Shadow Herald — Chapter Five
Navaeli took refuge in a dark and dreamless sleep that lasted nearly into the next afternoon. When she finally woke, the fog in her head had lifted, and she was alone. She’d been left in a quaint, run-down house with shuttered windows and creaking floors. Withered herbs and poultices were gathered on the kitchen counter. Pale yellow wallpaper clung to the walls, the rougher spots clumsily concealed by a few pieces of lovingly carved furniture. It was as comfortable as it was silent.
Apparently, Crislie and Evain’s father had been a woodworker by trade and a physician by heritage, and had passed some knowledge down to them. For someone so dangerously close to being kicked in the face, Evain had stayed remarkably calm last night when he’d cleaned and bandaged her wound. Though Navaeli doubled over in pain all too often, she could now hobble around on her own.
Despite Evain’s advice, she peeked beneath her bandages. The wound was scabbing over. Perhaps soon, it would fade into a scar, and she could forget about it. This was her first and only mark of battle.
Outside the window, weeds ravaged the garden. A pile of lumber and a rusty ax rotted on the porch.
No one was around. No neighbors, no knights.
No one to intend her harm.
A blustery breeze made Navaeli shiver as she visited the rain barrels outside. Scrubbing the blood and dirt out of her clothes took some effort. Her uen had been crusted over with mud as well. She washed the strip of fabric hastily before wringing it out and twisting it back in place, cold and damp.
Once safe inside again, Navaeli laid out the contents of her bag and slowly repacked them. It wasn’t an important task — it wasn’t necessary in the least, actually — but it gave her a way to kill time.
There wasn’t much to her name. A flint and steel, a bundle of carefully preserved maps, a charcoal pencil, a compass, a waterskin, and a bowl.
Navaeli also had a knife, but she didn’t consider it to be hers. Talon, a curved athame with a blade and handle wrought of pure bone, was a relic that really belonged to her goddess. Unlike everything else, Navaeli kept this tucked into a hidden pocket inside of her poncho. The cost of losing it would be high. Silamir had put her through a good deal in order to obtain it and would not appreciate it being casually misplaced.
Several rapid knocks at the door caused her to startle off the side of her chair, landing in an ungainly tangle on the floor. “Vak yeh,” she swore, rubbing her head.
“Navaeli, are you there?”
Oh, she recognized that voice. Her racing heart slowed. Composing herself, Navaeli made her way to the door. Sure enough, when she cracked it open, she found Crislie waiting outside. The girl held a cloth-wrapped package between her crossed arms. Unlike yesterday, where she’d been quick to cheer, her eyes were downcast.
“I am present,” Navaeli murmured. “You returned?”
“Of course. What, did you think we’d forget about you?” Crislie brushed past with a jittery chuckle. Jars of paste and leaves clattered as she brushed them aside. “Hard thing to do. Hey, I know where Da kept his tea. Want a cup?”
Navaeli pondered the offer. “I suppose I would,” she said as she limped back to her seat. “But at this hour, don’t you have class to attend? Or do they not educate the youth here?”
“What’re you on about? It’s still harvest season. They don’t teach us nothing until the fields frost over,” Crislie explained, setting the package in front of Navaeli before running over to grab two small tea sacks from a battered cabinet. “I’m eighteen anyhow, so what would it matter if I ditched? Not like I was learning anything useful. What’s memorizing Gadhi’s provinces going to do for me, huh?”
Navaeli, being eighteen herself, quietly wished that she could ditch things that she didn’t want to do. Instead of commenting, she turned to the package. “And this is . . . ?”
“Bought it for you on the way over. The burned ones are practically free, y’know?”
Hesitantly, Navaeli unwrapped the bundle. It contained a baked potato, a thick slice of cheese, and half of a crispy loaf of bread.
As Crislie hauled a kettle of water to the stove and lit firewood, Navaeli devoured the food, barely minding its plainness. While she worked on the cheese and bread, she also went to the pain of dragging a stray stool over to the side table for Crislie to sit on. The house fell into a comfortable silence as their tea steeped.
