We decide to make camp in the courtyard of the Lost Library. There is talk of doing so inside, but we both fear the effect of too much human interaction on the ancient books, and we don't want to leave the horses alone outside with the creature, just in case. On top of that, we are both terrified of what might happen if we had to light a fire around all that paper. Accidents do happen.
The courtyard is sheltered from the wind, and we don't mind sleeping outside again. Also, we seem to have acquired a guardian of our own. The creature is currently pacing the grounds, clearly searching for threats and reacclimatizing itself to its territory. That Pip and I, and the horses, are now apparently a part of said territory is only slightly discomforting. I do not fear its teeth any longer, but I do fear what might happen if it decides to sleep next to us and rolls over in the middle of the night.
The late afternoon sky above us is an endless ceiling of vaulted blue, and I cannot help but raise my face to the sunlight and smile at the scent of honest vegetation and book-dust. I stretch my shoulders back, and they make a pleasant pop as I work out the kinks of weeks in the saddle and an afternoon of sneaking about, slope-shouldered and cautious.
The water in the fountain is clean, still bubbling up from some underground well after all these centuries. We refill our drinking skins and the travel pot we use for campfire-tea, and then I decide to be the first to brave the brisk temperature to wash away the travel grime. The fountain is a far cry from the warm bath for which I have been yearning, though. I seem to be spending every blasted day of this quest lusting for a good shave and a hot bath. It's starting to get farcical.
Pip is sitting on the edge of the fountain as I bathe, turning the vellum over and over in her hands.
Something has been niggling at me since our encounter in the Library, and instead of tumbling it about in my head, I finally ask: "What did you mean, that you know what it feels like to be tied down? To be a slave?"
Pip jerks back from me so quickly, eyes so wide, that I wonder if something has bitten her. Surely my words couldn't have been that shocking?
"Nothing," she lies, but it is a knee-jerk reflex. She catches herself in it and sighs, her whole posture deflating. "I mean, you know that I... "
I hadn't wanted to bring it up, especially since it's been so long since Pip has had a fit, but I desire clarification, and so I say, slowly, "The Viceroy?"
Pip goes stiff all over, eyes tight and the skin around them translucent with fatigue. "Yes," she grinds out between clenched teeth.
Then she cries out. She drops the parchment and jams the heels of her hands against her temples, fingers balled into fists.
"No, no," she moans, staggering back a step.
I am up and partway out of the fountain before she holds out her hands to halt me.
"I'm fine," she wheezes. "I'm fine. Just... stay there. Over there. For a minute. Please."
I stand in the fountain, my nudity forgotten, waiting, goose bumps crawling up my legs, clenching my thighs. Eventually, Pip seems to regain control of herself, shaking out her limbs and rolling her head back. There is a pop loud enough that even I can hear it, and then she sighs, long and drawn out and weary. I feel the tension flow out of her frame from within my own.
Like a slowly unfolding marionette, she reaches down and retrieves the scroll, then checks it over for damage. It's fine. She turns it over a few more times, as if hoping that its fall has jostled some more information from it.
With a grunt of frustration, she goes to her saddlebags and withdraws a pot of ink and a travel quill. Decisively, she draws a stroke across the top of the scroll. She watches it for a long moment, and then draws back, eyes wide.
"Pip?" I call, galvanized into stepping out of the water. I pick up the towel I left on the ledge and scrub at my skin. "What's wrong?"
"I figured out why it's called the Parchment that Never Fills." She holds it up to me. It is blank. She draws another line down the center of the scroll, deliberately showy. Slowly, the ink is absorbed into the vellum, like water being drawn up into a sponge.
"Friggin' useless!" Pip says. "This quest makes no sense, Forsyth. All this stuff, and I don't know what we're supposed to use it for. Maybe I didn't do the chart right."
She sits on her bedroll and digs out her Excel, spreading it out to its full length on the ground. I pull on my trousers and move to stand next to her, careful not to drip on the chart.
"I was so sure I had it all figured out," she says, face in her hands.
I crouch down and lay a soft kiss on her cheek. "You are clever, Pip. We read Bevel's scrolls together; we marked the map together. I don't think we're wrong."
