She left the hut as midday burned through the ash veil, casting shadows on the should-be-dead trees that had never recovered from the Godsfall. The village was awake, but no one spoke to her as she slipped through the streets, headed toward the tiny house Sersha had given her and Dani when they first arrived.
Dani was waiting, her nails dirty from garden work. She gave Lore a pointed look.
“It’s done,” Lore said, slumping into one of the chairs by the rough table. “He said we can take it.”
“Then let’s go.” Dani brushed past her with barely a glance.
Lore stood with a sigh, gathering the bag with the Fount piece from the back of the room before following Dani out of the hut.
They were halfway down the dirt road before Dani turned back around, eyes narrowed. “What’s in the bag?”
Dammit.
Lore kept her face impassive. “Food, mostly. Unless you wanted to keep eating jerky salty enough to pickle your insides for the entire journey? I also got us both a change of clothes. You smell.”
It wasn’t even a lie. Raihan had given her the food, and she’d found Sersha after gardening yesterday, asking for a pair of tunics and trousers in the loose, undyed linen that everyone in the Harbor wore. All of it was tucked carefully around the Fount piece.
Dani eyed her warily but didn’t ask to see inside the bag. Aftera moment, she shrugged and kept going. Lore followed close behind.
The Harbor was bustling. The dirt road that housed both their hut and Raihan’s was one of many, all spiraling out from the central green. Children played around the edges of the garden, the older ones helping harvest and till. Sersha was bent over, pulling potatoes from within a dark box she’d dug up.
A community. People helping one another. She was robbing the prisoners on the Isles of a chance at this, by taking Raihan’s ship. The ash wouldn’t let them go home, but they could make a home here.
Lore focused on her feet and tried not to think of that too much.
As they passed, Sersha raised her head. She didn’t ask them where they were going, but she lifted her hand in a wave. Lore returned it. Dani didn’t.
The beach itself was empty, Raihan’s boat bumping against the dock with every swell of the waves. Lore eyed Dani’s back. “I hope you know how to sail, because I sure don’t.”
“Relax.” Dani clambered up the ship’s side, then lowered the gangplank for Lore in an uncharacteristically thoughtful gesture. “I wasn’t lying about having a lover at the shipyards, that day at Alie’s tea. He taught me a few things.”
Lore boarded the boat without a word.
“Now,” Dani said, sitting the silver instrument on the deck. It spun, once, then pointed at Lore. “How do these things work?”
“Raihan told me.” Lore gathered up the silver balance quickly, hoping Dani didn’t notice how it reacted to her and the thing in her bag. “I have to take it below, set it up properly. Give me a second, and I’ll tell you where to go.”
For a moment long enough to make her stomach twist, Dani just stared at her. Lore twitched one finger, winding a thin thread of Spiritum. Just in case.
“Don’t fuck with me,” Dani said quietly.
“I’d never,” Lore replied. “We are the very definition of mutually assured destruction.”
Though was that really true now? Lore had no doubt that she could make her way to the Golden Mount using her own power. Steering the boat could be a problem, but even that she might be able to figure out, manipulate her magic in some way that made it unneeded. She could kill Dani right now, and it would barely interrupt her plans.
But… she didn’t want to. So many deaths already piled on her heart, all the villages, Anton, Jean-Paul. She didn’t want to add another unless there was no choice.
And she hadn’t been lying, that day in the shipping office. She did feel for Dani. They were both only what impossible circumstances had made them, and what it had made them really wasn’t so different, in the end.
Dani watched a minute more, eyes narrowed. Then she nodded.
Lore took the Mount-finder belowdeck.
The room where Raihan had kept the silver balances was cleared; he’d come back and packed them away at some point. Lore set hers in the middle of the table, warily watched the point of the pin like it was an accusing eye.
Well. Time to see what she could do.
Tucked into her bag, the Fount piece called out to her, singing its low song. With a glance at the door to make sure it was still closed, Lore pulled the carved stone from the tangle of spare clothes. The Mount-finder whipped around on its pin, pointing so directly it trembled.
