“Better make a choice now, tree,” Archer said, turning away and readjusting the strap of the bag over his shoulder. “I know we didn't get the letter like I said we would, but going back would be bad at this point. I don't care whether you come with me or not. Pick whatever works best for you; it doesn't make much of a difference to me.”
Wick knew if he let Archer go now, the chances of anyone catching him again would be slim to none. He could talk about getting Archer arrested all he liked, but even if he told everyone in Aro to keep a lookout, they would only be able to catch him on the seventh or eighth stone, when they knew where he was going and could head him off. If Wick stayed with Archer, at least for now, he could keep tabs on him until the opportunity arose to turn him in.
And then there was the business with the keepsake box. He couldn't stop thinking about how Archer had taken nothing but the Heather Stone piece. There had been other things of value in the chest, some of them small enough for Archer to tuck in a pocket, even if he didn't have room in his unfillable bag. And yet Archer hadn't even taken one.
Even if that had all been for show, to convince him to see it Archer's way, Wick knew that he had taken nothing but the Satyr's Crown from the satyr territory, even though everything in the hall of valuables could be resold for a great deal of gold. Some of the other valuables had been found lying on the floor, and the stand that the Satyr's Crown had stood on had been broken, but the satyrs had reported nothing else stolen.
If Archer was just a thief who wanted to build the device for his own means, something here was not adding up.
But was believing him the right decision? If it turned out he was making the wrong decision, would he still be able to turn everything around before Eland's vision came true?
“Waiting, tree,” Archer said impatiently.
Wick hated everything he was doing. “I'm coming.”
“I knew you'd come around.” Archer slung an arm around Wick's shoulders as they walked. “You might shape up to be just like me one day.”
“I will not. Get off.” Wick shoved Archer's arm off, and they kept walking into the night.
Chapter nine
How to Betray All
Your Known Allies
“Stop moping,” Archer said.
Wick opened his eyes. “What?” he asked, irritated.
“You're still moping about what happened back in the seraph territory,” Archer said. He rubbed an eye, adjusting his position against the spiny bush he leaned on. “Either accept it or reject it, but you can't just keep moping. It's not working for me.”
“I'm not moping,” Wick said, forcing his voice into the passive one he used in the most difficult political situations. “I'm just reflecting on what happened.”
“You know I'm right,” Archer said.
“I can't say whether you are or not just yet,” Wick said evenly. He started digging his feet back out of the dirt. The earth in human territory was so dry and dead, it was a wonder that anything grew in it.
“You actually can.” Archer got to his feet. “You've got to know how much I hate when you do that. Answer in that flat voice like nothing in the world makes a scrap of difference to you. I can't stand it.”
Wick shrugged. Never in his life had he been told that taking a diplomatic defense on something was irritating, and he wanted to think that Archer was just saying it now because he was trying to get under his skin.
As they started walking again, Archer said, “And you know I'm right.”
“I already told you that you're wrong,” Wick responded.
“No, I don't think you know what part I'm talking about.” Archer pushed the twiggy branches of a bush out of his way as the clouds in the sky finally broke and started to drop a light drizzle. “You're talking about being mopey. Which you are. But I'm talking about being right about everything. I think you know that I'm right, but you don't want to believe it because why on earth would I be telling the truth? You think you're so above me, so you think that means you don't have to listen to me. And do you want to know how I know?”
“I really don't.” Wick tried to protect his messenger's bag a little bit more with his body as the dark rain started coming down just a little harder. They weren't at the level of a storm yet, but the drops of rain were getting bigger. They were likely to get a good deal of rain before it was over.
Archer looked angry for the briefest of moments, then the expression disappeared, replaced with relaxation at a startling speed. “Fine. Have it your way for now. But I know things about you, tree, and don't you forget it.”
A few hours later, when the rain had pounded and passed and they hadn't spoken to one another short of occasional warnings about rocks and holes along the way, Wick found himself longing for conversation once again. Archer was taking berries out of his bag again and eating them silently along the way.
“What's it like to taste things?” Wick asked, his curiosity getting the better of him.
Archer looked confused and faintly annoyed. “I don't know. When you're hungry, you just eat whatever you have, and it tastes how it tastes. Sometimes it tastes like dirt. Sometimes it tastes great. I don't know.”
“Tell me you can do better than 'sometimes it tastes great',” Wick said, giving Archer the same side-eye Archer liked to give out himself. “What does great taste like? Not that you were any help telling me what tasting is like in the first place, but you could try.”
To his surprise, rather than give him a snappy retort, Archer complied. He rolled his head back to stare up at the sky for a moment while he thought. “I guess the stuff that tastes good all depends on you. Everybody tastes things differently. Everyone agrees that sweet things taste good and bitter things normally taste not that great, but. . . I don't know how to explain this.”
“What's it like when something's sweet?” Wick tried, stepping over some larger rocks. The terrain was getting rockier as they got closer to human territory.
