The sun had set, but most buildings along the pathway had at least one lantern lit inside, if not more. Without walls, the light from them bathed the bamboo path on both sides with a soft glow. In addition, each porting post had a lamp burning brightly, providing even more light to those out for a walk or traveling in-between buildings. Some people gave her and the fairy an odd look as they rushed past, which Tif guessed would have happened even if she wasn’t running to keep up with the tiny creature--they were a fairy and a Blooder after all, a combination probably never seen on this island before.
Just as Tif was thinking that they were giving the knights a very easy path to follow, they reached the outer curve of the city, where buildings sat only on the in-side. The bounty hunter took them off the side of the bamboo street then, toward the sound of water slapping against rocks. Like before, the earth that Tif landed on with a soft thump was a few feet lower than the walkway, and she felt the brush of waist high plants against her clothes. The raised path behind her blocked most of the light from the buildings on the other side of it, and Tif’s eyes hadn’t adjusted to the dark yet, so she couldn’t make out the fairy in front of her. She could hear the water sounds getting louder though and the air smelled more like salt, which made her shorten her steps. She knew her Blood ris could heal her, but Tif doubted that would be much help against drowning if she tipped over the edge.
“Stop,” Tif heard a voice whisper surprisingly close in front of her. “Time to climb down.”
“Climb...down?” Tif said.
The fairy snorted. “A Lercel girl who doesn’t know how to climb. Now I’ve seen everything.”
Tif had climbed before, but it was usually up a path on her feet. She had a general idea of how to go about it though and wasn’t going to give the little creature the satisfaction of being right. Tif crouched, reaching forward with her hand to see where the ground she stood on ended. Her fingers brushed a leafy plant, followed by some sharp, porous rock, and then there was nothing, just air. If she had taken two more steps, she would have fallen into the ocean. Doing her best to breath out that frightening thought, Tif turned on her knees, so her feet were facing the overhang. Next, she inched backward until she didn’t feel anything under her sandals anymore. Then she laid on the plants and rock on her belly, scooching until her knees and then thighs were over the lip, at which point Tif was able to drop her legs against the side of the cliff to look for toeholds. While she did that, she gripped what handholds she could find. She continued to squirm backwards, the pull of empty space beginning to do some of her work for her, which was utterly terrifying.
For a flash, Tif became extremely jealous of how Tears user’s could jump to wherever they wanted to go and how the fairy could simply fly there. That’s when Pep came to her rescue.
“Of course,” Tif said.
“Of course what?” the bounty hunter asked, surprising Tif yet again with how close she was--maybe a foot to the side of her head.
Tif decided to show the fairy instead of answering. She had spent all this time practicing bonding rocks to her hands, and tonight was her chance to flip that around. Tif moved the warmth from the ris spread across her body to her fingers and palms and then pushed that heat into the stone beneath her skin. Immediately, Tif felt her hands press closer to the rock--even a bit painfully due to the sharp edges of this island stone--but the amazing part was that they stayed that way when Tif tried to relax her hands.
“I can’t fall,” she said giddily.
“But can you move?” the fairy chirped. “They’re not going to wait forever.”
Tif didn’t let the comment take the shine off her excitement, but she did release one hand by willing the heat release from it to stop, and began to make her way more aggressively down the cliffside now that she knew there wasn’t any danger.
Things went well for the next minute or so, with Tif making steady progress by alternating which hand she bonded to the rock and which foot she used to brace herself. But then the cliffside sloped inward at a steep angle, giving Tif no purchase with her legs. She tried a few different positions, but even if she could get her sandaled feet to brush the wall, she couldn’t find a lip to catch on.
To make matters worse, while her ris kept her hands stuck to the rock, that also put a lot of strain on them, and she was starting to tire, sweat beading her brow and running down the small of her back. When Tif asked the fairy if there was a better way nearby, the little creature said, “Just let go. There’s a rock shelf about fifteen feet down, right beneath you.”
