Chapter 36 #2
She grunted and rolled her eyes again. “Stay.” She pushed herself to her feet, and I watched her stop to talk to one of the serving girls.
The girl looked over, and they bowed their heads together.
I dreaded whatever they were concocting.
I needed Baxley for interference, or Nicco to put a stop to whatever was about to happen.
Larana came back with two mugs in her hand. She plopped one down in front of me. “Drink.”
“What is it?”
“It’s not rat piss. Drink it.”
“You convinced me,” I deadpanned. I picked up the mug, and it was warm. I sniffed it tentatively. It had a sharp but sweet scent. “Will I like it?”
“Drink it and tell me.”
Maybe she was related to Nicco? A cousin, maybe?
I took a sip. I drank it. It was warm and sweet, nothing like anything I'd had before. I sat with the cup in my hands and felt its warmth move through my chest alongside the other warmth, the one that had been humming quietly since the column and was sharper now since this afternoon.
“You look like someone seeing rain for the first time,” Larana said with a sly smile.
“I've seen rain,” I told her, knowing I sounded defensive.
“Not like the rain in Florlunia.” She looked out the window at the dark beyond. “Wait until spring comes properly. The rain in Florlunia is different from anywhere else. It's warm.”
I tried to imagine warm rain, but couldn't quite picture it.
“You've traveled a lot.” I looked around the inn at all the travelers like us. “Do you enjoy it?”
“Enjoy it? Sometimes.” She looked at her own cup. “I do travel a lot, I guess. More than I want to, some years. Less than I need to, others.”
I looked at her sideways. She had the look of someone who had said something more personal than they'd intended and had decided to let it stand rather than take it back. I respected that.
“Larana.” I turned the cup in my hands. “When Vorn's people were going to take you—”
“They didn’t,” she said sharply, before I could finish. Her eyes held a stern glint. “Because you traded for me.”
I licked my bottom lip, knowing I needed to tread carefully. “I know. I just—” I stopped. “I'm sorry. I’m sorry, it was Baxley who let her go.” I looked away from her then. “I’m sorry that she probably died alone.”
She was quiet for a moment. “She died free,” she murmured.
I blew out a low breath. “Yeah, she did.”
Silence lapsed between us. Long enough that I thought she was done talking. “How did you know it reminded me of something?”
I thought about that night when Vorn’s men emerged from the snow and darkness to seize me.
The image that flashed in my mind was of her, trapped, standing there.
The intensity of her anger, not the panic-driven fury of someone facing immediate danger, but the burning rage of someone who had been in this place before and was enraged to be back in the same circumstances.
“I didn't,” I told her honestly. “I guessed.”
She looked at me for a long moment with those cool, assessing eyes. Then she looked back at her cup. “You're perceptive,” she said. “For someone who claims not to notice things.”
“I never claimed that.”
“Didn’t you?” A memory tightened her expression. “It was a long time ago. It doesn't matter now.”
“It matters,” I said quietly.
She looked at me sharply. I held her gaze and didn't look away. After a moment, her expression settled — not softened exactly, just — settled.
“Yes,” she said, her words heavy with tiredness. “I suppose it does.”
We sat together in the warm common room and didn't say anything else. It was the most honest conversation I'd had with her since the night she'd stood across from me in the snow and knew I was going to bargain to save her.
I finished my now-cool drink. Larana said she would stay down for one more, so I said good night.
I passed Nicco and Baxley’s room, the sound of voices loud in the inn’s quiet. They didn’t sound like they were in a heated discussion, which made me linger even though I knew I should move on.
His voice was very low, and knowing I shouldn’t, I stopped at their door, my ears straining to hear, wondering if he was telling Baxley what he suspected I carried within me.
A small glyph against the wall to hear better, a trickle of magic, nothing more.
“We need to move,” Nicco said. “Tomorrow.”
A pause, then Baxley's voice sounded, lower than Nicco’s. “The job's set up—”
“Tomorrow,” Nicco said. “Early.”
Another pause, then a louder sigh. “Does she know?”
“Not yet.”
“She's going to ask why.”
A silence. The silence of a man choosing his words. “I'll tell her it's part of the job. She won’t question it.”
“And then?”
“We’ll have another job, farther south.”
“Is that true?”
The silence this time was different. Longer than I liked. “It will be.”
I stood in the dark corridor and contemplated ‘it will be’ and felt the magic hum quietly in my chest alongside the thing I still didn't have a name for, both of them patient, both of them waiting.
I went to my room without making a sound.
In the morning, Nicco woke us early and told us the job needed an early start. We didn’t get breakfast. Baxley nodded in greeting as he helped me onto the horse, and Larana grumbled that it was insufferably early. I said nothing and watched his face and thought about it will be.
It felt as if the city watched us leave.
I didn't look back.