“Alright, so, if we keep this speed up, we should arrive tomorrow. We’ll need to stop by a nearby village, and after that, it’ll take almost ten hours to reach the capital. The village is a few hours away, so we should be there at around eight… But if we want to, we could probably reach the capital if we rode through the night.”

“Sure, but Frog’s tired as it is, and we need the rest,” Fiir-ette replies, a sentiment I agree with. When you travel this much for this long, rest becomes less of an optional choice and more of a necessity. Even with the goal so close we could almost touch it, we still want to be well-rested when we get there. “Not to mention that if we arrive at the emperor’s place without being fully rested, we might make fools of ourselves and get executed. That’d be dreadful.”

“Oh, absolutely,” I say, with all the experience to back it up. “A total, um…” What’s the Aetongue word for bummer? Is there such a word? Hmm… “Ungoodness. Yes.”

“Couldn’t have said it better myself,” Fiir-ette says.

With the plan decided on, we continue our trek. And a few hours later, we arrive in a village that feels more like a small town. There are a pair of conjoined churches in the center, surrounded by what would be called the hub area. As we ride past looking for some place to settle down, we pass a blacksmith, a half-decrepit tannery, and finally an inn, which is perfect for our purposes. As Fiir-ette ties Frog and goes in to discuss whether or not we can stay the night here, I do my usual ritual of checking the village out.

The road is gravelly and a bit tough to walk on in parts, and few people are out, since the sun has gone down. I’m mostly interested in the churches. As per the usual, they aren’t the ones I’m looking for, but it’s still interesting to get a sense of what gods are celebrated where, and why.

As I head back, secure in the knowledge that the village is both safe and boring, I pass by that tannery again. For some reason, I feel myself pause in front of it. Sniff, sniff. It smells… Oddly familiar. It might only be that the scent of dried skin has become overly known to me, but I kind of doubt it. The tannery is closed right now, so I can’t enter or whatever, but I decide to keep it in mind. If they open early enough tomorrow, I might be able to peek in before we leave. Might even be able to sell some of my own creations as I do. Nodding to myself, I decide to do just that.

Around eight hours later, at the crack of dawn, I return. Fiir-ette is making use of his judge’s order for this final day to get some more provisions, so I have a bit of free time.

Oh, and lucky me—they’re open! Delightful.

I head inside, and age around three days at the paralyzed look the goblin behind the counter gives me. In return, I do what I’ve done many times before—I hold up my hand, smile, and say, “Greetings. Lovely business you have.”

The goblin, though still somewhat nervous, visibly relaxes. “Well met. Am I to presume you are a hoeksak?”

“That is indeed the case. Though, I mean no harm. In fact, I was wondering about your wares. You are a…” I struggle to remember the Aetongue word for tanner, and instead grab the nearest approximate. “A skin-maker, yes?”

The goblin nods. His mane is rather short, and his face isn’t too wrinkled, so I’d wager he’s about my age. “Indeed. Though, I must warn, if you have come here to find the wares produced by my late father, you have come in vain.”

“Not at all,” I say, stepping closer to the counter. “I was merely curious. Tell me, do you buy wares?”

“It depends. As you might have been able to tell, we are in no position to purchase large quantities.”

“I see,” I mutter. “In that case, as a fellow skin-maker, may I receive some words on my own creations?”

“Go right ahead. However, I can’t help but notice that you’re in lack of luggage.”

“Not to worry, we hoeksak have our ways,” I say, removing one of my more recent skins from my inventory—that of a wolf. I spread it across the counter, feeling a slight sense of nervousness bubble up inside me. “Not my finest work, though I used to do more poorly.”

“I see,” he mutters, turning it over to look at the inside of the skin. “There’s a tear here, and the skin on this side is much thicker than necessary… What tools have you been using? Knives?”

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“Ah, no, that is…” I show off my claws. He makes a disgusted expression. “Before you ask, I feel it pertinent to mention that not all hoeksak have claws. However, for me, they have been very useful in… Working on skin. B—besides, I do actually have tools, I just haven’t…” Now that I think about it, did I ever actually use the tools Harad gave me? I think I used them a bit for a month or so, but after that I just got bored, so… Yeah. Maybe he’ll be able to give me some input on if they’re worth using more than my claws? “Once, I received these tools…” I remove the little tool kit, bound in leather, and spread it across the counter, atop the wolf hide. “Do you think it might—”

He stares at the tools. With trembling hands, he reaches out, removing one of the scrapers. His finger moves across the edge, along the whittled wooden handle, all the way to the bottom, where Harad carved his initials—not that I can read them at the moment. His fingertips thread the initials, into the creases and grooves. Face set in an indiscernible expression, he looks up, eyes like coal. “Where… did you get these?”