Tif brought her legs up and widened her stance so she could look down unobstructed. There weren’t lights nearby anymore--what with her bonded to the side of the cliff face--the moon wasn’t out, and the rock was dark, so she couldn’t see exactly where the fairy meant. Landing on stone was better than water in her case, but still, fifteen feet was a lot. It would definitely hur--
Tif squawked as a sharp pain stabbed into the back of her right hand. The sensation broke her concentration, and she stopped pushing heat into the rock at all. Without the ris holding her in place, both palms slid free. Tif’s eyes went wide as she tilted backward through the air, away from the wall, which she grabbed frantically for, and then she was falling, air rushing beside her ears. The drop didn’t last nearly as long as when she was traveling with Udaru, uneven rock slamming into her back and head, causing her to bite down hard on her tongue.
She half screamed, half grunted in shock, the explosion of agony throughout her body only muted by the roaring flash of white in her head. Like always, her ris responded reflexively: heat rushing to her mouth, and the back of her skull, and her shoulderblades, and to her right hip, gradually easing the pain everywhere it touched. When the throbbing in her head lessened enough for her to think of things other than her hurt, Tif gently pushed herself up. She tested her tongue against the back of her teeth. It didn’t seem split anymore, but she still had a mouth full of blood, so she spit that on some of the rocks she was sitting on.
“Up and at em,” the fairy said form somewhere. “I’ve seen cyclops get their throats cut and barely miss a step.”
“You made me fall,” Tif said. She had meant to shout the accusation, but her head was still like a leaden weight atop her neck, so she was happy to have gotten the words out at all.
“Of course I did. We don’t have all night.”
Tif teetered into a standing position and pointed where she thought the fairy was--a dark smudge closer than other smudges. “Don’t...ever...do that again.”
“Won’t need to. We’ll be traveling by porting soon enough. Come on.”
The fairy’s voice grew quieter at the end, and Tif realized that was because the bounty hunter was moving away from her. Tif squinted, and she thought she saw something small floating above what might have been a narrow shelf leading away from where she stood.
Feeling like she didn’t have much of a choice--she certainly wasn’t climbing back up the cliff side--Tif went after the bounty hunter. As she walked, Tif trailed one hand against the rocky wall to her left. Tif didn’t bond with the stone like she had on the way down, but she kept the heat of her ris waiting below her skin to do just that if she started to slip or fall. The sound of water crashing was now very close and especially loud ones were accompanied by a spray of watery mist that fell over Tif from the right.
They rounded a bend, and Tif saw some lights bobbing in the distance. The closer they got to it, Tif realized that it was a long boat with lanterns hung at both ends, but that didn’t make much sense to her.
“I thought the people of Sah’Sah jumped from one island to another?”
“Just because this isn’t Lercel, you think everyone can afford ris?
Tif supposed not. Udaru had said it was just the eldest of each family that were given two Seals of Tears, which would leave a lot without. And it was the underground they were going to see, or at least Sah’Sah’s equivalent. Maybe they took pride in not having ris like the ones back home. But then how did they get down here? Tif couldn’t imagine someone without Seals doing what she just did, and when she asked the bounty hunter, the answer stopped her in her tracks.
“There’s a ladder,” Tif said, mouth agape. She couldn’t believe the fairy had put her through all that. What was she thinking, of course she could. The little creature had been trying to get her to jump off things since they had met and generally make her life miserable.
Tif felt the fairy buzz close to her cheek, and she swatted at the bounty hunter with her hand. Sadly, she missed.
“A ladder with a path leading to it that’s not so hard to find,” the fairy squeaked. “Remember, we’re trying to escape your friends.”
They trudged the rest of the way in silence. Tif decided that if fairies were as mean as this one, maybe it was a good thing that they all stayed in Life tribe’s forest home. Or maybe this one had been kicked out because she was so nasty. But that got Tif thinking a new way. Maybe the fairy was mean because she didn’t have any friends. That wasn’t enough of a reason for Tif to forgive the bounty hunter her many snide comments, but the possibility did bank some of Tif’s anger at the little creature.
