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Chapter Eighteen

Oskar

What, Oskar wondered as he returned to the clearing, am I looking at?

Guinevere and the treehugger were sitting cross-legged and facing each other, their eyes closed.

She was clutching the little skull that she wore on a chain around her neck, and there was now a thistle flower sprouting out of it.

The grass was moving, as were the shrubs and the banyan branches, but there was no wind. The horses pranced anxiously.

Not knowing what else to do, Oskar gave a discreet cough, tossing the catch bag full of catfish onto the ground. The plump, slow-moving creatures had been lurking in the shallows, easy to bring down with arrows that he’d used as makeshift spears.

Guinevere reacted like he’d speared her. She screamed and leapt to her feet, shoving the skull back beneath her bodice, her violet eyes wide with horror.

He frowned. “What—”

“Mr. Elaras thinks there’s a heavy presence chasing us!” she all but yelled.

“I don’t think it,” said the feygiant, opening his own eyes. “I feel it, and thus I know it to be true. Which is why you must—”

“He sensed that there was something wrong, so he was trying to discern what it was.” Guinevere turned to Elaras. “Isn’t that so?”

She was a bad liar. Her silvery-blond hair was practically standing on end. Even with her back to him, Oskar had a pretty good idea of the sort of look she was giving Elaras at that moment—all trembly and beseeching. It came as no surprise that Elaras caved, nodding slowly.

“I suppose that that’s all there was to it,” he mumbled.

Master con artists, the two of you are not, Oskar thought dryly. In all likelihood, they had been doing some sort of magic-user thing that was far beyond his grasp. But Guinevere clearly didn’t want him to know that she had magic, so he decided to let it go and focus on a far more worrying detail.

“Who’s after us?” he asked Elaras.

“I don’t know,” said the warden of Labenda.

“What do they look like?”

“I’ve no clue.”

“Are they after the trunk? Were they the ones who hired the mercenaries?”

Elaras blinked. “What mercenaries? And do you mean that trunk over there that Pudding’s carrying?”

Oskar lost his patience. “Thanks for nothing.”

“It’s not as though my magic drew me a picture,” Elaras huffed. “It doesn’t work like that.”

“Of course not. That would be too convenient.” Oskar dropped a hand on Guinevere’s shoulder, waiting until she had faced him again before he spoke anew.

“It’s safe to assume that this is the same person who hired those mercenaries.

I think we should hole up somewhere—perhaps Zadash, which is teeming with the Crownsguard—and send word to your folks.

Wait for them and Lord Walnutdock to come get you. ”

“ Wensleydale. No.” Guinevere’s reply was shaky, yet it came without hesitation. “There’s a ball to be held in my honor. The invitations have already been sent out. I need to get to Nicodranas as soon as possible.”

“Guinevere—”

“And I’ll do it with or without you.”

Oskar was getting heartily sick of these revelations that Guinevere kept casually tossing out. First she was betrothed, and now—“You’re willing to risk life and limb just so you can attend a damn ball?”

“It’s not a damn ball, it’s my ball,” she retorted.

“It’s very important. One doesn’t simply reschedule a ball!

” She drew a quick breath before retreating into that prim composure of hers that he normally found charming against his will, but now it set his teeth on edge.

“However, I am not willing to risk your life and limb, so I believe that it would be for the best if we part ways.”

“Fat chance.” He released her shoulder, all the better to clench his hand into a fist at his side. “I already said that I wasn’t going to leave you.”

And he wasn’t going to glare at her any longer, either. It was sort of…ripping at something within his chest, to treat her this harshly.

He settled for glaring at Elaras instead. The feygiant had looked away to give them privacy while they argued; he was contemplating a wall of vines as though he longed to disappear into them.

In all honesty, becoming one with the undergrowth didn’t seem like such a bad idea at this point. Mysterious luggage, killer mercenaries, a sinister magical presence…Oskar couldn’t believe that he’d gotten into this mess.

But he’d be damned if he didn’t see Guinevere through it.

“I’ll prepare our lunch,” he told her, nodding at the bag of catfish. To Elaras, he said, “I found a huge shelf of hen of the woods for you. I’ll fry them up with some of our onions.”

Elaras blinked. “Thank you. That’s very kind.”

Oskar rolled his eyes. “You don’t have to sound so surprised.”

They found the Bromkiln Byway without further incident.

