Page 35 of Homeward for a Spell

When Sage doesn’t move, she glances over her shoulder. “It’s quite cold out here, you know. Would you mind hurrying a bit?” Then her eyes dart toward the water’s dark surface, and she makes a show of turning her face away. “I won’t look, if that’s what you’re worried about. Here.” Stepping carefully backward, Araphi kneels at the very edge of the steaming pool, nearly within reach.

With a heavy sigh, Sage wades toward her and plants a foot on a submerged outcrop of slick limestone to boost herself up. The night air is like knives on her wet skin, exposed to the waist. She hurries to work through the knotted laces, then turns to the soft stays beneath. When her knuckles brush against Araphi’s back through the delicate fabric, Araphi shifts slightly on her knees.

“Stay still,” Sage barks.

“All right, all right. You’d think you’d be in a better mood. We’re getting what we came for, aren’t we? I saw you shake hands with Viktas. She’ll sell us the supplies we need?”

Her head spins as they return to business, but of course this is all business and nothing more. “We struck a deal, yes.”

When she’d first approached the woman, she’d been wary, scowling out across the gathered audience to make sure Remy was keeping away, as promised. “Never mind our horses, I wouldn’t sell that basilisk’s cloaca a bucket of piss if he were aflame,” she’d said poetically.

“He did say there was an unpleasant history between you two.”

“Unpleasant?” Viktas scoffed. “Did he tell you we rode together in the queens’ army? Not just rode together, but joined up together. Though it was the king’s army back then.”

Stunned, Sage shook her head. The Agent, a soldier? “I know him no better than I know you,” she admitted, to herself as well as to Hexham’s spokesperson.

“Ask him, then. Go ask him where he was when our battalion was pinned down by Perpignese battle mages.”

“You were in the Battle of the Broken Pacts?”

“Aye, younker.”

Sage frowned and settled back on her rough-hewn stool. What was it about herself that read as nobleborn to the woman? She was wearing her one remaining tunic without bloodstains; perhaps that was it. She longed to ask Viktas what name Remy went by back then, when he would’ve been around Sage’s age, but she doubted it would help matters to focus further on the Agent. And what would she do with the information on the road, anyhow? Get the party outfitted to continue into the Northlands, get the tooth, and get on her way, never again to cross paths with her once-associates: That was the plan. That was always her plan. “I don’t trust the man an inch,” she said, “but he’s not the party leader. I am. You’d be selling to me. Or imagine you’re selling to her, if you like.”

Onstage, Araphi was in the early verses of a ballad. A bittersweet song about a young man who’d been traveling but longed for the place where his roots first grew before time and the inescapable forward spin of the world transplanted him. When he finally returned, the waterlogged soil of his home was no longer fit to feed him, but his love for the land remained. Remy’s suggestion to choose a song from the Swamplands had been a clever one, but Araphi’s magic (and it was magic; nobody here could deny that) was responsible for the silvery shine of tears in Viktas’s eyes as she quieted to listen.

“Extraordinary,” she said at last in a choked voice.

“Don’t sell me the supplies for the sake of the basilisk’s cloaca,” Sage murmured so as not to overpower Araphi’s song. “And don’t let him cheat you out of what I’m more than willing to pay. A denari may not be worth more than the metal it’s made of in Hexham, but you still pay taxes to the crown. We all do. The price of breathing Harrow’s air, isn’t it? And we’re carrying enough to cover a significant portion, I’d wager. Think of it this way: The more you pry from the man holding the purse strings, the less likely he’ll be to come back and trade with you again.”

By the time the ballad was done, they’d struck a hard bargain. She’s no idea how much lighter Remy’s traveling funds will be now—perhaps it’ll mean no inns for the rest of the journey—but she knows he can spare it, and they’ll all be paid the same regardless. They’ll leave Hexham tomorrow with fresh horses and tents and enough foodstuffs to make it to Briarwall only a day behind schedule, without needing to stop to hunt or forage.

“You did well,” Sage now admits to Araphi while fumbling at her laces with icy fingers—strange, when she has so much experience at loosening corsets. “I don’t think Viktas would’ve softened without you. Doubt she would’ve let us into the village at all.”

“Glad to be of service,” she says, sounding genuinely pleased.

It feels good to please Araphi Clauneck. Better than it should.

In the end, Sage nearly rips the corset off, then steps away to plunge back into the pool. She hardly has the time to submerge again when Araphi lets her corset slip down over her hips, swiftly followed by her gown. Sage refuses to flinch at the naked silhouette of her stamped against the night sky beyond the hut, all slim shoulders and gently sloping hips, and calves that she could bite into like pieces of round fruit…

Gods, she should have sent Araphi away when she had the chance.

She looks down as Araphi turns to slip into the pool, almost moaning with pleasure. “It’s so warm!”

“As hot springs tend to be.”

Araphi rests her arms on the slick stone ledge behind her, the water lapping at her sternum. “So then. On to Briarwall in the morning, and then to the Swallow…and then?”

“Then home, I suppose.” Not that there’s any such place for Sage. While Viktas teared up over her memories of a childhood in the Swamplands, Sage thought of the Rookery without any particular longing attached to it. If anything, she longed to long for a place…though she immediately buried the thought and returned to the business of haggling.

“Then home,” Araphi echoes.

For an heiress, she sounds distinctly unexcited about returning to the capital and its comforts.

“What will you do with your share of the purse? A wedding present for your fiancé?” Sage asks, quickly crushing the firefly spark of something bright and hungry in her chest.

Araphi snorts, very un-heiress-like. “I’ve no intention of giving Denby anything beyond what our agreement dictates.”