Brigands & Breadknives by Travis Baldree - 8

Astryx made a game attempt to separate Zyll from the hazferou. This would have been easier had either of them cooperated, but the creature nipped at any approaching fingers that were not green, and Zyll’s lips writhed closed over her teeth as she growled deep in her throat and clutched the hen closer to her coat.

Fern discovered that the goblin only seemed truly menacing when her incredibly sharp teeth were hidden.

The elf regarded the demon bird and the goblin with a frown and fists on hips, then squatted before them both, a choice that put her face far closer to that fanged beak than Fern would ever have dared.

Snagging the loose end of the coil of rope, Astryx held it up in front of Zyll’s eyes. “I have a feeling you understand me perfectly. So, I’m going to offer you a bargain.”

Zyll’s eyes narrowed to calculating slits, but the growling ceased.

“I won’t pretend to understand what this is,” she said, gesturing between bird and goblin. “And I have no idea how you slipped your bonds, but I can assure you that I know much more complicated knot-work, and have dispatched plenty of hazferou in my time. It wouldn’t even be an inconvenience to do it again. However. If you’ll let me rebind you without a fuss—just the wrists this time—then I’ll let this creature live.” She tilted her head toward the hazferou, which clucked aggressively.

Zyll blinked very slowly, and with equal slowness her pointed pink tongue emerged from between her lips in an inscrutable expression. Lazy. Somehow catlike.

Then she stood, placed the hazferou carefully on the ground, and thrust both wrists in Astryx’s direction.

“Holy shit!” cried Fern, shrinking away from the hazferou as it hopped onto the buckboard between her and Zyll.

This despite Astryx depositing the creature in the underbrush at least two leagues back.

Its evil green eyes regarded her with a species of malicious disdain before it shuffled closer to the goblin, who burbled happily and buried her face in its side.

The furry hind limb of some unfortunate woodland creature dangled from its beak for an unsettling moment until, with a gulping cluck, the leg vanished down its gullet.

Bucket whinnied as Astryx seized his bridle and brought him to an abrupt halt.

It was the first time Fern had seen surprise register on the elf’s face.

“How—?” Astryx stood with mouth agape, one hand still wrapped around bridle leather.

“—did it get here?” Fern finished for her, gingerly sliding several inches to the right and as far away from the bird as possible. “Yeah, I’d like to know that, too.”

Astryx’s expression hardened, and she reached for the haft over her shoulder, striding purposefully back toward the cart.

Zyll’s attention snapped to her approach, and she thrust her bound hands into the air and waved them significantly.

“The deal was that I’d let it live,” said the elf. “Not that I’d take it on as a traveling companion. Hazferou fancy the eyes of their prey, and I don’t like the idea of it fancying mine while I sleep.”

The goblin hissed something under her breath at the hazferou. It clucked throatily, and at a single insistent nudge from the goblin, hopped back over the seat and onto the tarpaulin in the cart, where it waddled in a circle and then settled down to roost in the valley where the canvas spanned two crates.

Astryx stopped and regarded both of them narrowly, hand still gripping the haft above the starburst pommel.

After a long moment, she dropped her hand from the sword.

“So . . . it’s staying?” asked Fern, hunched over and regarding the beast with distrust.

The elf stared at her levelly. “What’s a second stowaway, I suppose?”

“What was that you said about them fancying the eyes, though?”

“Perhaps you should have a conversation with Zyll about that,” replied Astryx with suspect cheer. She clucked to Bucket, and the cart got moving again.

To its credit, the hazferou made no menacing moves toward anybody’s eyes.

Their little caravan continued along the road as it curved northeast, up a series of switchbacks and out of the wooded valley, into an increasingly craggy series of bluffs. Stronger, colder winds tugged at Fern’s ragged red cloak, and low-lying mist poured slowly down the cliffsides until it tore away to form ribbons of cloud that glided above the valley below.

Fern stared back the way they had come, and for the first time could see the spare gleam of Thune’s fortress walls in the far distance, and the glittering path of the River Briar as it cut through the heart of the city and disappeared into the western haze. She’d hardly spent enough weeks in Thune for it to feel like a home, but after only four days away, her heart still ached for what she knew she had left there. For who she had left there.

“For the fucking mess I left behind,” she muttered to herself and dug her latest letter to Viv out of her satchel. Fern stared at it bleakly. “And now, I’m on a cart with a murder bird and a goblin with a mouth like a shark. A real improvement, Fern.”

It also wasn’t lost on her that every hour, every league they traveled, was one she’d have to painfully retrace at some point. There might as well have been a field of brambles behind them.

Her stomach growled loudly. Astryx had been free enough with the simple rations she had on hand, but the stone-hard bread and terrible cheese were a chore to eat, and none of it was a patch on Thimble’s cooking. Or, indeed, anyone’s cooking. The elf didn’t seem to believe in the heating of foods. Fern was no chef, but she was increasingly appreciative of how many excellent ones she’d lived near.

The rattkin’s fur was grimy, and a network of scrapes and scratches stung beneath matted silver tufts. She prodded some of the longer wounds with a claw, hissing as she did so. “What I’d give for a gods-damned bath.”

She suddenly sensed Zyll’s gaze upon her and met crimson eyes with her own.

“Um,” she said.