“It's. . . good.” Archer was struggling. “It's a light taste, I guess. Everyone I've ever met said bitter things taste heavy or dark or something, so I guess sweet must be a light taste. No,” he said suddenly, realizing something, “It's not light. It tastes thick. The sweeter something tastes, the thicker the taste is. I think.” He struggled a moment longer, then just shook his head and said, “I give up. It's hard to describe tastes to someone who doesn't have taste buds. What's sunlight like? What's it like eating sunlight instead of food?”
Now Wick was the one that was put on the spot. But he found he could describe it more easily than Archer could describe food. “It's. . . the best feeling in the world. All that light comes down from the sky, and you can just stand there and absorb it, drink it all in. And there are so many kinds of sunlight. Not everyone knows this, but some kinds of sun are better than others. Where you're standing and how the light diffuses and the time of day is important.” He realized how fast he was talking, but now the floodgates had opened. “The best kind of sunlight is when the sun isn't all the way in the sky. When it's just going down or just coming up, that's the best kind of light.”
Archer stepped over the rocks. “What's so great about that kind of light if the whole sun isn't even there?”
“Well, it depends on whether you're talking about the light when the sun is coming up or the light when it's going down,” Wick responded, his panicked babbling now over. He found he was calmer now, more honest, everything seemed all right, at least for the moment. “When the sun is just coming up, the light is fainter. It's lighter and colder and more delicate. It's a wonderful feeling once in a while, but I couldn't live off it.”
“Hmm,” Archer said. “What about the other kind?”
“The light when the sun is going down is the best kind,” Wick said decidedly, and he realized it was true. “It's my favorite kind. It's stronger than any other kind at any other time in the day. It's so much richer and deeper, and the energy it gives you could last for days if yo
u were careful.”
“Huh,” was all Archer said. He didn't seem sure what to say now that Wick was really talking, and Wick wasn't sure what to say now either. It felt like a barrier had broken.
“So,” Wick managed after a moment, “we're nearly to the edge of human territory. Do you know where the humans are keeping their piece of the Heather Stone?”
“I think I do.” Archer backtracked. “At least, I have a hunch. I don't know many humans personally, but I did hear through a few people that some man was bragging about having seen it with his own eyes, and they knew where he'd been before he started talking about it.”
“That sounds promising,” Wick said.
Archer shrugged. “Well, it would be if he wasn't a traveling salesman and hadn't been to three streets of houses that day.”
“You said you knew where it was!”
“I do! I will.” Archer held up his hands defensively. “Sometimes you have to do this kind of research on the road. I can't know everything ahead of time or I would be a centaur.”
“Even the centaurs don't know everything ahead of time. They can't channel every vision,” Wick said.
“I know they don't know everything.” Archer skirted a hole in the ground. “If they did, I wouldn't have to be the one getting the stones together, and I wouldn't have to put up with you right now.”
Wick knew better than to take any of that personally. “Do you at least have a plan?”
“Baby steps, tree. We'll find out who has the stone, then we'll make a plan.”
They had barely crossed over the border to the human territory and found the first of the many dirt roads the humans insisted on building when the skies let loose again, harder this time.
“Oh, come on!” Archer hollered at the sky. “It already rained! Wasn't that enough?”
Just as he asked, the wind picked up, and it started raining harder. The dirt road under their feet was quickly turning into a thick mud.
Wick spotted a thick plume of smoke over a rise ahead of them. Smoke meant a building or some other structure that they could take shelter in until the storm had passed. “Look!” he called to Archer. “There's smoke ahead! Maybe we can find shelter!”
Archer nodded, and together they ran over the rise to the small town on the other side.
A woman held the door of the inn open for them as they raced inside. “You made it just in time,” she said as she closed the door again behind them. “It looks like the thunder and lightning will be starting soon. But that's good. We've been needing rain here for a good long time.”
A few fair folk men entered behind Wick and Archer, thanking the woman for holding the door in small but gruff voices. Archer sort of smirked at their small size as the fair folk passed, heading for the only table that would seat people who were shorter than knee height.
As much as the rain was an inconvenience, the land had clearly needed it. Wick had been to the human's territory enough times to know that the ground always looked that parched, but in dry territories droughts could easily turn savage. He often wondered how the humans could live in such a place. But the humans seemed to thrive on the difficult living circumstances rather than saving their energy and moving to a place that was easier to tame. They saw it as a challenge, where anyone else would only see it as an inconvenience. Human resilience was a weakness and a strength.
“Care to sit down and have something to eat while we wait for the rain to pass?” the hostess offered, pulling out a chair at one of the empty tables.
The ground level of the inn seemed to be a sort of tavern, with a bar and large seating area. Most of the tables were already seated to their limits with men and women chatting and laughing as they waited out the storm. A pair of musicians sat in the corner playing the flute and the drums, providing a calming and homey sort of atmosphere to the tavern. While the tavern had no windows other than a small peephole slit cut into the wood of the door, every other table had a lit lantern in the center, casting a flickering golden glow over the tavern.
