“The Webbed Woods?” Sora asked. It sounded like her breath got caught in her lungs. Whitney didn’t recall her being afraid of anything, but only a fool wouldn’t fear those cursed woods.
“The Queen wanted us to retrieve the Prince’s... or King’s... whatever he is now. She wanted me to steal his special doll back from a Drav Cra Arch Warlock who happens to be the Queen’s brother or something like that. Somehow, it’ll help him recover from sickness. Highborn and their trinkets.”
Sora just stared at him, dumbfounded. Whitney couldn’t help but smirk.
“I think that’s enough, you? They won’t be catching up. Let’s rest.”
“Thought’d you’d never ask,” Whitney said.
They found a relatively dry spot under a thick canopy of trees to block the rain. Whitney took a seat on a fallen tree trunk, and Sora sat beside him, scooting in close. She smelled like a farm, which wouldn’t have been awful if not for the fact that it was now a smell so foreign to him. He was used to city folk and city smells—shog and piss and everything worse.
"So, what now?” Sora asked.
“I’m not sure,” Whitney said, “but I’m sure as Elsewhere not going to die for some Shieldsman.”
“You’re going to abandon him?”
“Better me do him before he does me.”
“Good to see some things never do change.”
“That’s not fair,” Whitney argued. “He hired me to steal, not to fight. He was supposed to be the muscle, and he goes and gets us captured by a mob of crazies who probably wanted to cut our throats to please a goddess that’s not even listening? How do you think he’ll fair against Arch Warlocks or giant, bloodthirsty spiders? He’d throw me at them to save his hide.” Whitney shivered at the thought.
“What's the pay?”
Whitney had plans to continue his rant, but her response caught him off guard. “Excuse me?”
“The pay,” she repeated. “In exchange for helping.”
Whitney grinned, turned his cheek and said, “I swore I wouldn’t say.”
“Oh, c’mon, Whit.” She nudged his side playfully. “Clearly you’re getting paid. What is it? How much?”
“Why? It doesn’t matter anymore. Torsten’s locked in a cage, and without him, I barely know who or what I’m looking for.”
“So, you give up?” It wasn’t a really a question.
“No, I move on to greener pastures. I’m out of dungeons and ancient dwarven ruins, in the clean air. I’m thinking a vacation is in order. I did just steal the Glass Crown you know.”
“You still haven’t answered. What was the price?”
“My freedom, which I now already have, and some riches.”
“You’re lying.” She shifted her body and leaned forward so she could stare straight into his eyes. He tried to look past hers, but the brilliant, golden flecks in her irises kept drawing him back.
“I swear.”
“A swear from a man who fears no gods is no swear at all.” Her breath on his skin brought a feeling familiar and strange all at once. “And furthermore, I don’t believe you. You were a sad liar when we were kids, and you still are.” She lay her hand on his thigh and nudged in closer. “Just tell me. What does the greatest thief alive get offered for his services?”
Her hand slid further and further up his leg until finally, Whitney blurted, “A name.”
She pulled away immediately.
“A name?” she asked.
“Yes. A name. Happy?”
“What does that mean?”
“If we made it back alive, Torsten was going to have me ennobled the head of a new house, and I wouldn’t have to share a name with that sorry bumpkin I called Dad.”
Sora seemed disappointed. She sunk back, all the glimmer stricken from her eyes.
“But it’s not worth dying over,” Whitney went on. “A name doesn’t matter much in a profession where you’re not meant to be seen or heard. It was a stupid idea, really.”
“You haven’t changed one bit.” Sora sprung to her feet and took a few healthy strides away before Whitney reacted.
“What is it now?” he whined.
“Was it really so awful back home with all us bumpkins?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
Sora folded her arms and continued facing away from him.
“Look,” Whitney sighed. “There are enough men after me to fill a barracks right now and trust me, I’ve had my fill of dungeon food. I have a friend in Winde Port. He’s one of the only decent dwarves I’ve ever met. We can head there for now.”
