underneath his coat. He threw the pack onto his shoulders, then took off into the woods above the shoreline without a word. Glenn watched him go, then, seeing no choice, followed, her white breath puffing out before her. Soon, the rush of the water faded and the trees thinned, giving way to a long empty field that stretched to the horizon. Glenn hoped they’d at least be within sight of a town or a road, but there was nothing but twilight-shadowed hills everywhere she looked. It was all so alien. So empty.
“That way.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “It just … seems familiar.”
“Kevin, you’ve never — ” But then Glenn understood. Cort. He was saying Cort had been here before.
They set off. He moved quickly, barely pausing to examine the rough terrain as he led them through the woods and out onto a road that was pitted with what Glenn took to be wagon tracks. Glenn’s exhaustion was a heavy fog that wrapped around her body, dragging her down. Her legs ached. Her back was a nest of burrs and knots.
Far worse than the pain, though, was Kevin’s silence. She never thought she’d miss his babble but now the absence of it haunted her, as did the way his hand rose to his chest over and over to steady whatever it was Opal had given him. As they passed pilgrims’ waymarkers Glenn let her fingers brush against them, wondering if praying to Kirzal could make Kevin be Kevin again.
Hours later they stopped in the middle of the road, Kevin
squinting off into the darkness.
“What?”
Kevin pointed straight ahead. There, peeking out from the trees, ghostly yellow lights danced just above the ground. Glenn thought back to the man and the swan woman in the forest and wondered what the Magisterium might bring them next.
Slowly the lights resolved into small yellow points. Candlelight in windows. It was a town, ten or fifteen small buildings arranged on either side of the main road. Most of the structures were low shacks, little more than dark boxes barely lit from the inside. There was one larger building, the only two-story building in the town, and it sprawled the width of three or four of the other shacks. Firelight and candlelight poured out of it, and Glenn thought she could also hear the barest trace of music.
“An inn?”
Glenn shrugged and peered into the town, trying as hard as she could to not see the shapes of giants and ogres in the plain lines of the houses.
“Give it a try?”
Glenn was pretty sure she couldn’t walk another step. It was fully night now and the temperature still seemed to be dropping. Glenn nodded wearily and started to press on, but Kevin took her hand and pulled her back down.
“I need you to do something for me first. Before we go.”
“What?”
Kevin reached into Aamon’s bag and pulled out a dark blade with a scarred wooden handle. Glenn started, but Kevin flipped the knife around so the handle faced Glenn, the tip of the blade pointing at his own heart.
“What do you want me to do with that?” Glenn asked.
Kevin’s smile briefly returned as he pushed his fingers through his green mane.
“Think it’s time for a trim,” he said.
As they walked out of the woods and into the town, Glenn
couldn’t stop looking over at Kevin. He was right — his green hair would have drawn far too much attention to them. But still, Glenn hated it. Almost more than his silence, turning to her side and seeing the stubbly gleam of his nearly bald head, made Glenn feel like she was walking with a stranger.
As they approached the larger building toward the end of town, the thin strains of music drifting out of its windows started to become clear. A flute, Glenn thought. Maybe a violin too? Whatever they were, they were being played fast and cheerful, lightening something in her as they stepped up onto a small porch and neared the door.
“There’s money in there, right?”
Kevin was looking at the pack that was now over Glenn’s
shoulder.
“Yeah,” Glenn said. “I think.” She slipped off the pack and dug through it until she came up with the small purse. She opened it and produced a handful of metal coins of various sizes. Kevin snatched them away and reached for the door.
A welcome blast of light and heat from a large stone hearth hit them as soon as they opened it. The room was smaller than Glenn would have guessed, and packed tight with about ten rough wooden tables, each of them surrounded by four or five men and women leaning over tankards and pipes and games of cards. The men were dressed in well-worn but sturdy-looking clothes — farmers or hunters maybe — and were big-boned and bearded, with wide shoulders and hands like dinner plates. Daggers hung from their belts.
The air reeked of smoke and food and unwashed bodies. The
music was coming from the far corner where a woman, heavyset and rosy faced, sat on a stool blowing into a wooden flute. Beside her stood an exceedingly thin man with long gray hair who drew a bow across an old violin, quick and precise. The music soared and reeled around them, and after the quiet hours of their hike Glenn became distinctly uneasy.
She turned to Kevin, reaching for his sleeve — maybe staying outside wasn’t so crazy after all — when someone shouted from the back of the room.
“Close the door! You want to kill us all?!”
It was followed by gales of drunken laughter. Glenn took a step back and the door slammed shut behind her. She expected to see the same fear that she felt on Kevin’s face, but he was already striding deeper into the room toward the bar, searching through the faces as he went.
Glenn’s head spun, overwhelmed, as she made her way through the crowds. Before she knew it, they were standing near a bearish-looking man with red hair and an enormous handlebar mustache, pouring something frothy and amber into two metal tankards from a ceramic pitcher.
“Excuse me,” Kevin called. “Is this Armstrong?”
The bartender wiped up a spill. “I’ve got one room,” he said. “It’s thirty-five. Comes with dinner. Kappie stew and beet root. You have money?”
Kevin fumbled with the coins, dropping a spread onto the bar.
The barman picked through them, pocketed some, and pushed a few coins back.
“Room’s upstairs at the end of the hall.” He raised his eyebrows over to their left. “Table’s over there. Maggie will bring you something.”
Glenn stepped toward the table but then realized that Kevin was still at the bar with his hands on the shoddy wood, the barman looking down at him.
What is he doing?
“You need something else?” the barman asked.
Kevin seemed eager to say something, but when he saw Glenn
was still standing behind him, he quickly said no, and fled.
“What was that?” Glenn asked.
“Nothing,” he said, taking her arm and pushing her along. “Come on.”
Kevin dropped the pack against the wall and fell into a wooden chair at the table. Glenn sat across from him. Sitting was a miracle.
And it was such a relief to be out of the cold with the promise of food on the way that her spirits buoyed despite Kevin’s strange behavior.
Moments later a barmaid dropped two plates and two of the metal tankards down in front of them and scuttled off. The plate was covered with a slop of reddish brown, a stew composed of thick-cut potatoes, carrots, and what Glenn was pretty sure were hunks of meat. She realized how hungry she was as the stew’s smoky tang wafted up to her, but a sick lump weighed in her stomach at the thought of it.
“What’s the matter?” Kevin asked.
“There’s … meat in here.”
Kevin pushed his spoon through the stew. “So?”
Glenn stared across the table. Land in the Colloquium was at such a premium that raising animals for meat was almost impossible.
“I’ve never eaten meat before,” she said. “And neither have you.”
Kevin dug into the mess on his plate and lifted a dripping
spoonful. Glenn winced as he shoved the food into his mouth and chewed. His eyebrows lowered, puzzled, as his jaws worked at it.