“Get you something?” A nervous voice brought her back to herself. The tavern kid, a bunch of empty mugs dangling from his fingers.
“A couple of those,” she said, pointing to the mugs. “And whatever everybody else is eating? Three of that.” She caught Brand’s attention, raising her brows at him. He gestured back. “Let Brand know, and I’ll pay up tomorrow.” She patted her bum leg.
“Uh, sure.”
While he was gone, she centered Ten Links in the Chain before her and sighed deeply. It felt like giving in to even consider reading it. A tacit admission that she was now a different sort of person. Weak. Soft. Sleepy.
Someone who idled and studied, rather than fought and won.
She flipped to the first page. The chapter was titled “IN WHICH I DISMEMBER A MAN.” Viv thought of Fern’s knowing gaze and huffed a laugh. With reluctant interest, she began to read.
When I first tell you that I was wrongfully imprisoned, you may have some sympathy. But when I also relay even a few of the dire things I’ve done, your sympathy will, perhaps, become strained beyond its limit. I can only ask that you hear me out, dear reader. Indeed, because I cut the man’s head off and then his legs and his arms and stuffed them into three barrels of brine to survive the voyage, I may seem a monster. But by the end of my tale, I think you may again consider me worthy of your regard.
Besides.
He was a bastard.
Viv continued reading after her drinks and food arrived. She chewed and sipped absently, turning page after page, and was surprised when she noticed all three bowls were empty, her mugs drained. She didn’t even look up when the kid took them away.
The glow in The Perch dimmed, her corner untouched by the blast of light and heat from the hearth across the room, so she asked for a lantern to read by. The kid obliged, and despite the uncomfortable chair and the ache in her leg and the backwater in which she’d been abandoned, she was absorbed.
She was transported.
She was elsewhere.
4
That night, Viv dropped the wooden shutter in her room against the rising wind and sheeting rain. Striking a sulfur match, she lit the lamp, then shuffled the mattress around so she could sit on it while leaning against the bedframe. Not terribly comfortable, but the low boom of blood in her leg made that small by comparison.
Viv read until the wee hours, until she couldn’t keep her eyes open and her jaw creaked in an enormous yawn. Then she lay with the book facedown and open across her chest as the sounds of the storm crossed over the boundaries of sleep and colonized her dreams. Swords flashed on the foredeck of a frigate lashed with rain under a bruised sky. The keening of the wind twinned in her slumber, and Viv voyaged through seas unknown.
* * *
When Viv navigated to the ground floor of The Perch the following morning, the storm had blown itself out into a miserable drizzle. Raindrops murmured on the shingled awning, and through the open door, runoff pitted the sand below the eaves.
She’d bound the butt of her crutch in the remains of the wool shirt she’d ruined to bandage her wound in the woods. It was considerably more comfortable now, though it would take a day or two for the raw flesh under her arm to forgive her.
Thinking of the looks she’d gotten, she’d left the saber behind, though it chafed her to do so.
A scattering of folks breakfasted at a few of the tables, and Brand must have been in the back. Viv mounted one of the stools and realigned its neighbor under her foot again. She slid her book onto the counter and found her place on page 196.
Madger had just infiltrated the island fortress of General Dammerlight with her crew of down-and-outers, and if Viv could’ve read through the prior night, she would’ve. Her subsequent dreams had been vivid fragments of past scenes and imagined futures, and she’d never experienced anything quite like them. It might’ve been the wound prodding her sleeping mind, but she awoke itching to recapture the light and fury of it all.
“Been to Thistleburr then?”
She startled, already absorbed after only a couple of pages. Brand passed her with a few empty plates.
“Oh. Yeah.” She glanced out the door at the rain. “Something to do indoors, I guess.”
“Looks like you should’ve gotten two.” He indicated the slim number of pages remaining. “Always dishes to do when you get bored, though.” A half-grin.
“That reminds me.” She fished a handful of copper bits from her wallet. “For yesterday, and some breakfast again, if I can get it.”
Brand nodded and disappeared into the kitchen once more.
When he returned with a plateful of fried sausages, buttered grits, and peppered eggs, Viv marked her page and closed the book. As he scooped her coins off the bar, she pulled the plate closer and asked, “So, that tapenti Gatewarden … ?”
Brand laughed. “Met Iridia, did you? Eight hells, I would’ve paid to see that stare-off.”
Viv blinked at him.
“Sometimes you spy a couple of dogs on either side of a road before they see each other, and you know the teeth are going to come out. I would’ve said the same about you two. Iridia’s a hard lady and wants to make sure you know it. In her mind, it saves trouble later.” He shrugged. “Can’t say it doesn’t work. And I guess she barked loudest, since you’re sitting here this morning.”
She frowned and put down her fork, bite uneaten.
“It’s a compliment. She’s the head Gatewarden around here. If you’d been fool enough to press her, you would’ve spent a lot harder night. In a cell, I figure. Means you’ve got some sense, that’s all.” He patted her considerable forearm. “Besides, in a dogfight? I’d put my copper on the one who hasn’t been stabbed in the leg yet.” He chuckled and strode off, wiping his hands on his apron.
Viv tried to let that roll off her, with limited success, but the hot food helped. The really excellent hot food. If there was a bright side to forced convalescence, it was eating something besides cold, dry trail rations.
Even thinking that put her in mind of Rackam and all the rest, forging northward without her. The fried sausages were more than fine, but she would’ve traded them for a blanket on the cold ground where she really belonged.
* * *
Brand was right. She should’ve gotten two books. Viv moved to the table she’d claimed the night before and settled in to finish Ten Links in the Chain. Madger’s long-delayed revenge, the heartbreaking betrayal of Four Fingers Legann, Dammerlight’s poignant end, even after the hells he put her through. Viv kept wishing she had a bowl of nuts to chew through.
When she closed the book at last, running her fingers over the red cover, the drizzle still hadn’t abated.
“Well, Fern, don’t suppose I’m going to show today. I’ll just have to make it up to you,” she said. She imagined the rattkin charging through the door, fur soaked flat and cursing her out in that high, sweet voice of hers. That dredged up a grin.
Viv was turning back to read the first chapter over, just to keep the taste alive, when someone did charge through the door.
Rain slicked off his oiled cloak as he flapped it with one arm and withdrew a big, black leather bag. The elf tossed back his hood and flicked errant drops from his valise in exasperation. A pair of spectacles dangled on a cord around his neck, which was odd, since elves rarely needed them. Even Viv knew that.