Alis is wailing.
The rest of the world is silent, but my child, my baby, is screaming. I feel like joining her, feel like exorcising every horrible, ugly feeling that is churning and roiling in my guts in a shrill, anguished cry. Instead, so as not to terrify her further, I swallow hard on the taste of my despair. I feel as if I am doing her a disservice in pretending that I do not wish to scream as well. As if I am betraying her, somehow, in lying about what I am feeling.
Pip kisses Alis’s forehead over and over, clutching the bottle of blood and our daughter both, whispering soothing nothings as fat, shocked tears roll down her cheeks and soak into Alis’s hair. Her hands are trembling, but Alis doesn’t seem to notice in her own distress.
The commotion and screaming draws out the rest of Saetesh’s colleagues, who were hiding behind the gallery pillars in the reading garden. Silently, they shuffle into the courtyard, hats doffed and held before them, expressions shocked, or pitying, or worried. A wide halfling man that, I think, is part dryad, kneels immediately before Saetesh and scoops him up. Saetesh screams again when his leg is jolted, then turns his face into his colleague’s chest and balls his fists in his sleeves.
“If you puke on me, I’ll puke right back on you,” the halfling warns Saetesh, its voice reedy, its flesh made of crackled bark.
Saetesh makes an incomprehensible moaning sound and shakes his head slowly.
“That’s . . . super gross,” Pip says, trying not to look directly at his leg.
“There are healer’s supplies in our camp,” the dryad-born creature says to me. “Come to us when you’re . . .” He does not finish his sentence, only swallows hard, then turns and goes. The rest of his colleagues, six others in all, trail after him, leaving us alone with . . . what is left of Lanaea.
Wyndam has let Bevel pull him away from her. But when Bevel reaches down to touch her neck, it is clear by the shuttering of his gaze that he finds no pulse. Even to me, the least skilled warrior of the lot of us, it is obvious that all breath has left her body. If the arrow did not kill her, then the amount of blood she lost when she fell back against the flagstones and cracked open her skull did. Ruby rivulets run along the decorative divots in the stonework, an archaic sort of geometry in gore.
Wyndam crawls over to the astronomy building and rests his back against the stone, staring up at the now clear sky. His jet eyes are red-rimmed, and starkly dry, but his cheeks are still flushed and stained with saltwater. His hands are painted with her blood, and he holds his fingers against his lips, smearing the stain against his mouth like a last kiss, mourning.
The despair that has been dragging upon me finally grows too burdensome to sustain. “Th-this is-s-s ah-all muh-my f-f-fault,” I blurt, and I am choking on the words, barely able to get them past my tongue, where they scorch to ash on my lips. I crumple down onto the charred flagstones. My head feels too heavy to keep up, and my sword drags in the dust. “I was com-complete-letely useless j-just now, but I c-c-cou-could have kn-knocked the ar-arrow away-ay in-instead of j-juh-just si-side-step-ping it. F-F-Forsyth Tuh-Turn and his d-damn c-clever footwork-k, aye, Kin-Kintyre? What good is all th-that p-p-posturing, inde-deed.”
Bevel, no longer needing to be delicate, yanks out the arrow. Even in death, no one deserves to remain stuck like slaughtered livestock. He chucks it aside, fury bunching his shoulders, and then clenches his fists. “I’m going to have to go back and tell Anne that we got her niece killed. Oh, Writer’s balls. I’m going to have to tell Thoma. Lanaea’s father sent her to Gwillfifeshire for safety, and I should have been a better shot, should have . . .” He trails off and snarls, punching the stones at his feet. Kintyre grabs his wrist to keep him from doing it a second time and possibly breaking his own hand.
