She woke up sad, having dreamed of her sister. Hester would be thirteen now, but in Rose’s dream she was still a ten year old girl. Moments after waking Rose couldn’t remember why the dream had been sad or even where she and Hester had been or what they had been doing. She only remembered feeling cold in the dream. That cold fled as soon as she woke to the warmth of the bed and the morning sun filtering in through the red and brown glass casting pleasant light across the room.
Rose found that this morning she had no shakes, no cramps, and no miscellaneous discomfort. She’d been developing some wear and tear on her hands and a faint sore on her bottom from all the movement, but they also seem to have cleared up. Was that witch magic, or just a good night’s sleep and the judicious application of ointment?
Emrys, despite his speech, had fallen asleep quite soundly. He was wedged into a weird shape in the corner with his mouth hung open breathing in and out softly. Occasionally he made little ‘mnup mnup’ sounds and worked his mouth. Rose got herself moving without waking him. He was probably used to sleeping late in his comfy magic student bed. Rose, on the other hand, was used to waking early and dealing with the chickens and water for her teacher.
She opened the door as quietly as she could and shifted into the small room beyond – these doors were almost too tight for her chair. Thankfully the dwarf was widely built. She stopped dead as two pairs of eyes turned to regard her. The pale blue eyes of Opal and a pair of tired brown eyes that she had only seen once looking at her in anger. Now they were more confused than anything. Opal was sitting up, still on the table, and the dwarf was watching her eat from a bowl as if she thought she might forget how. Rose squirmed a bit and made a bit of a wave. “Hey. Umm, you’re awake. That’s …. swell, I think?”
Decima looked at her warily. Her chin raised and she tried to speak, but it devolved into a couch and some heavy breathing. Opal made a tisking noise. “Eat and drink first. Talk later. She means you no harm or she would not have brought you here. This woman, for whatever reason, saved not only your life but your leg. And for you, I know those two are quite the same thing.” Rose tried not to notice the irony. Decima went back to eating and drinking little sips of what looked like tea. Opal said, “I have bread and eggs for you and your friend. Tea as well. I don’t think the butter I eat will be palatable to you, but there’s some lard and honey.” Rose noticed that Decima raised her eyebrows in agreement about the butter. Just how well DID she know this witch? But a moment later Decima looked away sharply, as if correcting herself.
Rose found, as promised, bread, honey, tea in the pot, and eggs waiting to be cooked. The grill of the stove was, for once, at just the right height for her, and she took advantage. She used the lard and cooked herself some eggs. She even toasted the bread on it (on a whim she DID look at the butter, but she wasn’t sure why it was a weird grey color and didn’t want to ask). Between the tea, the bread with lard and honey, and the eggs, it was the best breakfast she’d had in weeks. The bread was very dense, but also clearly fresh. The eggs probably came from ducks, she thought. She sat with her eyes closed, enjoying the feeling of being indoors, and had almost convinced herself that she was back home on the farm when Emrys woke up and stumbled around the cottage, hitting his head on one of the thick logs that made up the supports for the ceiling.
He managed to burn his bread and also burn his eggs (he ate twice as many as Rose) but he didn’t seem to be complaining about the food. Hard to do that when you were the cook.
Once she had finished her tea and … porridge probably? Anyway, once she had finished that and rested up a bit from it, Decima spoke. “I am clearly in your debt.” Her voice was nice. She had one of those strict Thessalin accents, as if they all went to the same boarding school.
“It was nothing,” said Rose. “It was my chair that busted your leg in the first place.
“Because I was trying to knock you senseless.”
“Yeah, well, likewise. That woman,” she glanced at Emrys, who was clearly uncomfortable with the subject, but carried on, “that woman told me you had her kid and …. I guess I was hasty, you know?” Decima was taking this in so Rose added a, “kids,” as if that explained it all.
Decima thought about this, a series of expressions that Rose had no point of reference for played across her face. The dwarf, Opal, looked displeased with something. “Still,” Decima continued, “you would have been well within your rights to leave me. It was a kindness to bring me here. It must be out of your way.”
“Well, yeah, I suppose, but it worked out. Opal here gave me some good information about the -” Opal tried to speak up here, but Rose had gotten a weak, “Sundered Countenance,” before she put that together.
Decima seemed to rally. “You are enemies of the half-men? That is an excellent piece of good fortune!” Opal mumbled something about, “it certain is not,” to herself, but Decima was undaunted. “I have encountered them more than once and they have made an enemy of me as well!”
Rose could see where this was going and didn’t like it one bit. She already had more spectators than she wanted for what was essentially family drama. Cautiously, she said, “Well … that’s great. They suck. But I couldn’t let you risk yourself again. And honestly, we probably can’t wait for that leg to heal.”
The woman’s face went hard and she looked, for all the world, like she was about to stand up to prove a point. Opal practically threw herself across Decima’s body to prevent her. “No! You are much improved, but do not tempt the spirits this soon.” They looked at one another and something passed between them. Decima nodded and Opal slumped a bit. Seemingly against her better judgment, she said, “She will be well enough to walk the morning after next.”
Rose wasn’t sure she’d heard that right. “What? No shit? Like, the day after tomorrow? As in two days from now? As in …. okay, I have no idea what day it is, but still, will she really?” Opal nodded, hesitantly.
“She will probably be able to stand on it later today and walk a bit tomorrow, but she will not be fit for travel until then.” She said it more to the other woman – Decima – than to Rose. Apparently this Decima was not the sort to listen to good advice, but Rose refused to allow that to make her like the woman.
