No, toward the direction we had come from.
Sammy said something beside me. I answered, although I could not have said what I told her, and kept the deputy in my peripheral vision. He stopped at the edge of a stall selling maps and travel goods, spoke briefly with the proprietor, and accepted something small that disappeared into his vest. Then he turned and walked without hurrying back toward the western road.
Back toward the village.
I watched until he was out of sight. My mind was already moving, sorting, filing, examining the shape of it. The deputy had no business at this market. His territory was the village and its immediate surrounds. He was not a trader, not a traveler,not someone with family in the valley settlements. There was no reason for him to be here.
No sanctioned reason.
I thought about the status message I had sent last night. Our direction. Our heading. Our intended next stop.
The crossroads market.
Berry’s tail flicked against my neck. Not the single press ofpay attention. Two quick taps, lighter. They had seen him too.
I reached up and stroked between their ears once, our wordless communication. I turned back to Sammy.
She was still writing, head bent, her pen scraping across the page. The worry and the hope competing in the lines of her face, present even now. She glanced up when she felt my gaze and offered me a small, tired, yet determined smile.
My little human. My mate. Nothing was going to touch her.
“Are you ready to keep going?” I asked.
“Almost.” She finished a line and looked up fully. “Can we eat something proper first? I think we’ve earned it.”
“An excellent idea, little one,” I said with a grin, hiding my concerns behind a calm smile. “I have just the place in mind.”
I guided her deeper into the market, away from the western road, keeping her in the center of the crowd where we were surrounded…invisible with the throng of creatures. She did not notice the route I chose. She was already asking me the name of something hanging from the neighboring stall.
I answered her and watched the crowd, saying nothing about what I had seen.
Not yet. Not here, in the open, where sounds carried.
She didn’t need more burdens, especially not on a hungry stomach. Tonight, around the fire, I would decide what to tell her and how.
Sammy
Guruk knew a food stall at the center of the market run by a pair of fae sisters who sold something they called ember bread—flat rounds cooked directly on hot stones, served with a thick herb paste that tasted of garlic and something I had no Earthly comparison for. We sat on a low bench at the stall’s edge and ate without speaking for several minutes, which was, I had learned, one of the highest forms of compliment the food deserved.
“This,” I said through a mouthful of the hearty bread, “is going in the notebook.”
Guruk wiped a crumb from the corner of my mouth. “I thought the notebook was for quest information.”
“The notebook is for everything important.” I swiped at his thumb with my tongue. He laughed.
I fished for my notebook and wrote:Ember bread. Center market, fae sisters’ stall. Herb paste — investigate ingredient. Ten out of ten, would recommend to all party members, would consider restructuring entire journey around obtaining more.
Guruk watched me write with the expression he sometimes got when I did something he found entirely Sammy and entirely wonderful and didn’t have words for. I was getting better at reading it.
“What?” I smirked at him, head tilted to the side to study him.
“Nothing.” He broke off another piece of bread and handed it to me. “You missed something.”
“Did I?”
He reached into the canvas bag and produced a small object, setting it on the bench between us. It was about the size of a quarter, a carved token in dark wood, smooth and round, with a many-sided shape pressed into its face.
A die. An eight-sided die.
