Brigands & Breadknives by Travis Baldree - 4

“I fucking hate it!” sobbed Fern, her face in her hands.

Potroast glanced up with a hoot and a slow, concerned blink of his owlish grapefruit eyes. One of Thimble’s hard cookies lay half masticated between his forepaws.

She let out a watery breath and scratched him behind the ruff of his feathers. “What am I going to do now, little man?” she whispered.

Fern gazed around the alley behind the shop, where she sat on the back step with her red cape rumpled around her. Evening painted the tumble of boxes, barrels, and bales there in shades of deepest blue. A scatter of puddles reflected the pale rind of the moon, and the nighttime murmur of Thune echoed from streets that felt very far away. The frosty air bit her toes.

A week had passed since the grand opening of Thistleburr Booksellers, and things had gone better than they had any right to. Viv’s intuition had proven correct, and some kind of synergistic energy had built between the coffee shop next door and her own. A cozy magnetism. It was obvious to all and sundry that the bookshop belonged there.

And that was wonderful, Fern supposed.

Except that it didn’t matter.

The hollowed-out feeling of dissatisfaction that had steadily eroded her center for the past few years was still there. In fact, it seemed to have grown .

Oh, she’d been distracted from it for a day or so, in the same way that sprinting until you’re breathless makes it hard to focus on the growling of an empty belly. But now that things had settled into an easy—and profitable—rhythm, it yawned within her, sucking up all the light in reach.

“There you are,” came a voice from the mouth of the alley, rousing Fern from her morose reflections.

As the shadow approached, it resolved into the craggy features and flat cap of Cal.

“Shit. Don’t look at me. I’m a mess,” protested Fern. She gestured at the detritus around her. “I came here to be with my people. This is a garbage-only meeting.”

He ambled over and dropped to the step on the side opposite Potroast, who tucked both paws tighter over his cookie and gnawed it with wary determination.

Cal folded his hands between his knees and didn’t say a thing. The smell of fresh sawdust tickled Fern’s nose.

She mopped her cheeks with the hem of her cloak. “This is the part where you wait in silence until I unload all my feelings, isn’t it? I’ve read a few books, you know.”

“Hm.”

“I wasn’t supposed to feel this way.”

“That so? Who says?”

“I thought for sure you’d do the silence thing.”

Cal shrugged. “Can if you like. Just greasin’ the wheels. Speakin’ of.” He rummaged in his overall pocket and withdrew a flask. He spun the cap off, sniffed it, and took a slug of whatever was inside. He passed it to Fern.

She took it, and without pausing at all, put it to her lips and tipped it back. The liquor hit her throat with a quick burn and her belly with a slow warmth that made her eyes water.

Fern coughed and returned the flask. Wiping her eyes with her cloak again, she said, “Okay. Consider me greased. I just . . . I feel . . . empty . And it seems like that’s my fault. But I don’t know what to do about it. I don’t even know what I did wrong? If there was a choice that I made somewhere along the road that led me to this, I sure as shit don’t know what in the hells it was.”

“Seems your shop is turnin’ out fine,” observed Cal, tilting his head back toward it.

Fern snorted. “Better than fine. And that makes it worse . I figured a change of scene, an old friend, new acquaintances, it’d be something like a fresh breeze in a stale room . . . I leaned on the kindness of others to get here, it didn’t fix what I wanted fixed, and now I’m ungrateful to boot.”

She took the proffered flask again.

It traveled back and forth between them while Cal ruminated on that. Eventually, he pursed his lips and ventured, “Didn’t get the impression Viv thought she was doin’ anythin’ more than helpin’ a friend open a business. Maybe allow that she wasn’t thinkin’ of . . . fresh breezes, or what have you.”

“Does it matter? I don’t know if I can keep doing this. But I don’t know if I can admit that to her, either. ‘Oh, hey, Viv, thanks for all the help, sorry it didn’t work out, but I’m questioning my very existence, and I can’t keep on this way. So sorry!’”

