Page 85 of Homeward for a Spell
“Just so. And since the artifact seems like a wash, all that’s left is to make sure that you can’t stop the Claunecks from bringing ‘Phi Runesong’ back to the capital, where she belongs. They’ll never let her go now.”
Despite her aching arms, Sage lifts her dagger higher. “You know I won’t let that happen.”
Remy sighs, his hands drifting inevitably toward his belt and his own daggers. “You’re willing to throw away everything you’ve ever wanted for the bard? Your reputation would have been made had you fulfilled our contract. You’d have more gold than you could spend. Your name would have been whispered among Ashaway’s elite as a party leader to seek out for the most difficult quests—by me, if nobody else. You’d be picking jobs where and with whom you like, with every road open to you. You would have been as free as anyone in the kingdom. Why, Sage?”
“Because that isn’t freedom,” she replies, realizing the truth as she gives voice to it. “I’ve spent ten years running toward nothing, only running from. From the fact that I didn’t know where I belonged, and believed I never would. But now I do. So you can complete your mission—rather, you can try—but if you’re not prepared to kill me with your own hands in order to stop me, then get out of my way. Time to make a choice, Remy.”
The Agent wavers on the path, his hands resting briefly on his dagger hilts, his deep-brown eyes sharp as arrows as he watches her. Perhaps those twenty-four years of choices flicker in front of him now. Then his eyes soften, and he drops his hands to his sides. “In you go, boss,” he says, stepping off the path.
Sage doesn’t stop to yell at him for the nickname. She only nods her thanks before she lowers her sword and runs through the still-open gate before the confused guards can stop her.
32
Araphi
By the time the mercenaries have dragged her to the gates of Briarwall, Araphi can no longer hear what’s happening on the path behind her, all sound swallowed by the trees. The Queensmen posted in the watchtowers above the gate allow them through quickly enough, once the fighters explain that they’ve managed to recover their client’s niece, and must get her to a healer with all haste, after a winter spent lost in the Northlands. The lie is new to Araphi, but she doesn’t fight them. Not when Sage’s freedom depends on her willingness to play along with whatever they have planned for her.
They escort her to Briarwall’s humble lodge, flinging the door open to shove her inside with rough hands, then slam the door behind her.
Araphi’s eyes widen in shock as she takes in the scene waiting for her.
There’s a fire roaring in the grate, glittering off the bottles on a shelf above a rustic bar along the back wall. Standing in the middle of the room are her mother and aunt, entirely out of place in their elegant furs and jewels.
“Mother?” Araphi gapes. “What are you doing here?”
Her mother rushes forward and pulls her into a hug. “Darling. I’m so glad to see you. You’ve been gone for months. How could you? I was so worried!”
“What are you doing here?” Araphi repeats, too stunned to say much else. She would’ve sooner expected to see her mother and aunt in the Dragon’s Bane than in this outpost at the edge of the kingdom.
“We could ask you the same,” her Aunt Menorath deadpans. “Last we heard, you were being measured for a wedding dress before you traipsed off to a spa, and then you were simply nowhere.”
Araphi shakes her head. “I don’t have time to pretend that you truly care about me, Aunt Menorath. You have to let me get back out there! I have to help Sage. You have to help Sage!”
“No one is going anywhere,” her aunt snaps. “Do you have any idea how long we’ve been looking for you? How much money we’ve spent trying to find you? Gods, I’ve been making excuses to the Oreborns for months now. Lying to them about how you’ve been sent to Locronan to aid in an important deal for the Clauneck Company. Tell her, Brenna!”
Araphi’s mother wrings her hands. “Well, that is true, Menorath, but I’m sure Araphi’s got a good reason for risking her life—”
“And her contractual obligations,” Menorath reminds them both.
“Yes. And of course, she’ll come with us. We brought our fastest carriage, darling. We’ll take the Queens’ Road and be in Ashaway tomorrow evening.”
“I’m not coming,” Araphi insists.
“But we’re here to rescue you,” her mother replies, bewildered. “Gods, your hair alone will take a week to fix. Not to mention your clothing. What are you wearing, darling? I suppose you’ll have quite a story to tell once we’re back in Ashaway.”
It’s exactly what Araphi has been afraid of all along. That this adventure with Sage, and these months of learning more about herself and what she wants, will all be relegated to an anecdote. That they will cease to mean anything, except perhaps late at night in her marital bed, when she’ll fall asleep to the memories of a time in her life when she was free.
No. Araphi will not let that happen.
“I don’t belong with you anymore, Mother. I’m going back out there to finish my fight, and to help the woman I love.”
Menorath’s fingers dig into Araphi’s arm. “Oh yes, your party leader, Sage Wilderstone. I know all about her.”
Her aunt’s tone is so dangerous, Araphi pauses. “What do you know? How did you find us?”
Menorath smiles her drawing-room smile, like a hawk focusing on a kill. “When the Agent and the rest of your little ragtag party made it back to Briarwall last winter, he reached out at once, wrote to me at Hazelbend to tell me there’d been a complication. That Sage Wilderstone and a bard named Phi Runesong had disappeared into the night with the artifact; supposedly into the Swallow, but he had his doubts about the healer’s story. An unpracticed liar, that one. Regardless, it didn’t take me long to put the pieces together. One missing heir with a talent for music and a terrible habit of believing that her desires are more important than the needs of her family. So, where is my dragon’s tooth, Phi Runesong?”
Araphi shakes off her aunt’s hand and crosses her arms. “It’s not here. I don’t have it.”
