Chapter 38
The town was called Bloomreach, the kind of name that, if it were in Crystallese, you’d say was for a place that decided to be optimistic about its future.
I’d said that to Baxley, and he’d laughed and told me to get used to hearing a lot of nature-associated towns and villages.
Bloomreach sat not far from the Florlunia border.
It wasn’t large enough to be important, nor small enough to be overlooked.
That was how they explained it to me. As we got closer, I knew it was the kind of town that trade passed through rather than stopped in, and the town was built around that role.
We arrived as the light was failing, when towns like this were at their most useful as evening approached. Inns open, fires lit, no one looking too closely at who came in from the road.
I knew these places well. I’d always felt most relaxed in these kinds of towns. No questions. No one’s eyes lingered on you long enough to remember. You were just another faceless person moving through.
We stabled the horses, took rooms, then met downstairs to eat. Larana had caught me counting my purse and asked if everything was okay. It was. I was just used to frugal living, and it was clear to me that my companions were not.
We had finished eating, and Baxley and Larana were talking among themselves. Both looked content to rest at the table for a while longer.
“I’m going to walk through the town,” Nicco said as he stood. He gave me that sideways look that was as close to an ask as I was going to get.
I pushed back from the table. "I'll come."
Baxley said nothing. Larana looked between us. Neither offered to join us.
“Alright then,” Nicco murmured, and we left them to their ale and their own company.
“I’ll get my cloak—”
“You won’t need it,” he told me, already heading for the door.
Outside without a cloak? What a strange thought.
Bloomreach at night was pleasant. The air was warmer than I was used to, and I was glad I had left my cloak behind.
He was in a dark linen shirt, slightly unlaced at the collar, in a way that wouldn't have been possible three weeks ago, when the cold demanded every fastening done. His sleeves were pushed back, showing the golden tan of skin used to warmer climates.
Without the bulk of his travel cloak, he looked different.
His shape was more visible, broader through the shoulders than the layers had suggested.
His pants were still the thick, dark cloth, but in the paler light of the evening, I could see they were of good quality.
His boots were scuffed and worn, but the leather was supple, and again, the better quality of the leather was more obvious now that I had time to study him properly.
He’d trimmed his beard into something more manageable, and it looked good.
His rich brown hair was longer too, pushed back off his face, more from habit than intention.
“You’re staring.”
“I haven’t seen you out of a cloak before,” I blurted.
He made a short sound that could have been a grunt or a laugh.
Nicco glanced at me, his eyes running over my form from head to toe, once, not in any other way than a man cataloging someone’s appearance. “Same,” he confirmed.
I couldn’t help but look down at myself, self-consciously aware that my clothes were not of the same quality as Nicco’s.
I was in my wool tunic and pants, a simple leather belt around my waist for my dagger, and my hair was loose for the first time since the baths.
Without the cloak and layers, I felt lighter than I had in months.
Lighter and slightly exposed. It was as if I’d been wearing my own form of armor for so long, I didn’t know how to be comfortable without it.
The air on my arms was cool but not biting, which was a revelation in itself.
The streets were quieter than Glassfyr but livelier than any Crystallese town I'd known after dark. Lantern light spilled warm and yellow from the inn windows and caught the cobblestones in pools.
I walked beside Nicco and looked at everything.
Not the stunned look I had when I looked at Glassfyr. I was past that, thank the gods. This was the trailfinder's look, the cataloging of a place, its exits and rhythms, and the way it held itself at night. A reflexive habit, and always useful.
"You're doing it," he said.
"Doing what?"
"Reading the town." He looked sideways at me. "I can see it. The way your eyes move."
"Trailfinder," I said. "It's what I do."
"Even in towns you’ve never been in?"
"Especially in towns I’ve never been in." I looked at the street ahead. "Towns like this I can read. Glassfyr was… harder."
He made a sound that might have been an expression of sympathy. We walked in silence for a moment. It was a different silence from the one on the trail. Or maybe I was just more aware of it.
I was aware of him beside me.
That wasn't new. I'd been aware of him since the first morning in Eirhollow, when he'd walked into the inn and looked at me like I was something worth knowing about.
