Page 10

Chapter 10

Elliot

E ven the throbbing in his feet wasn’t enough to keep Elliot from sleeping. Just thinking about a future where he wasn’t tied to the candelabra was enough to send him straight into slumber.

Except it wasn’t a candelabra anymore. He needed to start thinking of it as a lamp.

He woke to birdsong and morning light. Avery had woken before him, and she must have noted that he was sleeping deeply. He hadn’t moved from his bedroll all night.

She still seemed wary around him, however, and by the time he had gotten in her way for the fifth time, he could guess why. Avery worked smoothly, clearly used to the pack up procedure, and when Elliot tried to help, he only tripped over her efforts.

When he backed away from her only to step on a rock large enough to be felt by his tender feet even through his boot sole, he yelped, and she gave a huff of frustration.

“Just go sit on the cart and rest your feet. It will be easier for me to finish on my own anyway.”

Elliot wanted to protest, but his feet were hurting worse than they had the day before, and he couldn’t deny he was disrupting her rhythm. It still stung, however. He wasn’t new to travel any more than she was. He had set up and packed down almost as many campsites in his life as she must have done.

He had never traveled with a cart, though, and he had limited experience with horses. He would have liked to ask Avery to teach him how to care for Nutmeg, but he didn’t dare. If he showed interest in the horse, she might suspect him of an ulterior motive. Yet another pitfall of having a guard horse.

The morning was still young when they got back on the road, munching on a cold breakfast as they traveled.

“This reminds me of a morning in Stonyfell,” Avery said, gazing up at the clear blue sky. “The sky was just like this, and I was sure it was the sort of day where nothing could go wrong.” She laughed. “I was seven, mind you. I know better now.”

Elliot narrowed his eyes. He hadn’t started traveling until well after seven, so she had him beaten there—as she must have known.

He kept his tone light, though, despite his disgruntlement. “I’m guessing everything didn’t go to plan?”

Avery laughed again. “Does it ever?”

“Rarely,” Elliot said. “Although it has been known to happen from time to time. Mostly to other people.”

Avery laughed for a third time, and Elliot glanced at her sideways. Maybe he’d been unfair, and she really was in a good mood. Maybe any sense of competition between them was only in his head.

“We stopped for a rest break, and I wandered off.” Avery’s lips curled upward. “I found an abandoned tree house high in some branches and decided to climb the ladder nailed to the trunk and have a look inside.”

“In Stonyfell?” Elliot shook his head.

“I was seven, remember!” Avery cried. “It was the first time we’d been there in two years, and I barely remembered our previous visit.”

“So you got trapped, of course,” Elliot finished for her.

The Halbury Legacy loved trapping people. The locals all knew not to end up alone anywhere either remote or high up. He was betting Avery had been the first child to ever climb into the tree house on her own.

“The ladder just disappeared!” Avery cried. “And I could have sworn half the branches did, too. It was easy to climb up, but climbing down…” She shook her head. “I was stuck there for three days.”

“Three days?!” Elliot laughed before quickly stifling it and throwing a guilty look sideways. “You must have been scared.”

Avery was still smiling, though. “I actually liked it. There was a rope and a bucket, and I suggested using the rope to climb down, but my parents said the Legacy would probably make it snap. They told me to use it to send the bucket down for supplies instead. I didn’t argue because I secretly liked being up there.” She smiled reminiscently. “Normal children pretend to run away from home and go on adventures. I played at setting up a house. I made that tree house into my own cozy home.”

Elliot smiled, imagining seven-year-old Avery happily settling into the tree house while her parents ran around in a panic working out how to rescue her. He had never considered the idea that a roving merchant might dream of settling down, but he liked the idea that Avery might feel that way.

“Just because you can travel freely doesn’t mean you have to,” he said aloud. “If you like the idea of settling down, have you considered finding a place to do so? Or is that frowned upon for roving merchants?”

“Oh no, not at all. In fact, most settle eventually.” Avery paused, her thoughts clearly far away. After a moment she sighed before turning back to him. “My mother was the one who was born a roving merchant, and traveling with her meant my father had to endure the burden of being away from his home kingdom. His symptoms were light compared to many which is the reason they made it work. But not all roving merchants fall in love with people who bear with travel so easily. And even those who have a light burden from their Legacy usually end up tiring of the constant travel eventually. After my parents died, I traveled with my aunt and uncle and cousins for a couple of years, but they settled in Glandore two years ago.”

