Chapter Nine The Impatient Made Small under Moonlight #3
“I’m going to—finish the job.” Saeldian took a deep breath. “I’m going to see it through to the end.” Their voice strengthened as they vowed it, glaring at Kell. “Why do you always have to poke at me?”
Lorzok reached for his pack, and so did Jubilee.
Kell picked up his own pack and pulled the shoulder straps tight. “Because I won’t forget what happened when I trusted you.”
Saeldian looked like a high bank of dark clouds sculling in on the wind. “You’re acting like you’re the boss of this job. You’re out of the heist game, remember?”
He didn’t have to take disrespect like that from the likes of Saeldian Charmhand! “We’re in the Feywild now, remember?”
The air was cold then, and so quiet it pressed against Kell’s ears. The horned lark went silent. Chattering he didn’t notice until it was gone. The trees around them shifted only a little, but their shadows were darker.
“Hey, watch the temper,” Jubilee said. “Calm down.”
“Yes, do calm down,” Lorzok said. “Remember where you are. Let’s decide what to do.”
“It’s easy. There’s only one reasonable thing to do,” Kell said. “We catch up to my family, and they can help us.”
“It’s only reasonable if you can point in their direction,” Saeldian said, acid still strong in their voice.
Everything got darker. This was dangerous. But it wasn’t just him. Saeldian was egging him on, poking in just the right spot to make him harden his stomach muscles and square his stance. He couldn’t let them get to him. He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.
“Hey,” Jubilee said. “Did you hear that?”
Lorzok peered in the direction Jubilee turned.
Saeldian ignored her. “You want to do it your way, huh? Fine. Find them. Lead the way.”
Like they were daring him to do it.
“I can’t just spin in a circle and head in their direction.”
“You said your plan is the reasonable one, but you can’t fool me. You didn’t even try.” Saeldian adjusted every strap on their pack and bounced to judge the fit. “Why not?”
There wasn’t anything Kell could say, because he’d rather die than tell Saeldian the reason.
Because he’d tried before.
Kell could find whomever he wanted to find, so long as he’d met them at least once before.
Essanderon had given the knack to Kell when he was very small and afraid of being lost. The better he knew someone, the easier it was.
But he had barely been hungry on the first day of his exile when he had sat alone and reached out, only to find nothing.
He’d guessed that meant he couldn’t find them if they weren’t on the same plane. Where was the Feywild when you were in Faer?n? That was logical. That made sense. He couldn’t find them until he made it back.
But the other possible reason, which he’d never admit aloud, was that they were all dead. He couldn’t tell Saeldian that.
“Hey,” Jubilee said. “Keep it down. Someone’s coming.”
“Excellent,” Saeldian said. “We can ask them for directions to Eightbridge. Since Kell just wants to stand here all day.”
“The sky is a beautiful clear blue, and everywhere is peaceful,” Lorzok said. “We are safe.”
He didn’t sound like he believed it.
Kell sighed. “Look at how everything has changed. We can’t clash like this in the truewild.”
“So don’t be an ass when we’re trying to figure out what to do,” Saeldian said. “We need someone who knows how to get to Eightbridge, and now someone’s coming. Or maybe your brother just happened to be out for a walk. It’s the Feywild. It does whatever you want.”
“It does whatever you feel,” Lorzok said. “And you two feel like a duel. Will you please center yourselves?”
“I’m fine,” Saeldian said. “No reason to be angry when you’re right.”
Kell took a deep, deep breath, held it, and counted the seconds before he had to let it go.
Saeldian marched off but made it only a few steps before a woman with long white hair in a traveling robe with a sturdy walking staff strode up to the party. “Forgive me, good folk, but I couldn’t help but overhear. Are you lost?”
Chilly air curled around the back of Kell’s neck.
Saeldian froze, caught in mid-step. Long tendrils of moss drooped from the tree branches, swaying desperately for something to touch.
To grab. All around them, the air took on the smell of slow-moving water, and the ground under Kell’s boots went soft as the traveler came closer.
This woman was no mere wanderer. She ambled closer, only her smile visible in the shadow beneath the wide brim of her pointed hat. She carried a staff and wore a humbly cut but spotless traveling robe.
Kell stood up straight and bowed before the traveler, as courteous as a bard acknowledging the noble whose purse would provide. “Good morning. We were just discussing breakfast.”
Saeldian said nothing.
The woman drew closer. “You are hungry? I have a little to spare.”
This close, Kell could feel it. Incredible power, heavy with possibility, scented with charms and lightning and the smell of a just-burned match—all of it balanced on the tip of a needle and ready to fall on them for good, for ill, for whatever she wanted.