Pip shakes her head and scrubs her hands through her hair. “No. I was the one who said this was the First Station. I was the one who said it was safe for her to come. This is my fault. God, I’m such a fucking idiot. You realizing that the books were going missing was the First Station! Then, there was showing up here . . . the attack in the field . . . and now the Library. This is the Fourth. There’s always a goddamned attack at the Fourth, and some newly introduced character always gets Redshirted, and I just . . . I just . . .” My wife’s voice cracks, and she crumbles as well, shoulders shaking as she slides to the ground beside me and folds herself small against my chest. Alis, cocooned now between her parents, quiets. “She deserved better than to just be fridged,” Pip sobs.
I hold my wife close, rocking her and letting my own tears mingle with hers. My tongue flutters against the roof of my mouth in my shocked despair, and I cannot speak, not now, but I can make soothing noises.
And behind me, Wyndam is still, and silent. Dead, for all that he breathes still. I had wished so fervently for Lanaea to be Wyndam’s Pip. Instead, she was his Melinda. I have known that pain, and I would wish it on no one, least of all my nephew. Least of all on Lanaea herself.
“If we have to blame someone, blame the Deal-Maker Spirit,” Kintyre says, pulling Bevel shakily to his feet. “She attacked us.”
And in a flash, Wyndam is on his feet, one finger jammed into his chest and a silent fury boiling across his face. He shouts a whole string of expletives and words that are silent and too fast for me to lip-read. But it is clear who Wyndam blames.
“And what is wrong with you?” Kintyre says, at the end of his patience, and his tether. He pushes Wyndam back, out of his space, but the lad is right back in it, swinging a punch that Kintyre shifts to the side to avoid. “Damn you, just say it, boy!”
“St-stop it,” I say, standing, scrubbing my cheeks with my cuffs. “Both of you, stop! Wyndam, e-e-enough!”
Wyndam ignores me and swings again. Kintyre stops his fist with his palm, and I expect him to wrench the lad’s arm around and behind his back, as he’s done to me many times in the past when we were roughhousing. I forget, however, that Wyndam was trained by pirates.
The lad drops his center of gravity. Kintyre, having shifted his own in preparation to grapple, is startled into letting go of his arm. Wyndam crouches quick, swings one leg out in a circular sweep, and knocks Kintyre back onto his arse.
I don’t have time to relish the look of shock on my brother’s face, however. Wyndam is up again in a flash, hands on Kintyre’s tented knees, using the momentum to flip over in a midair somersault, landing with his feet on either side of Kintyre’s shoulders. He grabs his father’s collar and hauls back his other fist, but Bevel is there in an instant, tenacious as a bulldog. He clamps his arms around Wyndam’s cocked elbow and wrenches the lad back. This time, momentum and gravity work against Wyndam as Bevel deliberately rolls back onto his rump, rocking back and flipping Wyndam into the wall of the astronomy building with his feet.
But instead of slamming into the stone and going down, Wyndam continues the spin, plants his feet flat against the wall, and springs back, knocking Bevel back down from where he was rolling to a stand.
“This is some serious Kung Fu shit right here,” Pip says, from over my shoulder, and I glance at her quickly to see that she has now stood as well. Alis is sniffling, but otherwise occupied with examining the old barnacles pressed against her arm. “We should probably stop them.”
My attention is drawn back to the fight when Wyndam lands a punch on Bevel’s jaw. Bevel, already woozy from his knock against the flagstones fighting the blob monster, drops for the second time in twenty minutes, and now, I am annoyed. Bad enough that they are brawling instead of talking it out like families ought, but they are doing it mere steps away from Lanaea’s remains. Kintyre springs to his feet, meaty paws open to catch Wyndam around the waist, and Pip is right.
“Enough!” I bellow in my best Shadow Hand voice, and both Wyndam and Kintyre freeze where they stand. “Kintyre Turn!” I bellow. “Go fetch a blanket and the healer’s kit from the cart! Wyndam Turn, you wake Bevel up right now and check his head for injuries.”
“But I—” Kintyre begins, at the same moment Wyndam gapes at me and begins gesturing rudely.
“Now,” I roar. Kintyre and Wyndam obey so quickly that I can practically see the blur of their motion.
