Bookshops & Bonedust (Legends & Lattes, #0)(5)
“Highlark?”
“The surgeon.”
“Oh,” she replied with a wince. Well, that wasn’t ideal.
“Pitts,” he said, indicating himself. Then he ducked his head, hitched the traces higher, and tugged the wagon into motion. He didn’t wait for her to offer her own name.
She found that vaguely annoying. “Viv!” she hollered after him. He just nodded without looking back.
“Eight hells,” said Viv. “Great town. I can see why everybody stays.”
She struggled to her feet. Gathering her crutch and saber, she went to the end of the boardwalk, retreating out of sight into a valley between two dunes.
She couldn’t see the water, the wind was cut off completely, and the stillness itched at her so much that she tossed the crutch to the sand and limped to the crest of the beachward dune, hissing in pain the whole way.
The breeze up there was sweeter, and she gave her breath a minute to even out before unsheathing the saber. Viv tried to execute a couple of sword forms, keeping her weight mostly to her undamaged leg. She’d hoped to at least manage a few sets of transitions from high to low to feint, focusing on precision and upper body work, but it was a lost cause. Her leading leg shifted suddenly, and when she rocked back, the weight of the blade forced her onto the weak heel, and then she was tumbling over in a plume of sand and profanity.
Five minutes after her embarrassing flail down the dune, she stumbled back onto the main thoroughfare. Angry, thwarted, and keenly aware of the mix of sand and sweat up inside her shirt, she started the grueling trek up the hill toward The Perch. The gentle slope was more of a trial than it had any right to be, and all she had to look forward to at the end was an empty inn, an empty room, and a set of very narrow stairs.
She should’ve been shoulder to shoulder with the Ravens. She should’ve been hacking her way closer to Varine.
She should’ve been anywhere but here.
With most of her attention fixed on the sand-covered cobbles and where she’d next place the crutch, she was startled when a shadow stepped into view.
Glancing up, she found herself staring into the slitted serpent’s eyes of a tapenti. The woman wasn’t as tall as Viv—few people were—but situated upslope, Viv had to look up at her.
Or maybe it just felt that way.
She was powerfully built, the delicate patterns of her hide sculpted over muscular shoulders and legs. Her scaly hood flared along her temples and neck, salmon where the light glowed through it, and the long, rattle-like braids of her hair slithered dryly in the breeze.
The lantern of a Gatewarden gleamed where it hung at her waist opposite a longsword, and she wore a badge on her blue tunic.
The woman cocked her head in a way Viv couldn’t interpret as anything but disdainful. “A stunning display of martial prowess.” Her eyes darted beyond Viv to the crest of the dune and the site of her aborted blade practice.
Viv’s skin crawled in a hot flush, the kind that could tip from embarrassment into rage with no more than a feather’s weight. She wasn’t fool enough to let it happen, not with the local law, but she didn’t have to be polite either. “Guess there’s not much else to look at, huh?”
The tapenti smiled thinly, and her eyes narrowed. “It’s a sight I’d rather not see around my city. I like it quiet, and little girls hauling swords around promise to be noisy. I suggest you keep your steel sheathed, or better yet, back in your room. No reason you shouldn’t stay there too, in my estimation.”
Viv sputtered, “Little girl … ?”
The Gatewarden rode over her roughshod, her voice a relentless hiss. “When they dragged you in, I took one look at you and knew I’d need to watch you. Highlark certainly won’t forget your arrival anytime soon. If you cause the slightest trouble here, I won’t hesitate to toss you in a cell to ride out your convalescence until your … friends show up to take you off my hands.”
Viv could only stare in mute fury. Her hand twitched toward her saber’s hilt, but she mastered the impulse even as she saw the tapenti’s eyes follow the motion with grim amusement.
“Good day.” The woman tilted her head mockingly toward the inn. “And be careful on your way up the hill. A bad fall might extend your stay, and neither of us would want that, would we?”
Then she was gone, and Viv could only stare up the street toward The Perch and fervently long for something to stab.
If Rackam didn’t come back soon, she’d have to leave and find him herself, before she did something she might really regret.
3
Still seething from her encounter with the Gatewarden, Viv considered The Perch with a renewed lack of enthusiasm. Unable to face a tedious, lonely walk to a tedious, empty room for the rest of a tedious, pointless day, she angled for the boardwalk and the nearest occupied shop.
As she brought her crutch down in front of Thistleburr Booksellers, there was a tortured crack. She swore as the rotten wood buckled beneath the weight. Viv almost went tail over tusks for the second time in a quarter of an hour but managed to hike the crutch up before it went all the way through.
She stared at the half-disintegrated plank. “Shit.”
With adrenaline still sizzling up her arms from the near miss, she pushed open the door and staggered into the dim light of the bookshop.