"Then why all this?" Pip says, throwing out her hands in frustration. "I can't for the life of me figure out what we're supposed to do with a bit of jewelry, a cup that's always filled with useless water, and a piece of vellum that won't hold on to any words!" She deliberately drops a spot of ink right into the center of the vellum, savage, and it too is sucked down into the page.
"That's why they are riddles," I say. "Besides, we don't have all the objects yet. There's one left to collect, the knife, and then we have to go to the Eyrie. Maybe it will become clear when we get there."
"I hope so," Pip mutters.
"It's just not clear yet, that's all. It is no reason to fret." I sit beside her and pull her into my arms, trying to soothe, but she shoves me away, prickly and irritable.
"I always have it figured out by now!" she snaps. "I always guess the ending right after Station Four!"
"But it is different when you're reading it, isn't it? Different from being right in the middle?" I ask. "Does Reed give you hints? Does he foreshadow or give you the villain's point of view?"
Pip deflates and curls into my chest, ear pressed against my heartbeat. The summer sun is comfortable, now that I am without a shirt and refreshed, and Pip is small and wonderful in my embrace. I press my knuckles into the small of her back, massaging the place where the worst of her tension sits, digging in around the curlicues of scar tissue.
"I hate this," she gasps, only partially in relieved pain. "I hate not knowing what's going to happen next. I hate not being able to figure it out. I hate feeling like I'm an idiot. It's all hateful."
"You're not an idiot," I soothe, curling and flexing my fingers against the soft welts of her ribs.
"I am. I'm so book smart, but I can't figure out real life. Even this," she says, one of her fists knotting around my belt, possessive, as if she fears I will dissolve into mist if she lets go. "I can't figure out how this happened."
"You kissed me," I remind her, and, yes, my voice is a bit smug, but I feel that I deserve it. "Believe me, if you are unsure of how or why we have become... this, as you put it, then do understand that I am twice as confused but half as likely to question my good fortune."
"Good fortune?" she asks, one fingertip starting to circle my nipple.
"Unf," I say, trying to keep my mind on the thread of our conversation. "Ah. No one has ever chosen Forsyth Turn before."
Pip looks up at me, startled. "No one has ever chosen Lucy Piper before, either. Not to date. Not to keep."
"I'll keep you," I say. Her skin is so soft, so smooth against the palms of my hands, her cheeks warm to my touch and flushed, eyes wide and embarrassed and in awe. "I'll keep you for as long as you'll let me."
I fear it's too much to say, to admit. But then she licks her way into my mouth, chasing the confession to the soft velvet wall of my cheek, trying to pin it down to taste, to feel. My skin tightens all over and I stop massaging, pressing my palm against her back instead and running it up the ridges, shivering at the sensation. Pip moans loud against my mouth, bites at my lips, but doesn't speed us along.
I choke back an oath at the way she swings one thigh over my lap and rolls her hips, delicious and hot.
"One of these days, I'm gonna get you to swear in bed," she breathes into me.
"Find us a bed, and I will comply."
I pass my hand across her scars again, sweeping back and forth, reveling in the way that Pip squirms and ducks away from my touch, and then presses herself back into it like a particularly finicky cat: not sure if she should enjoy the sensation or not, but clearly desperate for the experience of it all the same.
The kiss is soft, and slow. I tuck her upper lip between mine, and then her bottom lip, gentle, gentle. Her tongue is soft, tentative in a way I find endearingly girlish. Pip's eyes slide closed, her head falls back to give me all the access I could want, a low, soft moan fluttering up out of her throat.
I peel her out of her clothing slowly, and Pip laughs in delight when I raise a naughty eyebrow and pitch each and every garment over my shoulder and into the fountain. When we make love, it is languid, careful, but not at all lazy. Pip's eyes, flushed emerald with lust, never leave mine. Please, please, she mouths into my skin. The lines on her forehead scream, the nails she digs into my shoulder blades beg, and her breath on my skin demands: Please love me.
I love you, I say back with the flick of my thumb, with the press of my palms, with the snap of my hips. Pip lays back and tangles her fingers in my wet hair, brings my mouth to her sex, teaches me the art of kissing a woman's entrance as I would kiss her lips, bringing her pleasure with my tongue and tasting the results of my successes.
