The Untold Tale

Fourteen

We spend a pleasant two days at a high-quality inn, playing at being newlyweds on their marriage tour and indulging in a large tub of bubbles and a good night's rest on real mattresses.

In the afterglow of some particularly enthusiastic playing, I ask if Pip plans to get up in the morning for one of her horrendous "jogs." We haven't been in the same place two nights running since we left Lysse, and she hasn't had the opportunity before. She shakes her head, buries her face against my neck, licks at the sweat under my jaw and says, "Riding horseback is enough of a core workout. I don't think I've ever had such cut abs. And such sore thighs."

I take the opening for what it is, and when the massage turns into something more, we both sigh and groan, and dig in nails. She tugs my hair as I kiss the place on her that I am very rapidly coming to count among my favorites.

Later that night, Pip and I sit on the inn's flagstone terrace, sharing a bottle of excellent southern wine. Pip's head is tilted back, the base of her skull cradled on the back of her chair, and her eyes are wide. "There's so many stars," she whispers. "It's overwhelming."

I think "overwhelming" is a bit of an understatement. The magnitude of the stars, and the unfamiliarity of their arrangements in the sky, makes her go quiet every time she makes the mistake of looking up at night. Her mouth always drops open, and her eyes go distant and watery, as if, for just one moment, she has forgotten that she is not where she was born, and the sky pierces her.

"Pip," I say gently, bringing her attention back to the table between us.

Pip lowers her gaze and resumes frowning at her Excel. A half-eaten apple is partway to her mouth, the flesh slowly growing brown as it sits in her hand, suspended between the conception of action and completion.

She parts her lips and nibbles at the ragged edge left by her white teeth. She folds and unfolds herself on the chair, knees up, then down again, shifting, searching for physical comfort when it is something more cerebral I suspect she seeks, something that I'm not certain she even knows she can find. Her back might be sore, as well; I haven't asked. The twinge of new scar tissue twisting in muscle is, I've heard, irritating. I will offer a back massage smoothed by Mother Mouth's ointment later tonight.

"I think I'm missing something," she says finally. "I don't know what, but this has all seemed too—" She interrupts herself by slapping her hand over her mouth. "I can't believe I was just going to say that out loud."

"What? That this has all been too ea—?"

She lunges across the table and slaps her hand over my mouth.

"Don't you say it either," she says. When I nod, she withdraws and sits back down, but not before rapping her knuckles against the wooden planks of the table with a grin. "To avoid bad luck." I copy her and pour us both a fresh cup of wine.

When she thinks I am otherwise engrossed with the task, she rubs her palm across her throat, an action she has been doing more and more often. I have tried to be discreet about my curiosity over the gesture, but I have not been able to decipher any reason why she does it. Her shirt is not too tight, and there is no jewelry around her neck; she does not even wear a scarf. She has not developed an ague, as far as I can tell, and her voice isn't rough from irritation.

So what is it?

❧✍❧

It takes four days to ride to the next Station. We travel across a plain that was once home to a prosperous, ancient city-state, ruled by a warrior-king in the lost age before Hain became one land with one ruler. The outer bailey is fallen, the walls long ago broken apart by enemy siege machines and the resultant rubble hauled off by enterprising peasants to make barns and wells. The marks in the ground where they once were are still visible, however, as a low grassy knoll with the occasional naked stone bared to the world like bone through a wound.