The path led right up beside the boat, which sat low in the water and was a good twenty feet long. Tif saw lines stretching from the small ship to the rock wall to her left, which she guessed kept in place. The lanterns on both ends of the vessel also let her see a sheet of stone coming out of the water on the other side, which seemed to shelter the boat a bit from the choppy water. Despite this, the boat still rocked up and down, its edge going from a foot under where Tif stood to a two to three above all in the space of just a few moments. Tif also heard a slopping sound, as water pushed up in-between the wood boat and the rock path they had taken.
Falling there seemed a good way to get crushed to pulp.
The fairy buzzed right over the gap without a care and then turned to look back at Tif. Lantern light let Tif see her little smug face clearly, which perhaps made Tif jump a touch sooner than she should have. The boat swung up to meet her, causing Tif to stumble over the wood railing and then flooring when landing, but she got her feet under her well enough. Or so she thought, but it didn’t get any easier to walk after that, what with the deck swinging up then down, worse than when tremors sometimes rumbled through Lercel. Two steps in and Tif lurched sideways and likely would have kept going that direction right over the side if not for the rail she was able to catch herself against.
“Wait a second…” Tif said. She took off her sandals and tucked them behind her pants. Then she moved some of the heat from her Blood ris to the soles of her feet and then past that, into the wooden floor she was standing on. Just like with climbing, her skin pressed closer, flattening her foot and toes against the grain of the wood. She still had to keep her upper body balanced, but it was much easier with her feet locked in place. Tif laughed aloud at her discovery.
“This is great!”
“Louder please,” the fairy chirped, drily. “I don’t think they heard you the next island over.”
Tif barely noticed, working her way across the deck one bonded step at a time toward the only two people she saw on the boat. They sat at the opposite end, a fat yellow aquaros and an old man, giving Tif plenty of space to practice her new technique. Both of them rested on small wooden boxes, like the one Tif had used to carry her das board in, the two of them working on mending a net of all things.
“Hahna and Ipsol,” the fairy said when they reached the pair, gesturing with a tiny arm at the aquaros and then the human.
The old man had some blue Tears tattoos, probably enough for the first Seal and maybe the second. Unlike the man, Tif didn’t see any blue on the aquaros, but Tif wondered if maybe that was how Hahna had gotten so large because with porting she wouldn’t have to move her body to get around.
“I assume our crew provided an adequate distraction,” the old man, Ipsol, said without looking up from his work.
“Course they did,” Hahna said, her voice a slightly higher croak than Udaru’s. She leaned back with a sigh and stretched her scaled hands as if they were cramped from the work. “They’re here aren’t they?”
So it was Sah’Sah’s underground who had caused the fight in the bar. Tif hoped that no one had been hurt badly because of her.
The old man shrugged. “They took a while in coming, and things can go wrong, especially where knights are concerned.”
“Sorry for the wait,” the fairy chirped, giving Tif a look like it was her fault. “But we’re here, so let’s get going.”
Tif didn’t like the implied blame one bit, but it was nice to see that the bounty hunter was short with everyone, not just her.
“Can’t leave without Otari and Qundel to take you,” Hahna said. “Might as well sit a storm until they’re back.”
Tif looked up at the quiet, ink-black sky before realizing it must just be some sort of saying. The fairy made an annoyed sound and fluttered over to one of the lanterns, looking back toward the rocky cliff as if she was keeping watch.
There wasn’t a third crate, so Tif sat on wooden slats in front of the two gang leaders, like she was a kid waiting for a puppet show in Ker-Und Square back home. Without her soles to brace her, Tif started sliding with the rolling of the ship, until she managed to stick the sides of her feet to the deck--she was starting to understand why Blooders were known for wearing so few clothes.