And when I drive her to climax, she wriggles and writhes and pants, hips jumping up impatiently to meet mine before she settles back against the bedroll with a long, low moan of sinful satisfaction. The look of genuine gratitude and admiration in her eyes sends me over, and I lock my arms around her, hold her still, hold her to me, and she pets my shoulders, my neck, kisses my ear, tangles her fingers in the sweaty curls at the nape of my neck, all the while murmuring: "Yes, yes, oh, good boy, Forsyth, yes. I've got you, bao bei. I'm here. Let go. Go on."
When I am able to move again, when my vision has recovered from being washed white and my lungs have remembered to breathe, I lay my head down on the pillow of her breasts, ear pressed against her racing heartbeat. I breathe in the reek of sweat, and sex, and us.
"You've gotten good at this," she says.
"Good teacher," I admit.
"God, you're wonderful," Pip moans, stiffening and shivering a little as I slide out of her, growing soft and too sensitive to stay joined. And wasn't that a surprise when I first experienced it. "How did I get so lucky?"
"How did I?" I say, kissing the nipple beside my mouth because I can't not, because Pip is magnetic and I want to be touching her all the time, for the rest of my life.
I should get up and fetch my towel to clean us up. The bedroll will be stained, but I don't care. By the Writer, I profoundly do not care. I just want to roll her up in my embrace and stay where we are forever, content as a pair of cats in a puddle of butter yellow sunlight.
"And I just got clean, too."
"The fountain isn't going anywhere. Nap now." Pip yawns, and throws one of her arms around my shoulders in return.
My body seems to agree, for I yawn, and my eyelids droop before I can make any conscious decision to follow Pip into sleep. I cannot help the goofy grin that seems to have taken up permanent residence in the area of my mouth. It had been wonderful.
And it had felt a little bit like saying goodbye.
❧✍❧
The nap extends into the evening, and we wake in full dark only long enough to light a fire, drink some water, and feed the horses before we collapse back into one another like magnets. Then we tumble back into sleep.
A sense of unreality pervades the following morning. For a long moment, I am not certain that I have actually woken up. Mist lays heavily on the ground, and the creature has indeed snuggled close to us in the night. Its fur is clean and warm, and its lion-like tail is curled around us protectively. Carefully, I extricate myself from Pip's possessive limbs, and then tuck my blanket in beside her. She squeezes it to her side immediately, accepting the substitute, and I push away the ridiculous sensation of being jealous of cloth.
Walking softly, I make my way over to where we tied up the horses, on the far side of the fountain from our campfire and the creature. Karl and Dauntless are both awake, ears pricked at the opening in the hedge, pawing the ground and snorting softly.
"What is it, gents?" I ask them, running a hand down Dauntless's nose. My shoulders are warm, and there is discomfort, a burning across the skin of my back when I extend my arms. A sunburn? Ha. If so, it is well earned.
Dauntless knickers, and I turn to look over my shoulder. All I see is mist beyond the hedgerow. Whatever has them uneasy is not something I can spot.
Reluctantly, I go and wake Pip. Whatever it is must be met seriously, and that means being prepared. She crawls back to wakefulness grudgingly, snuffling adorably into my blanket. But the moment she realizes that I am awake and tense, she is on her feet, climbing into her jerkin and belting on her sword. The afternoon sun did its work on her clothing, and it is all dry again, thankfully. The creature stirs with us, black eyes wide and alert.
Within seconds, it is on its feet as well, growling softly at the mist beyond the Library boundary, the tip of its tail flicking back and forth, the now short fur along its spine bristling.
"I don't see anything," Pip admits after a long, tensely silent moment.
"Nor I," I admit. "But there's something... "
As soon as I utter the words, the horses seem to forget their anxiety, and the creature flops down onto its stomach and begins grooming one huge paw.
"Ooo-kay," Pip says, her grip loosening on her sword. "That's not even remotely disconcerting." The sarcasm is so thick it could rival the mist. "Well, now that we're up... "
She digs around the campfire, coaxing the coals that are blanketed by protective white ash back to life, rousing them from their beds. There is more than enough deadfall by the hedgerow to feed another fire, and it feels strange to feel no anxiety when Pip stops within grabbing range of the vines to collect some up. The greenery trembles, but then the creature growls and both go still.
For the next hour, there is tea, and fire-warmed bread, and the last of the hard cheese. The creature licks the rinds from Pip's palm, and she obligingly keeps her fingers flat to avoid its teeth.
I am surprised by the affection she shows the great beast, and say so.
