Bookshops & Bonedust (Legends & Lattes, #0)(2)
With one gloved hand, he patted her massive forearm. Corded with muscle, but the skin unblemished. Viv stared past it to the wreck of her leg.
Rackam stood, and she still didn’t have to look up far to meet his eyes. “Is this the one that kills you, then?”
Viv swallowed down her nausea and narrowed her eyes, feeling stupid. Feeling stupid made her feel resentful. And resentment was only a half step from angry. “No,” she said through clenched teeth.
He chuckled. “Don’t guess it will, at that. But you’re done for now.”
She blinked. “Did we get her?”
“We didn’t. Wasn’t even here, near as we can tell. Only a little trouble she stirred up just for us. We’re heading north. We’ll find her.”
Viv struggled to push herself to standing against the trunk with her left leg. The other felt too big by half, and every pump of her heart was a dark drumbeat all through it. “When do we leave?”
“We? Like I said, you’re done for now. They tell me it’s only a few miles to some sea town. I’ll send you that way. You’ll heal up, and we’ll pass through when we’re done. If you’re still around and able when we roll through, we’ll take you back on. Probably a few weeks. If you’re gone when we show … ?” He shrugged. “No shame in calling this the end of it.”
“But—”
“It’s done, kid. You survived a stupid mistake today. If you want to make another so soon after, well …” His gaze was hard. “Want me to tell you the odds I give on that?”
But Viv wasn’t a stupid orc, so she shut the hells up.
1
Viv lay on the floor of the tiny room. Well, almost on the floor. The place hadn’t been built with orcs in mind, and the bed was too short by at least two feet. Someone had wrestled the strawtick mattress onto the floor, and though her legs still went off the end, they’d positioned her pack so her foot was propped, keeping the wounded leg elevated.
It hurt like all eight hells.
She’d caught a fever while bouncing along in the litter behind a pack mule, coughing through all the dust it could raise. Which was a lot.
Viv might’ve been bedbound for two days, in and out of consciousness, a muddle of circular dreams and throbbing agony. The surgeon had come and gone multiple times. Or maybe he hadn’t, and she’d just been hallucinating it over and over. She half remembered the man’s face, tangled up in a shame she couldn’t identify.
Now, her head was clear. Which mostly meant she could also feel everything with complete clarity. It was a debatable improvement.
What’s more, she was absolutely ravenous.
Staring around the room, the place was mostly barren. A crude bedframe and a tiny table with a lantern and a basin on it. Gray, raw wood for walls. A small, slatted window. She smelled the sea, and dry beach grass, and fish. An old sea chest sat opposite. Her saber leaned against it, alongside a crude wooden crutch. Her maul was missing. There wasn’t much else worth considering.
The building was absolutely quiet. The only sounds came from outside—the hissing of grass, the remote grumble of waves, and the occasional call of a seabird.
Viv had been lucid for less than a single hour, and she thought the view might drive her insane if she had to endure another.
Her leg was cleanly wrapped at least, splinted so the knee wouldn’t bend. Her trouser leg had been cut away. The bandages showed some discoloration where she’d oozed through, but it was a big step up from moss and a dirty wool shirt.
“Well,” she said. “Shit.”
She made it up by degrees, hauling her butt onto the bedframe and sucking air through her teeth as she swung her damaged leg around. Her left boot fit, but the right foot was so swollen, it would have to stay bare. Tottering to her feet, she made it to the basin of tepid water, where she scrubbed herself as best she could with the rag she found there. Feeling less foul, she limped toward the door, but each thud of her heel against the floor pulsed black at the edges of her vision. Gritting her teeth, she changed direction and grudgingly seized the crutch.
It galled her to admit how much better that was.
While she was there, she belted on her saber out of habit.
Unfortunately, she discovered that the room was at the top of a flight of narrow stairs. She fumbled down them, catching herself every other step with the crutch. The saber did nothing to make things easier. With every impact, she found a new, more colorful epithet for Rackam. Not that it was his fault, of course. Still, it was a lot more satisfying to curse someone by name, even if that name should’ve been her own.
She could smell the ghost of bacon as she descended, which was plenty of incentive to carry on.
The stairs opened into a long, rough-timbered dining area in an inn or tavern or whatever they called it around here. A big, stone hearth crouched cold along one wall, yawning like a disappointed mouth. An iron chandelier hung askew, entombed in candlewax. Glass floats and storm lanterns were strung or nailed up in the rafters, alongside netting and weathered oars with names carved into them. The handful of scarred tables were unoccupied.
A long bar ran along the back wall, and the tavernkeep leaned against it, idly cleaning a copper mug. He looked as bored as the place warranted. The tall sea-fey’s chin was grizzled gray. His nose was a hatchet, his hair hung kelp-thick past sharp ears, and his forearms writhed with tattoos.