Chapter 27 Sage
Sage
The first time Sage sets eyes on Arkney, once they clear the sky-scratching pines and the mist that pools between them, she struggles to make sense of it.
Instead of a scattering of rugged cabins hunkered down against the forbidding landscape, Wren’s village appears as one structure with several dozen rooftops and chimneys.
It’s built into the foothills of the Kald Mountains and surrounded by a stone wall currently encased in moss and ice.
The rocks that range from the size of scones to cannonballs are easily scalable, but stacked just high enough to keep out wandering beasts.
There’s a sturdy wooden door, like a castle’s wicket gate, set into the side that faces down-mountain.
All told, the long structure looks like a dragon’s spine curling up the slope.
“Better for moving about in winter,” Wren explains at Sage’s questioning glance. “How’s the leg holding up?”
It’s fine would roll so easily off the tongue.
And undoubtedly, it’s better than it was; she never could have made it this far otherwise, even with the sturdy branch she found by the cabin to use as a walking stick.
But Wren spoke truly. While the magic has numbed and braced the joint, it’s fading quickly.
Her knee has still grown stiff and sore, a dull throb settling in, and it threatens to give out again if she shifts too much weight onto it for a second.
Soon enough, she’ll be right back where she started. “I could use a rest,” Sage admits.
“Well, come on, then. Not far from a fireside chair now.” When Wren twitches her shoulder, Goway takes flight at her subtle cue, and Sage resists the urge to cover her head.
The owl looks nothing like those gods-be-damned wraithverns, but it will be a while until she doesn’t flinch when the shadow of a winged thing crosses hers.
“Let them know we’re coming,” she instructs her pet, oblivious to Sage’s discomfort.
“Goway can speak?” Araphi asks, astonished.
“Not to anyone besides me, but he can make a nuisance of himself till the morning watchman wakes in his tower.” She nods toward a bell-tower-like structure that rises from one of the rooftops, enclosed against the cold.
“He’s probably asleep at his post now. Snow like this sends both beasts and travelers to ground.
Good for a few day’s peace, though it does make for a very boring shift. ”
They tuck their faces down into their collars and wraps as they leave the relative shelter of the trees, and the wind whips up to scrape snow across every inch of exposed skin.
Wren claims there’s a path beneath their boots, but it’s buried under fresh snowfall, so they struggle upward through the drifts.
Some are knee-deep. Araphi hovers next to Sage the whole time, poised to catch her in case her knee gives way.
More likely, Sage would send them both tumbling back down the hillside, but she doesn’t push the bard away.
Sage has grown rather accustomed to having Araphi Clauneck by her side.
Once they’re close enough to count the icicles that hang from the rafters, Sage looks up to see Goway pecking at the frost-patterned windowpane of the tower.
A moment later, the window swings outward, sending the owl flying with a disgruntled hoot until he comes to settle on Wren’s shoulder once more.
“That you, Morwena?” a sleep-rough voice bellows down.
“And who else would it be?” she calls back. “May we come in before our own breath freezes to our faces, Lenor?”
“Aye, aye, keep your breath in your mouth, and I’ll be down.”
Moments later (and yet somehow, also, ages later) the gate unlatches from inside.
Lenor turns out to be a barrel-chested man with bushy blue-black eyebrows and a scarf tucked up to his blue-black mustache, so that he appears as mostly hair.
But for all his gruffness, his blue eyes are kind as he regards Wren and curious as he takes them in. “Strays?” he asks.
“Much worse.” Wren rolls her eyes. “Adventurers.”
Half an hour later, as promised, Sage sits on a battered but comfortable chaise with her leg propped up on the long seat while Araphi explores their borrowed lodgings.
This was Wren’s aunt’s room in their family quarters before her death this summer.
“No sickness, naught like that, just a heart that reached the end of its journey,” their moody rescuer assured them.
In truth, there’s not much to explore. It must seem incredibly humble to Araphi.
Smaller even than the hunting cabin, the narrow chamber still manages to accommodate a decent-sized bed with a headboard of thin, braided pine branches, a washstand, a standing cupboard for clothing and possessions (little of which they now own), the chaise that Sage occupies, and at the far end, the stove.