Wyndam gently nudges Bevel awake, helps him sit up and rest back against the wall of the astronomy building. Pip goes over to check for a concussion—his balance seems fine, but he has trouble keeping his eyes open, and for one long moment, we are all certain that he is going to vomit. Wyndam flutters around Bevel, checking his scalp for cuts and generally looking contrite, and Bevel stills him with a soft, cupped palm on the lad’s cheek.
“Heck of a right hook, my lad,” Bevel says softly. “Quite impressive.”
Wyndam looks torn between pride and confusion at being praised by the man who generally only yells at him for mistakes.
Bevel chuckles, pats his face once, and says, “Now, open your shirt, Wyn. Let’s see if you’ve torn yourself open.”
Wyndam looks startled.
“What, you think we didn’t know? Poor guardians we’d make, then. And poor warriors to boot.”
When Kintyre returns, a blanket thrown over his shoulder and the healer’s kit in his hand, along with one of our water flasks, he joins the other two to mother-hen and cluck over their scratches and bruises. Alis squirms and wriggles and protests until she can stand beside Bevel, clinging to his knee and staring very seriously into his face as Kintyre dresses the cut on his forehead. Bevel keeps a loose hand around her ankle, to keep her from wandering off, and does his best to smile through the winces.
Her hands finally free, Pip avails herself of one of the empty phials in the healer’s kit and very, very carefully pours the blue Deal-Maker’s blood into the easier-to-transport glass container, capping it tightly and slipping it into her bra.
And I?
I take the blanket, lay it out on the flag stones and carefully, respectfully, roll up Lanaea.
✍
The cart is cleared out, and Lanaea’s remains are placed reverently in the middle. We relocate the rest of our gear to the open stone beside the fountain, building a makeshift camp of pillows and blankets. Capplederry creeps up to the cart, sniffing and meowing piteously. Wyndam has to push the great cat away to keep it from pawing at Lanaea’s body, and eventually, his shoves devolve into clinging to Capplederry’s ruff and sobbing piteously into the fur there. Kintyre and Bevel give him the space he needs.
When the lad is all cried out, he joins the rest of us where we sit on the lip of the fountain’s basin, washing away the blood. Alis has been stripped entirely, and as the water only comes up to her waist, she is quite enjoying stomping around making big waves, her terror of a few moments ago forgotten. Alis is on her bottom as much as she is on her feet, but the water doesn’t go over her head when she is sitting, and her mother has a close eye on her. Pip has her boots and her leather trousers off, her shirttails pulled low, and is dangling her feet in the basin with Alis, kicking gently and splashing when Alis gets close enough. But her face is grim, her complexion wan, and her freckles stand out in sharp contrast, the way they always do when she is shaken.
“My hair,” Kintyre moans, clearly attempting to lighten the mood as much as is respectable. He is holding up a few scraggly, singed ends that frame his ear.
“Better than you suffocating to death, you idiot lump,” Bevel says, but reaches up to help him try to scrub away the thick, greasy soot and purple slime all the same.
Wyndam’s shirt still hangs open, and he splashes and scrubs at his face before he sits directly beside me, gesturing to his stomach.
“It looks better,” I say to him, wetting a bit of ragged cloth and dabbing away the crusted, yellowed ointment. “It hasn’t reopened.”
“That’s lucky,” Kintyre says, head tipped over and one eye squeezed shut as Bevel, kneeling along the basin with sleeves rolled up, scrubs his hair with soap flakes. It smells of lavender. Kin splutters when Bevel scoops up water in one of the cooking bowls and dumps it over his trothed’s head with no warning.
Kintyre shoots him a look, and Bevel grins cheekily. If Lanaea were not laid out a few paces away, I know they would be celebrating in their usual post-battle, pseudo-pornographic manner. As it is, they are affectionate, but subdued. All the same, it seems to physically pain Wyndam. He looks away, eyes on the cart as I dry his wound and reapply the ointment.