Rose whistled. “Well, I have to admit, that’s some mighty impressive healing, but we’re going after my mother and that’s really, you know, it’s a personal thing and she’s sort of a shit person anyway, so -”
“All the same, saving anyone from those fields is a noble endeavor -”
Rose could feel her stomach starting to knot. This was her thing! She started to panic a little. Why the shit was she feeling like this? “I mean, we’ve only got so much space in the …. “ she sort of gestured at Emrys, who clearly wanted nothing to do with this conversation and was staring politely at the window.
“I will follow you at a distance if you wish, but you saved -”
“I don’t want you!” Rose hadn’t meant for it to be so loud. Rude. Hurtful. Even Opal looked at her like she had shit on the floor. Rose fled the room, heading out into the front yard and toward the garden. She knew she couldn’t go far, but she suddenly needed to be somewhere else. She sat and watched the garden, trying not to hear the low voices speaking inside without her. What the hell was her problem? A perfectly nice person offered her help and her first instinct was to push them away. But also, who the hell did that broken leg lady think she was? Just inserting herself into Rose’s quest to save her awful fucking mother! It was bad enough that she had to take along Stinky and let him share her …. what? Credit? Glory? What did he care about those things? Who was she looking to score credit with? Town criers?
It was about her mother, of course. She had been entertaining this fantasy where she’d save her mother and her mother would break down and cry and tell her that she had always been a good daughter and how she was so sorry. Pathetic. Firstly, it wouldn’t happen, but secondly, what the shit would that be worth? Gratitude from her awful fucking mother. Worthless.
But fuck did she want it. She wiped away the tears that rolled down her face without even having the decency to wait till she was crying.
She had expected Emrys to follow her. Maybe even Opal, to say some wise witch shit. Or at least tell her off. But what actually happened is the sun grew higher in the sky and little mice started skittering around the outside of the garden and nobody came outside. Nobody came looking for her. Nobody opened the door and said, “Hey, are you okay?” And why would they? These people were not her friends. She didn’t have any of those.
She let more time pass, trying to convince herself that she wasn’t hoping someone would come check on her, but eventually she had to head inside to see to her biology. The place was quiet as she entered and softly closed the door behind her.
Emrys was sitting by the table with Decima, clearly having managed to have that wash, his hair still wet. Opal was nowhere to be seen. Emrys was looking down, frowning. Decima looked … actually, who the hell knew? Rose didn’t know this woman well enough to tell one expression from another. “I’m just using the toilet,” she said, as if that made everything okay.
Decima gave her a different who knows look and said, “I wanted to thank you for recovering the circlet. The woman who stole it would have killed me if she could. You saved not only my life, but my quest.”
Well, shit. What did she say to that? “Yeah, well. It’s what anyone would have done.”
“It isn’t.”
Rose turned to look at her, but this look she really did understand. It was gratitude. It was the look she had wanted to get from her mother. From her teacher. From the other talents. And here it was on the face of this stranger. And yeah, okay, it felt good. Of course it did. And there was a little bit of Rose that felt ashamed that it felt good. Shouldn’t she be helping people for altruistic reasons? It didn’t matter if they were grateful. But of course, it DID matter and saying it didn’t was a huge fucking lie. “Well, I guess you’re welcome, then. And, hey, look. I’m … I overreacted before, I know it. I just -” you just what? “If you come with us and get hurt again, I’d feel responsible and there might not be a convenient witch close by is all.”
Decima’s lips curled just the smallest amount, but Rose knew that was it. “You know, the bad luck with the leg isn’t how these things usually go for me. I am properly trained. The Thessalin Legion may be arrogant and stuck up, but they know their business and their training is second to none.”
Rose, who was now seemingly stuck with another traveling companion said, “Legion? You’re a long way from home, aren’t you?”
Decima furrowed her brows. “Oh, any further and I’d be in the ocean, certainly. And if I were a strong swimmer, I might have given it a try, but for now the mountains will have to do. My people are not well trained for the mountains anyway. As I think I proved.” It was hard to tell if she was blushing, given her deep complexion, but she certainly seemed embarrassed.
Rose said, “Yeah, she got the drop on me, too. Honestly, Emrys saved both our bacons.” She glanced at him. He still didn’t seem like he felt good about it, but he was feeling better.
Perhaps sensing the tension, Decima said, “Her name was Quinn, but she was called Silence back in Acton, because she almost never left witnesses alive.” She looked hard at Emrys when she said, “You really did save us, then.” That seemed to cheer him somewhat. “So, what now? We track down the Sundered Countenance and …. something about your mother? Have they taken her?”
And so Decima was filled in. Yes, they had her mother. No, Rose wasn’t sure if she was even still alive. She had a rough idea that they wanted her for some sort of blood ritual, but Rose wasn’t even sure why except something about waking their god, but to be honest, that could mean anything given how religious types used language like that. Her sources (no reason to name Ellen) said that the ritual would need to happen at their current headquarters for some reason.
“Because that is where their foul god slumbers,” came Opal’s voice from the bedroom door. Rose almost pissed herself. In fact, considering she’d come back inside to find the toilet, she was rather impressed with her own luck in still having dry pants. “It is said that in the ages before my people settled there, it was a path walked by the ancestors of our ancestors: those who are without stone or bone. And it was those same ones who sent the true Sundered Countenance: their wicked god, to slumber. Or at least that is the story my people tell. I can’t say how much of it is true, but I saw their god once in my childhood, before they came and before we lost the cities.”
Decima made a noise. “How did I not know you were that old?!”
Opal scoffed. “That is exactly why.”
Rose was sure they were about to have some sort of spat, but she didn’t want them to get off topic. “So you’re saying they need to do the bleeding in front of their god or something?”
Opal slowly let her gaze return to Rose. “Bleeding? Killing, dear. They worship death, and they will use death to wake it. And not near, exactly. I would say they will do it ON their god. Perhaps right on his mouth.”
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