Page 55 of Homeward for a Spell

But for Sage and Remy, home is the road. Or is it what Sage has always secretly believed: a thing that waits somewhere down the road, if she can survive long enough to find it?

And how would she even know it if she did?

“Remy…”

“Mm?”

“Why doesn’t anybody know your name?”

He laughs, a puff of pipe smoke billowing up into the dark like the mist of the Graywood. “Surely you have theories. Let’s hear them.”

He isn’t wrong. Sage considers for a moment, then guesses, “You’re on the run.”

“A reasonable conclusion. Who from?”

“The Queens’ Guard?”

“Because I once deserted?” He shakes his head. “That was two dozen years ago, and the generals hardly kept track of us in the chaos of battle. Half of our dead sank beneath the bog in the Swamplands, their bodies irretrievable, and the rest of us all looked largely the same to those in command. We always do. Besides, if that were true, I’d hardly have joined the adventure that placed me among an entire garrison of soldiers.”

“From a job gone wrong, then,” Sage tries again.

Once more, the Agent shakes his head. “It’s nothing as dramatic as you’re imagining. No double cross, no disaster. I simply left and kept riding. Couldn’t go home again. Couldn’t look at the folks whose people died in the stink and the mud. Besides, everyone I really had was on the battlefield that day. So I found another place, another position, another name that suited my mood. I made a choice. Then I rode on. Made another choice, and another. Twenty-four years of choices that made me plenty of coins and kept the kingdom off my back. Kept me safe.”

Sage gestures into the dark, toward the black ribbon of the Swallow and the inhospitable, frozen forest beyond. “This feels like safety to you?”

“Well.” Remy chuckles, tugging down his cap. “This job’s a bit of a departure from my usual routine of sitting in taverns and telling people what they want to hear. Or listening in for scraps of information that may prove useful to potential clients. Haven’t been on a proper adventure in years.” He knocks an elbow into hers when he senses her starting to bristle. “It’s no mark against you. Just sometimes, with an item this valuable, a client is willing to pay extra for…let’s call it an insurance policy.”

Before Sage can press further, there’s an almost impossibly quiet squeak behind them. Ice crystals in snow rubbing against one another, compressed beneath a delicately placed boot. Someone trying—and failing—to pass without notice. Sage snaps her gaze around to see the back of Araphi’s traveling cloak as she moves carefully between the columns to disappear around the corner of the temple.

“What is it?” Remy asks, his own reflexes too dulled by the bottle and the pipe to note her before she vanishes.

“Just a fox. If I catch it, it’ll make a better breakfast than dried sheep and pickled onions.” She hasn’t got her bow with her, but she taps the daggers strapped perpetually to her hip. If she were hunting, these would be weapons enough.

“Off you go, then.” Remy nods. “Sheep never did agree with me.”

With that, Sage pads into the cold night after Araphi, unsure why she’s lied. But if the bard wanted to avoid detection, then Sage would prefer to find out why before the Agent does.

She follows Araphi’s tracks with a frisson of fear as she realizes she’s headed toward the Swallow, but calms when she finds Araphi sitting on the trunk of a broad downed tree, far enough back from the bank that she can’t possibly slip into the deadly stream by accident. Araphi has her hands on her lap, cradling something in her palms that Sage can’t see from this angle. When she puts another boot forward with the faintest crunch, Araphi jerks her head up.

She’s getting better at this adventuring business, Sage thinks with pride.

Araphi doesn’t look pleased to be found, though the look of alarm in her eyes recedes once she spots her tracker. “Ranger,” she greets her.

“Bard.” Sage scales the waist-high tree trunk from behind to sit beside her. “Surprised to find you away from the fire.”

“I needed to think.”

“About?”

She lifts a cupped hand to present the subject of her scrutiny.

Sage’s stomach clenches when she sees the dragon’s tooth in the palm of her glove. “What…Why do you have that?”

“Because I think I’ve figured out who wants it badly enough to send us to the Northlands in near winter. Hazelbend—that’s where Remy says the Client’s man is headed to make the delivery. I heard that right, didn’t I?”

“Yes…”

Araphi curls her fingers around the tooth again, though it’s too large to disguise completely. “Thought so. I’ve been there before. It’s a hamlet in Lintonbury built around an estate, not far from the queens’ summer palace. That’s Clauneck property. At least, it is now. It’s my Aunt Menorath’s inheritance, the Hazelbend ancestral home. They treat it as their summer estate. That’s where my wedding will…where the wedding is meant to take place in spring. And where Menorath was headed with my mother when I snuck off to Kingfisher. Sage, she’s the client—and perhaps my uncle too. Rather, I think they are. Though I have no idea how my aunt could keep something like this from our family’s patron. I wonder if he knows…”