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“If you ask me to take you to the Mecca, to find a healer,” she interrupts. “I’ll do it.”

He smiles. It isn’t without effort. “I know you would. But no healer in the Mecca or in between would dare afford their care to me, Dawsyn, even if the Queen’s wrath weren’t hovering over them; they find me rather unsavoury.”

“We all find you rather unsavoury,” Dawsyn quips.

“Yes, though it has naught to do with my choices in fashion.”

Dawsyn’s eyes narrow. “Your proclivities offend them?”

“Often. Though I do much enjoy offending,” he says wryly. “So, you could say I invite their disregard.”

“I’d much rather have their disregard than their favour if something so trivial should signify.”

“Oh, Irelishtheir disregard, love. It’s why I make a point of doing away with clothes altogether on the solstice. I dangle my dangles all through the Mecca just to see how close I might come to the palace before the guards are called.”

“Youare the solstice braggart?” comes Ruby’s voice. A chunk of fish slips from her fingers as she stares, mouth open.

“A braggart, you say?” Esra asks, turning his face slowly. “You see, Dawsyn? Perhaps they will not lend me their attentions when I am wounded, but they most certainly know that my naked form is something to be bragged about, and in that, I have their attention.”

Dawsyn laughs, her head thrown back and eyes cinched shut, and some of the others laugh along. She falls onto her backside and has to brace herself to keep from tipping further. She doesn’t calm until her eyes are wet. When she opens them, they find Ryon’s, watching her with some unknowable emotion flitting across his face.

“I took Baltisse to her cabin,” Ryon says when the laughter dies. “She is brewing you some kind of remedy, Esra. I can take you there when you feel ready.”

Esra blanches. “I must decline, I’m afraid. I feel simply dreadful.”

“Don’t be a child, Es,” says Salem. “Go and take whatever potion the witch makes.”

“Ugh, they taste like all my sins coming back for repentance,” he moans.

“She don’t got a cauldron big enough for that, lad,” Salem says gently, his eyes skittering over Esra’s frame with deeply etched concern. “Off yeh go, now.”

After much arguing, Esra eventually allows Ryon to take him gingerly into his arms. Seeing Ryon encase him gently, the care he takes to ensure Esra’s comfort… it forces Dawsyn to swallow thickly, to avert her eyes.

They will need to cross the river to find Baltisse’s cabin somewhere beyond, but Ryon will otherwise keep to travelling on foot to escape the notice of anyone nearby who might look to the sky.

The rest prepare themselves to follow. They will not all be accommodated within Baltisse’s small house, but they will at least find themselves better equipped. They can only hope that they will be far enough from the roads and paths that no one will come upon their camp.

Hector stamps out the fire while Rivdan and Tasheem don their shoes. The heat of the valley still challenges them, and Tasheem grimaces as she slides her weapon sheaths into place.

“Did Gerrot go to relieve himself?” Dawsyn wonders aloud, noticing his absence. The man is so very unassuming.

“I didn’t see him leave,” Ruby answers.

“Nor did I,” Hector adds. “He didn’t mention it.”

“How could he, yer dunderhead? Hard to say ‘I’m off fer a piss’ when yeh ain’t got a tongue.”

Several minutes pass, and Gerrot doesn’t return.

“I’ll look around,” Dawsyn says to the group at large. “Don’t leave until we’ve returned.” She holds her ax by the throat but lets its blade dangle toward the ground. She sees the fish bones littered on the ground as she passes the still-smoking ashes and pauses. She turns her head to the sound of the river, the water scurrying to sea. She looks down at the bones one last time and then alters her course.

The river takes mere moments to reach. The ground grows thick with moss the closer she comes. Ahead, muddied prints lead to the man who sits upon the bank, dangling his feet into the quieter waters below.

“Gerrot?” Dawsyn calls, coming closer. “We are making ready to leave.”

Gerrot doesn’t respond. When she comes closer, she sees his eyes are shut, the picture of peace. His boots sit alongside him, bare feet disturbing the mud in the shallow water.

Seeing him so content, she finds it difficult to disturb him. Instead, she sits down next to him, and is rewarded by his answering smile, another soft pat on the knee. He moves his feet back and forth in the water, and sighs deeply, lifting his face to the sun.