“Now you want to be quiet?” He let out a huff of a laugh. “So I’m right. We keep walking.”
Asshole.
“Back to your theory.” It wasn't a question, and I wasn’t surprised that he knew I had a theory.
“Maybe I don’t want to talk to you.”
“Now, bunny, I know that’s not true. You’ve been wanting to chew my ear off for the last few leagues if those glares of yours are anything to go by. Now, here I am. Talk to me about your theory.”
I could argue. I could. I could argue with this man fordays. But what was the point? All that would happen is that I’d be exhausted, and he’d still be asking the same thing at the end:tell me about your theory.
“I think that the column is used for something,” I said carefully. I looked over at him, and he didn’t react. “If whatever that was is coming from the north, which, accordingto everything I know, is empty, to visit a source point of concentrated…” I looked around and lowered my voice. “Magic?” He still didn’t react. “And if it is, then I think they may be visiting it regularly.” He did look at me at that. “Baxley said the tracks are worn into the pattern of it.” I kept my eyes on the trail ahead. “Inside.” I swallowed. “Whatever it is, what we saw isn’t new behavior. I think it’s been doing it for a while.”
“And it's not human.”
I swallowed again. “Not with those prints.”
He was quiet for a moment. The wind came from the east, carrying the dry cold of open tundra. “Things are definitely different in Crystallese.”
I glanced at him sideways. He was looking ahead, his profile giving nothing.
“You mean the creatures?” I asked. “The Frosttaken in Skallfen. The Hulgrim. The Drift Wolves.”
He nodded. “Things that we thought of as myth, or rare, are walking across the frozen waste of this land and...” He paused. “They're not staying where they should.”
“No,” I agreed. “I guess not. You think they’re connected?” I waited for him to confirm or deny. He didn't offer it. “You're not going to tell me?” I asked incredulously.
“I have nothing to tell you,” he said.
And I didn’t believe him.
I didn’t believe him at all.
I turned and looked at him, and he turned his head to meet my gaze. He held it with steady, unreadable attention. There was no harshness in it, no unkindness, but there was also no warmth. Just… measured. Whatever he was hiding, if he was hiding anything at all, he hid it well.
I scrambled for something to say. “That's not reassuring.”
“No,” he agreed. “It's not.”
He looked at the land in front of us, his gaze flicking once to the gathering storm.
I looked back at the trail and said nothing. Neither did he. The quiet between us had stopped needing to be filled somewhere after Iskaeld, and neither of us had mentioned it.
The light was failing by the time we made camp that second night south of Iskaeld.
I sat at the edge of the firelight, watching the group settle, and tried to name the thing that had been sitting in my chest since we left the basin.
I'd been employed.
I was a trailfinder. I'd been hired for my skills, my knowledge of this terrain, and my ability to navigate where others couldn't. That was the transaction. Clean, understood, with a clear endpoint when we reached our destination.
We'd reached our destination.
And nobody had mentioned where the endpoint was on the return journey.
I watched Nicco across the fire. He talked quietly with Marson, the kind of conversation that involved maps, distances, or both. He said something. Marson nodded. Whatever was being decided was being decided without my input, and that had always been true. Somehow, it felt different now than it had three weeks ago.
Three weeks ago, I was a resource they'd acquired. Useful. Exceptionally useful. I was beginning to understand that “useful” might not be the same as “free to leave.”
