“I came for the history of it.”
“The history? You mean your books?”
“You know me well.” He polished off the last of his drink. “Thillria and Triaxe appear often in Dank’s texts. Maybe the only way to understand his writings is to go to the places he wrote about.”
“Are you sure there are no other reasons?” she said with a grin.
“There are,” he admitted. “One day, I might tell you.”
She leaned back in her tall-backed chair. For all their clanging, laughing, and shouting, the feasting folk all around her sounded like soldiers in a battle. “Loud in here,” she sighed. “Shall we take a walk?”
Saul shook his head. “Rellen said we should sleep early tonight. He hurries to make Thillria before autumn. He wants to be back home by winter.”
“Rellen is not my husband, not yet,” she reminded him. “I mean to take a walk. I would rather a friend come with me, but either way…”
“As you wish.” Saul dropped a pair of coins atop his empty platter, shouldered his battlestaff, and followed her outside.
Clad in sandals and a plain white dress, she emerged from the inn. It was an hour before dusk, but the shops on the thoroughfare hummed with activity. Ladies slid from their carriages to peruse clothiers’ wares, children darted about with wooden swords and pouches full of fresh candies in their grasps, and men haggled at storefronts over the prices of exotic wares she had never once seen. She felt entirely out of place, a mouse among mountain lions, but it made no difference. She strode into the heart of it all, Saul trailing right behind her.
“These shops, these people.” She glanced from window to window. “I could live here, I think.”
“Even without Grandwood?” Saul looked doubtful. “The forests here are dark and dangerous, Ande, and the pretty shops should not fool you. This is a hard place, and not friendly to strangers.”
Maybe so. She considered Saul’s wisdom. “Rellen said Garrett soldiered here once. Is it true?”
“Aye,” said Saul. “He’s rather famous for it. No one has recognized him yet, and maybe for the better. He does not like to talk about it.”
…or about anything else. She finished his thought in her head.
In the hour before dusk, she and Saul walked the shadowed streets of Kilnhome. The people teemed like fish in a dark river, their grey forms swimming in and out of the huge dwellings all around her. Feeling small in their midst, she flitted from storefront to storefront, gazing into candy shops, tailors’ dens, painters’ shacks, and all manner of wine cellars, mead makers, and liquor distilleries. Saul, my truest friend, trailed behind her always. She was glad for him. Like a father to me, she thought of him. The real reason he joined us is to watch over me and protect me. And I should cherish him for it.
Though she gazed upon many treasures during her wandering, without Rellen’s coin she possessed no power to purchase anything. She bargained for a fistful of candy and a tiny cup of rare, pale liquor, but the dresses she fancied cost twenty times more gold than she had ever owned, and the sculptures and paintings which had seemed so beautiful at a distance were made for a manner of wealthy person she knew she would never be. Even worse, the Kilnfolk were aloof towards her. They were hard-shouldered and high-cheeked, their expressions toward her as stark as Erewain’s slopes, and their interest in a girl from the north less than nil.
As darkness claimed Kilnhome and shadows swarmed down the streets, she and Saul came to the last shop at the end of a narrow alley. The lanterns were few in the dim, dark passage. A dozen nearby towers made the quaint little row of dwellings look like children huddling fearfully in a corner. Striding along with Saul just behind her, she halted at the shop. Its door was made of hazy brown glass, and its tilted, weather-worn sign read, The Shelves of Wkhzl.
“What is this?” she wondered at the strange name.
“We should go back,” advised Saul. “Rellen will worry for you.”
Good. Let him, she wanted to say. “Will you wait outside for me?” She showed Saul one her smiles, the kind he cannot resist.
“Aye, I suppose.” He leaned on his battlestaff, looking weary. “But be swift, will you?”
“I promise.”
It seemed to her all the shops of Kilnhome stayed open late into the night. The Shelves was no different. She slipped through the door, strode down a candlelit corridor, and emerged into a low-ceilinged chamber. The room was hazy, the smell of incense permeating her nose. She crept into it with a sense of wonder, for every ledge on every wall was stuffed with tomes, and every bookshelf lining the room’s heart piled high with odds and ends. She thought it a queer place, disorganized and dingy compared to the other shops, but she decided she liked it. Other than the books, she glimpsed strange statuettes of manlike figures, glass blown into the shapes of skeletons, jars filled with syrupy-looking liquids, and a rather unusual assortment of knives. Other patrons were inside, old men here and there, all of them murmuring in hushed tones as though the store were a secret place not to be intruded upon. What is this place? She asked herself. Good thing Saul stayed outside. He would see these books and never want to leave.