With her vision clearer than it was yesterday, Navaeli slyly studied Crislie, determined to better understand the person sheltering her. The girl was at least a head taller than Navaeli herself and wonderfully sturdy. Her dark hair trailed all the way down to her knees, loosely curled. Curly hair was common in Gadhians. Her nose snubbed at an rugged angle, as if it had once been broken and never healed correctly, and her knuckles were calloused.
As handsome as she was, and as trustworthy as she had proven to be, Crislie looked like trouble waiting to happen. Navaeli preferred to avoid trouble. And yet, there was a flicker of gratefulness in her chest.
“Is your leg doing any better?” Crislie called out uneasily.
“I can manage.”
“I don’t think you should be walking on it. Evain’s gonna have a right fit if he catches you carrying on like this.”
Navaeli shoveled in the last of the potato’s skin and wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. “There is little to worry about. I am still alive, am I not?”
“For now.” Crislie peered into the teapot, tapping her foot on the dusty floor as if she’d never heard that cute little saying about watched pots not boiling. “The Irongardhe. They were the ones that hurt you, right? Don’t want to lecture you, but you’re lucky you didn’t tear out a tendon ripping out that arrow. Should take weeks to heal. Months, if you get infected.”
“Days,” Navaeli corrected softly. “A week at best. That will be how long I can afford to take. My goddess will want me to continue on my way as soon as possible.”
Crislie frowned. “That’s not nearly long enough. You’ll be limping around, stressing out the wound as you go.”
“I would like to talk about something else.”
Crislie scoffed and pointed at the maps strewn over the side table. “All right, then. What’s all that paper for?”
Navaeli blinked up at her, surprised that she’d noticed. “This? I dabble in, ahh, cartography. The landscape, the stars — it comes in useful, what with how often my goddess needs me to travel around. I’m hardly in one spot for long.”
“You like carts?”
“Maps,” Navaeli corrected with a flustered wave of her hand, before hurrying to push the weathered scraps into her bag. How feeble was that girl’s education? “Not carts. Maps.”
Crislie’s eyes glinted, dark and excited. “And you and your maps are planning on leaving within the week.”
“It depends on what Silamir decides. If I may ask, what brought you all the way out here to interrogate me on my hobbies? Besides my health,” Navaeli said. Gods knew, this conversation wasn’t only about checking in. The jitters that Crislie was obviously bottling up were too hopeful for that alone.
She wasn’t going to turn Navaeli in after all, was she? No, no, gods no. There had been ample opportunity to do that yesterday, or even last night, when she was asleep and unaware. And still, nothing had happened.
Or so Navaeli hoped.
Crislie smiled guiltily, pouring their tea. “Didn’t expect you to get to the point like that. I have some things to say about you leaving, but also about me, and stuff.”
The snort left Navaeli before she could even think to stifle it. “How specific.”
“I’m just trying to find the words for my thoughts!” Crislie replied, setting their drinks on the side table with a huff and a heavy clatter. “You haven’t really seen much of Gadlin, have you? And you probably won’t before you leave. So, let me tell you something — I know this place like the back of my hand. It’s small. I don’t know what I’m doing here, and it’s driving me crazy.”
Navaeli gingerly picked up her cup. The tea was too hot to drink yet, but it warmed her hands. “I see,” she said, feeling a pang of jealousy. She’d never been anywhere long enough to tire of it.
Crislie paced about while her drink cooled, brows furrowed. There was an irritated cant to her step. “I need a change of scenery. A new place to explore, uh, new options for me to look at. And I was thinking that, you, you’re a traveler, yeah? You know how to get safely between places. You could take me somewhere! Maybe to one of those great walled cities I’ve heard about.” Crislie stopped, glancing over her shoulder. “Would that be all right with you?”
It was at that inopportune moment that Navaeli took her first sip of tea and promptly choked, sputtering it back into her cup.
Judging by her flustered chuckle, this wasn’t the reaction that Crislie was looking for. “It’s not that silly.”
But it was. They barely knew each other. Navaeli wiped her lips, trying to find a better path to guide conversation down, but fell short. At least the tea was good. It was sweet, with a hint of heat that reminded her of a perfume she’d once stolen.
