Chapter Ten. In Which the Pair Shares a Moment
CHAPTER TEN
In Which the Pair Shares a Moment
A horse-drawn cart appeared out of the mist falling over the bridge and stream outside Cairn.
The cart’s lantern bobbed along the meandering path that led away from both the Bosque and the town.
Risa and Javi slowed, careful to remain out of sight until the cart had nearly passed, and then Risa was pulling the prince onto the back among stacks of crates while Brunie jumped aboard.
She worried the driver might have heard or somehow seen them through the fog, but he never slowed.
Risa fell asleep the moment she settled between crates labeled Bo’s Rocks and Minerals. She awoke after a particularly nasty bump in the road that sent Brunie scampering from between her legs, where the cat had curled up during the night.
Sitting across from her with his legs extended, hunched and displeased, was Javi, his blond hair a disheveled mop. His face grew hazy as she stared. Heat raced along her skin.
A telltale sign of magic.
“Don’t look at me,” he hissed, his head cushioned on one of his arms, which was slung across the ledge of the cart. “I’m hideous.”
That wasn’t true, but he certainly didn’t look his best, and not just because his hair turned her vision wonky. “Acceptance is the first step.”
He glared for a moment, then threw something at her. Risa’s beat-up pack landed on her lap, along with a small tangerine and a half-eaten apple.
“You’re welcome,” he spat when she bit into the mushy flesh. It was the first bite of food she’d had in what seemed like forever. “Now, as payment for my rescuing you—”
She chucked the core at his chest with a roll of her eyes. “Sorry, you were rescuing me?”
He responded with an offended gasp. “I untied your hands! Anyway, could you please get on with reversing this curse?”
“What?”
Javi clicked his tongue against his teeth. “You know.” He gestured at his hair.
“Oh, I can’t undo all of that. Would there be anything left of you?”
He scowled. “Do you need a please?”
“That would be nice.”
“Fine. Please.”
“Well, now it doesn’t sound sincere,” she quipped as she peeled the tangerine, plucked a wedge, and popped it into her mouth.
“You broke the curse over Cairn. I’m asking, begging, pleading you to break mine.”
She supposed she had broken a curse. Funny that, when she couldn’t begin to figure out how to break her own. Not that she had any idea how she’d defeated the Fangal. She had simply spoken the truth as she picked at the magic holding the curse together.
As Risa glanced at Javi again, that strange, disconcerting feeling of magic being afoot floated along her skin.
There was no way for her untrained eye to tell how the curse had befallen him in the first place, whether the starlight drink or her bad luck had done the job.
She concentrated on his face until her vision doubled and his hair was all she could see, like watercolor paint bleeding over an unprepared canvas.
There was a faint niggling at the back of her head, a warmth she recognized skating across her skin.
“Go away,” she told the blond mop on the prince’s head. But nothing changed.
Javi pulled at a lock of hair, the curl gone limp. “Great work.”
Bottom lip between her teeth, Risa stared harder until her eyes crossed and her nails dug jagged moons into her clenched palms. She felt something like a thorn caught in the pad of a finger, an insistent splinter. She tugged on it and felt something pop in her ears.
An unholy yowl rocked the cart. Brunie swatted at Javi’s dark curls, clearly put off by the change, knocking his circlet right off. Javi screeched when a paw snagged a few strands of hair and pulled them out by the roots.
“You’re welcome,” Risa sang, and leaned over to grab the disgruntled cat.
The prince was restored, handsome as ever.
He ran his fingers through his hair and rearranged his circlet until it sat perfectly once again.
Patted his face and arms and chest to reassure himself he was whole.
When his eyes met hers, she almost swore she saw a flash of disappointment in their gold depths, but then they crinkled up with good humor.
“Glad to see you’re back to your beautiful, aggravating self,” she observed.
“My best self.”
The cart banged on, the prince sneaking glances at her every time he thought she wasn’t looking.
“What?” she snapped when he did it for the four hundredth time.
