Bookshops & Bonedust (Legends & Lattes, #0)(37)

The gong of the tolling hour glanced off the cliffside to the north, and in the distance a galleon forged southward, sails belling in the offshore winds.

The baker’s sturdy arms kept up steady, powerful strokes as she charted a course along the sandbar, heading north and around the cape.

For the first while, Viv clutched the sides tightly, sensitive to every sideways swell and feeling entirely too big for the boat. Visions of toppling overboard—and taking Maylee with her—crowded her mind. No matter what Maylee said, Viv didn’t think there was anything romantic about drowning in sight of land. Eventually, she relaxed, though, and enjoyed the feeling of the sun on her skin and the growing hush as they drew farther from shore. The water glinted blue as sapphires, but Viv could see in the distance where it blackened over unknowable depths.

As they rounded the northern promontory, another small cove came into view, this one shaded by the bluff. When they coasted into the shadows, Maylee dug the oars in to slow to a stop.

The cool of the shade was shockingly sudden, and Viv’s arms broke into gooseflesh. Maylee flicked the end of an oar to catch her in the salty spray and grinned mischievously.

“I’ll remember that,” said Viv, with a slow grin of her own. She looked at the exposed rock of the cliff wall above them, a thousand layers sandwiched at an angle. Gulls twirled before it in a whirl of white, but surprisingly kept their voices to themselves, as though reluctant to ruin the hush. “You come here a lot?”

“It’s quiet. Cool. Pretty much the opposite of the bakery,” said Maylee. She hoisted the wicker basket into the center of the boat, between Viv’s legs, which occupied a lot of the room. Unfolding the linen, she withdrew a full loaf of bread and knocked on it with a knuckle. It sounded almost hollow. “Old and stale. And not for us.”

Viv raised her brows at that.

Maylee tore it in half with a brisk crackling sound, and shards of crust sprayed in all directions like wheat chaff. She handed one piece to Viv, who held it up with a quizzical expression. “Not for us?”

With a secretive smile, Maylee plucked a chunk from the center of her piece and flicked it overboard to float on the water.

Viv started when the bread almost immediately disappeared. A silvery form breached the surface with a sound like a stone dropping into a still pond. “You come here to feed the fish? Feeding Murk isn’t enough?”

“These customers are quiet,” replied Maylee, her voice low. “And look.” She pointed, and just beneath the surface, a swirl of pink and silver made broad, sinuous curves before doubling hopefully back.

“Oh,” breathed Viv. The fish moved like a single organism, and as they turned, the sunlight scattered across their sides in a gleaming flash. “There must be a hundred of them.”

“Peachgills. Yeah. Well, what are you waitin’ for?”

They took turns picking the loaf apart, tossing morsels to the fish and a few brave gulls who swooped down to inspect the proceedings. The slap of the water against the hull and the glips and glops of the hungry peachgills lulled them both.

Viv sometimes paused to watch Maylee’s face and the way her cheeks squeezed her eyes nearly closed whenever one of the fish received her offerings. The ache in her leg drifted far away.

When they’d satisfied the appetites of the undersea diners—or at least run out of stale bread—Maylee rummaged in the basket again, withdrawing a green bottle and a pair of glass tumblers.

“When we fed the stale bread to the fish, I figured you’d have a fresh loaf in there for us,” observed Viv.

“Oh, you thought this was a picnic? Nope. I just got you alone so I could liquor you up.” Maylee pulled the cork without visible effort and poured something clear into both of the glasses where they balanced on the seat between her knees. Viv caught a whiff of juniper that made her think of solstice wreaths and snow.

With cheeks rosy, Maylee offered a toast. “To chance meetings.”

“To chance meetings.” Viv knocked their glasses together and sipped. The dry taste unfurled across her tongue into what seemed a hundred different herbal flavors, followed by a tide of warmth that crept down into the center of her. “What is this?” she asked.

“Gin,” replied the baker, sipping her own. “Smells like winter. Tastes like summer.”

They drank companionably, and the warmth of the gin overtook the cool of the shaded cove. Viv could imagine it slowly heating every part of her like hot water poured into cold. She felt loose and easy in a way she hadn’t in some time.

She gazed at Maylee while liquor burnished the edges of everything. At the dwarf’s bare knees below tucked-up skirts. At a soft stretch of flesh beside her neck that made Viv think of Raleigh and Leena in the sea cave and what it would feel like to slide her fingers under the fabric and trace Maylee’s collarbone.

The flush of the gin became a different sort of flush altogether.

Then she noticed she was staring and flushed hotter.

“So,” she said, clearing her throat. She settled in and let her back rest against the stern. The boat canted a little in that direction, but not dangerously so. “Years out on the road, you said. You still got that mace lying around?”

Maylee sipped idly at her second glass of gin, and the corner of her mouth tucked up. “In a box upstairs. Couldn’t get rid of it.”

“So you might go back.”