After taking a deep breath and a gulp of her tea, Crislie broke the silence again. “Don’t you ever get lonely out there? I promise not to be a bother. It doesn’t even have to be that far; just to a new city, that’s all I’m asking. I shouldn’t be traveling alone, what with fey, bandits, and beasts roaming around. Maybe you shouldn’t be wandering alone either. I could protect you for a while!”
“I manage to survive fine on my own.”
Crislie gave her a skeptical grin. “Sure you do. I mean, seeing as we first met while you were busy bleeding to death, right?”
Navaeli stifled her indignance under a false cough. She held doubts about Crislie’s ability to “protect” her from her enemies. All the same, Crislie wasn’t wrong to acknowledge the dangers of travel. It was perhaps the first smart thing she’d said today.
Begrudgingly, Navaeli entertained the idea of a traveling companion. “I was hoping to visit a friend on my way north. He lives in the capital city, Talimour. You have surely heard of it, if you’ve heard of any ‘great walled cities’ beyond your village,” she said, swirling the crushed leaves at the bottom of her cup.
Crislie lit up. “Really?”
Navaeli gave a hollow sigh. “I can do that much for you, if you bring your own supplies for the journey, and some food for me as well. The trip will take a few weeks. If you don’t care where we end up, then I can leave you with my friend and continue on my own way.”
An obsidian temple loomed over her when she closed her eyes.
Crislie jumped to her feet, hands over her mouth in unabashed excitement. “Thank you! I’ll have to tell Ev that I’m going to be away, and figure out what in the world to pack, and figure out how to handle Ma, but— that’s all fine. Oh! I’d better go get prepared.”
“And I suppose I should rest.”
“Right, right. See you later!” With a hasty wave, Crislie was off, nearly tripping over her own feet as she dashed out the door. It slammed behind her, rattling the jars strewn about the counter.
Navaeli waved belatedly. In her rush, Crislie had forgotten to attend to the aftermath of her tea-making. That girl didn’t know how to exist at anything less than full tilt, did she? After savoring her warm brew, Navaeli limped over to clean up the mess. She smothered the stove’s fire, dried the dishes, and then set them back where they belonged. The leftover tea on the stove remained where it was. Evain could warm it up for himself if he stopped by.
A yawn came over her when she’d finished, and the ache in her leg throbbed less violently as she tucked herself into her guest bed. Maybe her exhaustion had finally exceeded her ability to feel pain. That was fine with her. Smiling, she settled under a blanket.
And then Navaeli’s nerves prickled. She became aware of a cold breath on the back of her neck. “You were listening in on us, yes?” she whispered, sitting up.
The phantom breath harshened, acknowledging her words.
“Do you have anything to say to me? Any objections?”
“If you accepted this girl’s request to spite me, it is an absurd attempt, even for you. Pathetic, really,” Silamir stated, as cool and irked as ever. “Take her on your insisted detour to Talimour or not, and my plans remain unchanged. Yes?”
“Yes. I meant you no disrespect.”
Navaeli imagined phantom fingers brushing her throat, clawed nails dragging against her skin. She couldn’t help but reach up to brush off the touch, but there was nothing to brush off. Silamir continued to talk, bearing no audible recognition of the threat.
“Remember your final errand before you head out to Talimour. We didn’t spend months hunting down the Romne’s Herald for nothing, did we? Thank me for letting you lay about as long as I have.”
Navaeli waited in silence, disagreeing without disagreeing.
“It would be so much easier if I could do this myself.”
“Probably.”
“You’d never be tired again, if you would let me do it all for you.”
“Perhaps.”
A frustrated sigh sounded. “Someday, you will grow wise and accept your role. But for now, you may struggle if you’d like.”
A cold sweat crept down Navaeli’s neck. She laid her head down and turned inward, pulling the lone blanket over her. No thanks passed her lips. Would Silamir have listened long enough to hear it, even if she had been grateful?
That was the trouble with Silamir. Navaeli never quite knew if the goddess was watching her or not.