“A witch.”
Saeldian barely let their breath make the sound. If Kell hadn’t stepped directly in front of them—when did he do that?—he wouldn’t have heard them at all.
A witch. Witches weren’t wizards, though they could learn a spell through study.
They weren’t warlocks, though they might have mentors.
They weren’t sorcerers, though they could make magic happen because they wanted it to.
Witches gained power however they could.
However they wanted. He didn’t know whom he’d met, but he knew better than to owe a stranger in the Feywild a favor.
“I mean that we were discussing our favorite breakfasts. I’m fond of eggs,” Kell amended.
“Smoked fish on toast,” Jubilee said, following Kell’s gab as smoothly as she did Saeldian’s.
“Fresh fish, clearly, is the finest breakfast there is,” Lorzok said, no slouch in going with a subject change as Kell’s partner either.
“And your opinion?” She waited, cocking her head, as Saeldian struggled to make any sound at all.
Kell filled the silence. “Eggs. They also prefer eggs.”
The white-haired woman’s face turned concerned. “Are you well?”
“Eggs,” Saeldian said, like they were grabbing on to Kell’s line at the last instant. “Fried in hot oil so the edges go crisp and lacy, then pulled to a cooler spot on the stove until the whites set but the yolks are still runny. Top toasted bread with it.”
“That’s marvelously specific,” the woman said. “I know an inn where you can ask for exactly that, and it’ll be perfectly done. It’s not far from here. Maybe you’ve seen the spire in the distance. Menoriath’s Fallen Spire, I mean. It’s beautiful and tragic.”
“Fallen Menoriath?” Lorzok asked. “It’s nearby?”
The woman turned her intent, interested stare away from Saeldian. Released from the strange woman’s regard, Saeldian struggled through a ragged breath of the sort that heralds a scream. No one but Kell heard the tiny, scared noise they couldn’t stop.
“Relatively speaking,” the witch said. “Distances change here, as I’m sure you know.”
Kell did his best to look like he was hiding ignorance. “I have read of the phenomenon, yes.”
“Your first time in the Feywild! I’m glad I found you before anyone else did,” the witch exclaimed. “When I think about what you could have stumbled over while out here lost, with no guide? Please don’t imagine it. I can sort this out for you. A disagreement, yes?”
Saeldian laughed. It sounded like a stone rolling over cobbles. “Only over breakfasts. Though I concede that my preference isn’t so easily done on a campfire.”
Nobody else would be able to tell how much that breezy tone cost them.
Why were they so afraid? Did they know this woman?
Had Saeldian swindled her once? Surely not.
The woman before them was white-haired, maiden-faced, and it felt like the heavy air before lightning just to be near her.
Saeldian wasn’t foolish enough to cross power like that.
“I’m so glad to hear that it wasn’t anything serious. But I can get you to the spire.”
“That is a kind offer,” Lorzok said, “but—”
The witch wasn’t listening. She was staring at Saeldian again—exactly at Saeldian’s breastbone, where their shirt was laced firmly shut.
Saeldian never favored the kind of figure that inspired people to stare at their beautifully crafted breasts or hugely muscled chest, but they might as well have.
Saeldian’s teeth clicked together in a helpless rhythm of terror that chilled Kell just standing beside them. They didn’t move or speak.
That didn’t stop the witch at all. “Oh, my dear, your teeth are chattering so! Let me—”
Near Lorzok’s feet, Timtim thumped his hindlegs in alarm. A tension in the air snapped. Saeldian covered their breastbone with their hand. Lorzok slammed the butt of his staff on the ground.
The witch’s eyes widened as magic swirled around her, but it closed on empty air, and she was next to Kell now, shoving him aside to get to Saeldian.
No. Kell spun away from that shove like it was a dance move and hooked his sickled foot around her ankle.
“Ha!” he shouted, and shoved.
She windmilled her arms as she fell flat on her back in the mud. He grabbed Saeldian’s shoulder and ran them to a spot between Jubilee and Lorzok.
The woman raised her head, and her unsmiling expression promised Kell that he would pay for that until his spirit was flat as an empty purse.
She lifted her hand, and Kell braced himself, but the glow of magic in her hand fizzled with a wet pop.
Saeldian’s shouted Counterspell still hung in the air.
Kell blinked at the spot that glowed pink in his vision where the light of the woman’s spell had flared. Saeldian had countered it—how? No. Kell couldn’t waste a moment.
He grabbed a vial from his belt, dropped it to the ground, and shattered it under his boot as he cast the spell that would slow everything she did. She struggled to speak as molasses smeared into the dirt.