But the quality of that awareness had shifted.
Since the column. Since Glassfyr. Since the Verei Kahn near-miss, and all the small, accumulating things that had changed the shape of our silence without either of us naming it.
I still didn’t name it.
How would I even know how to?
Without his cloak, his hood, and the wrappings that had covered the lower half of his face for months of travel, there was more of him to see than I was used to.
The beard, hiding the line of his jaw, the notable way he moved through a room or a street, present without announcing himself, aware without appearing to be.
It was easier to watch him without the layers between us.
"How long do we stay here?" I asked, aware I’d been staring at him again.
"A day or two." He looked at a side street as we passed, in a quick assessment. "Then farther south."
"Is there work farther south?"
"There's always work."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I have at the moment." He looked at me sideways. "Does that bother you? The uncertainty?"
I thought about it honestly. "Less than it would have in Eirhollow, my next trail was never certain," I said.
"But it still bothers me more than it should." I tucked my hand in my pocket as we walked. No gloves. So strange. “I think I’m used to living job to job, so I’m used to uncertainty, know what I mean?”
He didn't respond to that. Just walked, his presence beside me that solid thing it always was. Our breath didn’t mist in the air. It was another strange thing that I was so used to seeing, and the absence made me notice it more.
“It’s so strange to be walking around half dressed,” I murmured.
Nicco laughed. I don’t think he’d ever laughed. I stopped walking and watched the wide smile, the amusement on his face. It completely changed him.
“What did I say?” I asked him, fighting my own smile, a reaction to seeing him lighter.
“Farther south, where it’s warmer, or in Darysia and Cinderia, if you ever get there, I want you to remember this moment, when you said you were half dressed. Fashion farther south and east has a lot fewer layers and a lot more flesh on display.”
“Larana said that…” I looked down at myself. “Is it really fewer than this?”
“Gods, I hope I’m there to see your reaction the first time you see it,” he said with a rueful chuckle.
“Huh.” I couldn’t imagine fewer layers. On the road, I slept in my travel clothes, but when I was at home, before I left my father’s house, I wore a thick flannel nightdress, and even then, he’d told me to cover up in front of my brothers.
We turned down a quieter street. It was narrower than the one we left, the buildings looked older, and the light from the windows was more amber than yellow.
At the far end, a fountain sat frozen in the town square, a decorative thing that existed because Florlunia towns had decided that beauty was worth the water it cost. Ice had formed over the basin in a thin, clear layer that caught the moonlight.
I stopped to look at it.
"Fountain," Nicco said.
"I can see it's a fountain."
"You stopped."
"I'm allowed to stop."
He stopped beside me. We stood in the square's quiet, looking at the frozen fountain. I thought about Crystallese, about ice as a function rather than a decoration, about all the ways this country used the same materials as mine yet arrived at entirely different conclusions.
“How is this frozen?” I looked around. “It’s not cold enough here for that. How is it happening?”
“An enchantment from the Verei Kahn I would imagine,” he murmured. “The town would have paid a fee for it.”
“They need to travel twenty leagues north, and they can see it for free,” I mumbled.
He looked around in amusement. “Yeah, some people like the illusion while enjoying their luxuries.”
I sniffed in distaste. “Never thought I’d see the day when ice was considered a luxury.”
He made that huff of laughter sound again. I liked hearing it.
"Nicco." I kept my eyes on the fountain. "When we leave here. Where do we really go?"
He was quiet for a moment. "South."
"You always say south."
"Because south is always the answer." A pause. "For now."
"And after south?" I didn’t look at him. “When there is no more south?”
He turned to look at me then, and I turned to look at him, and we stood in the moonlit square in the coolness of a Florlunia evening, and his eyes were doing that thing, the warm brown thing, the steady, careful, not-quite-readable thing.
"I don't know yet," he said.
And it was the third time he'd said that, and each time it landed differently, and this time it landed like something that wasn't about directions at all.
I looked back at the fountain.
"Alright," I said.
"Alright?"
"I'm not going anywhere." I looked at him sideways. "For now."
Something that looked a lot like approval flashed across his face. Gone before I could examine it too closely.
He opened his mouth to say something.