When I step out of the room, the jovial man behind the bar gives me a gentle wave. His cheeks and nose are rosy, and he reminds me vaguely of Oryx, though I can’t put a finger on why. I raise my hand in a return wave, feeling entirely outside of myself, and step out onto the street outside.
Judging on the sun above, it’s noon now, and there are people walking about. Almost an hour must have passed in the time since Sybil left my room in the tavern.
I look up and down the street, uncertain, but no one passes me a glance. No one rushes out to stop me. I take uneasy steps forward, feeling like I am walking on an unsteady beam and the world around me might fall out at any time.
“What are you doing, standing in the middle of the road like that?” A voice surprises me from behind. I spin around, raising my arms in defense. It’s Maggie.
She tuts and shakes her head. “I see she let you go.” Was that the only other option? I wonder. “You’re going up to the farm house, I assume?”
I stare blankly at her.
She rolls her eyes. “You’re helping Sybil, right?”
“She didn’t say that.”
“She doesn’t say a lot of things, but she is our main export product, so she carries a lot of weight around here.” She smiles, “Not to mention, she’s very sweet.”
Sweet? My thoughts flicker back to the cold smile that was all sharp teeth and shivered. “She didn’t say,” I repeat. I run my hand over my head, “I think she wanted me to leave, actually.”
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Maggie shook her head. “If that’s the case, it’s not part of the plan.” She taps her chin, and my heart sinks into my stomach at the inference. Were they going to kill me after all? She steps past me and points towards a path that veers off of the main road and climbs away from the town to the west. “Take the path up that way for about half an hour. It’s hot, you’ll live. You’ll come to her farm.”
“What?”
She nods and passes me with a wave. “Good luck, princeling. You’ve got a lot on your hands with that one.”
I consider whether to follow her directions, uncertain if she’s just sending me off to die in the dark woods that border the path, but decide that I’m no worse off than I already am and a bit of direction isn’t inherently a… bad thing?
Usually.
The road twists underneath my feet and guides me up into the hills outside of the little town of Reisau, which disappears almost immediately from sight behind me as I climb. About twenty minutes in I wonder if I’ve actually made the right choice by following Maggie’s directions, but then I turn the corner and see the ground level off into fields of wheat stretching as far as my eye can see until it reaches the base of the mountain.
There’s a few structures that climb out of the waving ocean of green like great galleons. There’s white and brown that flash through the greens like fish coming up to touch the surface before diving back down. My stomach drops out of me. I don’t know that I’m equipped for the hard labor that confronts me. I feel the sun on my shoulders more acutely now that I eye the brown of the peaked hats people are wearing. I was a prince, once. Certainly, I’d led my men into battle in the hot summer months during the war, when the sun would reflect off of armor and sweat would drip into my eyes and soak my clothes. That was hard work, too. But without my sword, I can’t fathom the work that awaits me.
Stop being a child, I scold myself. This was the first step to becoming a better version of myself, of redeeming my sins, of correcting my wrongs. To become a better ruler. I needed to be humbled before I could rise. My promise to the necromancer echoed in my bones as I take another solid step forward: I would gather my confidence here, and then I would leave.
If only it was so easily earned, because as soon as I rounded the path to the farm house, a large, hulking construct made of bone and clay towered past the building carrying two pine trees in either arm. I felt my heart shudder to a halt and the world went dark.