“So you started traveling alone after that?” Elliot asked softly. He hadn’t realized she was alone because her parents were both dead.

Avery nodded.

“Were you not welcome to stay and live with them?” Elliot asked even more gently.

“What?” Avery turned slightly to look at him, her expression puzzled. “Of course I was welcome. They’re my family. I was the one who had no interest in settling down.”

“Oh.” Elliot frowned down into his lap. She had been offered the opportunity that had been ripped from him, and she had rejected it.

“They bought a house in Glandore because my aunt was sick of traveling,” Avery continued. “She endured it for twenty years for the sake of my uncle, and now he says it’s his turn to sacrifice for her. One of my cousins begged to be allowed to come with me, but I was already young to go off alone at seventeen, and she’s two years younger, so her parents insisted she stay with them.” She smiled brightly. “She’ll probably join me in a year or two, though.”

“And what about your other cousin?” Elliot asked, trying to keep his own feelings on the topic from leaching into his voice.

“He was perfectly happy to settle in Glandore,” she said in a tone that implied she couldn’t understand his choice. “Like you said, just because someone can travel doesn’t mean they want to.”

“I wish someone had told my mother that,” Elliot muttered, earning a curious look from Avery. But just as he hadn’t asked further questions about her parents, she didn’t push him to explain himself. Circumstances had forced them together, but they were still virtual strangers.

Silence fell between them, and he spoke abruptly to fill it. “Getting stuck in a tree house is nothing. The first time I visited Halbury, I was fourteen years old, and some of the youths thought it would be amusing to give me a ‘local drink.’”

Avery gave a gasp that transformed into a giggle halfway through. “It was actually a hair tonic, wasn’t it?” she asked.

Elliot ran a hand through his hair, adopting an expression of exaggerated pain. “Of course it was. I was way too trusting back then, and naturally I drank the whole thing.”

Her eyes widened and another giggle slipped out. “The whole thing? So you were…I can picture…” She dissolved into proper laughter while Elliot sat in dignified silence, feeling secretly pleased with himself.

“Are you done?” he asked her eventually. “Or do you intend to laugh at my discomfort all day?”

She sobered, although her lips kept twitching. “I’m sorry.”

She pressed her lips together to still them, glancing up at him from under her lashes in a way that made his heart thump. With annoyance at her laugher, obviously.

“Did it grow all the way to your feet?” she asked in a slightly strangled voice.

He sighed heavily. “It was past my feet every morning. For a month. My mother would cut it off, of course, but it would be well past my waist by lunchtime. We blunted at least two pairs of scissors before the effect wore off.”

“You’re only supposed to have a sip of those hair tonics, you know,” Avery said. “Every child knows that.”

“Maybe every roving merchant child,” Elliot said defensively. “But I had a perfectly adequate amount of hair in childhood, so I hadn’t come across Halburan hair tonics before the unfortunate incident.”

Avery nodded comfortingly. “It’s a perfect lovely head of hair. Or at least…” She suppressed another laugh. “It is now. But maybe that’s the lingering effects of the tonic?”

Elliot put a hand to his wavy brown hair. “This is my natural hair, thank you very much! The tonic’s effects did eventually wear off.”

“My mistake.” Avery sounded like she was still trying to stifle laughter. “So does that mean I should ask you to braid my hair if it starts getting in my way? You must be an expert.”

Elliot grinned back at her. “I am rather talented, now you mention it. I’m happy to be of service anytime.”

She stared at him for a moment, her laughter fading. An emotion less easy to name than amusement started to grow between them until she abruptly turned forward and cleared her throat.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

His lips twitched, and he watched her surreptitiously out of the side of his eyes. She might have had a lifetime of travel stories, but he had plenty of years of them himself. She would find he could match her tale for tale.

They talked on and off for the rest of the day, often riding in silence for long stretches. Elliot worried it would be awkward, but the quiet between them was surprisingly comfortable. When he thought about it, it made sense. Two people used to traveling alone had to be comfortable with silence.

Avery continued to insist that he sit and rest his feet while she set up camp each afternoon and packed it away the following morning. After the first occasion, he didn’t argue, using the time to watch her closely.