"He reminds me of my parents' dog," she says. "I miss the fluffy little bastard."
How is it that I can know so much about Lucy Piper, and yet know nothing?
❧✍❧
The second day on the road, the creature stops tailing us and turns back to the Lost Library. It moans in that sort of rusty machinery way that it has, and then the heavy underbrush behind us rattles with its passing. It is retreating into the forest, heading back the way we came. Pip stiffens in her saddle, and I reach out to grab her hand to keep her from turning around and beckoning the thing to follow after us.
"It's a lovely pet," I say, circling my thumb over her knuckles. "But I suspect that it is magically bound to the Library. To take it with us may be to kill it."
"I know that; the color of its coat matched the stonework. I'm not a complete tourist," Pip snaps, yanking her hand back, but the ire in her words had not been directed at me, so I let them pass unremarked upon.
I also do not remark on the fact that Pip's cheeks are wet, her eyes red.
She is very quiet for the rest of the afternoon, and instead of curling into me when we tumble into our bedrolls that night, instead of skimming her hands up under my shirt and taking me apart with her tongue, she simply presses her back against my front and tangles our ankles together, cuddling my arm miserably. I spend the evening with my mouth against the ivy leaf, my nose under her ear, breathing in her skin, and scent, and sorrow. Eventually, her breathing slows, and I assume she has dropped off to sleep.
"Why us?" I whisper against the leaf. "Why do you love my world so much that they would pick you for this?"
"Because that's the magic of being a fan," Pip whispers back. I had not realized she was still awake, or I would have kept my musings behind my teeth. She shifts against me and repositions us, tugging gently on my shoulders until I am resting atop her, pressed from knee to nose. I hold myself upright on my elbows, wary of crushing her, but Pip gathers me against her chest, pressing my cheek into the pillowy valley of her breasts. Her heartbeat is slow and sure in my ears, soothing and comforting, the sound of home. I curl and wrap my arms around her ribs, enchanted by the way they retract and expand, an even metronome of life.
"Being a fan?" I ask, watching as my breath brushes across the nipple right in front of my face, peaking it under her shirt.
"Unconditional love," Pip says. "No matter what happens, no matter what the characters do or how the author twists, no matter the surprises and the heartbreak and the joys, you love something—with all its flaws and all its diamonds. Being a fan means being devoted. It means daydreaming, and flailing with joy, and proudly showing your colors in public with pins and scarves, t-shirts and bags and costumes. It means being part of a tribe, having a place and a people to belong to. Being a fan means being obsessed, but in a good way. It means learning to love—wholeheartedly, honestly, proudly, crazily love."
"You love us?" I ask, turning my face so I can gaze up at her from under my eyelashes.
Her breath catches in her throat, her cheeks pinking and her pupils dilating. "I am a fan of The Tales of Kintyre Turn."
I smile, warmth spreading under my skin and lacing through my torso. "I love you, as well."
Pip threads one hand into the hair at the base of my neck and gently, gently uncurls me, bringing my mouth up to hers. "That's not what I meant," Pip breathes against my lips, but she doesn't explain, and I am too content with our lazy kissing to want to ask.
❧✍❧
The next week is spent on the road. We manage an inn three of the seven nights, and a farmhouse with a very loud, very generous, very prolific family on the fifth.
On the eighth morning, and well before the next blue moon, we pull our horses to a halt at the crest of a hill. A chill wind unfurls from the valley below, brushing back our hair and summoning goose bumps along my neck. I snuggle down into my robe. Pip flips up the collar of her jerkin and cinches it tight at her throat.
"This is cheery," she says.
"It's a graveyard. I'm certain that it's not meant to be cheery."
"Was it chosen to be a graveyard because it's spooky?" Pip asks. "Or did it become spooky because it's a graveyard?"
"Scholar," I accuse her warmly, and she smiles back. "The chill comes from the way the mist bottles in the valley. I suppose they chose this valley because the bodies wouldn't rot as quickly, giving them time to construct the tombs."
"You suppose?"
"A man can't know everything."
"Doesn't stop you from trying," she points out amiably.
True.
The horses prance, and Karl tosses his head, displeased with our proximity to the mouth of the valley. It is all white below, like staring into a bed of clouds, impenetrable to the eye and chilling to the soul.
"We've gotta go in there, don't we?" Pip sighs.
