Chapter 35
They departed the nameless village with barely any fuss, although Finny did insist on gifting Astryx with packets of pungent herbs to recreate her vile “healing” concoction at their leisure.
The elf was gracious and didn’t immediately throw them away.
For their part, the villagers were indulgent and didn’t comment on their missing silverware.
Astryx’s parting words to each villager in turn, and the way she knelt before the little stone-fey girl and lifted her chin with a gentle finger, were a far cry from Fern’s experience being rescued in the bog all those weeks ago. That had only amounted to a fistful of reins and a swift exit.
Fern suffered a pang of ridiculous envy.
She quickly squashed it, and even held her peace about Staysha.
And they resumed their journey.
According to Astryx, Amberlin was less than a week of travel away—
—which meant it was the end of Fern’s journey as well, but anytime her mind threatened to open a window on what came afterward, she ruthlessly shuttered it.
Instead, she lamented the fact that they’d likely be stuck with the bard for the rest of the trip.
To be fair, the Silver Sparrow was nothing but cheerful and made herself useful about camp without complaint. Fern found it difficult to maintain a heightened level of suspicion.
They shortly emerged from the evergreen forest into a gently rolling, grassy prairie, stitched through with fresh streams of snowmelt that branched and branched again in gleaming threads. Mountains rose blue and shadowed behind them and to the north.
More than once, small herds of prairie ox skirted them in the distance, their shaggy backs seeming to merge into one long, undulating beast, spined with massive horns.
The little seasonal rivers intersected the road in dozens of places, sometimes washing it out entirely.
Bucket traversed these obstacles easily enough, but they had to be cautious with Staysha’s wagon, as Persimmon struggled mightily where the streams became bogs.
Several times, they hitched Bucket in her place to make the crossing.
After one such ordeal in the early afternoon of the second day, Astryx called a halt so the horses could rest. Studying the Oathmaiden keenly, Fern thought that she might need a breather herself.
Although the elf moved with remarkable agility, she’d suffered too many wounds and too much punishment in too short a time.
Little hesitations and pauses in her manner hinted that it was all adding up.
She’d also taken to strapping Nigel’s sheath across the back of the saddle, which Fern found concerning.
After refilling their waterskins from the stream they’d just forded, they sat in long grass in the shade of Staysha’s wagon, nibbling at the dried rations from the Tarimites. Zyll darted around in the tallest weeds in search of small animals, whose fates nobody wanted to think about.
Staysha brushed crumbs from her doublet and cleared her throat. “So. I haven’t had a chance to finish the song I’ve been tinkering with after seeing you in action.”
“Hm,” said Astryx.
“The tune is solid, but I think the lyrics still need some finessing. Maybe if I had a bit more insight into how it felt to be out there in the dark, fire in one hand and steel in the other . . .”
Astryx was silent for so long that Fern thought she was going to actively ignore the bard, but the elf surprised all of them by murmuring, “I suppose if you think it’ll help.” She very carefully did not look at anyone as she said it.
Nobody seemed more astounded than Staysha. “Oh! Well, fabulous. Let’s see . . . Let me find my way back to the snarl first.” She hummed a few bars and sang softly, “Oathmaiden, Oathmaiden, silver and true . . .”
“Okay,” said Fern, rising abruptly to her feet and shaking grass seeds from her cloak. “I’m going to stretch my paws and relieve the ache in my ass. Back in a bit.”
Astryx opened her mouth, but Fern didn’t give her the opportunity to speak, briskly rounding the corner of the wagon and striding into the rustling meadow across the road. Persimmon and Bucket didn’t look up from grazing contentedly.
“Oathmaiden, Oathmaiden, barf in my shoe,” grumbled Breadlee. “What a hack.”
“You don’t wear shoes,” observed Fern tartly.
“Not with barf in them.”
She stomped through the grass for a minute or two.
“I don’t like her,” she said at last. “But I don’t fucking know why. Do I really have a bad feeling about her? Am I not giving her the benefit of the doubt because of Haber’s word? He was clear he couldn’t prove she did anything wrong.”
“I just don’t like music. I thought we were on the same page?”