I don’t know what sort of emotional depth main characters have in other fantasy works, but it seems that Kintyre and Bevel are not feeling this loss as keenly as the rest of us. Or, at least, they are pretending not to. I recall Pip’s words, her assertion that some “minor” character always perishes during the Fourth Station. I think back on our quest, and . . . ah, yes. Pip chose to free Capplederry instead of slay him.
But if what my wife says is true, then Kintyre and Bevel have lost a minimum of eight other companions in similar circumstances before. Perhaps they are not being callous so much as simply trying not to let her death wound them too deeply. To carry on carrying on.
They are not hardened to these deaths, only exhausted by them.
I catch them sharing a sad gaze in a tender moment, when they think no one is looking, and turn away. Let them have their privacy, and let them mourn in their own way. We are all devastated.
When Wyndam is patched, and his shirt is closed once more, I take the time to observe the scholar’s tent in the distance. Three of Saetesh’s colleagues are milling around the door to the tent, and one is hurrying toward them with a large kettle, still steaming from its time over their nearby cook fire. I assume the last two are tending to Saetesh.
I feel obligated to go over, to inquire after his health, but at the same time, the last thing I am feeling is social. I want to curl into my sleep roll, wrap myself around my wife and daughter, and bid Capplederry to knock the ball of the sun lower in the sky. There are hours yet before sunset, and I am weary in a way that I haven’t been since Mother’s death.
Body, soul, and mind, all I want to do is shut off, shut myself down, and sleep. But no, not yet. For Kintyre rises from the edge of the basin, shaking water from his hair, and sits down beside Wyndam.
“Come now, Wyndam,” Kintyre says, his voice firm yet gentle. “Enough is enough now. Speak to me, son.”
Wyndam takes a long, slow moment to drag his gaze away from the wrapped bundle on the cart, sliding his eyes along the ground before they land on his father’s boots, and then shift upward. The lad takes a deep breath, opens his mouth, then clicks it shut again. He peers over his father’s shoulder to raise pleading eyebrows at me. I tilt my head to the side in a question: Are you sure?
His answer is a small, shaky nod, and a thinning of his lips as he rolls them inward to bite at them, nervous.
“I’m not gonna like this, am I?” Kintyre rumbles, watching our silent communication.
“No,” I say. “But you must hear it all the same, Kintyre. And,” I add hastily as Kintyre bites his own lips in a manner identical to his son’s, “you must keep your temper.”
“Aye,” he grunts.
“Do you swear?”
“I swear!” he snaps, impatient and belying his promise immediately. I hold up a scolding finger, and he contritely says, “Apologies. I’ll try.”
“Very good,” I say, and then take a deep breath. “Now, where to begin? Wyndam has lost all ability to speak.”
“What do you mean, you can’t speak anymore?” Kintyre shouts, startled, and swings back around to goggle. “Explain!”
“Kin . . .” Bevel sighs. “Temper.”
“Sorry!” Kin snarls. “But . . . how long has this been going on? Why didn’t you, I don’t know, write it down? Writer’s calluses, Wyndam, I am your father! Did you think I would turn you away when you came to me for help?”
Wyndam looks at me helplessly, desperate.
“Kintyre,” I say. “Quiet, please, as you promised. And let me explain.”
✍
We leave the Lost Library empty handed. I had returned to the astronomy building with Robfarn, Saetesh’s half-dryad colleague, to search the collection by Wisp-lamp light, but we are unlucky. There are no tomes or tales of disappearing constellations, but, now that I had pieced together what I hoped was more of this mystery, I hadn’t really expected it.
In the morning, Saetesh is conscious and watching as we load our saddlebags, packing all of our traveling supplies onto the backs of the horses or onto Capplederry. He is propped up in a chair in the sunshine outside the tent, a travel desk already on his lap and a wan but genuine smile on his face.