Tif was impressed that Hanha and Ipsol didn’t need ris to stay in place, their legs spread wide in front of their box seats--and in Hahna’s case, her tail coiled behind--seemed to be enough to keep them where they wanted to be.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Not that either of them gave the shifting of the boat any mind, their attention on the net splayed out in front of them. Ipsol used a serrated knife to cut through parts of the diamond-shaped weave, while Hahna patched the holes that Ipsol was making with new rope and knots connected to old stubs. Tif had no clue how to help, but with them both working hard, she couldn’t help but pick up the end near her and lay it on her lap. The netting was thick and coarse, and she didn’t notice any frayed lines or loose knots. To her untrained eyes, Ipsol seemed to be cutting open diamonds at random, but then Hahna swept in right after him, making it clear they had done this sort of project together before.
They all sat that way for a time until the fairy let out a whistle that sounded almost like a bird. Before Tif could ask what that meant, a new arrival leapt onto the ship, a human man who looked frightened out of his wits.
“There’s a cyclops!”
“A what?” Hahna said, the frill of her neck fluttering.
“Caught us on the way back from the bar,” the man panted. “The others are keeping her busy, but she’s a Blooder and knows what she’s about.”
“I’ll take care of it,” the fairy said and then she was zipping up through the air, not needing to bother with the stone path or a ladder.
“Go with her,” Hahna said. The aquaros’s frill snapped open briefly to accentuate the command, and the man certainly leapt back off the ship fast as could be, scared or not.
Tif thought about going with them, but then Hahna’s eyes were on her, dark beads at the end of a long snout.
“What makes you worth wanting so bad?”
Tif was surprised by the question. From the way the fairy had introduced them, it had seemed like they were all in this together.
“I say Vak-Lav spent some time in the Blood Plains,” the old man said, eyes still on the net. He had a reed thin voice, but each word was very clear to Tif’s ears. “Fell in love with a local girl. Didn’t mind her being taller or stronger than him--fact he fancied it. They had this one,”--he motioned Tif’s way--“but his business took him to Lercel before the babe was old enough to walk. So, the Blood Tribe girl stayed behind, not wanting to risk the trip. But now their child is grown and Blooded, strong enough to get from the Plains to Lercel all on her own.”
Tif wasn’t sure what to make of the wild story, but the way he was telling it meant that Vak-Lav was human, so she tucked that little nugget away.
The aquaros huffed a laugh. “If that’s true, how’d the girl end up here? Sah’Sah is a sight out of the way.”
“Well…” Ipsol said, “you know how heavy-handed Lercel is about their ris. Poor thing probably came to see her father and was scooped up by the knights. Brings a tear to my eye just thinking about it.”
Despite what he said, Tif didn’t see any tears on his wrinkled cheeks or Hahna’s scaled ones. The female leader did turn to Tif though.
“Well?” she said.
“Well what?”
“There’s little joy in guessing if you don’t learn how it falls out,” Ipsol explained. “You Vak-Lav’s kin or something else?”
“No,” Tif said. “I’ve got my own parents. What Vak-Lav wants is this.” She pulled the collar of her shirt down while moving Udaru’s sah to the side to expose the Blood crest that sat just below her collarbone.
The two of them leaned forward. Even though they were members of the underground, it felt so nice to Tif to finally be able to talk with someone besides Pep about what she was carrying around.
“Your Blood tattoos?” the man said, sounding disappointed. “That’s not much of a tale.”
“Seems like a lot of trouble for something he could just go to the source to get,” the other leader agreed.
“They’re not just regular tattoos. It’s a crest.”
The aquaros’s eyes widened and her neck frill fluttered, which Tif took to mean she was excited. “Now we’re getting somewhere. What’s a crest?”
“Crest, you say?” Ipsol said, like he was testing the flavor of the word. “Sounds regal. Important.” He leaned forward with a sly grin for them both. “I bet it’s old, like a--”
Hahna waved him off. “Let her tell it.” Ipsol sat back with a sigh, making no effort to hide that he was put out at being stopped from saying his version.
