Chapter 15
After nearly a week in the Dervish’s company, Edmund had come to three conclusions.
He was very pretty.
He was very broken.
He did indeed flirt with anything that moved.
The first was self-explanatory. The second …
well. It was not as if he didn’t have a good reason.
Edmund respected other people’s right to be horribly traumatized.
He had a nagging feeling that the trauma went much deeper than he knew, but he was not going to poke at it.
If the Dervish wanted to tell him about it, he would.
And despite the sharp edges, the Dervish was surprisingly good company.
He was funny, and he did his share of camp chores without complaint, or even comment.
He might claim that he was a bad man, but Edmund had seen him helping Dog Violet to her feet when her leg stiffened in the cold, always in a casual this-isn’t-worth-mentioning way, or sometimes as part of an absurdly elaborate flirtation—“Good lady gnole, please, allow me but a touch of your gentle clawed hand.” Whereupon Dog Violet would accept his help, then smack him with the back of her gentle clawed hand, muttering about humans being crazy.
Edmund was actually very glad that the man flirted so shamelessly and so obviously unseriously with the gnole, because otherwise he might start to take it seriously when the Dervish flirted with him, and that was …
well, a dangerous road to go down. He doesn’t mean anything by it.
It’s just how he is. He’s not actually interested in me.
… Pity.
It was a dangerous road to go down, but Edmund was afraid he’d already taken at least a couple of steps.
It wasn’t just that the Dervish was good-looking.
He was so alive. Edmund had never met anyone who could flash from deadly serious to hilarious quite so quickly, then back again.
Mercurial might be the best word. Mercury, which was quicksilver, and that was what the Dervish reminded him of: fluid and shining and constantly in motion.
And very very warm, when they’d been pressed together in the most horribly awkward of circumstances, wrapped in reins with a dragon peering at them. Warmer than he had been when they were curled together, trying not to freeze to death.
I am clearly cursed to keep touching him when it doesn’t mean anything.
Many-Armed One, have mercy upon your wayward servant and his foolish wayward heart.
Edmund was currently leading Sweetness, and the Dervish had pulled a low branch aside to let the others pass.
“Please allow me, good lady gnole.” Dog Violet scoffed at him and the Dervish gave her a deep, elaborate bow, then straightened and grinned at Edmund.
Edmund’s heart lurched, but he could not help but grin back.
I see that it is your whim to torment your servant instead, Many-Armed One.
“Yes, for you too, you flea-bitten beast,” the Dervish told Sweetness, who swished her tail and ignored him thoroughly.
Noon came and went. Edmund caught a glimpse of blue through the trees, and then suddenly they were at the edge of the woods, looking into a dense hedgerow, while soft clouds drifted overhead.
“I think we may have gone too far south,” Edmund said slowly. “Though we couldn’t have gone that far, surely? We should be only a day out from farmland…”
“Are we sure this is farmland?” the Dervish asked, looking dubiously at the dense tangle in front of him.
“Man-made, certainly.” Edmund pointed to the brambles that made up the bulk of the hedge.
“That’s blackberry … and there’s a cherry tree of some sort back there …
those over there are roses…” There were still rose hips clinging to the roses, which Dog Violet had started harvesting as soon as she spotted them.
“All food plants,” the gnole agreed.
“I’ll take your word for it,” the Dervish said. “All the plants in this place are a mystery to me.” He reached out gingerly toward the blackberry. “I don’t think I want to push my way through this. Not without a shield, and possibly plate mail.”
“No, no.” Edmund shook his head. “But look over there—”
A thin vein of smoke rose up, dark against the turquoise sky.
“People,” said the Dervish. “Do we see if they have food, or do we keep our distance?”
Edmund’s first instinct was to avoid them. His bruises from the last set were starting to fade, but they were still tender and in some cases, bright green. Unfortunately, that wasn’t an option.
“We have to talk to them. Even if they don’t have food, we have to warn them about the dragon.”
“Yes-of-course,” Large Francis said. “If-they-do-not-know-then-we-have-a-duty.”
He half expected pushback from the Dervish, but the other man said, “Yes, of course.” Perhaps he didn’t fully keep his surprise from his face, because the Dervish smiled wryly.
“I may be a bad man, but I still know you warn people about natural disasters. Or unnatural ones. I’m still not sure about that thing. ”
“There have been theories that dragons were created by the ancients, or perhaps by a rogue wonderworker,” Edmund said, beginning to work his way along the hedgerow, looking for a gap. “Though wonderworkers of that power are few and far between.”