“What makes you think I want to go anywhere with you?”
“For one, you followed me all the way to Oxgate. Two, there’s no Troborough to go back to…”
He hadn't sooner said the words than regretted saying them. There was no more Troborough. Her home had been burned to the ground for no good reason.
She turned to him, tears pooling in the corner of her eyes. "You're a real bit of shog, you know that?" She walked off. Whitney chased her.
“Sora,” he called. She didn’t stop. “Sora!” He tugged on her shoulder. She whipped around, grabbed his wrist, and wrenched it so hard the pain forced him up onto his toes.
“I should have left you to rot in that cage!” she bristled, then released him.
“Probably, but now we’re here. Whitney and Sora, together again.” Whitney figured it was best not to mention he’d already expertly escaped the cage when she found him. Instead, he placed a hand on each of her shoulders, smiled, and said, “Don’t you remember when we got Pavlo’s dad to believe his pigs ran away?”
Sora continued glaring for a few seconds, but her lips betrayed the slightest hint of a smile. That was enough for Whitney.
“He searched frantically, screaming out to them each by name,” he said, holding back a snicker.
“Until he heard the snorting in his cellar,” she said.
“Must have smelled like shog in his house for a week.” They shared a laugh, and Whitney used the moment to rub at his sore wrist. For such a small woman, she had a grip like a vice.
“And then you left,” she said, her smile vanishing.
He sighed. Ever since that day he’d worked alone. It was how he liked it. But as he regarded her, now so many years older, he couldn’t help but imagine what it might have been like if he’d invited her along, had a partner in crime. Would he still have found himself jaded enough to go back home for inspiration and drink himself silly all alone?
“I’m back now,” he said. “We’ve all done things we aren’t proud of, no? Why don’t we put the past behind us for now and go somewhere far away from here? See what kind of trouble we can get into?”
Sora moseyed back to the fallen log and lay down, staring at the canopy above. From that angle, Whitney could really tell how much she’d grown up. He pretended to cough, hoping she hadn’t noticed him staring.
“You know what I want?” she said.
“What’s that?” he said.
“I want to see what you learned all those years away from home. I want you to find the new King’s doll and get that name of yours. And since I have no more home to go back to, I’m going to help you.”
Whitney stifled a groan. He leaned against a tree, facing away from her, trying to find words that wouldn’t trigger her again. “Look, Sora. I don’t know if the stories about the Webbed Woods are true, but this is a job for professionals. Drugging some cultists is one thing, but this—”
He lost his train of thought when he felt a burning sensation in his side. He looked down and realized that the bottom of his shirt was burning. He tore at it, slapped at it, but it kept burning. He grabbed it by the collar and ripped downward, removing it entirely. Then, he cast it to the ground and stamped on it until the fire suffocated.
The sound of Sora laughing drew his eyes up. She stood grinning, her expression more sinister than playful. She gripped a small knife in one hand and had the other raised toward him. A thin,
fresh line of blood dripped down Sora’s palm, with a tiny ball of flame hovering in front of it.
“Don’t you worry about me,” she said. “You’re not the only one who’s been training.
Whitney’s eyes very nearly popped from his head. He knew what he was witnessing, but found the words difficult to muster.
“B…b…blood magic?” Whitney stammered. “You are a blood mage?”
The smile still hadn’t left Sora’s face as Whitney’s shirt lay smoldering on the ground.
“Are you crazy?” he said.
“What?” she said. “You can galavant off into the world stealing staves from wizards, but I can’t learn a bit of magic?”
“So, you have heard of me?”
It was dark, but Whitney was pretty sure Sora rolled her eyes. “Maybe once or twice. Traders whisper and bards sing, especially those who’ve been robbed. And apparently, you’re never smart enough to leave out your name. No wonder you want a new one.”
“There are songs about me?”