Before we make the long, slow walk back to Gwillfifeshire, I decide to speak quietly with him.
“Well, now,” he says, exhibiting the customary elvish good cheer in the face of darkness. “That shall be, I think, my first and last adventure. Do you suppose Sir Dom will write about this one? If he does, I hope I come off as heroic.”
“You were very brave,” I comfort him. “How is your leg?”
“It was a clean break. Olissa says it will heal well, and I have elvish blood on my side. I shall be dancing at Solsticetide.”
“I hope so, my friend,” I say, and shake his hand. In another life, I might have invited him back to Turn Hall for the duration of his healing, become his patron and given him free reign of my library, perhaps even made a true friend of him. He could have been one of the most profound relationships of my life, held alongside Pointe and Pip. Now, I must say my goodbyes, knowing that if this quest is successful, and Pip, Alis, and I return to Victoria, I will never see him again.
A sort of bittersweet resentment crawls up my throat, but I swallow it back down. I cannot afford to mourn for friendships missed. I have neither the time nor the emotional capacity.
I make my farewells, and go back to our horses, passing Bevel as he comes to make his and Kintyre’s farewells too. Behind me, I hear Bevel apologize to Saetesh for his getting caught up in what was clearly a fight between the Deal-Maker Spirit and Kintyre, but Saetesh waves him off and only bids Bevel to depict him handsomely and with a twinkling smile. Bevel laughs, though it is strained, and promises that if he writes up this adventure, he will do as Saetesh asks.
I know, of course, that Bevel will not, cannot write a scroll about this quest.
Ever.
✍
Returning to Gwillfifeshire is as horrible as we all feared it would be.
The streets are less crowded, because it is not market day when we return, but we draw followers all the same. The funeral procession creaks and trundles its way toward the Pern, people gasping and covering their mouths when they realize that there is a body in the back of our cart, and one person missing from our party.
What we had hoped would be a joyous homecoming for us, filled with handfuls of scrolls and stuffed with gaiety and new information, is somber instead. Someone has run ahead, because, when we enter the inn’s courtyard, the Goodwoman and her son are already standing on the threshold, clutching one another. Anne and Thoma are subdued. There is no screaming, no hysteria, for Lanaea was virtually unknown to them, but there is a damp misery for the life and niece lost. And such horrified guilt in Kintyre and Bevel.
And in me.
Nothing is said. No one asks for explanations. No one rushes to blurt excuses. We simply look at each other, mute and miserable, united by our grief, yet separated by that gulf of the unfathomable loneliness that contemplating our own mortality always brings.
At length, Anne nods, just once, and then turns away and ushers Thoma inside. Kintyre and Bevel are joined by two other men—strangers from the crowd—and together, they lift Lanea down and carry her into the inn after Anne. Pip and I follow slowly, the marshalls of our grim parade of townspeople.
The women of Gwillfifeshire descend upon the Pern to cook, and clean, and comfort Anne and Thoma. Someone washes Lanaea’s body. Someone else anoints it. Someone styles her hair and dabs cosmetics on her lifeless lips, and someone else lays her out in a side room. Kintyre and Bevel hunch in the corner booth of the taproom, as far away from everyone else as possible, carving wood and smoking pipes, and scratching pencil on parchment. Pip, Alis, and I sit at the bar, where we can take it all in. No one asks us questions. We are not ignored, but we choose not to participate. Food fills the tables, and though no wake is planned, everyone in town, including Lord Gallvig, slowly trickle in.
Music breaks out like a rash of whooping cough: slowly at first, in fits and sports as a fiddle and a harp are tuned to one another. Someone runs home and returns with a flute, and the music becomes faster, louder, until suddenly, all at once, someone adds a voice, and then another. And then a whole chorus takes up song after song after song.
Far beyond the curtains of time and fate,
Beyond the misty vale of the Reader’s tears,
The Writer sets down his quill, his intent filled,
The narrative played out, the ink bottle empty.