It’s an ingenious box built of clay tiles set atop a brick foundation, with a rounded roof.
As Wren explained while sliding dry logs into the firebox, the clay is slower to heat, but retains that heat much longer than an open hearth or iron stove, allowing them to warm their rooms while burning far less wood.
She left them to their own devices after that.
Once Araphi has run out of nooks to peer into, she sinks down onto the bed, bouncing slightly to test it. “What do you need?” she asks Sage for perhaps the third time. “I can ask directions to the mess hall, or help you to the washroom for a soak, or…”
“How about we just sit for a moment?” Sage suggests.
Araphi rises to cross the room and squeeze between the furnishings with a dancer’s grace.
When she reaches Sage, she hikes up her long skirts, still soaked at the hem.
Taking great care around Sage’s bad leg, she settles herself onto Sage’s lap with a troublesome little smile, her knees on either side of Sage’s hips.
The dark hair that’s come unraveled from her hasty braids hangs down to brush Sage’s cheek, they’re so close.
She gives Araphi a quick, answering grin, but then turns to business.
“Listen. We’re in a better position than we were in the cabin, but our greater circumstances haven’t changed.
We’re in possession of a very powerful and valuable artifact, with a party somewhere in the area who’ll be looking for it, and us.
” Reaching into her waist pouch, which she’s yet to take off, Sage pulls out the dragon’s tooth to hold between them, its weight in her palm even more considerable than its size.
“I’ve a feeling your aunt won’t simply throw up her hands and write this off as a lost investment.
If we do manage to make it out of the Northlands once the snow melts and my leg has mended, there’ll be them to contend with, and if you’re planning to—”
“Ranger,” Araphi interrupts softly, leaning even closer to press a silencing kiss to Sage’s lips.
Sage welcomes it.
When she pulls back again, Araphi plucks the tooth from her palm and says, “I’ve a bargain to make with you.”
“I’m listening,” Sage says, sliding her emptied hands around Araphi’s waist.
“I would guess that, without you around to guide them deeper into the Graywood or provide for them throughout the winter, the party will make for Briarwall rather than risk straying from the route they know to search for us. Especially if there’s a good chance we drowned in the Swallow. Would you agree?”
Sage considers what she knows of Remy—a shrewd adventurer if a reluctant leader—and has to concede.
“That would be the sensible course of action. I doubt Remy will assume we’re dead without proof, despite the river’s reputation.
But he’ll know that we have to return to the gate to travel south, just the same as the party.
With the weather about to turn again, they may be well on their way back already before the mountain passes are untraversable. ”
Pleased to be agreed with, Araphi nods. Her fingertips stir, gently and maddeningly, through the short hair at the nape of Sage’s neck, growing out from the last shave.
It sends a shiver down Sage’s whole body, and a heat kindling between her legs.
“And would you agree that when Remy does manage to get word to my aunt at Hazelbend, it’ll be too late to cross back into the Northlands, whether to find us or to hunt anew for the tooth? ”
It’s getting a bit harder to think logically, especially when Araphi squirms on her lap to readjust her weight, and the friction between them only feeds the fire. But Sage does her best. “That seems sensible too.”
“Well then. We can’t go south to them, and they can’t come north to us.
Not until the passes are clear. We’re good and stuck.
So what if, for now, we don’t worry or plan?
Pretend we’re back in the hunter’s cabin, or better yet, in our pocket dimension?
We’ll keep the tooth a secret—borrow a needle and thread and sew it into the lining of this dress for safety, and tuck it away—but otherwise, there’s nothing to do for a time but survive the winter and keep each other warm.
Could you agree to that, at least for now?
” Her fingertips dip beneath the loose collar of Sage’s shirt to trace a path down Sage’s spine.
Reflexively, Sage’s fists bunch in the fabric of Araphi’s dress, and she tugs her closer still. “Yes, Bard.” Her voice is husky as smoke, her aching knee momentarily forgotten. “I could agree to that.”