very seriously. “There is one thing that I have never gotten used to in a thousand years, and that is being soaking wet. It never, ever gets any less objectionable. Ever.”
Clad only in her dirty nightshirt, Zyll bounced on the other bed alongside Nigel. The Elder Blade jounced up and down with every enthusiastic jump, and Fern could only imagine what he would have to say about the matter if he were unsheathed.
Fern and Astryx both chose to ignore her.
“Thank you for starting the fire.” The elf let her exhaustion show as if she’d shed a cloak obscuring it. “Now, I’m going to lie down and sleep until I can’t sleep anymore.”
Astryx dug around in her wet trousers where they were hung over the footboard and withdrew the small brass key to the room. She tossed it to Fern. “It’s best if she doesn’t leave this room. If you go out, lock her in.”
Snagging the key out of the air, Fern replied, “Um. All right. You’re not worried she’ll . . .” but the Blademistress was already flat on her back, her hands folded over her belly.
Her breath deepened, evened, and she was asleep.
“How do you do that?” muttered Fern, who had never been as envious of another person as she was in that moment.
“Sleepy sleep!” cried Zyll, going limp mid-bounce and falling to the bed like a rock next to the longsword, whereupon she instantly began to snore.
“Godsdammit.”
Fern rubbed her eyes, seized Breadlee from the mantel and her satchel from the peg, and made for the door and the great room downstairs.