Assassin’s Fate

It burst into flames. Not a spark, not a trickle of smoke. Flames leapt up from both pieces of wood and I scrabbled back and away from them. My heart was hammering in my throat.

I didn’t know we could do that!

Neither did I.

Don’t let it die!

No danger of that. I piled my wood onto it, and watched it catch. The blaze pushed back the shadows and set the silver in the black stone sparkling. And my silvered hand gleamed in the light as I examined it, caught between wonder and dread. Practicality asserted itself. I plodded back to the forest’s edge and came back with as much firewood as I could carry. Twice I did that, and then I turned to my meat.

Skinning a porcupine is as ticklish a job as one might expect. The best way is to hang them spread-eagled and work on them, but I had no string and there were no trees in the quarry. In the end, it was worth the work and nuisance. He was as fat as a fall hog, and as I cooked the meat over the fire, it sizzled and sent up a fine greasy smoke. I ate until I was full, and then slept rolled in a dead woman’s cloak. In the dawn’s light, I awoke under a wide blue sky. I built up my fire and ate more of my kill. I went back to the water caught in the low end of the quarry, washed my hands and drank deeply. With my belly full I felt as if I could face the day.

I recalled that there had been a stream not far from the quarry. A stream with fish. Starling. On the banks of that stream, I had told her that I did not love her, in an effort to be honest. Then we had joined our bodies in what had been little more than animal comfort, but had begun a strange and difficult relationship that would continue, on and off, for over a dozen years. Starling, in her fine striped stockings with her proud, wealthy husband listening as she sang the tale of our quest. Well, that was a verse she had omitted, I thought, and even smiled.

I returned to our fire. Motley was picking through the porcupine’s entrails. She looked up with a bit of gut dangling from her silver beak. ‘Home?’ she cawed hopefully.

I spoke aloud. ‘Today I sleep and catch fish. Some to eat and some to dry. I don’t plan to travel hungry again. Three days of resting and eating, and we continue our journey.’

It would be wiser to choose our piece of stone and begin now.

I crouched in stillness by my fire. I knew what the wolf was suggesting. I’m going home. Not into a stone.

Fitz. Long have we known it would come to this. How often did we dream of returning here and carving our dragon? Here we are, and it is time, and perhaps we have enough time and strength to do it. I would not wish to remain mired in stone like Girl-on-a-Dragon was.

I framed the thought sternly and spoke it aloud. ‘I do not think we have reached that time. I’m not old. Just tired. A bit of rest and—’

‘Home?’ Motley asked persistently. ‘Bee! Bee! Per! Fool! Lant! Spark!’

‘Lant is dead,’ I told her, more sharply than I meant to.

The wolf spoke more sharply. Persist in being so stubborn, and you will be dead. And me with you.

My mind froze.

‘Going home!’ Motley announced.

‘Soon,’ I told her.

‘Now,’ she parried. She ripped a last bit of gut from the porcupine. It wrapped around her silver beak. She deftly pulled it free with one foot, arranged it, and then gulped it down. She preened her feathers, blue-black and scarlet. ‘Goodbye!’ she added and lifted into the sky. I stared after her.

‘It’s a long flight!’ I shouted. Did she have any idea where we were?

She circled the old quarry, flying low over the blocks of rejected stone, and the piles of rubble from long ago works. At the low end was the rainwater pool. She skimmed it and I spun to follow her flight, she flew straight into the Skill-pillar. I feared I would run to a broken and flopping bird. But she vanished smoothly.

‘I didn’t know she could do that,’ I said. ‘I hope she emerges intact.’

Not her first journey through the stones. And she has Skill on her beak.

True.