By the time his feet had healed enough that he insisted on joining her, he had learned every detail of her routine. She seemed impatient with his desire to help, but by the time the camp was set up, she no longer looked disgruntled. He grinned, silently congratulating himself for fitting seamlessly into her efforts.

The feeling of working as a team—so different from traveling alone—still had him elated when he woke the next morning. The feeling was exactly why he was sick and tired of the traveling life. He wasn’t interested in being a ship in the night anymore. He wanted to be known by those around him and to know them in return.

With his assistance, they filled the waterskins, prepared breakfast, and were on the road quickly. But since the road took a gentle but extended uphill path, Avery decreed they needed to walk beside the cart to lighten Nutmeg’s load.

Elliot had been working on the mare, but she still treated him with suspicion, only letting Avery care for her. He’d never seen such a loyal horse, so he could understand why Avery took such good care of her.

Avery also seemed to be in a good mood—perhaps his previous unhelpful presence had been weighing on her more than she’d let on.

“We’ll be in Marleston tomorrow,” she crowed when they stopped to eat their midday meal. “Hot baths and proper beds!”

Elliot laughed silently at himself. Of course her mood didn’t have anything to do with him. How arrogant to assume it did.

His false assumption didn’t dent his good mood, however. He was as pleased as Avery at the prospect of staying in an inn. Before his candelabra had been stolen, he had been counting down the days until he finished sleeping on the side of the road forever. Every extra night heading in the opposite direction had been adding insult to injury, so he rejoiced at the prospect of a proper mattress.

He unwrapped the bread and cheese they had prepared that morning before breaking camp. It should have looked unappealing with the idea of a proper hot meal at the front of his mind, but even the two-day-old bread was given a pleasant glow from his good mood.

“Do you haf a favrut inn a’ Marleston?” he asked with his mouth full.

Avery gave him a disapproving look.

“What?” he asked with a grin, extending both arms sideways in an exaggerated expression of confusion. “I’m just excited.”

A sudden tug pulled the hunk of bread out of his extended hand, the cheese falling to the ground.

He twisted to see the culprit and toppled backward with an embarrassingly high-pitched screech. Avery burst into laughter as he scrambled inelegantly to his feet, growling. He would never get used to those blasted Sovaran mice! No mouse had the right to be that large.

A second cat-sized mouse darted forward to snatch up the abandoned cheese and both took off between the row of trees that lined the road. Incensed, Elliot sprinted after them.

“Leave them be!” Avery called from behind him. “It’s not like you’re going to want to eat it now.” She sounded like she was trailing him, her speed hampered by laughter.

He ran faster. His lunch might have been useless now, but he didn’t mean to let those brazen thieves have it!

On the other side of the trees, the mice ran through a large paddock, the grass short from the efforts of whichever flock or herd made use of the pastureland. Elliot dashed after them as they rounded a clump of rocks on one side of the paddock.

Circling the rocks, he caught the flicker of tails disappearing into cracks two small for him to follow. He slid to a stop and considered sticking his arm in after them.

But as he stepped closer, something slithered out of the rocks. Something that wasn’t a mouse. Something with scales, four legs, and large reptilian eyes.

He shouted in alarm, backing away as unreasoning panic set in. Long before he’d started traveling at fourteen, there had been a cave system near his hometown. The local children had all been fascinated by it, but the older youths had loved to regale them with tales of the fire-breathing dragon that lived inside and ate children for breakfast.

He stumbled backward, his eyes fixed on the miniature dragon in front of him. The one in the cave had been rumored to be the size of a bull, while this one was closer to a large dog. But childhood terror was crowding out rational thought, and he only wanted to get away from the creature.

The pastureland changed, beautiful flowers filling the field and catching his eye with bright colors in every direction. It wasn’t enough to break his terror, though. Even Avery’s distant shouts couldn’t do that.

“Elliot!” she cried, her voice becoming more and more alarmed. “Elliot! What are you doing? Stop! Stop!!”

Dimly he was aware he was making a fool of himself in front of her, but he couldn’t seem to stop his feet. The dragon lunged forward, and he stumbled backward with several rushed steps.

His foot came down on an uneven bit of ground, his heel sliding away from him. He cried out, thoughts of the dragon consumed by more immediate panic as his arms pinwheeled in an attempt to catch his balance. But it was too late. Dirt slid out from under him, and he fell backward off a precipice.