Quaking with curiosity, she glided into the center of the room, where sat shelves lined with hundreds of bizarre knickknacks. None of Kilnhome’s finer arts awaited her. These things are cruder, she thought. And more interesting.
As she inspected an onyx figurine of an eyeless man, she sensed someone approaching her from behind.
“May I help you?” a man questioned her.
Startled, she spun about. Her accoster was shorter than she, with grey wisps of hair hanging like cobwebs from his shriveled scalp. The oldest man I have ever seen, she thought. “Um, maybe,” she stammered. “I do not know. I might be lost.”
The old man held out a wrinkled hand, touching her forearm. His fingers were cold as icicles, and his fingernails yellow and twisted. “Perhaps you are in luck,” he said. “I am Wkhzl. This is my shop.”
“Your name.” She tried not to recoil. “I regret I cannot pronounce it. Your store is rather…interesting.”
The ancient man smiled a toothless smile. It was a rather hideous expression, his splotchy grey skin stretching like parchment over his too-sharp cheek bones. “Wkhzl,” he said again. “And thank you, my sweet. It is rare to see a new face here, or so I hear.”
She looked the old creature deep in his milky green eyes and assumed he was blind, or near as much. “You hear?” she said. “But you do not see?”
“My eyes work plenty well, m’lass. What I mean to say is; though this is my store, I seldom visit. I have not been here in years, you see. And after tonight I may never come again.”
“Oh.” She felt foolish.
“So if you need anything, please…” He waved his bony hand, nearly grazing her bodice with his fingernails. “You need but ask.”
Wkhzl, whoever he is, made her uncomfortable. She shied from him, weaving her way around a statue-riddled shelf until he fell out of sight. She felt his other patrons watching her, their hard gazes trailing her every movement as thought they were spies and she a burglar. Is everyone is Kilnhome so odd? She wondered. Maybe Saul was right. A bath, a feather bed, and a quiet night of sleep will do me well.
She slid down one aisle, then another. The clouds of incense smoke drifted in her path like spiders’ webs. She glimpsed the door to the street through the haze, though it seemed somehow farther away than it should have been. Like the breeze, she walked toward it, but in her haste clipped a trinket with her elbow and watched it fall to the floor. Perfect, she cursed her luck. I broke something. Now I will have to pay with coin I do not have.
Lying in a cloud of dust before her toes, she saw the thing she had toppled. What is this? She knelt. A dagger? Not broken? Thank goodness. She closed her fingers around its hilt and lifted it to her chin. The dagger was triple-tined, each black blade a third as long as her forearm, and each tine as dull as a dessert knife. The sliver of smoky steel seemed ou
t of place among the other knives on Wkhzl’s shelves. How she had managed to knock it off its perch, she could not have said. Like it wanted me to find it.
Drawing a deep breath, she clutched the strange, many-tined blade close and wandered the aisles until she found Wkhzl. The old man sat alone at a table in a corner, poring over a thousand-paged book. On the opposite side of the room I expected him to be.
“I think I want this,” she declared. “How much?”
He lifted his gaze to hers. The candles on his table seemed to shiver. He took the blade and turned it in his grasp, crinkling his gaze at the etchings running lengthwise up the three tines.
“You want this?” He seemed to doubt her.
“Yes. A woman must protect herself, even in Kilnhome. How much for it?”
“Why this one?”
“It will not matter to you,” she said. “I had a dagger once, but I lost it in a place far worse than Kilnhome.”
Wkhzl rose from his chair. She turned her nose at his scent, which was moldy despite all the incense. She felt the urge to run from his store and never look back, but forced herself to stand her ground.
“Kilnhome is quite unpleasant, no?” He fondled the dagger, staring at its three blades, and at me.
“It is not so bad,” she replied. “Our inn is clean. The stores are well-stocked. Everyone looks well-fed.”
“Are these important qualities?” He lowered the blade and raised one bushy eyebrow.
“Yes. I think. About the knife…”
He strode past her and toward a table in the room’s far corner. “A pile of men ten-thousand tall,” he remarked as he walked. “Towers who wish to rival the mountains. Pretty lasses like you prowling the streets, vain as Mother Moon. Ah, Kilnhome.”
“What are you saying?” She wandered after him.
Wkhzl took the dagger to his far table, a refuge of ink wells, shuffled papers, and spilled coins. “Tell me, mistress, for what reason did you think to come to my store? Few come here who do not know me, and I see from your stock that you are not from Triaxe.”
“I went to many stores tonight. Yours was the last in line.”
“I see,” he said, wrapping the blade in a bundle of dark cloth. “Odd that you should take interest in this, rarest of all my knives.”
“You never said how much you wanted for it.”
“For you, my sweet, it has no price.”