“I don’t know much about it either,” Tif admitted. “Just that it lets me give my ris away if I want.”
She half expected them to laugh at her--it was an outlandish claim--but neither did. Instead, they shared a look with each other that Tif couldn’t quite read.
“You don’t say?” Ipsol said, as they both turned back to her.
Something about his tone and the way the two of them were eyeing her now made Tif wonder if she should have been so free with her tongue. She was trying to figure out how to make the crest seem less interesting when the fairy returned, a half dozen humans and aquaros following behind.
“Aspect bite me, it was a cyclops. Took a while to shake the brute but finally lost it on the other side of the island. Now what would--” The fairy stopped, seeming to catch that things weren’t quite the same as when she had left. “What’s going on here now?”
The two underground leaders shared another look and then rose as one, both still holding onto the net.
“Shame we weren’t able to help Vak-Lav with his favor,” the aquaros said. “Tell him the next one we’ll be sure to.”
Tif saw the fairy’s eyes narrow as she buzzed closer. “What are you talking about? The cyclops is gone, and the knights haven’t found us. Get your porters to take us out of here like you promised.”
“Can’t yet,” said a blue aquaros who was much skinnier than Udaru. “Otari and I used up most of our ris keeping that cyclops away from here.”
“Take this girl?” Ipsol said, pointing at Tif. “No, you’re not looking close. She’s my niece. Sweet thing, but still needs to work on her net mending. Your girl ran the wrong way and tripped over a pier edge. Lost to the sea like my mum, poor thing. Sad as can be, and nothing we could have done different to stop it.”
Hahna was nodding her wide head along as if every word the old man was saying was true. “Best you tell it just like that.”
“I’m not telling anyone that,” the fairy snapped. “Vak-Lav hears you won’t give back what’s owed, you’ll wish I let the cyclops find you.”
Tif could tell this situation was growing fit to bursting and in a bad way, but even so she found herself wondering about the cyclops. Did they know Torgath, who had given her the crest? It seemed a wild thing that someone like that would be here, but the more Tif saw of the world, the more it seemed like strange things happened just as often as normal ones did.
“So maybe you don’t tell him anything, eh?” Ipsol went on, rheumy eyes on the miniature bounty hunter. “Maybe instead you go home. Everyone knows that fairies don’t leave The Canopy, and I hear you’re coming up on two years away. Getting homesick I’m sure. Wouldn't that be better?”
“Mmm,” the aquaros leader said, “that does sound better. Better all around.”
“Your blood is going to be all around,” the fairy hissed, “if you don’t hold up your end of the bargain.”
“Sounds like a lot of work for just you,” Hanha said, her frill rustling. “Just little, tiny you against all of us.” The aquaros motioned with a yellow hand, and the other gang members who had returned shifted into a circle around them.
The fairy glanced side-to-side at the oncomers, and as she did, the two leaders tossed the net they had been working on at the bounty hunter. Without thinking, Tif tightened her grip on her end of the net, which meant the opposite end flew into the air and then went right over her head, leaving her covered while the fairy flew free.
Ipsol wagged his serrated knife back and forth like he was shaking his head. “Like I said. My niece still has a lot to learn.”
Tif heard someone scream before she realized that the bounty hunter had moved. Out of the corner of her, a wiry man fell down, clutching at his leg, and then the blue aquaros next to him did the same. Turning that way, Tif caught a flash of something small shooting through the air but that was all--the fairy was quick when she wanted to be. Even scarier, the Life blade the bounty hunter wielded apparently cut through aquaros’s scales just as easily as human skin. The remaining gang members were dancing around, trying to avoid the fairy’s attacks while Hahna’s yellow neck frill was fully expanded now, splayed out around her head and making her look twice as big as she barked orders at her lackeys.