Wick and Archer took a seat at the nearest empty table. Wick noted that Archer had chosen a table pressed up against a wall. Probably a good choice; if anyone in the tavern did happen to know who they were and what they were doing, they were at a good vantage point to spot any trouble before it started and keep out of sight.
Their hostess came back over, carrying a plate and a wooden mug. She set the plate, overflowing with cheese and grapes, in front of Archer. “Some food for you, my boy, and for you–” She glanced awkwardly at Wick, then set the mug down in front of him. It had a dark liquid inside that he could only assume was wine. “I wasn't sure what to get you.”
“It's all right,” Wick said, accepting the mug graciously. “I ate earlier.”
As soon as she walked away, Archer said, “You ate earlier, huh?”
“I did. My way.”
Archer shrugged. “Well, I know you can't drink that.”
“No,” Wick admitted, “but she would have considered herself to be a bad host if she didn't give me something. At least she tried.” He slid the cup over to Archer, and Archer took a long drink.
“I don't know how they make this,” he mumbled as he chewed, waving one of the cheeses in the air, “but it is amazing. I can never figure out where they get it.”
“Something to do with cows and milk or something like that,” Wick said distantly. “I never paid much attention to the process.” The rain outside caught his attention as the door opened again for more of the little fair folk. Through the peep slot in the door, he could catch glimpses of it coming down in sheets. It was uncannily dark outside, even for the middle of a storm. The lightning flashed white outside, and he looked away.
Even as Archer continued to talk about the wonders of cheese and how great it tasted, Wick was looking around the tavern. The advantage to not having irises and pupils like everyone else was that he could do any amount of staring and if he didn't turn his head too much no one was likely to notice. No one seemed to have recognized them, at least not yet, and for the time being, no one seemed to be paying them any mind. He could be thankful for that, at least.
Now if they could only track down the stone.
A few men were gathered at the next table over, talking to one another too loudly not to hear. “It's almost a shame,” a man with a long black ponytail said to the others. “I don't know a single person who really liked him, but he did have all that money.”
“And a few relics besides!” exclaimed a man with three empty steins in front of him. “I saw his collection once. There were only a few, but they were pretty ones. Probably expensive.”
“Probably bought them all to keep. . .” Here the man with the ponytail became inaudible, “camouflaged. Hard to find a needle in a haystack.”
“He didn't have enough money for a haystack's worth,” the man with the three empty steins said with a laugh. “But I think you're right, all the same.”
The third man, face nearly hidden by a long and full brown beard, leaned forward. “He must have left it to someone. Who has it now? All of it?”
“I don't know, but I'll tell you who probably does know,” the man with the ponytail said, “Anna.” He nodded to their hostess, and as she passed again, he grabbed her sleeve to get her attention. “Anna,” he said, and the other two nodded eagerly, “who did old Silas leave everything to? He had too much of it for it to have all just disappeared. Especially with him having the. . . well, you know.”
“We figured if anyone knew,” the man with the full beard said, “you would.”
The hostess, Anna, regarded them shrewdly for a moment, then gave them half a smile. “And I do,” she said in a low voice. “He didn't leave it to anyone. Not anyone. But now Prentiss has it all. He was his closest living relative, and now he has every penny of it. Even the relics and other things.” She nodded and winked, and then left with her tray to serve the other patrons.
“Huh,” the man with
the beard said. “I didn't know Prentiss was his relative at all.”
“Neither did I,” the man with the three empty steins said, and the three of them twisted to stare at a middle-aged man sitting against the back wall, eating a bowl of stew in a very quiet and private way. They all turned back to face the center of the table again.
“Wonder what he'll do with it all,” the man with the steins mused.
As their conversation turned to what one could do with all that money, Wick cut his attention away from them. He had heard enough to have formed a hunch. The way they wouldn't say what relic the dead Silas had been trying to hide, the way the man with the beard had first asked only who had 'it', and then specified 'all of it' as an afterthought. . . he wanted to guess that old Silas had been the keeper of the humans' piece of the Heather Stone, and now that he had died, the man Prentiss now had it.
Wick leaned forward and whispered to Archer. “Those men behind you. Did you hear what–”
“Yes.” Archer never looked up from his food as he reached for the last of the cheese. “Don't lean forward like that. It means you're hiding something.”
Wick jerked back to a sitting position again.
“That doesn't help either. Yes, I heard the whole thing,” Archer continued. “I think the same as you. Prentiss just might have it.”
“What do we do?” Wick asked.
Archer put the last of the cheese in his mouth, chewed, and swallowed. “He's having his dinner now, so when he goes home, he'll probably just go to bed. Perfect time for thieving. We'll follow him home and get the piece from him if he has it, if he doesn't, we go back to square one. Easy plan.”
“Easy plan,” Wick repeated softly, watching Prentiss as he finished his stew and got up from his seat. Leaving some money on the table to pay for his meal, Prentiss walked toward the door.
Wick stopped looking at him as he passed, but out of the corner of his eye, he could see Prentiss fiddling with something in the pocket of his green coat.
Robbing Centaurs and Other Bad Ideas Page 9
