Pembroke kicked dust over the ashes of their morning fire and watched the last curl of smoke rise above the dawn mist. He felt his years from his shoulders to his heels, creaking like an unrosined bowstring.
Marret busied herself with the horses, and when he saw her in profile he smiled at the hale ruddiness of her cheeks. He wished he were younger.
His knees popped like dry branches as he crouched to gather his bedroll. In all of a few moments they'd packed away their camp.
They'd chosen a lovely little hill, surrounded on three sides with birch and looking out over a silver thread of river that neither of them could name.
"I suppose this is our last morning before we get back," said Marret.
"The blood and mud is done," agreed Pembroke. "But it's altogether more final for me, I think. I'm headed for the peaceful pasture of retirement. You? Why, you've only just jumped the fence, with a world to grab by the throat."
She tried to glance at him in surprise, but he knew she understood that this was his last ride. Marret gave up the pretense and frowned, almost bitterly. "It feels gods-damned wrong. We were … we were good together. Weren't we?"
Pembroke laughed. "I've never felt safer with another blade at my back, nor any other eye while I slept. We mend the holes in each other's britches, as my old da used to say."
"Then why does this have to be the end of it?" The plaintive note in her voice almost made him reconsider. Almost.
It took him a while to reply. Patching the last cracks in his resolve.
"Because I'm headed down the hill, and you're headed up it. I'm just glad we chanced to meet on the way."
Viv snapped the book closed and rubbed her eyes with two fingers.
An errant grain of sand had blown into her face, surely. There was wind enough.
Seated atop one of the beach-facing dunes, she looked out over the tumbling waves, every curl ripening to red before churning into its fellows. Gulls hacked and cried above, scolding her intrusion.
She slid a finger over the foiled lettering on the book's cover. Crossed Purposes by Kest Brindleby. Fern's last suggested book. More than any of the others, it felt personal in a way she hadn't anticipated.
Viv supposed that was what Fern had meant up on the bluff. About books and mirrors and that perfect moment of feeling seen.
Which was fine. Wonderful even, Viv could admit. But also terrible, because didn't it make things harder than they should be?
Wasn't it so much more comfortable to duck out the door without somebody pointing out your departure? She couldn't help but see Maylee's face, feel her thick braid between her fingertips.
She wished Rackam would come, and it could all be done.
Then from behind her came the clink of harness, the groan of axles, the tromp of boots, and the armored creak of folk who traded in blood.
Viv turned and saw Rackam's Ravens trooping down the road to Murk, and until that moment, she hadn't known you could feel dread and relief at the same time.
"There she is," said Viv, sliding Varine's book across the table.
The slit in the cover was surgically clean, a testament to Blackblood's preternatural sharpness.
It was strange to think, but to Viv, the book felt dead.
The unnerving vitality it once possessed had fled.
All that remained was leather, paper, and the faint whiff of blood on a frozen lake.
Rackam sat across from her in The Perch, and near a dozen of his Ravens stood crowded around the table. He drew it toward him, furrowing his brows at the symbols on the cover. Then he opened the book.
The pages were still black, but they were no longer depthless, and each was split crosswise.
"Not much of a trophy, is it?" said Rackam, sighing. "Weeks of false trails and backtracking, snow and mud, scores of blueeyed corpses—and this is how we catch up to her."
Sinna tossed her red hair back and skeptically examined it. "Nobody is going to pay us for this. How do we know she's even dead?"
"Oh, she's dead, all right," replied the old dwarf. "Or whatever passes for dead for her kind. Malefico saw her thralls drop like sacks of flour all at once, and we haven't seen one since."
Malefico nodded but didn't say anything.
"Still not clear on how you stuffed her in a book, though," rumbled Rackam.
Viv had briefly considered mentioning Satchel, but introducing an animated horned skeleton to a group of folks who'd been bashing them to bits for a few months straight seemed like a surpassingly bad idea.
"It was complicated. And lucky."
He held her gaze with his flinty blue eyes, but eventually he slapped the cover of the book and handed it off to Sinna to take care of.
"Well. Nothing in all eight hells that can be done about it anyhow. They'll pay us, or they won't."
But, knowing Rackam, Viv thought they would. He was a persuasive man.
The conversation shifted on to another sort of business altogether.
"So, who's this now?" he asked, gesturing toward the gnome seated beside Viv.
Viv waited a moment for Gallina to introduce herself, but when the knife-studded gnome only sat with mouth slightly parted and eyes wide, she took pity and intervened.
Smiling, she slapped Gallina on the back. "This is the girl that saved my ass in a street fight."
Viv didn't have much to pack, but she supposed Brand would appreciate having the mattress heaved back onto its frame. Just as she let it fall with a thud and a protesting creak, a knock rang out at her door.