Despite their efforts, Tif saw two more gang members drop and then a streak of color shoot toward Ipsol. The old leader ported, but not his whole body, just his arm holding the knife--one moment it was in one position and the next it snapped into place in another. The sudden movement let him connect his bony fist with the fairy barreling at him, the blow rocketing the tiny creature off in another direction so fast Tif could barely follow. The side of a crate stacked on the side of the boat exploded inward, leaving a small hole about as big around as an orange.
Tif thought the bounty hunter might be dead. If the little creature didn’t have her second Seal she surely was, as that punch had been powered by the first Seal of Tears as surely as it had been moved by the second. Idly, Tif wondered how long the old man had been charging the attack. Since Tif told them about the crest, or had he been planning this from the moment they all met?
The crate rattled, and everyone still standing lifted weapons, fists, or both, eyeing the small opening hard. Seeing grown humans and aquaros so tense about a lone fairy made Tif laugh. She knew the bounty hunter was skilled of course--the moans of the half dozen downed gang members around her was proof of that--but still, there was something about the difference in size and number of the fighters that tickled her. She earned a sharp glare from Ipsol for her laughing, but she didn’t regret it--he probably just couldn’t see the funny from where he was standing.
With a shrill cry, the fairy emerged from the crate, zipping back at the group. That’s when Pep let Tif know that she should probably be helping not just watching, and Tif got to it. She wrestled with the net above her, trying one way of pulling it and then another when that didn’t work. When she finally threw it aside and sprang to her feet, instead of facing off against one of the leaders, who she had expected to be near, she found herself looking at a man around her size who held a short spear, maybe for fishing.
Her first instinct was to try to come at him from the side to get past the weapon, but Pep pointed out that him carrying something sharp as opposed to, say, a cudgel made this the perfect chance to try what Bes-Ahl had been talking about. Tif needed a bit more convincing this time around, but she eventually decided that it couldn’t hurt much worse than the fall she had taken earlier.
Taking a deep breath, she ran straight at the man, or more so the tip of his spear, the metal flashing in the lamplight. Her bonded steps let her move exactly how she wanted, and she was on him in no time. He had been paying more attention to the fairy’s zipping this way and that, so when he saw Tif reaching toward him, Blood ris on her arms, the man squealed in fear and ran right off the ship.
She jogged to a halt, happy to avoid ending the night a human-sized pincushion.
“I guess that works, too.”
Trying to find whoever else was left, Tif turned just in time to see something truly horrifying: the bounty hunter flew at Hahna, going right into the fat aquaros’s wide mouth.The fairy was gone only a moment and then she shot out the side of the gang leaders neck, tearing not only through the scales but the side of the yellow aquaros’s frill, leaving the remainder fluttering like a falling kite.
Hahna let out a long wheeze, dark green blood pumping down her neck, and suddenly Ipsol was beside her. Strangely, the old man looked at Tif instead of wherever the bounty hunter was. The expression on his face was pained even though as far as Tif could tell he hadn’t been hurt yet. Then he put a hand on the gasping Hahna and they both vanished.
Tif stared at the empty space for a moment before she realized that something was pulling at the front of her shirt.
“Come on!” the fairy chirped.
Tif began going in the direction the little creature wanted, doing her best to get past the fallen gang members around them. Once they were clear of the circle of bleeding bodies and had leapt back onto the rock path, she broke into a run, the tugs of the fairy and her long strides making her feel at times like she was airborne.
They stopped sprinting a few minutes later, in a darker section of the island bottom that might have been where Tif had climbed down.
“You killed her,” Tif said between breaths. She could see the blood flow out Hahna’s neck over and over again, like it was stuck in her mind.
“Not likely,” the bounty hunter said. She sounded slightly winded herself but not the least bit sorry for what she had done. “Aquaros are tough, and Ipsol can get her patched up in no time the way he moves. Besides, if I hadn’t hurt her that badly, Ipsol would have tried to take you away instead.”
So that’s what his last look had been about.
“And if I did kill her, she deserved it. They all did.” Tif heard the bounty hunter spit.
“Because they tried to double-cross Vak-Lav?” Tif asked.