"Eventually, yes," I allow. "The tomb we're searching for ought to be in direct line with the rest of King Chailin's dynasty, but I don't know how far along the river that begins. We could travel alongside the valley, but then we might have to backtrack when we decide to descend into it." I point out the faint white mark of the path cut into the chalk cliffs by the millions of travelers who had decided to bypass the Valley of the Tombs rather than take the swift road through it.
"Which means starting at the beginning," Pip accepts. "Damn."
Without waiting, she nudges Karl into motion. Dauntless, unhappy at having to follow, clips up after Karl without my say-so.
The odd tip of a stone spear or helm, the top of a carved head, or the spire of some great tomb intermittently punctures the mist that rolls along the ground. They poke above the clouds like stones in a harbor, the wash of ash-gray breaking and swirling around them in a tide ever receding, yet never leaving. The air is perfumed with petrichor and dew, crushed grass and damp wool. It tastes wet and mossy.
"So, what can we expect?" Pip asks, once Dauntless has brought us up to flank her. "Info-dump me, Mr. Exposition."
Her forced cheeriness and understanding of the situation makes all the tension and worry I was harboring about the commencement of this Station lessen. It doesn't vanish entirely, though, because Pip's Excel says that this is going to be the Station where the Unexpected Twist occurs, and my mind is racing across the possibilities of lichs and poltergeists.
"This valley is no-man's-land," I explain obligingly. "It is midway between the Three Kingdoms—Hain, Gadot, and Urland. It is where each royal household buries their dead. They say it is so the great rulers can learn to make peace with one another in the afterlife, in the hopes that their descendants will somehow benefit from this knowledge."
"That makes no sense," Pip points out. "Not unless their kids, you know, commune with them afterward."
"Which I've never heard of any royal attempting," I agree. "Hmm. Possibly because they fear it will actually be successful, and then they'll be scolded."
"Nobody wants their dearly departed Daddy telling them what to do?"
I shudder once. "I certainly don't."
Pip goes quiet for a moment. "I'm sorry," she says, eventually.
"Don't be," I say. "I'm not. Had I the bravery, I might have pushed him down the stairs myself, instead of waiting for the drink to do it for him. He was a hateful man, with a horrible addiction, who spawned an equally hateful son. At least Kintyre is addicted to adventure and sex, and not the bottle."
"And what are you addicted to?" Pip asks. "Addictive personalities are sometimes hereditary."
"You," I say, trying to lighten the topic. My lungs have become a hot knot behind my sternum, and I can't seem to get enough of the cool, damp air to make them expand again. I shake my head, and water droplets from the condensed fog fly off into the gloom. I wish, suddenly, for the over-warm summer sun of the Library courtyard. I even miss the sunburn that plagued me with heat rash and blistered skin for the last few days. The lack of heat radiating from my shoulders is felt twice as keenly in the damp cold that is reaching slimy fingers under my collar.
"Books, secrets," she offers instead. My honesty seems to have made her uncomfortable, so I take the work-around.
"Secrets, yes, I suppose," I allow. "I am addicted to knowledge. An addiction that I hope, unlike with my brother and my father, will not prove fatal."
Pip bursts into peals of bright, sharp laughter that echo around the valley, slapping back at us from the slabs of marble tombs, from the water of the river that is so slow and deep that the surface is veritably still. She swallows the sound swiftly, stunned, and on guard.
I tense, but nothing seems to have heard Pip; or, if it has, it hasn't decided that her laughter was the perfect signal to attack. After the last echo fades away, I whisper, my voice perhaps too low: "What was so funny?"
It's a bit ludicrous to be whispering—if anything was going to hear us, it already has—but Pip also drops her voice and says: "Knowledge. Fatal. We're on a hero's journey because of our curiosity. So yeah, I'd say that this is a pretty dangerous addiction."
I have to concede the point. Then I ask her if she has any addictions of her own.
"Jogging," she says. "Endorphins and adrenaline and all those hormones that make you feel incredible after sex. Books. Stories. Academic debates. Being proven right." She smiles wryly, her lips twisting into her cheek. "You."
I manage to get Dauntless to walk beside Karl long enough for Pip and I to engage in a swift kiss.