It was Maylee.
Without asking, she entered and closed the door behind her, and simply stood with her hands at her sides.
The walls of the room seemed to float away in the silence, and Viv couldn't stand to let it extend any further. She opened her mouth to speak.
"Hush," said the dwarf. "I know you wouldn't leave without sayin' anythin'."
Viv wanted to believe that was true about herself.
"I just couldn't do this out there, in the world.
" She gestured vaguely behind her and met Viv's gaze for the first time since she'd entered.
Her eyes glimmered at the corners. She sniffed and then roughly ran her forearm under her nose.
"You're too gods-damned tall," she complained in a thick voice.
Viv sank down onto her knees, so they were nearly face to face.
"That's better," Maylee whispered, and put a hand to Viv's cheek.
Viv could smell yeast and sugar and warm skin.
"I know what I told you at the beginnin'.
About knowin' you for a while. And I even believed it.
Guess I still do. But here's the part where I pay for it.
And maybe you too, but I won't ask about what it costs you. I'm not sure I want to know."
The lump in Viv's throat was too big to fit words around. Instead, she mirrored Maylee's gesture and laid her huge hand along the side of the dwarf's cheek.
"I'll probably never see you again," continued Maylee, and one tear overspilled, tracking through the fine flour on her cheek. She leaned into Viv's touch and added fiercely, almost angrily, "But I don't regret it."
She pushed forward, and her lips pressed against Viv's, warm and lush and longing. And all too brief.
Then she pulled away and left the room, closing the door quietly behind her.
Viv never managed to say a word, but their time was over.
One had gone up, and the other down, and the crossing would not be repeated.
When Viv walked into Thistleburr for the last time, Satchel was shelving some repaired volumes while Fern curled up in one of the surviving padded chairs, perusing a catalog. Potroast looked over from taking experimental nips at Satchel's anklebones to hoot at her.
Fern put the catalog aside and started to rise, then saw the pack on Viv's back. Her expression made a few detours on the way to a smile. "So, you're going, then?"
"Soon," said Viv. After Maylee, she'd figured this would be easier, and it was, but not by as much as she'd hoped. "I wanted to give this back to you before I did, though." She held out Fern's copy of Crossed Purposes.
Fern snorted. "I knew there was a reason I lent you that. Kept you from slipping off on the sly."
"I wouldn't do that," protested Viv.
"Hm. I know you warrior types," she replied, with a pained smile.
"Tear the damned place up and leave. Just look at this mess!" She waved dramatically at the shop, which still clearly bore the marks of Varine's trespass.
"Anyway, that book is yours to keep. What did you think of it?" She asked it offhandedly, but Viv didn't think it was an offhanded question.
She studied the cover and understood that to give a thoughtless answer was to break something she didn't want broken.
"Well," she said slowly. "At first, I decided it was maybe a little on the nose. Sad. Pembroke is so sure he's done.
They'll never see each other again, and maybe that's just because they're both too stubborn to see things another way.
That's how the author leaves it. Still. The more I think about it …
it seems like it ought to be obvious, but people in books are wrong all the time.
Hells, the authors are wrong. So maybe that's what the story says in the words that got put down, but if you could read past the end?
The words that didn't get written? Maybe it ends up being something else altogether. "
"The story past the story," murmured Fern.
Viv shot her a startled glance. "Yeah."
Fern nodded. "You've been a good friend to me, Viv. And I'm going to miss you." She held out her paw to shake. Viv did. "Property damage notwithstanding."
Viv laughed and sniffed. "You, too. I did get the better end of the deal."
Satchel approached and sketched a neat bow. "You have my undying thanks, m'lady," he said, and something about his voice kept Viv from correcting him. "I never dared dream of my liberty."
"Are you planning to stay here, then?" asked Viv.
The homunculus tilted his head. "Fern has agreed to have me on for a while, and I believe I will enjoy the quiet. For the days yet to come? I cannot say. There are so many to account for."
A hoot from Viv's feet made her look down. Potroast nuzzled her boot, his soft feathers flaring against the leather.
"Now you get affectionate, huh? I guess I'll even miss you, you little monster." She fished the final chunk of bacon she'd saved from her pocket and showed it to him.
He stared up at her with his huge golden eyes, and then delicately took it from her hand. The gryphet held it in his beak for a moment, then gently placed it on the floor, as if to say, "I'll save this for later." Then he very deliberately licked one of her outstretched fingers.
"Huh," said Viv, because her voice was too choked for more. Somehow, this on top of everything else was too much to endure.
She stood and offered more words of increasing inadequacy until there was nothing to do but go.
As she opened the door to leave, she took one last look back at the three of them.
"See you in the story past the story," said Fern.
And then the red door closed behind her.