*COMPLETE* Allayria promised to do what it takes to stop the Jarles, to make the ugly decision. She thinks, at last, she understands what the dynast meant. The lesson earned from the top of that lonely cliff and given the dark murky water below.
It...
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"Where have you been?"
It's the first words she says to him, thrown amidst a flurry of shuffling feet and the rush of charred, hot air. It's the dead of night, hours after they said they would reconvene, hours after he promised to check in, and Meg's tolerance has run out.
For what it's worth, Iaves seems to know it: even as he rushes in, dirt-caked, ashen men following behind, sweeping through the hideout like a wave of smoke, he grimaces.
"It was out there," he answers, side-stepping a clog of people, circling around the edge of the room, keenly aware of how she follows on his heels.
It is sometimes what they call that thing let loose on Solveigard since the Day of the Black Sword, the thing that swung it then and swings it now. The thing in the smoking armor.
"Did it follow you?" Meg demands, picking up the pace.
He glances back at her.
"It tried."
"I told you going there was a stupid idea."
He's not listening—or not listening well enough, moving at a clipped pace toward the back offices of the abandoned building, back to where the two of them have set up camp. It is becoming challenging, finding places that mad dog hasn't burned, or the Queen's spymaster has not found.
They are trying to smoke us out of the city, Meg thinks. Even if they burn everyone else.
"It was worth it."
Iaves enters the room, throwing his bag on the ground, turning to the basin in the corner.
"We have enough already. We don't need the extra—especially if grabbing it is going to put the beast on our trail."
She gives the bag a good kick as she sweeps past it, toward the fraying paper tacked to the wall, the scrawl of cartography and notations. She looks it over again, the plan, following the long, red line, tapping on the little x's strewn about it.
It feels like Ben, which is how she knows it's going to work.
"He's not on our trail and that's not what made it worth it," Iaves says somewhere behind her. "I checked the dead drop. There was a letter."
"From him?" Meg demands, wheeling around, watching intently as the Beast-caller plucks at the edges of a grayed envelope, unfurling the scribbled thing inside. She knows even from here that scratched, cramped writing, and she watches the minuscule twitches of emotion that flicker across his face. It's only read in the slight tightening of fingers against the paper's edge, the subtle flair of nostrils, the quiet twitch in the jaw.
"And?" she presses into the silence when his eyes hit the end of the scrawl.