It was a road that cut through the otherwise interminable murk of Labenda, spilling from the mists in a well-trodden ribbon.

Elaras moseyed back into the undergrowth after wishing them good fortune in the journeys to come, and the party—such as it was—continued on to Berleben, reaching it in the late evening.

“Oh, it’s positively quaint!” Guinevere declared in a tone of hushed awe. “How charming.”

Oskar shot her a skeptical look. Berleben was a ramshackle city that seemed one mild earthquake away from collapsing into the swamp from which it had sprung.

Several thatched stone buildings jostled for space atop wooden stilts and rickety platforms connected by fraying rope bridges, but the entire eastern side of the city was a mess of hovels lying dolefully slumped in several inches of brown water.

In the long shadows of the banyans, the districts were illuminated—a generous term—by feeble torches that flickered over the ambling silhouettes of Berleben’s inhabitants, bringing into soft relief their swamp-colored clothes and catching in their eyes like lanterns.

Unlike the Silverstreet innkeeper back in Druvenlode, the one manning the Drowned Nest was amenable to bargaining.

This probably had more to do with Berleben’s remoteness than with any discernible powers of persuasion on Oskar’s part, but the desired result was achieved: one room, in exchange for him chopping the firewood that had piled up on account of the innkeeper’s bad back.

Well, it was almost the desired result.

“What do you mean there’s only one bed?” Oskar snapped.

“I meant exactly what I said,” the elderly innkeeper snapped right back. “All the rooms with double beds are booked. Take it or leave it.”

“Like I have a choice.” A resigned Oskar grabbed the key and led Guinevere to the room at the end of the hallway, where they dropped their bags and he tried not to stare at the too-small bed before ushering her back out and plunking some coins down on the innkeeper’s counter for her supper.

“Where are you going?” Guinevere asked him.

“To chop some damn wood.” He had to get started on it now if they were to have any hope of leaving the next day.

The girl he’d met in the clearing off the Amber Road would have quailed at his surliness. This Guinevere took it in stride and bestowed upon him the warmest, most beatific smile that he’d ever seen.

“For you I shall negotiate a meal fit for a king,” she promised.

“Bread and ale is fine. Don’t use any more of your trinkets.”

She ignored this and waved him off.

The innkeeper hadn’t been exaggerating; there was a veritable mountain of logs out back, all needing to be split and stored before Labenda’s damp leached into them.

Working by torchlight, Oskar soon lost himself in the mundane task of swinging an axe down on one doomed log after another.

There was refuge in the mindless physicality of it.

He didn’t have to think about pretty women with fiancés, or spider-emblemed mercenaries, or secrets lurking inside a pearwood trunk.

And perhaps he’d end the night so exhausted that he’d fall asleep immediately, without thinking about who was in the room with him and how sweet her kisses had been.

He chopped wood until his muscles burned and his stomach growled, and then he pushed a little past that.

It was bitter work for so little in exchange, but nothing he wasn’t used to.

Only when his head started to swim did he make his way back into the inn, planning to grab a bite and pass out on the floor of his and Guinevere’s rented room, in that order.

The hour was late, and he was expecting her to have already retired.

She should have already retired, because there was another long day of travel ahead of them tomorrow.

Thus, Oskar was justifiably annoyed to find Guinevere still in the lobby of the Drowned Nest, surrounded by other patrons.

The evening’s festivities were in full swing; a burly dwarf was playing her lute in the corner, and the ale was flowing.

Some of it was flowing into Guinevere. Prim, innocent Guinevere, chugging a tankard like a seasoned sailor while her audience cheered.

“Oskar!” She lurched to her feet when she saw him. Her eyes were shining, and she looked so happy that he almost couldn’t breathe.

Then she stepped closer, flinging her arms wide open, and he said, “Don’t,” because he was sweaty and dirty, but she hugged him anyway.

He automatically looped his arms around her waist. The inn’s patrons hooted, but they might as well have been wallpaper.

For him, there was only Guinevere, soft and warm in his embrace.

She gave a sigh of contentment, snuggling against his chest. “You stink.”

“So do you, princess,” he mumbled into her silver hair. She smelled like a distillery. “How much have you had?”

“Enough” was her mysterious reply. “I said I’d never had any, so the nice innkeeper offered it on the house. I like ale so much better than wine, Oskar!”

“Clearly.” Oskar glared at the innkeeper, who at least had the decency to duck his head, abashed.