Oh gods and saints, she thought, rolling over and burying her face in the pillow. Oh. Let them only be empty bones.
“I never could sleep the night before a battle,” said Fenris.
Marra turned to face him, even though she couldn’t see. “Is this going to be a battle?”
“I don’t have the slightest idea what to expect. It might be. Or maybe we’ll just wander around in the dark for a while and the dust-wife will wave her hands and it will all be over.”
Marra shook her head, forgetting he couldn’t see her in the dark. “I doubt it. Whenever I go anywhere with her, something terrible and magical happens and then I wish it hadn’t.”
“I had noticed something of the sort, yes.”
“I suppose that’s still better than a battle.”
“Mm.” She could picture his expression, the way his lips would be twisting at one corner as he considered this. “Battles are terrible, but they’re also comprehensible. You know what you’re doing. Well … all right, that’s not entirely true. You know what you’re supposed to be doing. There’s a lot of yelling and hitting things and then you look up and it’s over. But once you’ve been through a few of them, you know more or less how things go. Magic, though … I don’t know how it’s supposed to work or why.”
Fenris paused for so long that Marra wondered if he had fallen asleep. Then he said, “I was never so frightened as when we were leaving the goblin market. If you had not led me out, I would still be hiding in a corner there, hoping that everything would go away.”
Marra blinked up at the darkness. “I didn’t lead you out. We went together. I leaned on you for half of it.”
He chuckled softly. “That’s not how I remember it. I remember you holding my arm. You were very calm and very brave, even though you’d just had someone yank your tooth out.”
The Toothdancer. Marra shuddered. “I didn’t feel calm or brave.”
“You hid it well.”
It was easier to talk in the dark, somehow. Marra took a deep breath. “I don’t feel brave now. I feel frustrated. I want to run in and drag Kania away from that monster, but I can’t. If you hadn’t found the way into the tombs tonight, I would probably have done something foolish.”
“So long as you take me with you.”
“I’d rather you didn’t get killed for my foolishness.”
“I have been resigned to dying for a long time.”
“Fenris…”
“No, no, don’t sound stricken. What else am I good for now? You gave me something useful to do with my death. I will be grateful forever.”
“No dying,” said Marra angrily. “I don’t want you to die! I want you to live to a ripe, old age so that I can say, ‘Hey, Fenris, remember the time we went into a horrible catacomb and the dust-wife said something cryptic and Agnes waved a baby chicken at us,’ and you say, ‘Of course I remember,’ and I don’t have to try to explain to someone who wasn’t there.”
The silence from the other side of the room was suddenly deeper and more textured. Marra bit her lip. “Besides,” she said, after a moment, “someone has to chop all my firewood. I’ve gotten spoiled.”
“Hmm.”
She rolled over again. She could not seem to get comfortable.
If I ask, he’ll think I’m propositioning him.
… Am I?
No. Definitely not. Not while all this is going on. It’ll just make things terrible and complicated, and they’re already terrible and complicated enough.
I might never get another chance.
But if I do and it’s awkward and weird, then we’ll probably die with things being awkward and weird and I cannot handle that.
Marra thumped the pillow and then gave up. “Fenris?”
“Yes?”
“I don’t know how to ask this without giving you completely the wrong idea.”
“All right?”
“Do you remember on the road, when we slept back-to-back?”
He did not answer, but she heard the bed creak, and then the indignant snuffle of Bonedog being nudged out of the way. Her own bed sagged as Fenris sat on the edge of it. Marra scooted up against the wall to give him room.
His back was as solid and warm as she remembered. She sighed and felt something unclench, although whether it was in her jaw or her gut or her soul, she couldn’t say.
“You’re a saint,” she mumbled, tugging the blanket up around her shoulder.