Chapter 7 Sage
Sage
Nothing in Sage’s life has felt as pure as the very first steps of a fresh adventure.
The first deep breath of wild lilac or snowmelt or mountain pine, and every concern, every regret, and every desire falls to the wayside, save one: Complete the mission.
Find this specimen, retrieve that artifact, chart an unknown course.
The objective is always changing, but the thrill of leaving behind the city and all its entanglements as she turns toward the open road in front of her remains constant.
It is, she supposes, what peace feels like.
A peace that lasts for about an hour, until Araphi dismounts to relieve herself as they pass a wildflower meadow, trips over her new bootlaces, rips her pants, and skins a bloody stripe down her knee. How does a person injure herself in a meadow, of all places?
They stop so that Bramble can bandage her leg.
Araphi has chosen a wool riding dress for travel, cunningly made to disguise two flowing pant legs as a skirt whenever she stands on firm ground.
Sage certainly does not watch as Bramble lifts the hem of Phi’s bloodstained left pant leg up to her soft-looking, pale thigh for access.
Instead she moves away from her party, leaving Tea to pull a pair of thick texts from her saddlebag and sit reading them among the flowers—truly, Sage has never seen anyone read two books at once before—while Nura coos over the horses and feeds them apple slices.
Facing the treeline on the far side of the meadow, Sage stares off toward the forest road she knows will lead them east for a time, following the general course of the Willowthorn, which runs a few miles south. On the second day, they’ll veer northeast into deeper woods.
By cutting across forests and fields, traversing neglected paths without names and streams without bridges, they’ll arrive in Briarwall a week sooner than they would traveling due east by the Willowthorn, then due north by the Queens’ Road.
And hopefully, they’ll avoid notice along the way, as Remy insisted was a top priority.
She’s aware of Remy’s approach even before she hears the swish of the tall grass parted by his passage. He frowns as he joins her. “Don’t say it,” she warns him, still staring into the trees.
Of course, he doesn’t listen. “It’s not too late, you know. We can send the bard back and find another along the way, if you insist that we need one. This particular bard just doesn’t seem worth the trouble.”
“You don’t know what she’s worth,” Sage snaps back.
“And you do? You have some history between you that I’m not aware of?”
Wearing her best attempt at a withering glower, she turns to face him now.
“Do Phi and I look like people who travel in the same circles?” It isn’t really a lie, and even if it were, it’s none of Remy’s business.
“I…have a sense for folks. I can’t explain it, but I’ve come to trust it, and you ought to as well.
What did you hire me for, if not my instincts? ”
“As you say.” Remy raises his hands in capitulation. “But if the unasked-for advice of a lifelong adventurer who was also young once is worth anything, then be careful, Sage. Trust yourself, but remember: That’s the only person you can trust in the end.”
“Just tell them to finish it up, will you?” She tosses a nod in the general direction of Bramble and Araphi. “We’ve got a long way to ride today to stay on course.”
Remy salutes. The fine lines baked in by weather and age around his brown eyes deepen, but any trace of a smile is gone before he turns away.
Good. She isn’t in the mood to be made fun of—not by a man she’s begun to regard as a sort of obnoxious uncle who still looks upon her as a child, no matter how long she’s been making her own way through the world.
Still. His advice may be unasked for, but he isn’t wrong.
It’s not Sage’s job to hold Araphi’s hand through her first—and most certainly last—adventure.
Leading this party to the Swallow and back again by winter with their client’s prize safely in hand is Sage’s job, and she cannot let any party member compromise that mission.
It’s her only purpose over the coming weeks, and so her only desire.
Nothing and no one else can be allowed to matter.
Luckily, nobody falls significantly behind on the first day despite the urgency of their travel.
Araphi climbs back on her horse, pink-cheeked and bandaged, and they move on into the forest and down the narrow dirt lane nearly buried by fallen leaves in their determined order.
Sage rides her own horse—a beast the stable hand called Reaper, long-necked and lean, his coat bay-colored except for a snowfall of white spots on his rump.
Slightly ahead of the party, she scouts around the curves between the trees.
Remy follows at a short distance, watching for any signal of danger from their leader.
Then Araphi, Tea, and Bramble, and, at the back of the party, Nura, with one eye on the trail behind them in case of approach or ambush, her “walking” stick strapped diagonally across her back to allow for riding.
The woods this close to Kingfisher are generally benign, patrolled every so often by the city guards, so it’s mostly to practice keeping their senses sharp before they reach the wilder places of Harrow.
Or, sharpish. Without a need for stealth this far south, the party laughs and banters behind Sage in the crisp quiet of the woods. But even when they break for a quick lunch by the roadside, she keeps her thoughts to herself.
Once twilight settles, they decide to make camp in a clearing off the road.
The nights aren’t quite so cold yet that it’s necessary to press forward to an inn and betray their presence in the woods.
Besides which, Sage isn’t ready to be back in civilization, and being able to afford lodgings rather than sleep with the stars for company is perhaps the only downfall of a well-funded adventure.
Every horse carries a large hemp canvas waxed for waterproofing in its saddlebag, which makes for a simple sheet-style tent, slung over low branches and tied to trunks.
Bramble sets up their cooking pots and quickly starts a campfire—knowledge they picked up traveling back and forth to the island temple off their village’s coast, they explain—while the others rope up the tents and Sage scouts the area.
These woods aren’t free of beasts or bandits, and the danger grows the farther north they travel.
There are parcels of desiccated vegetables, dried beans, hard yellow cheese, and fish salted into stiff, silver strips packed away in their saddlebags for later, when they’ve strayed too far from the villages that speckle the countryside between here and Briarwall, and the hunting and foraging grow slim as the weather grows colder.
But for their first supper, they’ve got fresh food bought in a trustworthy cookshop on their way out of Kingfisher: fish pasties and griddle cakes, peas in their pods, and even figs, which Remy purchased on the docks off a boat from the south.
They eat around a crackling bright fire, and then Araphi pulls out her lute.
It’s still safe enough to make noise after nightfall, though that too will change as they move north.
Soon after, Nura takes first watch while the rest of the party retreats to their tents to rest, anticipating an even longer day of travel ahead of them.
Sage has always slept better on the road than in any inn or rented room.
Usually, she drifts off quickly to the familiar hoots, chirps, and even faraway howls of woodland creatures, knowing from long practice that she’ll bolt awake at the first sound or scent of true danger.
But tonight she turns over and over on her bedroll, her thoughts a tangle of doubts—about the mission, about the party she’s picked, about her ability to lead it all the way to the Northlands and back—as well as a discomposure she can’t explain.
Sleep has yet to come when Nura approaches Sage’s tent to rouse her for her turn at watch, and doesn’t claim her for hours after her shift is done.
Tired though Sage may be, the next day passes even more uneventfully than the previous, with no further wounds to tend along the road.
The weather holds, crisp but clear, and they encounter nothing more dangerous than a leaf snake, small and toothless, which spooks Tea more than it does the horses.
The party is in good spirits as they set up camp for the second night.
Araphi ties up the horses, insisting, “I’m capable of more than singing songs.
I know how to tie a knot, for gods’ sakes.
” Meanwhile, Bramble puts a pot on the campfire to boil beans and soften strips of dried fish.
As they eat, Tea passes around a flask of dark wine she brought with her all the way from Locronan.
Sage hands it off without drinking; her senses are blunted enough by fatigue as it is.
But she knows better than to talk the party into abstaining, and a few sips apiece won’t hurt.