Chapter 21
Chapter
Twenty-One
Pair bad news with food
The village was dark by the time I got to Maive’s house.
I’d flown back in silence, three hours of cold and cloud cover and the armor doing nothing for warmth once the exertion of the day was behind me. Below the harbor wall, the lanterns burned. The path through the village was empty, my boots were loud on the packed stone.
I did not go home.
She needed to hear what I’d learned, now, while the memories were fresh. Light came from the upper floors. She was still up.
I knocked.
Footsteps from upstairs. Then she opened the door.
Maive had her hair down and wore a long robe of deep green, tied at the waist. She looked at me with a quick, thorough sweep. Eyes to boots. Back up. She took in the armor, the dried mountain grit on the knees and forearms, and the general state of me, and her expression pinched.
“You look terrible,” she said.
“I’ve had better days,” I agreed.
She stepped back and held the door wide. “Come on up,” she said. “I’ll get you some towels so you can dry off and get warm.”
I tromped up the stairs behind her. The treads were worn and slightly uneven underfoot, the railing smooth and dark from long use.
The staircase opened up and I stopped in the doorway, taking in her private space with interest. On the second floor, the rooms were divided up into smaller ones, but the central one looked like a sitting room.
It smelled of dried herbs and the sea breeze.
Beside a lamp on a shelf sat her boots, a shallow basket of mending, and a clay pot holding a green, vining plant.
The walls were the same pale stone as the rest of the building, but hung with woven panels in greens and browns, fine work with a repeating pattern of leaves.
The room was warm. A small metal stove in the corner ticked with settled heat.
Despite how hot the days could be, the nights were cold.
The rug underfoot was thick, deep red, and with a pattern of interlocked diamonds worn soft in the center where feet had crossed it for years.
Near the window, two chairs angled toward each other with a small table between them.
A book sat open on the table, face down, and beside it a cup that still had steam rising off it.
Along the far wall, a low cabinet ran the full length of the space, holding more books, a carved wooden figure, a row of small bottles in different shades, and a shallow dish of smooth stones.
It was perfectly cozy and comfortable without being fussy. So perfectly her.
Through an open doorway, I could see the bed. High wooden headboard, layers of blankets folded at the foot, a deep red quilted cover on top. Three pillows.
She moved to the stove and opened the top to check it, then added a small piece of wood from the stack beside it. I lowered myself into one of the chairs by the window.
Maive disappeared through an interior door and came back with two towels. She held them out.
“Your hair is soaked through,” she said.
It was. I’d been above the cloud line for half the flight back and hadn’t noticed. I dragged one towel over my head and face and the back of my neck. She sat in the other chair and tucked her feet up beneath her, both hands wrapped around her cup, and waited.
“Tell me,” she said.
I told her.
I described finding the cave mouth, the guards who brought me inside a mountain full of people. I described the cavern and Anlara, who I knew she’d be interested in. White-haired, older than both of us, seated, watching me arrive with complete calm. I told her about my request.
“She said no,” I said. “Flatly. And then she said it a second time.”
Maive’s brow pulled together. “On what grounds?”
I hooked the towel around the back of my neck.
“Hard to say. A five-hundred-year-old agreement that was never honored? When the original group left for the coast, they promised to send supplies back to the people who stayed in the mountains. According to Anlara, they were abandoned and the village was settled without them. They haven’t spoken with the village since. ”
Silence settled over the room. Maive’s cup moved slightly in her hands. She looked at the window. “No one in the village knows about this,” she said.
“That’s what I told her.”
“Contact should have been made.” Her voice had gone precise and clipped.
“Generations ago. By us, by them, by anyone with the information and the ability to act on it.” She shook her head once.
“Whoever made that agreement had a responsibility. This should not have been left to calcify for five centuries.”
“Who knows what happened to those people?” I said, then repeated what I’d told Anlara. “Maybe they tried to go back but got stuck in a storm and died. Maybe they fell off a cliff. That’s not unlikely, you know.”
“Maybe,” she said.
“Clearly a great deal was lost in the years after the split,” I said. “The people who knew what happened are centuries dead and took the story with them.”
Maive looked at me. “Did you tell her that?”
“I told her you had no memory of the agreement. Which she already assumed, and was not impressed by.”
Maive exhaled slowly through her nose. The stove ticked. Outside, I could hear a boat rocking gently against its mooring, the rope straining and releasing.
“Also,” I said. “I told Anlara that if the situation was reversed, the village would help the mountain Runams. That your people would not stand by.”
Her eyes came up.
“It didn’t change her mind, but she went quiet on it.” I shrugged. “I meant it, though. It’s what I’ve seen from you.”
She pressed her lips together and looked back at the window. “I would have helped them,” she said. “We all would have.”
“I know.”
“She won’t even consider taking the children?” Maive asked.
“Not at present.” I leaned back. “But the mountain location wasn’t the only option I had in mind. There’s always my house. That can take about twenty people.”
The room was very warm now, warm enough that I wanted to be out of the armor. I didn’t move, though, mostly because removing armor in someone else’s home was a significant statement. And then, of course, I’d have to carry the lot of it back to the shuttle. Easier to just wear it until I got home.
“Gilrox,” she said.
I looked at her. “Yes?”
She was watching me with those green-gold eyes and a directness that I still hadn’t fully calibrated to. She held her cup in both hands and her feet were tucked up and her hair hung in those long, gray-tinged ropes. Fleck, she was pretty.
“We’re past the quarrel,” she said. “Aren’t we?”
“Yes.”
She tipped her chin down in a single nod. “Good.” She set the cup on the table. “I don’t like fighting with you. I don’t mind arguing with you. That’s different, but the other thing.” She looked at me squarely. “It made me feel terrible.”
I stared at the rug for a moment. I had not done a great deal of honest emotional accounting in my life, which may have been why that sentence hit me harder than expected. “It made me feel terrible too,” I said. “For what it’s worth.”
“It’s worth a great deal,” she said quietly.
The lamp on the table threw warm light up across the lower half of her face. The steam had gone off her cup. She looked at me, and I looked back, and neither of us had anything to say.
“I want to cook for you,” she said. “Tomorrow evening. Here.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“A proper meal.” She was entirely matter-of-fact about it, as though she’d planned this ahead and was simply informing me of the schedule. “I’m not as good as Braija, but I’m not awful, either. And you’ve never eaten anything I’ve made. This strikes me as an oversight.”
An oversight. I barely resisted a smirk. “I’m sure you’re an excellent cook,” I said.
“Come at sunset.” She picked up the cup again, then set it back down. “And don’t worry about bringing a gift. Just bring yourself.”
I was already thinking about what to bring, but now I wasn’t sure. “Pasek said I’m always supposed to bring something.”
She looked back at me and shook her head.
Okay, well. I was going with Maive’s cues rather than Pasek’s, who I still did not fully trust with a charged blaster. I accepted this and moved on. “Sunset,” I said. “No gift.”
A quick grin. “You’re getting it.”
I got to my feet and flicked my thumb over her chin. “You’re a spicy one.”
She laughed and walked down the stairs with me. At the door, she held it while I stepped out into the night. The cool, salty air came in around me immediately.
I turned back. She stood in the doorway and looked out at me with those eyes.
“Good night, Gilrox,” she said, and leaned out for a kiss.
I complied, taking my time, testing the softness of her lips. “Good night,” I said after I pulled back, and then I headed back to my shuttle. My boots were loud in the dark.
Sunset. No gift. Just me.
I could do that.