“Not very good ones.”
“Very funny. We’re getting off topic. How in Iam’s name did you learn…” He lowered his voice even though they were alone. “Blood magic.”
“It’s not really an interesting story. Not like one of your grand, exaggerated epics of stealing crowns and serving the Queen.”
“I’ll have you know that every one of my feats is one-hundred-percent, perfectly true. It’s not my fault I was gifted with the ability to enrapture minds.”
Sora’s eyes rolled so far this time Whitney couldn’t miss it.
“Just tell me,” He pointed to a spot on the ground beneath the boughs of an aged oak tree. “We can stop here for the night. The ground’s damp, so it looks like we’re going to have to snuggle up close to keep warm. Where better to talk?”
“You do remember what I just did to your shirt?”
Whitney glanced down at his bare chest. Seeing it also made him notice how cold the air was. “Right. I’ll get you some wood.”
“You think I’m going to cut myself again just so you don’t catch a chill?”
Whitney started to respond, but Sora’s giggle made him realize she was chiding him. He laughed nervously along with her and began gathering wood.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Helping you start a fire,” he said.
“You really don’t understand how this works, do you?”
She stood and searched the ground until she found a spot in between two thick, fallen branches. She squeezed her hand into a fist, and a droplet of blood dripped to the earth from her last cut. She closed her eyes and spent a long moment deep in focus, then fire sprung from the wet dirt.
She plopped down and waved her hand through the spikes of flame. It reached out for her palm as if she were controlling it, keeping it from spreading to the boughs of the tree above.
Whitney took a step back, aghast. He’d seen magic before. Most humans weren't adept at it, and dwarves never were, but he’d seen more insane miracles than making a fire. He imagined his amazement was more over the fact that it was Sora. He’d always hoped he could learn a trick or two, but not everyone was born with an affinity with Elsewhere, both the source of magic and the underworld realm filled with demons, spirits, and far worse which Iam created for them after the God Feud.
“Okay.” Whitney joined her by the fire. “You’re seriously going to have to tell me where you learned that.”
“Troborough,” she answered as if that should be expected.
“Not a chance,” Whitney said. “I grew up in that goat-shog town. C’mon, really, where?”
“Like I said, Troborough.”
“And you thought my stories sounded crazy?”
Sora swiped her hand through the fire, causing it to lick Whitney’s boots. He yelped and shimmied further away.
“Wetzel,” she said.
“What? He was an old nutter who played with medicines, not blood magic!”
“He wasn’t just some ‘old nutter,’ he was a healer. And if I remember correctly, he sewed up more than a fair share of your cuts.”
“I can pull a thread, Sora. I don’t bleed fire.”
“That’s not how it—” She exhaled. “Wetzel taught me everything he knew.”
“This isn’t adding up,” Whitney protested. “How could you have practiced blood magic in the middle of our little town without anyone knowing?”
“Oh, now it’s our town?” Sora scoffed with a smile. “Wetzel knew—plus, he’d been doing it for gods know how long under his shack, and no one has found out. It’s not legal you know, using the magic of Elsewhere. What better place to learn than in a town barely anybody has heard of?”
“Were you… even when I was still there?”
She shook her head. “I was too busy getting into trouble with you. But he saw my potential after you left.”
“I always knew there was something off about him.”
Her features darkened. “Was…” she whispered softly. She raised her knife and stared longingly upon the wooden handle, the end carved into the shape of a dragon’s head. Whitney recognized the weapon as the one Wetzel used to use for surgery.
He swallowed back the lump forming in his throat. It was clear Wetzel meant more to Sora than being just some old coot who took her in as an orphan and let her live in his tool shed so long as she helped him with his work.
“He died in the attack, didn’t he?” Whitney asked.
Sora didn’t answer, but she didn’t need to.