"So, who are we looking for?" Pip asks, turning away to squint into the fog as the first monument rises to our left. It is a vain atrocity of raw marble, large enough for all four of us to camp in for the night and have room left over for the Library Lion. The further along we go, the more ornate the tombs will grow, though they won't get much bigger. There is a limit to the size of slab a group of workers can transport, after all.
"King Chailin was the first of his dynasty," I explain. "He was king of Hain two dynasties before the present one. Before that, he was the Minister of the Right, and he was appointed ruler in the field, after King Spiche fell in battle against the Centaur Horde. Spiche had no heirs. Chailin called a cease to hostilities and brokered a peace with the Horde, and, in return for the lives saved and his wisdom in calling for peace, the dryads of the forest—in which the battles were mostly taking place—presented him with a gift."
"The Blade that Never Fails?"
"Yes. I don't know what it looks like, though, but one can assume that a gift such as that would be buried with Chailin. I know it was not passed down to his heirs, or His Majesty, King Carvel, would have it."
"He could have it, and you just don't know about it."
I level a look at Pip that communicates my thoughts on that possibility.
She giggles again, but it is more mindful and subdued. "Right, yes, of course, Master Shadow Hand. Obviously not. So, we're just going to go and take it?"
"Borrow it," I correct. "I see no reason not to return the enchanted knife to the dead king when we are done with it. I'm returning everything else."
"Which is a damn sight more polite than most heroes do," Pip points out.
"It is polite," I say. "It's the right thing to do."
"Still, most people would want to hold on to a knife that can't fail, whatever that actually means."
"It does not belong to me," I counter.
"Chailin is dead. It's not like he's going to mind."
I can't help the shivers that crawl up my spine. "You can't know that for certain," I say. "It is safer to ask permission, and to return the knife. Who knows if any curses have been laid upon it?"
In our last village, I made certain to obtain a charm to repel the dead for each of us—Pip and I are wearing ours around our necks, and Karl and Dauntless have each had the charm braided into their manes. I hope that is enough forethought for the Station that always surprises the hero, because I cast no spells save for Words, have no tricks beyond the strength of my blade, and no wards save those I was able to buy.
I am frankly ill-prepared for battling the darker sorts of magical creatures: ghosts, vampires, lichs, and zombies. In this, Bevel Dom's preparation and knowledge far outpaces my own.
Not that there are probably zombies amidst the tombs of the kings—they are always lain to rest with the rituals and wards to protect their mortal remains from that very thing. I can't imagine a vampire would choose to make his home amid the tombs, either; mortal travelers are too few and far between to sustain a vampire's diet, and the creatures are such utter hedonists that I can't imagine one wanting to live somewhere without velvet and silk, humidors and rich wine. If there are lichs, or ghosts, in this graveyard, they are not those of the great rulers of the past. They would be the leftovers of travelers long lost, or thieves who deserve their fates for trying to rob royal tombs.
I shift uncomfortably in my saddle. Pip and I have come to be thieves, too. What spells will lash out against us, I wonder. What foes will we have to face?
For the first few hours, it seems that the answer to that question is merely boredom and cold. No other opponents materialize to challenge us, and the most put-upon thing I must do is try to nudge Dauntless far enough up the slope of the valley to read the names of the kings and queens carved onto the lintels aloud to Pip. He always dances back to the path with a sense of urgency and relief, and it is becoming harder and harder to convince Dauntless to obey the press of my thighs and knees with each successive tomb. Very soon, I might have to start dismounting to check, and the thought fills me with trepidation. I'd rather remain seated, if I can—Dauntless can run very fast, and his hooves are shod in good dwarven steel, excellent for bringing down upon the head of a creature seeking to attack us.
The sun barely penetrates the gloom at the bottom of the valley, giving the light a watery blue quality and making it virtually impossible for me to guess the time of day. We ride until my stomach begins to rumble for its lunch. But neither Pip nor I are willing to dismount to eat, so we munch on dried fruit and meat as we persuade the horses to move further and further along the river.
There are only the sounds of hooves on gravel and grass, our own breaths, my heart in my ears, the shift of leather and clothing and tacking. No birdsong. No rustle of the wind. Not even the sound of anyone following us, which might or might not have actually been welcome, at this point.
Time passes—slowly, quickly, I cannot tell—and everywhere, skin-itchingly thorough silence. Pip is waiting for it, too, whatever it is going to be, the great plot twist, eyes rolling left and right so often now it almost appears as if she is watching a metronome.