More flattery. She rolled her eyes. “Perhaps I should go.”
“You should, but not without the dagger.” He laid the bundle in her hands. “Get away from Kilnhome, my sweet. Go far from all these cold, cruel men. Keep the blade close. You have the look of someone who might need it.”
The old man made less and less sense. She looked for his other patrons to see if they were still watching, but they were gone. Only she and Wkhzl remained.
“Take it?” She regarded the black bundle in her hands.
“Take it.” He waved her toward the door. “Consider it a gift.”
She bit her lip, afraid that to take the knife would be akin to stealing it. But I found it, she thought. Or it found me. I will show it to Saul. He will know what to make of it. She backed away toward the door, grasping the bundle close to her breast. “Goodbye then.” Her gaze never left poor, hunching Wkhzl. “Thank you, I think.”
That evening, as most of Kilnhome slumbered, she drew a bath in a quiet chamber at the rear of the inn. Saul was off to sleep, the rest of her companions the same, and so she claimed the night for herself. Her dagger lay in the bottom of her satchel, where she hoped to forget it. In the warm, candlelit bath chamber, she stripped off her clothes, tossed them into an heap on the floor, and sank into a piping hot tub. I need this, she knew. The Kilnfolk; they probably disliked me for my stink.
She lathered herself in soap and used a stiff brush to work every speck of dirt from her skin. After scrubbing, she massaged herself with scented oils, their aromas like flowers, candies, and rain. Soaking in the tub for nearly an hour, she savored it long after the water cooled, humming children’s songs to herself, closing her eyes and pretending she was bathing in the sea. Her chin and knees bobbed above the surface, while she played her fingers through the fading soap bubbles, making shapes in the swirling oil. She might have slept, for all that the water soothed her, but her mind wandered to things far more interesting than sleep.
I have been cold, she decided at length. To my poor Rellen, I have not been as good as he deserves. I should be a constant woman, not this fickle creature I have become. His father, the war, my voices. None of what happened is his fault. I must love him harder, for he deserves it. And I will start tonight.
Her mind was made. She emerged from the tub, slipped into her nightclothes, and pattered out of the bath chamber. She made no sound as she sneaked through the inn. The two maids toiling in the common room did not see her, and the drunken man staggering down the stairs paused when she breezed past him as though she were wind, not a woman. Saul had told her where Rellen’s room was, and she crept to it like a mouse, striding up four flights of shadowed stairs. Outside, rain began to thrash the streets and batter the windows, but not so loud as to drown her heartbeat, which propelled her blood like fire through her veins.
He will see, she thought as she glided into the fourth floor hallway. I will rekindle his fire. Tonight the mountain between us will move and everything will be right again.
She tugged at the doorknob to Rellen’s room. It creaked open, and she glided within, as fluid as the wind. Inside, the darkness was complete. Every window was shuttered, every lantern long ago put out.
“Rellen,” she whispered, but earned no reply save the softest snore.
She drew closer to his bed, which lay in the middle of the room. Her fingers found its edge, but before she moved any closer, she set her satchel down and stripped off her waifish gown. Like a sliver of shadow, she climbed naked onto the bed, soundless, hardly disturbing the crumpled sheets Rellen had kicked aside. She loomed over him, imbibing his breath, brushing her lips against his.
“Rellen,” she purred. “Wake up.”
He shifted. Slow to wake, he tried to sit up, but she held him down, straddling him and pushing his shoulders into the mattress.
“Ande?” he mumbled. “So late. The storm will pass. Sleep now. Long trip tomorrow.”
She pressed a finger to his lips. “No, no sleep, not until we are through. First, I must apologize.”
“Apologize?” His eyes were half-closed. “For what?”
“For the way I am.” She lowered her lips to his ear. “For the way I have been. I took my new life for granted. I looked lightly upon your troubles, and did not ease them when I could. I lost myself in my mind and in the memories of Furyon. Forgive me, my love. I never meant to put this ocean between us.”
“Do not be sorry. Just sleep. We will talk tomorrow if you like.”
“No. No sleep,” she whispered. “I will not be cold any longer. You and I must be as we were before.”
There were no more words. She took dominion of his body, and he ceased to resist. Effortless, as hot and graceful as fire, she moved against him, and her body became one with his. The steam from their breaths fogged the windows, their sweat dampening the sheets. No sounds broke the night save his moans, her coos, and the thrashing of the storm against the windows. Her body sang with pleasure, as did his. All at once, she remembered what it felt like to love, to be loved, and to make love.
Afterward, she lay beside him, her skin slicked with sweat, her body sore from his roughness. “Sleep now.” She stroked his hair until he faded back to sleep. “Sleep, my love. When you wake, remember this.”
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