Whitney stood to walk over and comfort her but stopped, thinking better of it. She might be talking freely, but it was too soon. She obviously hadn’t forgiven him for leaving without so much as a goodbye all those years ago, when he disappeared like so many of the treasures he’d stolen from their owners.
“None of that matters anymore,” she said. “My old life is over.” She turned her head and tried to subtly wipe her cheek as if it were an itch that drew her hand and not a tear. She didn’t fool Whitney, but the way her hair framed her face in the darkness made it look like she was still wearing a hood, and flicked a spark in Whitney’s mind.
After giving her a moment, he said, “Sora, I have to ask you something.”
“I already told you, we aren’t cuddling,” she replied.
“No… it’s just…. Those cultists back there were blood mages too. And… and you just happened to follow me there?”
Sora stood to meet Whitney’s gaze, the arms of the fire rising with her.
“Are you accusing me of helping capture you after I just rescued your worthless hide?” she said.
“No, not at all. I’m just saying, it is pretty coincidental.”
“Yes…yes, it is quite coincidental that Whitney Fierstown would find himself thrown in prison for stealing the King’s crown on the same night the King died. It is also coincidental that he was somehow released from jail to adventure across the land accompanied by the Wearer of White. Or maybe that after ten years you returned to Troborough right when the Shesaitju decide to rebel. There are a lot of coincidences going on around here, Whitney, but unlike the others, this one is exactly that.”
He had to admit, his story seemed unlikely. Maybe even more than hers. As he thought back over the past ten-day, it all seemed awfully strange. He’d been wanted in every major city and most small towns, but breaking free of his third imprisonment in as many days had to be a new record. He was rarely caught unless he planned to be.
“Must be the hand of Iam, eh?” Whitney said, grinning.
“A blood mage and a thief,” she said. “I’d wager Iam isn’t too fond of us.”
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned in every part of Pantego, it’s that the gods don’t give a yig about us. Doesn’t matter what name they go by. We’re still alive, that’s all that matters.”
“You sound like Wetzel.”
“Must have been a brilliant man.”
Sora answered with a soft grunt. S
he returned to her seat by the fire and lay her head back against a thick root. “We should get some sleep. We’ll need it for the Webbed Woods.”
“Hey, I don’t remember agreeing to that,” Whitney protested. “I can think of a million better places to go.”
“Goodnight, Whitney Fierstown. Maybe when I wake up, you won’t have run off again.”
She turned onto her side, facing away from him, and tried to make herself comfortable. Sleeping in the dirt wasn’t hard for Whitney—not that he preferred it over a nice, soft bed—but after sleeping in a dungeon, anything is possible. She had the look of someone who’d never slept without a thatched roof over her head and a cushion under it.
Whitney lay back himself, listening to her struggle to find a good position. “I’m sorry,” he whispered after a brief period of silence, not sure if she was still awake. For one of the few times in his life, he really meant it. Not for leaving her behind—the places and things he’d done were nothing a young girl should’ve experienced—but for not at least saying goodbye. He’d been so intent on getting out of Troborough, leaving behind his worthless life and every part of it, he’d never even considered his only childhood friend might actually care.
“For which part?” Sora answered after several heartbeats.
“All of it, I suppose,” he lied. Sometimes it was the best way.
No answer.
He turned his head and lowered his gaze toward the fire.
How can she complain when she got to stay home and learn how to make that without even a stick?
He couldn’t believe he found himself jealous of someone who stayed to live in Troborough while he watched the embers wafting across the night sky, disappearing as they passed by Celeste, the bright moon. He tried to clear his mind when a clump of cloth landed on his face.
“Hey!” he protested, pulling down the ball of clothing. He held it up and realized it was the cultist’s robe she’d stolen. She’d had a plain tunic and leather pants on underneath, clothing fit for a peasant of Troborough and not adventure.
“In case you get cold,” she said. “Next time, bring a spare shirt, thief.”
Web of Eyes: (Buried Goddess Saga Book 1) Page 16