“Because they double-crossed me!” the fairy chirped. “You let something like that go, you get the wrong kind of reputation, so I didn’t let it go. Simple. Now start climbing.”
Tif flinched. They were back where they started. “Can’t we take the ladder?”
“The same one any other gang members who are left will be using? Can’t believe I didnt’ think of that. Up.”
Tif stared at the shadowed rock in front of her, barely able to tell where it started, but then she remembered the trick she had learned on the boat, and her confidence soared. She lifted an arm and a foot, bonding them both to the rock, then used them to pull herself up and bond her other arm and foot. She was tired from the run, but getting to climb this way--connecting and releasing from the stone in pulses of heat through her skin--was so much fun she barely noticed.
Tif was maybe a third of the way up when the fairy said, “Time to talk about how stupid you are.”
“I’m not stupid,” Tif said.
“Oh really? People like them don’t piss off people like me or Vak-Lav unless they think they can get better out of it, which means you blabbed something you shouldn’t have.”
Tif felt a smidge responsible about that, but it didn’t stick because of the judgy tone the fairy was using. “You already knew. I figured they did, too.”
“Like I said, stupid. Good thing you’ll be with me the rest of the way. I can cut your tongue off before you say anything more to anyone you shouldn’t.”
Tif paused in her ascent, swinging sideways while staying bonded to the rock with one hand and foot. “I’m going with you?”
Her eyes had adjusted enough to the dark and the fairy was close enough that Tif could see the bounty hunter looking at her like she was even dumber than the little creature had thought.
“That’s what happens when you stab the people who were going to be your ride, yes.”
Tif reconnected to the wall and pulled herself up. “I’ll just go with the knights, that’s easier.”
“No, you’re coming with me.”
“No…” Tif was having to work harder now that she had reached the angled part of the cliff, right below the spot she had fallen from. “I’m going with them.”
The fairy whipped near her head, so close that Tif could feel the buzz of the creature's wings against her ear.
“Try and I’ll cut your tendons just like I did them.”
“And I’ll heal,” Tif said. She continued up, which got her past the sloped bit and forced the fairy to flit away--Tif wasn’t sure which was more satisfying.
“Only while you’ve got ris. After your fall and this climb, you’ll run out before I do.”
Tif stopped again, turning toward the last spot she had heard the bounty hunter. “What’s your name?”
“...why?”
“Because if we’re going to yell at each other, I want to know who I’m arguing with.”
The fairy flew closer, and Tif could just make out her tiny pursed lips underneath a miniature frown. “Plumya,” she said.
“Plumya, I’m sorry your plan, or Vak-Lav’s plan didn’t work out, but there it is. We need to move on, and that means I go with the knights.”
“No it doesn’t. I told you, I’ll take you back to Lercel.”
“It will be a week or longer that way, and you can’t protect me from all of Death between here and there.”
The fairy bared her little teeth. “Think I can’t?”
“Nope,” Tif said, to which Plumya visibly fumed. “Even if you could, I’m not waiting that long to see my parents. As fast as the knights travel, even with us going to Blood, I’m sure we’ll be back sooner than that.”
“Back with nothing to show for it, if they even bring you,” the fairy squeaked. “And then what can you do for your parents?”
“I’ll figure it out when I get there.”
“You really are stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid!”
Plumya moved too fast for her to follow in the dark, but Tif felt the slash of pain across her cheek clear as day.
“Ow!” she said, jerking back from the attack. Tif braced herself for another, focused more on staying bonded to the wall then anything else--she wasn’t making that mistake again--but it never came. The night was silent except for the waves crashing below her and the whistle of sea air blowing around the island. The bounty hunter was gone.
Tif resumed her climb, feeling some heat move to her cheek to repair the cut skin there.
More importantly, she had the whole trip from here to the Blood Plains and then the Plains back to Lercel to figure out a plan better than Plumya’s. That had to be at least a few days.
“Plenty of time,” Tif said to Pep as she crested the ridge, and they both hoped it was true.