“Any reason you can’t say ’xactly that?”

“I . . . well, obviously I can’t say . . . what?” Fern spluttered through a mouthful of whiskey.

Cal shrugged again. “What’s the worst that can happen?”

“She hates me and never wants to see me again?”

“Remind me how long it was the two of you didn’t trade a word?”

Fern gaped at him, her belly afire and head woolly with liquor.

“Awful quiet stretch for a friendship,” Cal continued. “Longer’n most could stand. Seemed to survive okay though. Sturdy, I expect.”

“All right, setting that aside, even though I am not saying I agree with you, what the hells do I do if I’m not doing . . . this ? Who would I even be?” She stabbed both paws toward the shop.

“Seems to me Viv used to hack things up, and now she makes coffee. She’s still Viv though, I guess. You’d know better’n me though, considerin’.”

“I need some more of that. Seems to be working,” said Fern, extending a paw for the flask as a welcome cocoon of drunkenness enfolded her. “And it sure as hells beats figuring out a new career in an alley in the middle of the night.”

Cal considered her before reluctantly handing the whiskey over once more. But not before taking another swig himself. “Never really was one for givin’ advice. I’m more the askin’ questions type.” He leveled a finger at her. Fern had trouble focusing on it. “But I’m gonna break that rule and say you should talk to Viv. Tomorrow. Tell her what you told me. Don’t figure you’re gonna find anybody with a better idea of how you’re feelin’ right now.”

Fern considered the mouth of the flask, which seemed very black and big all of a sudden. She sighed, and the alcohol on her breath curled her whiskers. “I guess maybe you’re right.”

“Hm.”

“How do you turn a hm into whatever you want it to mean? How does that work?”

“Hob secret. Now, pass that back while there’s still somethin’ in it.”

She did.

“Promise you’ll tell her,” Cal said with an uncharacteristic earnestness.

Fern slumped against his shoulder.

“I will, uncle,” she mumbled.

She couldn’t see his face, but even drunk and morose and suddenly half asleep, she thought she could feel him smile.

After Cal made his way home—tottering only a little unsteadily—and Fern made her way back inside—tottering a lot —she tossed and turned in her bed for a solid hour. Potroast sawed logs for the duration, and Fern was too cold, and then too hot, and then too queasy, and the room was spinning anyway, so she fiercely whispered “Fuck it!” and hurled her blanket back.

She seized her cloak from the peg to shrug into it, then took a moment to acknowledge exactly how drunk she was from a peculiar, muzzy distance. Mostly on account of the fact that she missed the peg three times with her paw.

“Ooh, too old to be this soused,” she mumbled. And with the unjustified optimism of the middle-aged, declared, “S’not too bad, though. I’m not even slurring. Just . . . a li’l softened. Thass all.”

She gazed around the darkened shop, the shelves and books bordered in wavering canary light from the streetlamps outside. On impulse, she snagged her battered leather satchel from the chairback behind the counter. A satchel once inhabited by an old friend, now home to parchment and quills and knickknacks and whatever book she was currently nibbling her way through.

Questing between the shelves, she slid out a few volumes until she found the one she was looking for. A red cover. Ten Links in the Chain .

“Sure, Fern,” she murmured. “Some kind of peace offering. Appeal to rosy memories. That’ll definitely help.”

She hiccupped.

“Balls.”

But she stuffed it into the satchel anyway, and then, before any more whiskeyed resolve could drain out of her, she unlatched the front door and went out into the night.

Fern didn’t think to lock up after herself as she nearly stumbled off the step, only counterbalancing herself at the last moment with a reflexive whip of the tail and a small cloud of profanity. Clutching the satchel to her chest against the cold and blinking in the sudden blare of light from the nearest streetlamp, she peered next door at Legends & Lattes.

Candlelight still glowed through the mullioned glass of the front windows. Which meant she had no ready excuse to scuttle back inside and hide her head under the blanket she’d so recently cast off.

“You promised,” she murmured to herself. And then, “Fuck.”