If only the infuriating waiting for it would be over, I might just welcome this horrible twist.
"Intolerable!" I finally hiss. The sound of my voice cuts across the laden air, and Pip jumps in her saddle. "Apologies," I say. "I didn't mean to surprise you."
"There's the next tomb," she says. She tries to coax Karl off the path, but he refuses to go.
"I will look," I say, and Dauntless takes a bit more heel than is usual for him to obey.
I have to read the name three more times before I am certain that it is King Chailin's tomb. But it is. We have found it. For some reason, this all feels too simple. Too easy. Perhaps too much of a trick. But the name doesn't change on each successive read, and the styling of the tomb is correct for Chailin's dynasty—all organic shapes and curved lines, the product of an era obsessed with nature and the attempt to recreate her in precious stones and delicate filigree. The plinths look like oak trees, and the panels of the door have been carved with leaping stags bearing tree-branch antlers, blossoming fruit trees, waving garlands, and nymphs and satyrs at play.
Such optimism Chailin's rule had ushered in. The Spring King, they had called him. The man who began what his great-great-grandson, my King Carvel, has continued: the prosperous peace between the races. It is this that my brother enforces with his quests, routing the bad apples from humanity and the magical races alike to ensure that the peace prevails. While I may not prefer my brother's methods or attitudes, I cannot deny the worth of his deeds and the benefit it has had on Hain. On all of the Four Kingdoms.
When I return to the path, I don't get lost, or enchanted, or even tripped up. Pip is even right where I left her. Together, we dismount and draw our swords, just to be prepared. Pip is getting better with her own weapon, but always seems to halt our practice just as she is beginning to pick up a new technique. It is almost as if she fears becoming too proficient, which is a strange thing indeed to worry over.
We approach the tomb, but the wind does not pick up; there is no fateful moaning, and nothing screeches in to block our path.
Some of the stone of the portico's knotwork has eroded so much that there are holes in the sculpture, and we loop the horses' reins through one such gap, not at all confident that they won't follow their clear desire to be elsewhere and abandon us if given the option.
I retrieve the Wisp lantern—repaired at the last village and supplied with a new Wisp—and gently stroke the creature awake. Once she is conscious and glowing, I close the glass door to protect her from the damp, and she jostles against the side of the glass, lifting the lantern in the direction she wants us to go.
"Bossy," Pip says, but she says it with a smile, and I get the feeling that the Wisp approves.
At least the little thing isn't scared of the gloom which stains the valley.
Pip tries the door of the tomb, and it, surprisingly, is not only unlocked, but easy to shift. It swings outward soundlessly, the silence of the hinges more eerie than a rusted squeal might have been, as it was the latter for which we were both braced. Swallowing down my fear and raising my sword, I hold the lantern aloft.
The shallow chamber beyond the threshold is just deep enough to hold a large stone box, roughly the length of a man, with enough clearance around it for mourners to attend the sarcophagus without banging their elbows into the walls. A row of shelving, at eye level, runs the entire perimeter of the tomb. Upon it, someone has placed those things which must have been sentimental for the deceased: a favored bow and arrow; small paintings of a woman and three young children; a second painting of the young children looking significantly more grown-up; a small chest opened to reveal a games set; a second chest framing a signet ring, a crown, and a chain of office not unlike the one I wear during official business as Lordling of the Chipping, but significantly more finely wrought and laden with a merchant's wealth of precious stones; a child's cuddly toy, the nap of the fur loved into patches, the glass eyes dull and cracked from thousands of childhood adventures; and a hundred other things that my eyes skim over.
Pip stops beside the toy and tentatively, carefully, rubs one of the round ears between her fingers. "Still soft," she murmurs. "He must have loved this teddy bear a lot when he was a kid. It's sort of sad that it's not in the coffin with him."
I make a noncommittal sound, and make my way over to the sarcophagus. As I expected, there is a bas-relief carving of King Chailin on the cover. His eyes are closed, as if in slumber, and for all that he was a crowned king when he died, he is dressed in the comfortable, simple clothing of a scholar. His house robe is patterned with the royal crest, however, and on his brow is a circlet made of actual gold and woven with green and yellow gems. Pip takes the lantern when I hold it out to her and stands by the head of the sarcophagus, inspecting the mosaic mural that fills the entire wall.
