CHAPTER SIX #3
“Then you’re welcome to stay here,” he said, adding quickly, “I’ll sleep on the floor.” There was barely room on the floor for all the clutter. There was, however, plenty of room on the bed.
“I’m quite used to sleeping outside,” she said crisply. “Sperling Park is nearby; I’ll sleep there.”
“Wolves and bears are nothing on lecherous drunks, I’m afraid.” Something was cracking in his implacable demeanor, though she couldn’t say what.
“Your concern is quite chivalrous, but I’ve been fine on my own this long. Somehow, I’ll have to manage one more night without you.”
“I’m not making myself clear.” His sudden intensity startled her. “There are…It’s not like your forest, but terrible things happen to girls alone on the street in this city.”
“I’m not a girl. I’m a hunter.” At the door, she paused. “Besides, wizard. Terrible things happen to girls everywhere.”
And I have always been alone.
The last time Anya had seen the streets of ?bender, she was eight years old, leaving for the country with her parents, as they did every summer.
Twenty years had passed, and not much had changed to her eye, but what changes she saw disoriented her.
Shops whose names she couldn’t recall had been replaced with new wares and new names; streets she couldn’t name but knew like the back of her hand redirected to make way for new buildings; green, open spaces filled in with stone and glass.
But the park remained, more familiar to her than any other part of the city.
She’d passed many an afternoon there with her governess when her kinetic energy became too much for her parents’ town home to contain.
Briefly, the temptation to find her erstwhile winter home whispered to her, but she ignored it.
It was someone else’s home now; even if she wanted it, she would never have it.
As she strolled the once familiar cobblestone pathway through Sperling Park, she noticed more of the trees had been cut back.
The gas lamps lining the path had been replaced with electric lights.
And the little pond where she had liked to catch frogs had been paved and replaced with a stone fountain.
Away from the electric lights and the fountain, past the lawn and into a small, secluded grove, she found a tall, sturdy maple.
She settled underneath it, using her pack as a pillow.
In the quiet, in the calm, emptiness drifted over her like a cloud.
She’d spent many a night in the starless dark of the Lichtenwald.
And yet, for all her efforts to scare the wizard away from the forest, she had never felt so small, nor so alone, as she did now.
She curled up around herself. The forest was her home, now. These twenty years, it had been. It was hers, whether it wanted her or not. And she would not be chased from it.
The wizard wasn’t what she had expected.
Cannier by far, and made of stronger stuff.
Whatever he needed that money for, he needed it badly.
He wasn’t stupid; he didn’t seem overly greedy.
He lived in a decent but shabby little apartment, whereas, when she was a girl, all the spellscribes she knew had lived in townhomes or manors of their own.
She also hadn’t remembered them looking so ill, so worn; quite the opposite.
It almost prickled her conscience to have to steal his prize from under him.
It almost prickled other parts of her to think of his amber eyes on hers.
The rustle of grass nearby sent her hand to her belt.
Something was creeping toward her, far too large to be a badger or a hedgehog.
She rose to her knees and peered around the trunk of the maple.
A figure approached in the dark, carrying what looked like a large sack.
To throw her in after knocking her unconscious?
How long had they been following her? Lost in foolish memories, she’d let herself become helpless as a little girl again, let herself forget she was the danger, now.
Slowly, silently, she drew her knife from its sheath and rose to her feet, hiding behind the trunk of the tree, waiting for a footfall beside her.
One step forward, a thrust of her arm, and her knife pressed against the skin of the assailant’s throat.
The sack was not a sack, but…a pillow and blanket. The smell of lily-of-the-valley wafted over her.
“Bite and beetle, bugger and fuck,” Anya hissed, dropping her arm. “What are you doing? I might’ve killed you!”
The wizard scowled at her, rubbing his throat where her knife had scraped but not cut. He lifted the pillow. “I took your words to heart. You were right. I’ve never slept outside in my life.”
She sheathed her knife. “So you thought the best time to try is the night before we set off on a perilous journey.”
“No time like the present.”
“And you brought…a pillow.”
“Shall I use a pile of leaves instead?”
“I wouldn’t. Might get a spider in your ear.”
Even in the darkness, she thought he might have turned a shade paler. She felt her lips twitch.
“We’ll get you some proper equipment tomorrow,” she said, settling back into the grass, too relieved for company to admit her resentment toward him for following her. “Bedrolls, at least.”
He laid the pillow on the other side of the tree from her, facing the lit pathway, and settled into the grass.
Several moments passed. She heard him pull his blanket over himself, then readjust. Several more moments passed.
He readjusted again. She could sense him aching to break the quiet, yet fearful of what doing so would bring.
She knew the feeling well. Eight years old, curled up beneath the blossoms of a rowan tree, internally screaming for any sound at all to break the unbearable quiet but able to sense things silently shuffling, creeping around the edge of her shelter under the branches, things equally eager for her to break it.
Johanna later told her the tree had protected her, but it was likely her silence that had saved her life.
Anya heard the wizard let out a small sigh. With a slight smile, she spared him. “It’s easier if you don’t try so hard. Let your body do the work.”
“Noted.” Barely another moment passed before he added, “Is it always this quiet?”
“Quieter,” she whispered. “Like all the world is poised to spring.”
“Hunting suits you, I’ve no doubt, but you’ve truly missed your calling as a writer of grotesques.”
“It isn’t too late to turn back,” she said to the leaves. One last chance to soothe her conscience. She would do what she could to keep him alive, as long as he was useful to her. But she could only do so much.
He didn’t answer. She wondered again at his steely determination. She leaned up on her elbow. “Wizard.”
“Yes?”
“What’s your name?”
“Sylas Cassirer,” he said, after a moment. “But you may call me Sy.”
“Good night, Sylas,” she said, turning on her side. “Sleep well. You will need it.”