“I received them as a gift,” I say, “from a goblin named Harad.”

“He would never give these away!” he snaps at me, clasping the tool closer to his chest. “Not over his dead—”

“He did, though,” I say, easily. “On order from the gods, and at his own request, I killed him. In reward, I received these tools.” I angle my head at him. He’s almost snarling. Without any changes in my inflection, I ask, “Are you the son he spoke of?”

“I am,” he growls. “His youngest son.”

“That’s good,” I say. “Before I killed him, he asked me to relay his final wishes to his family. One was that his oldest son wasn’t to inherit the business, as he was a rotten—”

“My older brother is dead!” he erupts, sweeping everything off the counter and onto the floor in one large, angry movement. “A rotten egg? Is that what you were about to call him?”

“Not me, no, that’s merely what Harad—”

He slams his hands onto the counter. “Well, he doesn’t need to worry about him, because Klas is dead! Only a few weeks after that fermented father of mine went off to the capital, Klas went looking for him, and he didn’t return either. All we got was a letter sent by some coroner five paces over that they’d found his body. Wonderful, isn’t it? I’m sure my father would be most pleased to hear such news!”

I watch him for a second. Then, I lean down, and gather up everything that fell on the floor. I put the hide back in my inventory, but I return the tools to the little kit. Rising once more, I place the tool kit on the counter between us. “You have my deepest condolences,” I say. Not meeting his fiery gaze, I slide the tool kit closer to him. “Harad may have left these with me, but I believe they would be better in your hands. If nothing else, selling them might…”

He grabs the tools, raises his hand to throw it again, and is only stopped when my hand flies out and grabs his wrist. A burning eye slides to look at me. I meet it with calm honesty. “Don’t do that,” I say. “Don’t sully his life.”

“Don’t sully—what? As though you can speak. I cannot sully it anymore than he has sullied it himself!”

“Maybe not,” I say, keeping my grip on his wrist. “But, at the very least… Have some respect for the sacrifice he made. He may simply have left, never returning, but… He was a strong man. Until the very end, he stayed strong. For your sakes. So that your memory of him wouldn’t be tainted by what he became.”

Breathing heavily, face twisted in despair, he slowly lowers his arm. I release him. Deep in my memory, I recall something Harad had said, long ago. “You… your name is Harad too, isn’t it?”

He winces. “Yeah. That’s right.”

I smile at him. “Good. It’s a nice name.”

He looks at me, and then at the far side of the store, and then his eyes fall back onto the counter. At the tool kit, still clasped in his hand. “We didn’t have much left after him,” he mumbles. “Barely even tools to keep things going. But, with this, maybe…” His face lights up in a tiny, tiny smile. After a moment of silence, he rolls open the tool kit again. His fingers move across the tools, one by one. He chuckles. “We were never allowed to touch them. Never ever,” he says warmly. “But we still did. He never wanted us to work with what he did, but… All we ever wanted was to be like him one day.”

“He talked about you until the end. I don’t know whether you were close to him or not, but… I could tell he loved you very much. And, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry that I couldn’t save him.”

He wipes at his eyes, putting away the toolkit. “I’m sure you tried. That’s what matters to us. That he wasn’t put down like a drake, but rather given a proper end.”

I hesitate. Did I really try? Did I really do my best? The way he died, slowly, bit by bit… Could that be considered a proper end?

I shake my head. In the end… The way he died doesn’t matter anymore. If he knew the exact pain he was in, all that time, he would never be able to move on. So, even though it hurts, and even though it’s hardly the right thing to do… “Yeah,” I say. “You’re right.”

Nodding, smiling stoically, he puts away the tools, out of sight. Then, he reaches out, and pats me on the shoulder. “Thank you. On behalf of my family, you have our gratitude.”

It was nothing. It really didn’t mean anything. I was only following orders. The gods were the ones who made me do it, otherwise, I would have moved on. You have nothing to thank me for.

I shake my head, recuperate his smile, and reply, as earnestly as I can muster, “You’re welcome.”

Then, we talk about some other things, and when I finally have to make my exit, I stick around just enough to leave a few of my better pieces with him, since they’ll be infinitely more valuable for him than me. I bid him farewell, and he promises that if I ever need room for the night and food for the day, I will always be welcome here. In return, I swear to him that should he ever require my services, I will be more than eager to help.

I leave him, and when I join back up with Fiir-ette, I do so with the knowledge that the capital doesn’t only hold a place that can direct me to where I need to go—but indeed also a cathedral of the god of knowledge.

I couldn’t be luckier.