Page 33 of Deadly Maiden

For someone I called not quite trustworthy enough, he’s doing a lot to help me. I need to ask him questions.

Later, though.

“I can’t say thank you and goodbye to Bethy and Fiorn?”

“No time. Should’ve done that when your feet hit the ground.”

Except you grabbed me and?—

It’s not worth saying. We hurry onward.

The market has created chaos at the stables. People and their mounts, the two stable boys, the owner, and any number of people are trying to leave crates of this or that, saddlebags, storage chests and other possessions in the care of the stables for the day. I can guess why Rorsyd carries his. Thieves are surely waiting to pounce on such disorder.

Warily, from under my brow and in the shade of a small, straggly but green tree, I examine the stable’s comings and goings through a gap in the brickwork. Rorsyd has vanished in there for long enough to grow a new horse. I’m sitting, knees raised, with my back wedged against a low, crumbling brick wall that creates an alcove and cordons off this spot nicely. The gateway leading in has a decrepit wooden gate hanging on one hinge.

Before me, a sylph fountain shoots the tiniest amounts of water into the air, after which it tinkles back into a green scummed pond.

I keep the hood pulled over my head and try to appear lazy, drunk, or both, though I’m not sure how to do either. My sword hilt crosses my palm beneath the spread cloak.

I think I’m getting the knack of this armed and dangerous renegade style. I blow a bang from across my eye then realize it’s blue. Hurriedly, I poke it under the hood. Iridescent dragonflies roam past, buzzing in a desultory fashion. A neighborhood fairy chases after one, zigzagging in flight with a sharpened splinter in its tiny hand. There must be a nest of them somewhere here. I’m allergic to the little bastards, and I stay hunched and still. An hour passes, close to two. I’m hungry and getting baked in the sun.

Where is he? We chose a bad day to be in a hurry.

At last, Rorsyd appears. He’s leading two horses, the roan one called Brinks and a spotted, chestnut-and-white mare, and has added a rucksack to his gear. He waves to me, and I jog over, attempting to appear nonchalant. No one seems curious about us.

“This is Nimue. Treat her well, and she won’t bite you.”

“She bites?” I look at the mare with some skepticism. “Is there a non-bitey version?”

“No.”

He mounts up, and I follow suit, gingerly, after roughly tying my rucksack to the saddle. I’ll have to ask him how to do it properly, later.

By the time we ride past the last few houses and onto the open road, I’m relaxing into the movement of this huge beast between my legs. However, sore butt, here I come.

“Let’s keep to a fast gait until we’re closer to the hills. An hour’s ride, maybe. We can camp there near a river called theGeorgie.” Then he snaps his heels into Brinks, and we’re off with no detailed discussion of where or why. I guess that can wait.

“Off we go, Nimue.” She barely needs any encouragement. Maybe she likes Brinks. I let her find her own speed as we canter after them. Another hour and the sun is low and bumping into the hills mounding on the horizon. They’re in friendly tones of gray, soft green, and blues.

Chapter 9

Kyvin

Though not alive, Kyvin almost feels…something, as he teeters on the edge of a cliff and understands he must detour for miles to descend safely. His target has wandered all over the map since he began walking.

He isn’t supposed to feel the passage of time or wonder at the logic behind his journey, but he’s close to doing this. The gheist supplying him derives from something more powerful than unpurified lost souls. Deep within his somewhat undead brain a Warnite crystal thrums out high-tension gheist in a stream that percolates through his undead body.

It keeps him walking and makes his non-living brain stir a few neurons into functioning enough to steer him in the correct direction.

The stream of gheist is also doing other things to neighboring tissue few could have predicted when he was deposited in his not-quite-a-grave to wait for twenty years to go by.

He turns to march at right angles to the cliff, and his undead brain dribbles out an almost-thought.

Bugger.

Chapter 10

Wyntre

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