My eyes are for the dead king's carved belt—and yes, there, on his hip, sits the dagger given to Chailin at the end of the Bloody Battle of Bigonner, which signaled the end of the human-centaur wars forever. His palm rests over the pommel, obscuring its shape, fingers loose against the guard, symbolizing both the peace this blade represents and his preparedness to use it to strike at those who would threaten it. That it was carved into the tomb lid gives me great confidence that it was buried with him. Now, to simply open it up without breathing in too much grave rot, or triggering any curses.
I check the seams of the sarcophagus, but there doesn't seem to be any spells or wards carved, or melted into wax and placed along the seal. I give the lid a bit of a shove, pushing with both my arms and my hips, and am startled when the lid gives easily. There is no sucking pop of a broken seal, but I hold still all the same, listening, waiting, fingers curled on the lid and palms tacky with sweat and tomb-dust.
Silence.
A breath.
Nothing.
Relief floods through my limbs, but is very quickly chased away by dread.
Why was the seal so easy to break? And why were there no wards to rupture? I do not like the answer that occurs to me, and make haste shoving the lid all the way to the side. Pip hands me the lantern back, and I peer into the box. Oh.
No.
By the Writer, no. The coffin has already been shattered. The lid has been punctured by what appears to be a sharp blow, the dark wood scattered out of the way, the light wood exposed like vulnerable flesh.
King Chailin's hand is visible, and if it was ever preserved before, the careless, crude, rude way in which his final sanctuary has been violated has let in the damp air. The hand is bloated and gray and half-turned to slime.
The smell hits me hard, and I reel back, gagging, trying very hard not to make the inconceivable sin of vomiting on a king. Pip makes a choking sound and turns her face away, both hands covering her nose. I bury my own in the lapel of my robe, which I bring up to shield my mouth and nose, and screw up my courage to look into the coffin again.
The knife was carved over the king's right hip, which is where I assume he probably wore it in life. It is the right hand that is dissolving. Using the tip of my own sword, I nudge it aside at the wrist, and it leaves a smear of watery flesh and fat on the clothing in its wake. I half-brace myself for the hand to suddenly become animated, to clutch with unholy strength at my blade, or to try to reach up and throttle me. It only falls to the side, the bones breaking free of the meat like they do from an overcooked chicken.
I see the belt now, and with a second nudge, the scabbard of the dagger becomes visible.
Only the scabbard.
"It's gone," I manage to squeak. "Dear Writer. Pip! The knife. The scabbard is still here, but it's empty. Someone's already taken it."
"What?" she says. "Let me see!"
She leans over the lip of the sarcophagus, her shirt pulled up to protect her nose, and moans. She directs my sword into more prodding. "Someone got here before us!"
"Yes, but a long time ago. Years, it seems. Maybe even decades."
"Son of a bitch!" Pip snarls. "How's that for a plot twist! Goddamnit!" She slams her palms against the side of the sarcophagus, making the whole room boom with her frustration.
"Careful, Pip," I caution. "Respectfully, if you please."
"Right. Sorry," she apologizes to the king's corpse. "That was out of line. I don't suppose you want to tell us who took the Blade that Never Fails? We'll fetch it back for you."
She peers down into the abyss of the coffin for a long moment. The king makes no reply.
"Well, it was worth a try." She sighs and rocks back on her heels.
"Now what?"
"I don't know," I admit. "Can we skip this and move on to the next Station? Maybe keep our ears out while on the road, see if we get another clue?"
"No," Pip says. "It has to go in order. We have to find the knife first. Dammit, I thought things were going too well."
And that's when a flash of gold leaf on the wall catches both the light and my eye. I take a step closer, and the colors reveal themselves to be a mosaic of Chailin and a dryad. Between their fingers is balanced what can only be the Blade that Never Fails.
Incredulity swoops into my gut so quickly that the world actually spins under my feet. I have to lay my free hand on the corner of Chailin's tomb to remain upright.
The knife in the mosaic is blocky and crude, the hilt gilt and patterned with precious stones that are arranged to mimic blooms.
But, above all, the blasted thing is familiar. The last time I saw it, it was slightly tarnished, half of the precious stones missing, and embedded in my ballroom floor, scant breaths away from my fencing boot, waggling at me like a taunt.
*
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