Page 79 of Homeward for a Spell

The bard sighs. “Perhaps, but that was when you didn’t have a choice, nor anywhere else to go. And you can’t tell me that you would have wanted to winter in Arkney, planting parsley and hunting frost frogs for the village soup pot, if there’d been any other option. Isn’t that so?”

“I don’t know,” she answers honestly. “But what does that matter?”

Araphi sets down her mug to cup Sage’s face in her still-warm palm, her large brown eyes thawed at last. “It matters, Ranger, because I won’t make the same mistake as Ollie.” Though she says this so gently, some part of Sage crumbles like campfire ash all the same, scattering under the slightest pressure of her touch. “I wouldn’t ask you to leave this life behind to come and play politics with me in the capital, for however long it took for me to work my way back into my family’s good graces and come to power. You would hate that, and we both know it. You don’t travel with the same party twice, you don’t sit still if you can help it, and you wouldn’t trade the road for anything, or anyone. But it’s all right. You never lied to me about who you are, Sage. And unlike my family, I wouldn’t dream of telling you who you ought to be, or trying to force you to change. I’m not a Clauneck. Not really. I’m just a bard.” There’s a hint of humor in her voice when she repeats Sage’s words, but when Araphi leans close and presses a soft kiss to Sage’s lips, it feels like goodbye.

Sage could protest: Better a bard—better Araphi—than every powerful artifact that’s locked in the Clauneck Company’s vault combined, scavenged from the corners of the kingdom and beyond by adventurers just like Sage. Folks trying to make a denari and a name for themselves, never reckoning the cost to communities like Arkney or Bloomfield or Hexham. Even Bramble would have put the dragon’s tooth to better use than Sage had originally intended, using its power to rebuild their village after the storm’s damage and the kingdom’s neglect. At least Bramble heals. And Araphi? She creates: music and joy and moments and magic.

What has Sage ever really done for anybody but leave them behind?

The truth is, she isn’t sure that she can change. Perhaps she’s just broken, like a compass with a needle no longer magnetized, so that it never points north. Perhaps she’ll always be lost.

Since there seems to be no future in which Sage gets to keep Araphi, and Araphi gets to keep her, she says nothing at all. Araphi picks up her mug, stands, and strolls away from the fire, and Sage watches her go, swallowing painfully around the promise she’s too much of a coward to make.

As expected, they glimpse the gate at Briarwall by midday—a man-made shape cresting the winter-stark canopy.

“They’ll remember us here, won’t they?” asks Araphi. “They’ll let us in?”

“They’ve a record of our passage north, and a record of who came back. I’m less worried about getting through, and more worried about who’ll be there to greet us.”

“What are the odds the party is still at the outpost?”

“I wouldn’t bet against it.” Sage hates that they’re able to speak like two adventurers working a problem, but what else can they be? She knows how to do the job she was built for, if nothing else. “At least, Remy likely will be. I want to scout things out before we approach. The forest’s borders are so thick with detection spells around the gate, it’s not worth the effort to avoid them. Give me a moment to get a better look. Just stay here, all right?”

Araphi nods, tightening her fists around the straps of her pack.

Turning to find the nearest scalable tree, Sage grabs the lowest branch of a sparsely needled pine with both hands, just above her head. She heaves herself upward, swinging to hook a leg around the branch. From there, it’s simple enough to stand and make her way up by digging the toes of her boots into the branch joints. Out of practice though she may be after a season more sedentary than most, her body remembers how. Higher up where the surrounding branches thin out, she can see the gate, which stands open as if to welcome them in.

Sage considers the possibility that this will all be much easier than she feared.

Then a point of light among the leaves catches her eye, sunlight glinting off silver. Her gaze traces the forest path that leads through the gate, and there it is, a quarter of a mile from Briarwall and just beyond the boundaries of its detection spells. A small battalion—or not, as they aren’t wearing the uniforms of Queensmen—is scattered among the trees between Sage and Araphi and the gate. There’s a dozen of them at least that she can see, waiting with swords drawn as if in ambush, and likely more out of sight. It seems to bode well that they aren’t wearing Clauneck colors either. There’s no consistency to their armor or weaponry at all, except that it shows the wear of proper battle. No green bards or salmon god acolytes or academic wizards here. Perhaps they aren’t Menorath’s men either, and their presence just before the gate is an unlikely coincidence…

Her eyes dart toward movement, a shifting shadow behind a tree trunk. Then a sliver of a man. Deep-brown skin, salt-and-pepper beard, and a navy knit cap.

Remy.

Sage’s heart plummets to the forest floor below, even before she descends.

Dropping as noiselessly as possible into the bed of dried needles just behind Araphi, Sage wastes no time. She spins Araphi by the arm to face her and cups her hand over the bard’s mouth in the same moment; even if their presence is known, they needn’t broadcast their exact position. Sage watches Araphi teeter on the edge of pulling back until their gazes lock, and Araphi must recognize the fear in hers. After a moment, she nods her assent. She lets Sage pull her deeper into the woods, leading them to a copse where the trees grow thick enough that she can be confident their voices won’t travel through.

“What did you see?” Araphi whispers urgently.

“It seems Remy’s assembled a larger party than we expected. Mercenaries disguised as adventurers, I expect, armed as they are. And plenty of them.”

Araphi pales, her eyes going round as moons. “Perhaps we can reason…”

“I don’t think we can charm our way through this time.” Sage scrubs a hand in her hair, wild with the wind of the mountain passes. “And we can’t sneak around them; the wards on the woods north of the gate funnel everything toward it.”

“Do you think the soldiers at the garrison are on their side?”

“I didn’t see any in their midst. But whether they were let in on a total lie or a near truth, we’re still far enough from the gate that I doubt any help is coming from the Queensmen, even if they felt so inclined.”

“What do you suppose they mean to do?”

“Well, they’ll want you back in Ashaway, if they’ve any idea who you are. And if Remy has been in touch with Menorath, and been given leave to hire more men to stop us, I’d say they do. They probably want me in custody, with everything I know. Your aunt won’t risk her secrets being revealed now. And of course, they’ll want the artifact.”

“Well, they won’t get the tooth. We haven’t got it anymore.”

Sage rears back. “We don’t?”