Here the story is finished, here joy abate
Here an end to pain, and an end to fears.
Here is the story told as He has willed.
Here the empty spot on the Shelf left for thee.
My heart fills with such a complex weight,
Grief, thick like syrup, in my breast appears,
My own tale, with you missing, I must rebuild.
Until my own The End also folds over me.
The mournful, chanting tone of the dirge-music drives me out to the front step of the tavern. I do not worry that anyone will tread on me, nor that they will want to pass me, for it appears as if the whole of Gwillfifeshire is in the blazing hot, candle-bright room behind me. The party reminds me too much of Solsticetide, of the beginning of this adventure, of a time when my family was safe and my life stable. Or so I thought.
Foolish Forsyth.
And so here I am, again, alone on a step, staring up at the sky and wondering, wishing, my mind a tangled skein of facts that I cannot unravel, cannot knit together to form a pattern that makes any sort of sense. I see the pieces. I know there must be a pattern. But I do not know what it is. I do not know why.
And without the why, I cannot stop it.
Oh, I am utterly stupid.
What use am I? What use is the know-it-all younger brother of the hero, the man who is supposed to find answers in books, when he searches and still yet finds none? What good is a scholar on a quest who holds no information?
No good at all, that is what.
Impotent in my stupidity, I clutch the sleeves of my jacket and grind my teeth, forcing myself to breathe deep and steady. To re-evaluate what I know. To take out what little information I have and look it over once more, reorder it, try to assemble it in a new way.
Wyndam called down a Deal-Maker who took his voice. The stars are burning out. Books are vanishing at the same rate as constellations. And there is a weather witch who is not a weather witch, but the Deal-Maker who stole Wyndam’s voice and will not allow him to tell us why.
Above me, only one solitary, lonely figure of stars remains: The Great Tale. Together, the stars form the picture of a desk, a figure seated behind it with quill in hand, and another standing alongside, reading over the first’s shoulder.
And there is no reason for it. None that I can see.
The constellation of the Writer is entirely useless. It does not move. It does not look down on me, and call me “son,” and explain. It does nothing but twinkle, and I hate it. Isn’t this the part of the narrative where the Deus is meant to Ex Machina?
And Reed can’t even bloody well do that right.
It isn’t until the sun is fully set, the sky near-black without the constellations to light it, that Pip finds me seated by the front door, watching the people come in and out, and asks: “Where’s Wyndam?”
I had not forgotten the lad, not really, but his misery had been so encompassing that he had refused all food and company and gone directly upstairs.
“I would say his room,” I guess. “But you are about to tell me otherwise?”
Pip points a finger-gun at me and fires. “Gotcha. I just went up to put Alis down. He’s gone.”
“Blast,” I curse. “Stay here, I’ll . . . go see if he went for a walk.”
I huddle into my jacket, pulling up the collar against a chill in the spring night that has more to do with my state of mind than the temperature. There is no clue as to which direction Wyndam might have gone, if he has gone for a walk at all, so I decide to make for the areas we have already passed through, as they would be the best known to him. It is a good choice, for I find him by the edge of the crumbling old well in the middle of the market square. The well is made of more gray stone, shored up on one side with red clay brick and weather-whitened wooden joists. A cypress tree crowds against the side of the wall, twisting along the mortar paths and splaying like a mourner’s umbrella over the open pit of the well. Around its roots, the stones of the square heave and buckle, unable to resist the strength of life and time.
And on this wall sits Wyndam. He has his head between his hands, and he is hunched over. The paving stones between his feet are wet, and I choose not to comment on that. Instead, I walk to his side, making a deliberate and obvious amount of noise so as not to startle the lad, and then sit gingerly beside him. The wall shifts a little under our combined weight, but doesn’t collapse. Still, mortar dust rains down into the water far below us, with a few small pebbles that make soft, echoing, plinking noises.