The handful of yards between her and the coffee shop seemed very long.

“Just . . . a li’l walk to clear my head first,” she mumbled, heading in the opposite direction. “Cool air. Sobrin’ up.”

She wandered, wobbling, to the next street corner, and then turned left. The cross street held mostly shadow, with lamps set much farther apart, but the chill was delicious on her overheated face as she walked.

Then another turn, and another, and by now, she should’ve been nearly back where she started.

She wasn’t.

A rustle and creak to her right caught her notice.

Parked several doors down the unfamiliar lane, only just revealed by the borderlight of another streetlamp, waited a tiny, open-backed, two-wheeled horse cart. A canvas tarpaulin hid a lumpy assortment of something-or-other in the bed, and a shaggy draft horse in the traces nuzzled patiently at the cobblestones.

That wasn’t what really drew her attention though.

A tall figure cinched ties at the edge of the tarpaulin, reaching easily over the boxboards.

A figure Fern recognized .

If the star-shaped pommel of the sword above one shoulder wasn’t enough, the hacked-short silver hair and maimed ear would have settled it.

“Astryx?” mumbled Fern.

Well, it was definitely a coincidence to see her now, only weeks later. And after being the object of her rescue, no less.

“Coincidence . . . or maybe a sign,” said Fern. “S’not every month you bump into a legend twice.” She blinked, startled by the volume of her own voice.

If Astryx heard, she gave no indication. The elf scrubbed the horse’s cheek affectionately before slipping into another alley, leaving beast and cart unattended.

Fern glanced around and at last spied a building she knew, a chandler’s shop only a few doors east of Legends & Lattes. She wasn’t lost. Hells, she could be back at Viv’s place in no time at all, if she wanted.

Fern imagined the warmth within, a cozy fire, the lingering scent of coffee underpinned by cinnamon.

She imagined Viv’s confounded expression when she opened the door to see Fern weaving on the step. Her easy smile when she ushered Fern inside.

The awkward silence, the halting, anxious beginning of the worst sort of conversation.

The way her smile would slip, and the light in her eyes would withdraw by degrees.

And suddenly Fern was moving, but not toward the shop.

In a trice, she lifted the tarpaulin on the cart and scrambled awkwardly inside before cursing herself—in a whisper, thank gods—for not removing the satchel first before she tangled in it on her way up.

Then she was on her back, hemmed in by crates and sacks, clutching the leather bag to her chest again. Her cloak was in rumpled disarray beneath her and wrapped around her tail. The canvas puffed up and down ever so slightly with every breath.

The horse stamped a hoof in surprise, but then fell silent.

She lay there for some minutes, holding every coherent thought at bay, focusing only on the rise and fall of the tarpaulin, the impossibly loud thudding of her heart.

No sounds came from without. Astryx did not return.

At last, the adrenaline leaked out of her, and the yammering in her head could not be staved off any longer.

“What in the hells, Fern! What in the fashionably fuckable hells ! What is this? Really? Get your stupid ass out of this cart and march your paws down the gods-damned street like the grown rattkin you are and keep your promise !”

Fern paused and listened. She heard nothing but the occasional shuffle of the draft horse a few feet west of her head.

“What were you planning anyway? To stow away and flee the gods-damned city? Are you so drunk that that seems reasonable ?”

She considered the idea. It seemed more reasonable than it ought to, actually, which was very distressing. Definitely drunk.

Fern surprised herself with an enormous yawn.

“All right, that’s enough of that,” she whispered, and gathered her resolve. She braced a paw against the bottom of the cart and began to sit up—

—and froze as footsteps approached.

She lay back down as quietly as she could manage.

Shit . At least this time, she had the presence of mind to say it only in her head.

It was getting warmer under the canvas. The minutes ticked by as Astryx fussed with this and that. She heard the creak of leather, and the jingle of harness, an oddly soothing chime. The cart rocked on its wheels gently as Astryx adjusted something on the buckboard.

Fern waited.

And waited.

And waited .

And then she was asleep.