Chapter 10 #2
She points at a large rowboat moored to an old post, but Torver’s attention is snatched away when her legs fail her and she collapses into the stony riverbank. A squeak escapes her as she lands harshly onto the gravel.
Torver hears a yelp that may have come from him as he hops the fence and careens down the bank. He wants to help her up, but she bats him away.
“I’m—I’m fine, Torver, get off—”
Lavellin looks down at them in alarm, climbing carefully over the fence and shuffling down the slope to join them.
“What’s happening?” It crouches down, skirt fluttering, and looks at Bassen with a tense concern. “Are you hurt?”
Bassen shakes her head and stands up unsteadily, helped reluctantly by Torver’s wide hands on her arms.
“No, I just—get like this sometimes. I—” She swallows hard. “I need to kill.”
“We need to get as far away from here as possible,” Torver reminds them. The water laps noisily at the rivershore behind them, the air thick with its scent.
“What?” Lavellin rises and takes a step back. “What’s this about you needing to kill?”
Torver ignores it. “I knew this day would come eventually, but Conise is on to me. Hopefully, just me! If she somehow knows about Lavellin…”
His voice comes quick and high in his throat, not in his chest where he usually keeps it.
“We become fugitives the second they enter that house,” Bassen agrees shakily. “Even if she doesn’t know about you or Lavellin, those books I, um, borrowed from the library are…incriminating.”
Her eyes unfocus and she swallows, like a wave of nausea is overtaking her. “So be a love and steal that boat, will you?”
Torver runs his hands forward through his hair, mussed from sleep in a series of absurd cowlicks. His palms come to rest on the stubbled sides of his face as he gazes at the wooden boat floating on the water.
“I suppose I can’t get any more wanted for my crimes.”
“Where are we going?” Lavellin says.
Torver swallows hard, like that can keep the fear inside him from rising up in the form of bile.
“Dunmail Raise, I suppose.” His heart thumps. “The cairn. The Beast. Away from here. There’s no way out of this now, only through.”
Bassen inhales loudly. Perhaps in resignation, perhaps she genuinely needs the air. Her hands are shaking. Whether out of fear or out of the slow death of her consequence, it’s unclear.
So she rests on the bankside, killing clumps of grass and moss, trying not to deteriorate further, while Torver goes to retrieve the boat—hoping that the owner isn’t nearby to shout, to chase them, to bring the law.
When he glances back at Lavellin, cloaked and looking lost, Torver can see the dull grey of the slate pendant in its still-scabby hand. It twiddles the stone between its fingers, watching him with a steady gaze.
Observed, Torver puts his brave face on. He can steal a boat—easy. He’s extremely tough, actually.
Upon inspection, the boat seems suitable. Plenty big enough for them, its hull wide and deep with planks running across to act as seats. There’s no time to search for an alternative—the faster they can get away, the better. And the sooner he can find something more substantial for Bassen to kill.
Before he knows it, Bassen and Lavellin are wobbling into the thing, and he’s pushing it away from the riverbank and into the water. Wetting his legs up to the knee as he does so, cool liquid filling his boots.
As he rocks the boat, climbing in on sore feet, he notices that a passing man has stopped on the midpoint of a nearby bridge. Bassen goes rigid at his side.
The man watches them, and Torver waves, willing to trade his soul that the man will assume the boat is his, that he’s taking two veiled women on a leisurely boat ride—not stealing a boat and running away with a deathmancer and a genderless fae.
A flag flutters above the man’s head, and when he glances up, the hard faces of the Meddera look back.
Then, Bassen is suddenly and violently sick over the side of the boat.
The man walks away, some expression of disgust no doubt on his distant face. Torver wobbles over to Bassen and holds back her hair. Before he can stop it, Lavellin usurps his seat at the centre of the boat.
Torver pats Bassen on the back as she retches up the last of what’s inside her. He’s about to say something to Lavellin, but the words die on his lips. It has its sleeves rolled up to its elbows, palming each oar and flexing its fingers around the wood.
“Allow me,” it says, looking puzzled at Bassen hanging over the side of the boat, like it doesn’t understand and doesn’t want to ask. “I’m stronger than you.”
Torver huffs. “Why do you just assume you’re stronger than me? You’ve never even seen me do anything that requires strength and—”
The boat lurches forward as Lavellin thrusts the oars into the water and propels the craft with impressive speed. Torver grips Bassen by the shoulders to stop her from falling into the water and is forced to concede that Lavellin is definitely stronger than him.
Torver half-expects Enforcers to burst from the streets above the river, shouting and mancing the water to hold them in place, but for once in his life, he is experiencing good luck.