“I would ask if you want to talk about it, my lad, but . . .” I say softly, and beside me, Wyndam snorts. “The truth of it is this, nephew: you are Kintyre Turn’s son. And he is a hero.” Wyndam stills, and I turn my face up to the sky, mourning the loss of the stars that were so comforting, so bright in my childhood, and hoping deep within my guts that I will be able to restore them. That other children will have the opportunity to revel in the magic of their glow.
Wyndam grunts. He is listening, but he doesn’t like it.
“I have come to understand that you dislike people comparing you to your father,” I go on, “or judging you by his merits and achievements, but in this, you must acknowledge your connection. You are the son of a hero, Wyndam Turn, and that means that, simply by virtue of your existence, those with harm and evil in their hearts will hurt those closest to you simply because they are closest to you. And that threat is even greater if those people are women. Villains . . . Writers are forever harming women to hurt male heroes. It is lazy writing, but a staple of the genre, which, unfortunately, makes it a fact of life for us.”
Wyndam jerks to his feet, face twisted with disgust.
“No,” I say, guessing what has him so wroth. “No, I am not excusing it. I am warning you, my lad.” I sigh, scrubbing my forehead with the heel of my hand, exhaustion and grief pulling on my body. I want to sleep for a week. “This is not what you expected life with Kintyre Turn to be, is it?” I say gently.
Wyndam shakes his head.
“I will tell you a secret, nephew mine,” I say, leaning close. “It was nothing like how Bevel’s scrolls paint it for me, either. We are, both of us, living in the shadow of a hero who never truly existed. Bevel is a romantic, and his scrolls are a fantasy. The road is a hard, exhausting, boring, filthy place,” I say. “It is gruelling. And it is horrible. Bevel writes fairy tales.”
He looks as if he’d like to protest. I wish he could.
“I do not say this to disillusion you, Wyndam, but to apprise you of the realities of it. Were you to, say, take up your father’s sword and mantle, for example, we would very much wish for you to be prepared for what you might find.”
Wyndam looks up at me, jet eyes wide and shining, mouth dropped open with slowly dawning understanding. He presses his hand against his chest, expression hopeful.
“I do not see why you couldn’t,” I say, conspiratorially. “It seems there is already a great tradition of the Lordling Turn leaving home to go on an adventure. First Kintyre, when he was heir to the seat, and then me. If you were to take the title, you would be the third. I would even venture to say that it’s practically expected, at this point.”
He chews on the corner of his lip for a moment, tugging at his own sleeves, thoughtful.
“Stay with us for now. Finish this adventure. See how you like it, first.”
And if I don’t? his gaze challenges.
I shrug. “Then there is a position with the Sword of Turnshire. It is not as exciting as questing, that is true, but there is . . . there is infinitely less heartbreak, my lad,” I say softly. “And you will have the opportunity to prevent the sorts of things that happened to Lanaea.”
Her name sets off a bout of furious, tight pacing, and he scrubs angrily at his eyes. When he slows, I stand, sling an arm around his broad shoulders, and guide him back toward the Pern.
“Come, my lad,” I say softly. “Let us say our goodbyes, properly, and then get a drink into you. And tomorrow . . . tomorrow, we shall leave for tomorrow.”
When we return to the inn, we join the rest of our family in the corner booth. Pip is staring, wide-eyed and stiff with surprised horror, at a ghost that is floating in the middle of the room, corralling delighted children.
“That’s Mandikin,” Bevel says, when I shoot him a questioning glance. “She’s Gwillfifeshire’s childminder. Pip’s never seen a ghost before.”
“No,” I agree. “I don’t believe they have ghosts in the Writer’s world.”
“Shame,” Kintyre says. “They’re a good way to gain closure. Look.”
And there, behind Mandikin, is a new ghost. She is so freshly dead that there is still color in her cheeks, in her corn-silk hair and pretty pink lips. The hems of her pearlescent dress and sleeves are so barely transparent that, if I didn’t know better, I would have assumed that Lanaea was still alive.