“You don’t like—? Never mind. No, it’s not that. Gods, am I jealous? Do I just want Astryx to myself, like some kind of child?”
“Oh, well, wanting her all to yourself is totally natural. At least it better be, because if not, I’d have to rethink every one of my goals for the future.
And I absolutely do not want to do that,” chirped Breadlee.
“If Nigel just happened to slip off that horse’s butt and disappear into the grass, or plunge to the bottom of a canyon, or, like, a deep river, maybe?
I wouldn’t make a peep. Familiar feeling? ”
Fern ground her teeth and didn’t reply, because she wasn’t sure she wanted to face the answer.
“Or maybe it’s just because the end of the road is coming,” said Breadlee more soberly, “. . . and you’re mad because you feel like you’re running out of time to do whatever it is you’re doing out here. To be clear, I have no idea what that is.”
Fern didn’t want to face the answer to that, either.
She walked a wide loop and returned to the animals, where she fussed over Bucket until Staysha’s singing voice trailed off.
“Finally,” Fern muttered to the horse, who lipped her paw sympathetically as she scratched his chin.
As she turned to head back to the wagon, she was startled to find Astryx almost beside her already. The Oathmaiden joined her at Bucket’s head, patting his cheek and inspecting his mane as though there were, in fact, something to be done with it.
Now Fern felt awkward about leaving, so she continued to stroke the horse’s chin.
Two people pretending to have important business with a horse, thought Fern, and nearly laughed aloud.
Astryx surprised her by speaking first. “Anything the matter?”
“Of course not,” lied Fern.
“All right,” replied Astryx. There was also apparently something critical to be adjusted on Bucket’s halter.
“Actually, she’s very annoyed,” declared Breadlee.
Fern withdrew the knife from her cloak pocket and hurled him into the grass.
“Hey!” he cried.
She ignored him and addressed Astryx. “All right, fine. I can’t stand it. Why are you . . . indulging this?”
The Oathmaiden frowned. “Indulging?”
“Yes! The song! Giving her ‘insight’”—Fern made a face—“when all she wants is to ride your coattails to, I don’t know, glory? Whatever it is bards want. It’s . . . it’s beneath you.”
“Only days ago, it was you who told me that I ‘don’t stick around to be appreciated,’ and am always ‘off to the next thing,’” replied Astryx, with unexpected heat.
“Now I pause for a moment and pay attention, say a few words to the people we helped, and listen to what they have to say in turn. I make time for someone that wants it, and it’s beneath me? ”
“Well, not all of it, but this part at least,” said Fern.
“Are you just chronically dissatisfied, or is that only when it comes to me?” demanded Astryx, ghostlight eyes blazing with a fierceness Fern had never felt directed toward her.
She nearly quailed beneath it, but the upset she was wrestling with couldn’t be subdued.
“I don’t fucking know!” she shouted.
“Then you should figure that out first. Even if you did know what would please you, I doubt I could bring you to it. If you saw it on the horizon, you’d probably run the other way. I don’t care about a gods-blasted song! I’m not trying to build my legend,” snapped Astryx.
“No, you’re just walking straight in the dark until the sunrise—whatever the fuck that means—which is why we’re hauling Zyll in for a bounty and to gods-know what fate, even though you know it’s wrong!”
“We aren’t hauling her anywhere,” retorted Astryx, with ice in her voice.
Then she spun on her heel and strode away from the road. “I think I need a walk. Look at all the good it did you.”
Fern watched her go, the anger slowly leaving her body as Astryx disappeared over a swell in the prairie.
“Fuck,” she muttered to herself. “Great job, Fern.”
Behind her, she heard a muffled thud and a squawk, and assumed Zyll had caught something.
At least somebody around here got what they wanted, she thought.
At the gritty noise of a footstep on the road, she turned to find Staysha in the middle of the path, her lute case under one arm, heading Fern’s way.
The expression on the woman’s face was unreadable, her mouth a thin line.
Fern reviewed their loud argument and the words she’d shouted, experiencing a second rush of guilt. “Hey, I’m sorry. I don’t know what you overheard, but—”
Then the Silver Sparrow grabbed the neck of the case with both hands and brained Fern with it.