“I’m aware,” said the Dervish dryly.
“Oh!” Edmund flushed. “I’m sorry. I should have thought…”
The Dervish snorted. “It’s fine. It’s a good thing they’re rare, that’s all.”
There was actually a school of thought that almost everyone had a talent for wonderworking, it was simply so incredibly specific that the circumstances never arose.
Edmund decided against bringing that up.
Though he had occasionally wondered what talent he would have, if that were true.
Probably something like communicating telepathically with yeast.
Actually, that would be rather interesting. I wonder how much awareness yeast has? Do the different types of yeast have different personalities?
He’d spent about ten minutes contemplating the difference between beer and bread yeast—and avoiding impaling himself on the brambles in the hedgerow—when the Dervish said, “Okay, it’s driving me nuts. Why are there green parakeets in Anuket City?”
“Huh?” Edmund lifted his head, then felt a foolish smile spread across his face. “You really want to know?”
“Apparently I do.” The Dervish looked both amused and somewhat resigned.
“I-am-also-curious.”
“It’s the foundries,” Edmund explained. “The artificers use huge amounts of metal, so there’s nearly a dozen foundries that work day and night all year.
They generate huge amounts of heat, which they vent from the roof.
The parakeets roost up there in winter so that they don’t freeze at night.
” He ducked under a branch that the Dervish held back for him.
“I’d be surprised if that hadn’t happened in other cities, but most of them don’t have as many foundries as Anuket City, so probably there wasn’t enough space for a breeding population. ”
The Dervish considered this. “There were little red birds where I grew up. Although red doesn’t really cover it.
They practically glowed. They had black wings and they would catch bugs out of the air.
We called them khemis-thray. I think that would be ‘paint birds,’ or maybe ‘pigment birds.’ Because the color was so intense.
” He smiled, suddenly unguarded, and Edmund caught a glimpse of what the Dervish must have looked like when he was young.
“I haven’t thought about them in years.”
“We-see-differently-from-humans,” Large Francis mused.
“There-is-a-bird-in-my-homeland-that-humans-call-the-drab- singer. There-was-much-confusion-for-a-time-because-we-see-markings-that-humans-do-not. The-wings-have-bright-bands-on-them-and-are-not-drab-at-all.” She tapped her antennae together, a sign that Edmund thought meant amusement.
“But-then-we-do- not-see-many-of-the-shades-that-humans-claim-to-observe. We-eventually-gave-up-trying-to-compare-color-words. It-was-too-confusing-for-everyone.”
“You can see different colors?” Edmund asked.
“Perhaps? We-cannot-compare-them-effectively.”
“Oh,” said the Dervish, “is this like when we were kids and realized that there was no way to tell if what I call blue was the same as what you call blue, because we’re each locked inside our own skull?”
“Precisely-friend-Dervish. There-is-no-absolute-blue-that-we- can-be-sure-that-we-both-are-seeing-the-same-way. At-best-we-can-say-that-we-see-markings-where-you-do-not-and-that-you-see-differences-between-colors-that-appear-the-same-to-us.”
Edmund took out his notebook and began hastily scribbling notes. The Dervish reached out and steered him around a tree root that he hadn’t noticed.
“Oh, thank you…”
“It’s fine. The amazing thing is that you don’t run into more things when you’re doing that.”
“Lots of experience. I can walk and read a book at the same time, too. Though it’s harder in the woods.” He tapped the end of his charcoal on his lower lip, vaguely aware that he was leaving a black smear. “I wonder if it has something to do with the structure of human eyes versus pillbug eyes…”
“Vertebrate-eyes-are-very-peculiar.”
“A gnole doesn’t want to interrupt, but a gnole has found a gap.”
Edmund hastily put his notebook away and stowed his glasses. There was indeed a gap in the hedgerow, which showed signs of regular maintenance. Beyond the hedge, he could see empty fields.
“A farm? But what’s it doing this far north?”
“Not much, at the moment.” The Dervish peered through the gap beside him. “Not unless they’re growing dirt.”
“Too early to plant,” Edmund said, “or lying fallow this year. But I had no idea there were farmers here at all. This used to be more forest. Although I suppose that was a few years ago…”
“Time is like live fish,” said Dog Violet philosophically. “Put it down and it flops away while a gnole isn’t looking.”
“That’s … certainly one way to put it,” said the Dervish.