“I know you’re lying about something,” he said, his tone light. It wasn’t an accusation. Merely an observation, void of judgment. “Whatever it is, you can tell me. I won’t put you in a dungeon. Unless, of course, you are trying to kill me.”
“I’m not, though it would make everything easier.”
Despite being an unwitting villain destined to bring bad luck and devastation to those around her, Risa couldn’t help but wonder if her own survival was worth his imminent danger.
It seemed like she could break curses. Unravel magic by pulling at its seams. But Risa wasn’t sure she could ever pull herself apart. What if there was nothing left?
“You could leave,” he said finally, eyes downcast. “I won’t hold you to Brunhilda’s word.”
“I’ve been trying to get away from you since the beginning,” she admitted.
His gaze cut back to her, and she sucked in a breath. His beauty was alarming: discomfiting and devastating, a kind of magic all on its own. When he looked at her that way—like she wasn’t something to fear—she almost understood how easy it would be to fall in love with him.
“Alas, I am irresistible,” he finished.
“That’s not it.” She ignored the pout he gave her. “I have something I must see through, and I can only do it while on this silly quest.”
And if he was disappointed or wanted to question her further, he kept that to himself. Instead, he said something that made Brunhilda’s spell constrict around her chest.
“I’m glad to have the company all the same.”
Blue sky greeted them when the cart rolled to a stop. The verdant green fields and meadows around Cairn had been replaced by a barren wasteland of parched earth where tumbleweeds rolled past.
Heavy footsteps clambered from the driver’s perch and around the cart. Risa and Javi scrambled to get off before they were caught, but a halo of frizzy burnished-copper hair appeared over the ledge, followed by thick, coarse eyebrows and a pair of brown eyes.
“You’re in my cart,” said the redheaded dwarf, glaring daggers at them.
The dwarf had a long, matted red beard and dark freckles sprinkled across his toasted brown nose and sunburned cheeks.
He was bedecked in an abundance of glittering jewels at his ears, around his neck, and even on the cuffs of his shirt.
Dwarves weren’t common visitors to Barrow; usually, they rode through as uneager merchants who wanted to desert Barrow and its gloomy weather as soon as their wares were gone.
Risa didn’t recognize this one as a former visitor, but he seemed as rough-and-tumble as the other dwarves she’d met, who all preferred gems and rocks to people.
“I’ve commandeered this vehicle in service to the Crown,” Javi declared, towering over the dwarf from his makeshift stage atop the cart.
“What he means to say,” Risa interjected, jumping off the cart and landing next to the dwarf, “is thank you for allowing us to hitch a ride as we escaped certain doom.”
The dwarf considered this for a moment. “Then this is where I leave you,” he decided.
“Thank you,” she repeated. When another voice didn’t immediately chime in, she smacked Javi’s foot. “This is where you say ‘Thank you.’”
Javi scowled down at her. “He should be thankful for the honor of transporting a member of the royal family—”
She knocked his foot with a little more force.
“Thank you,” he muttered.
The dwarf nodded. “Follow this road and you’ll come to a town.”
Javi jumped down and landed next to Risa. She moved aside, giving him ample space and ignoring the way the heat of him sank into her skin.
“Is there a reason you’re not going that way?” he asked, sounding very put out by the suggestion of walking.
“Yeah.”
“And what is that reason?”
“Don’t want to.”
Risa looked over the dwarf’s head at the desolate fields beyond him. A range of faded mountain peaks drawn in muted blues and browns emerged on the horizon. Stretched across that skyline was a town that jutted out like a row of teeth.
“Is there another reason?” Risa questioned.
The dwarf—who, she decided, must be Bo, of rocks and minerals fame—furrowed his bushy brows, though the rest of his expression remained unreadable.
“The town is a haven for outlaws,” he said. “If you’re in a hurry, passing through is the fastest way to cross the Grunion Mountains. But I’m not in a hurry.” He shrugged. “My husband decided to rearrange the house again, and I don’t want to deal with the mess.”
Risa worried her bottom lip between her teeth, eyes fixed on the mountains.
“I understand,” she said.