The goblin cocked her head to the side, then shoved her bound hands into one of the many pockets that made up her coat. She fished around for a moment, tongue protruding, then, apparently dissatisfied, tried another. And another. And another, upon which she brightened and withdrew a fistful of what looked like aggressively moldy weeds.

Zyll extended them. “Gul tatuk.”

Fern glanced at Astryx’s back where she strode beside Bucket, and then at the tragic plants. “Um. What’s this?” She wondered whether Astryx had searched those pockets. She must have.

The goblin’s grin widened, and she waggled the handful significantly at Fern’s legs.

Tucking the letter back into her satchel, Fern tentatively reached a paw out to take the offered weeds, or herbs, or whatever they were. She sniffed. “Whoof. Smells like . . .” Actually, it smelled astringent. The scent tickled some memory in the back of her mind.

While the plants were truly dire in appearance, squeezing them between her fingers pressed some sort of sap or oil from the leaves.

She eyed Zyll one last time, and then muttered, “Oh, what the hells, it’s been nothing but bad decisions for days. The odds are in my favor for a turnaround.” With two fingers she rubbed some of the substance experimentally on one of her longest scratches. The smell intensified, heady and medicinal.

Immediately, a numbing coolness spread outward. The stinging fell away.

“Huh. Thank you,” she said with honest gratitude.

Zyll did not reply, only settled back against the slatted bench back with a satisfied grin from which only two or three teeth escaped, and promptly fell asleep.

“So, bad debts?”

Fern shook herself out of a somnolent daze brought on by the rocking of the cart and stared in confusion down at Astryx.

The elf had dropped back to keep pace beside the buckboard, still loping along with her endless, effortless stride. Her voice was unaffected by the effort, as per usual. Bucket clopped stolidly onward, sure of his own business.

The stony ruptures of the uplands had dwindled to the occasional low upthrust of rock, peppered with scrubby trees Fern didn’t recognize. Zyll’s squeaking snores issued from beside her, although her eyes were closed this time. She sagged back and forth in dramatic, metronomic arcs that seemed implausible to sleep through. Broody grumbles issued from the hazferou in the cart.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“In my business, odds tend to favor owing silver, and not being able to pay it. I was just wondering what sort of trouble you were in.”

“What makes you think I was in trouble ?” Fern asked sharply.

Astryx shot her a look.

“I was just . . . drunk. And upset.”

“Yes, I smelled the whiskey. And I might not be a terribly good judge of age as far as that goes, but aren’t you a bit old to be passing out in random wagons? I thought that was reserved for the young and foolish.”

Fern sighed and rubbed her face with both paws. “No age restriction for fools.”

“So. Not fleeing.” A pregnant pause. “You said you were a bookseller?”

“Hm.” Fern figured that if everyone else could reply monosyllabically, then so could she.

“And you’re anxious to get back to it, are you?”

It was Fern’s turn for a long pause. “Why are you so anxious to know? You’ll forgive me, but you don’t seem like one for idle conversation.”

Astryx shrugged. “I can be curious. Call it an essential job skill.”

Two days ago, Fern’s stomach might have fluttered at the thought of Astryx One-Ear’s interest in her. Here and now, though—scratched and abraded, ass-aching, groggy, and existentially fucked-up—she was simply annoyed.

The elf continued, her tone offhanded. “It seems like relaxing work. Easy. Calming. Not the sort of thing to drive anyone to drink.”

“Relaxing?” Fern sputtered. Her face burned hot with disbelief that wanted to swell into indignation if not anger. “I . . . you . . .” She was uncharacteristically lost for words.

“Sure.” Astryx ticked items off on her fingers. “Nothing wants to stab you. Indoors all year long. Easy on the back. No risk of dismemberment, and, most importantly,” she gave Fern a significant look, “the dry socks.”

“Listen,” said Fern, jabbing a finger at Astryx. Something far at the back of her skull shrieked, Why are you wagging a claw at a thousand-year-old monster hunter, you numbwit!

Something much older and more righteous ignored the warning.

“I have spent my life convincing people to buy blocks of paper with marks on them for more money than they want to part with. I fill a room with them and pray to the Eight that I filled it with the right ones, and that I can get them into the right hands, and I never get enough of that right . It’s like tossing fistfuls of fucking silver up a hill and hoping enough of it rolls back down that I have more silver to throw. I bet on odds that any self-respecting dice player would run screaming from, and half the time, I lie awake wondering whether I’ll be able to keep at it for another week, or a month, or a year.”

She was panting, and her eyes were probably a little wild.

“I only do it,” she continued, “because I’m stupid enough to think it’s important. ”

Astryx returned a considering look. “So, it’s important. Then why did you run from it?”

Fern blinked. “I . . . no, I mean I . . . loved . . . it.”

“I can tell from the impassioned defense.” There wasn’t a hint of mockery in the elf’s reply, though it was clear she hadn’t missed Fern’s use of past tense.

The rattkin sighed and stared bleakly ahead at Bucket’s patient progress. In the wake of her outburst, the emptiness that had gotten her into this fix returned, like cold, black water refilling a pool from an underground stream. “You know, I already bared my soul a few days ago, and that’s how I ended up in this mess. You’ve been doing the same job for nearly a thousand years. Did you always feel good about it?”

“Nothing feels good all the time,” replied Astryx.

Which wasn’t exactly an answer.

“Only a day stands between us and Bycross, and then you can head back to where you belong,” continued the elf. “To what’s important.”

And that was definitely the end of the conversation.