Until Bassen’s nose is bleeding and she’s retching again over the side of the boat, flecks of vomit and shed hair making patterns on her dress.
Torver grips the edge of the vessel and peers in the water, but instead of the fat trout he’d hoped for, the river shifts with silver filaments.
Tiny minnows dart among the duckweed that Torver directs her to with a pointed finger.
The boat leaves a trail of watered-down blood and scatterings of scaly pulp as they slip out of the Wen.
Lavellin makes occasional low grunts of exertion and the last of the fluttering Meddera banners grow smaller and smaller as the city recedes.
Torver puts his jaw to the meat of his palms, trying to breathe deeply.
In tense silence, the river becomes theirs.
Only the landscape watches them uneasily as they pass through. But Torver’s expanding guilt threatens to burst him like Bassen’s fish.
“I’ve really done it this time,” he says softly.
He removes his head from his hands. He drags the string around his finger until his shoulder is patted by Bassen’s trembling hand.
“We would have had to leave eventually, Torv,” she says. “This isn’t your fault. I should have made you go in the back of the wagon the second we got into the Wen…”
She trails off when a bird circling overhead seems to notice the trail of minnow in the water. It swoops downriver and Bassen kills it with a flare of her eyes. Colour instantly returns to her face and she sits upright, blinking as if awoken from something.
“I suppose…” Torver chews his lip.
“King Eveling wasn’t going to wait for you,” Lavellin breathes heavily. The fae is glistening with sweat, its lean arms bulging with the continued effort of rowing at speed. “Better to set off now than to um and ah about it for any longer.”
“You’re right,” Bassen concedes bitterly. She dusts the front of her dress and leans back into the prow, pulling her eyes from the dead bird and the scum of pulverised fish on the water behind. She swallows. “Off to slay the dragon…”
Torver wipes his hand over his face. “Hurray.”
The sun beats down and Lavellin removes its heavy cloak, wearing only Torver’s thin shirt and Bassen’s headcloth. The shirt clings to it sweatily, and after a while, Torver offers to take over the rowing. It only laughs at him.
“Well, at least slow down,” he pouts. “We’re not being chased, so there’s no point wasting all that marvellous fae strength of yours, is there?”
Lavellin concedes and they travel to the steady sounds of splashing oars and the rhythmic beat of Lavellin’s breathing.
Time passes softly as they flee, and ancient trees shade the river with thick, leaf-laden arms. Heath-clad hills rise around them as the winding river slips through valleys.
Farmed fields edged with hedges spread out further than Torver’s eyes can see.
Grey sheep and the piebald dogs that herd them are whistled at by distant, unseen farmers.
And Torver looks ever over his shoulder, unclenching a little each time he sees that they’re not being followed.
When the morning surrenders to the afternoon, they’ve long drank the water Torver brought.
The journey grows sharp with hunger and an exhaustion that even Lavellin can no longer deny.
When the boat draws up on a riverside bothy—a free shelter erected when travel for pleasure was still encouraged—they have little choice but to make use of it.
Torver just hopes they’ve made it far enough from the Wen.
They moor the boat to a tree and Torver looks to the bothy. A jolt of familiarity makes him wince.
He’s made use of bothies in the past; when he was trekking to the Wen after he’d been sent from the Mere.
The journey had been long and bothies had been his salvation from the cold, until the final night of his journey when there had been no shelter in sight.
He’d awoken in a field the next morning, near death from exposure, to the inquisitive eyes of a girl with white hair standing over him.
The bothies he had stayed in, though, hadn’t been empty like that field. They’ll be welcome inside. But there’s no telling who is already in there.
Obtuse with hunger, Torver is willing to risk it.
As he and Bassen stumble, stiff and weary, towards the questionable lodgings, Lavellin hangs back, pensive. It stops him. Puts a sweating hand on his shoulder.
“Before we do this,” it says weakly. “I just—I need to ask.”
Its face is dewy in the sunlight, hair plastered in wavy strands to its beautiful face.
Torver’s tongue feels thick in his mouth. He swallows and answers, “Yes?”
Lavellin looks to its feet, and then at Bassen. “I have to know…”
It trails off, its hesitation making Torver nervous.
“Go on,” he says, meeting its bright eyes.
“I dropped it earlier because Bassen seemed to be dying and we had to run from those…knights,” it says, pulling its slate pendant from its pocket and grasping it gently. “But what did you mean earlier, when you said about Bassen needing to kill?”
Torver laughs in relief, unsure what he thought it was going to ask. A smile on his face for the first time that day, he links arms with Bassen and they walk towards the bothy.
“No, I really can’t stress this enough.” It trots after them. "What did that mean?”