Bo tipped his head in acknowledgment, and without another word, Risa took Brunie in her arms and forced Javi to start walking.
Sooner than she expected, a rusted iron archway carved with the word SPEARBELLY sprang from the dusty ground in greeting.
Strange undulations ran through the air, making her skin itch.
Tacked onto one of the rusted posts was a board where it looked like a child had scribbled a list of rules, which read:
1. No Stealing
2. No Hitting
3. No Killing
Sheriff Watching
Several bullet holes riddled its surface.
“Should we take bets on how many outlaws bother reading signs?” Javi asked with a grimace that she felt in her chest.
The road continued through the gate, bisecting the town ahead.
Crammed on either side of the street were the abandoned, skeletal remains of large wooden buildings and squat stone structures that looked more like husks than like banks or post offices.
Wind rustled through crumbling halls and sent window shutters banging on their hinges.
The buildings that did remain standing were made of either stone or rough boards and nails, cobbled together in a hurry and left to fall apart over time.
At the end of the road, bone-dry dunes painted the horizon beige, and a lone scarecrow had been strung up, watching over the town with a wide-brimmed hat on its obscured head.
The sun beat down on the deserted streets.
It was evident that rain was a rare thing in these parts, the dusty road and distant dunes parched beneath a cloudless sky so bright it was almost white.
An unbearable heat rose from the ground, and explained why the streets were empty of people.
At times, Risa thought she caught sight of a figure huddled in an alley or peeking from behind a fluttering curtain, but when she looked again, no one was there.
Loose, dry dirt was kicked up with each footstep and settled over them in a fine layer. An eagle screeched overhead, no doubt considering Brunie for dinner, and a lone tumbleweed rolled past them before disappearing into an alley.
Risa tamped down the wild beating of her heart. An empty, lawless town might be exactly where Javi’s assassins were regrouping and assessing their botched plan, but surely that was too on the nose.
“Remember when you said you’d listen to me more often?” she asked.
“No.”
“Give me your circlet,” she said, holding out her hand. “We don’t know who might be watching.”
At least he didn’t argue as he removed the thin gold diadem and handed it over begrudgingly.
She crammed it into the velvet pouch Brunhilda had given her, where magic seemed to muffle the sounds of whatever was inside, and stuffed that back into her pack.
The bag felt much emptier than when this ill-advised adventure began.
Ahead, voices floated out from one of the few wooden buildings that hadn’t fallen into complete disrepair.
Two shaved-down planks served as swinging doors, their once-red paint chipped and dulled brown, matching the exterior paneled walls.
They creaked in protest with every gust of wind or movement from within, echoing the creaks of the sign overhead that read MEAN-EYED CAT SALOON.
A shout rang out, followed by a bang, and then the faint notes of a piano floated through the doors.
Risa felt that they should walk right out of the town, but the truth was that she was hungry and tired and she didn’t know the way to Madros.
What she did know was that she and Javi were not going to survive on their own.
They would have better luck giving an outlaw all the coins in her pouch and Javi’s circlet in return for protection.
“We’re going in there, aren’t we?” Javi asked.
Risa nodded, took a deep gulp of air, and strode in.
At least a dozen people sat at rickety tables, with pints of beer and knives and daggers and pistols in hand.
One man held a nasty contraption that was the ugly child of a knife and a pistol, though Risa couldn’t begin to understand how it worked.
Someone else caressed the easily identifiable handle of a rusted pan.
A lady in a red dress trimmed with black lace arm-wrestled a bearded man without a shirt; she looked mildly disinterested while he sweated rivulets.
In a spot off to the side of the door, a pair was engaged in a fight that looked near its end: A hand gripped a mustache, a boot ground a head against the sticky floor.
The struggle paused in its last throes as the pair turned to consider the new arrivals.
Javi breezed past, Brunie draped fashionably over his shoulder. He leaned against the sticky counter—and regretted it, if his disgust was anything to go by—before flashing the disgruntled worker behind the counter a cheeky grin.
“Table for two.”