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“Why are you up here?” She asked, avoiding his eye.

“I could ask you the same. Why were you sleeping up here?”

“I couldn’t sleep in the house.”

“I don't know what answer I expected,” Herrick grumbled to himself .

“Are you going to answer my question?” She snapped, irritated with how he kept avoiding answering her.

She buckled on her weapons belt and checked to see that her dagger was still strapped to her thigh within reach through the slit she had cut in her pants for access.

“I came to see if you had left us yet. I wanted to talk to you about the plan for tomorrow night,” Herrick sighed.

Right. The plan to leave Logi so she could finally hear what they had to say about this “weapon” to kill Helvig. She turned back to face Herrick, who had been looking up toward the sky as if he was trying to give her privacy. She motioned for the stairs.

“After you.”

Herrick rolled his eyes and descended. When they finally arrived on the first floor, Liv had her assortment of knives laid out on the table and was placing them in various hiding spots on her person.

Gunnar also seemed to be waking up from an afternoon nap as he was stretching in the chair closest to the hidden passage.

He smiled warmly at Herrick and then turned to greet Maude with a slightly more reserved smile that was friendly nevertheless.

“What were you two up to? We heard Maude shriek and then a commotion,” Gunnar grinned cheekily at Herrick, standing up to finish stretching out his back.

“I don’t shriek,” Maude muttered as she headed for the jug containing drinking water, pouring herself a healthy glass and downing it in one drink.

“Maude decided to take a cat nap on the roof, and I tripped over her,” Herrick said as he took a seat on the long, low bench in the living space that had a selection of multicolored pillows and cushions .

“If we are just going to talk about how Herrick has big feet and no coordination, I’ll go back upstairs,” Maude said to the room as Gunnar laughed and Liv eyed her from the table.

“Children, play nice,” Hakon’s voice drifted in from the back door as he strode in and washed his face in the wash basin.

Liv rolled her eyes now, and Herrick raised his middle finger at him in a rude gesture. It was Gunnar who responded to Maude.

“We will be going over the southern wall of the city and make our way the short distance to Engate, the coastal city that lies a few leagues to the southwest. There is an innkeeper who puts us up a few times a year when we venture to this city. We have to make a southern loop around the Bone Chasm to get back east.”

Maude shivered. The Bone Chasm was the rift in the earth created two hundred years ago during the Elemental War between kingdoms. The seated Elven King of Light had wrought the power of the sun to stop the collision of elemental galder that was being launched at opposing armies.

The power was so great that the Elven King had been incinerated for being the conduit of that much galder, and the Elven of the solar Kingdom of Light were wiped out.

Their northern relatives, the Kingdom of Shadow, were never seen or heard from again after the war.

Rumors circulated that the complete wipeout of Light Elven had wounded the Elven race so grievously that they never recovered.

Now, the Elven were just stories told to noble children to warn them of attempting to wield too much galder at once.

Scary stories passed on from generation to generation, muddling the truth of what happened on that battlefield.

The treaty that is honored today between territories was a result of that complete demolition— the Chasm is the only physical reminder of the war that ravaged these lands .

There was no way across the Bone Chasm as it ran over a few leagues across at its widest point and harbored jagged rocks and old bones at its bed that would impale anyone who fell into it.

Trade between kingdoms had become tenuous over the years as the routes to each kingdom’s trading posts were fraught with raiders and wild beasts.

More goods were lost than the trade seemed worth, but the resources from each kingdom proved necessary enough to keep trying.

Despite the dread hanging over her at the thought of leaving Logi and bringing her cursed presence to another small village, Maude was excited at the thought of seeing the Bone Chasm.

She had only ever made it as far as a few neighboring villages before she had been forced to turn and go back to Logi.

The tall city buildings and dense population were a veil she couldn’t find elsewhere in Ahland, she had discovered.

“And we leave tomorrow? What time?” Maude asked, breaking from horrid memories starting to resurface.

“Got somewhere more important to be?” Liv bit out.

Maude bared her teeth at her, swallowing her growing rage. Instead of falling into her trap, she ignored her and spoke to Gunnar.

“Guards patrol the southern wall during the day because of heavier foot traffic, but at night, the wall goes mostly unguarded because of how frigid the desert gets on the other side. They figure that if anyone were going to make it over the wall, they’d either freeze to death or be eaten alive by the monsters that make the desert their home.

I’d hoped you’d know that when you decided to go over the wall at night. ”

Silence came from the group. She hadn’t spoken so many words to them at once before. Maude was sure they assumed she was a pit rat who knew no better than to swing without provocation.

“We were going to leave at sundown, just like you were suggesting,” Gunnar said, breaking the silence of the group .

“Great. If that’s all, I’ll take my leave of you."

She mocked a bow and turned without waiting for their response, headed outside, and unsheathed her sword and axe.

She was going to need to go through all her physical exercises to calm herself before she went back inside and cut Liv’s beautiful shell open to see if her insides were as ugly as her shit attitude was.

As she stepped into first position, Maude recognized that she was being hypocritical.

It wasn’t like she was the portrait of civility and grace on her best day.

Maude only remembered being angry at her world and trying to break free from it; her rage and her fire were all she had left now.

But Liv had a problem with her, that much was evident.

She’d barely spoken ten words to the warrior.

Moving into second position by swiping up with her sword and blocking with her axe, Maude centered herself in her exertion and blocked everything else out.

Tomorrow, they would leave, but that meant she had all tonight and tomorrow to train and deal with the forced proximity.

Maude steadied herself and retreated to that part of her mind that got her through so many years of her childhood.

She didn't stop moving until the sun had nearly set on the horizon.