Chapter Twenty

A Walk unto Thyself

Agloff walked to the end of the corridor, the rucksack saddled over his shoulder. Through a barred window, the moon’s reflection danced in the shimmer of Lake Principia. The background canvas of stars shifted, points of light flashed in and out of existence for every patch of sky he focused on. He sighed a long sigh and turned to look back.

She was right.

Of course, she was right. She was Ariea.

Oxford would come after him. Winter was his catharsis after all. And Merry and Memphis would follow either one of them. Because they were good people. Agloff knew he was kidding himself. Like Ariea said, he was just a coward.

He stole a moment and looked out. The world beyond that barred window was impossibly large and preposterous, a land of a thousand nations. He imagined troupes of zebras and wildebeest. Unbounded hills, swamps, and wetlands. Rivers marked by diminutive settlements of a dozen or two, lived in yet unexplored. Unbeaten pathways prowled by storied gangs, vagabonds and more. And all the while there was Winter’s perfect, sleepless machine. Marty had said it would all be his alone to explore one day. Maybe it wasn’t.

Maybe it was theirs, the six of them.

The strap slackened and his bag hit the concrete with a dull thud. He dragged it across the floor and back to Ariea’s room. He propped it up against the back wall, adjacent to where she lay and set his head down. With her, the world felt warmer, and so he pretended to sleep.

Come morning, Agloff saw Ariea shudder from her sheets. She straightened her back and her neck craned down to Agloff. She said nothing, but her face was peaceful. She gestured him to his feet and hugged him weakly, said nothing.

Ariea pulled away and looked at him then, and he at her. ‘I’m proud of you.’

Half of Agloff wanted to do more than hug her, the other wanted to cry. He didn’t presume to be forgiven, but it was a start.

Then, the block door sailed open and footsteps trudged towards them. The bounty hunter, Kira, walked past, to a locked cell by the end of the corridor. One-by-one, the prisoners staggered from their greyed rooms to follow.

Kira knelt beside a boy rocking in his chair in the corner of the room. His thinned head was shaven, with a blanket wrapped tightly across his chest. The cell had been inked with mindless scrawls. Papers and notes were stashed on view, each signed by Winter’s mark. A drip was mounted on his chair as a tube fed into the base of his neck.

‘Good morning,’ Kira said to him gently. She extended an arm to the boy who ignored her. ‘My brother,’ Kira said to the onlookers. ‘Ade. He’s very ill.’

Agloff could make out a blueing of the flesh where the tube fed into Ade’s neck. ‘Is that—’ he started.

‘Fever, yes. None about these days. When Ade was inoculated, he had a reaction.’

‘Who inoculates them?’

Kira scoffed. ‘Winter, who else. When all the children go to Eden, they’re injected against it. I was. Ade was better than all the other children. Could have been one of Ardul’s Knights. But the rash stopped everything. They send us care for him though. Or Ade’d be dead long ago.’ Kira’s voice seemed to float into the past. She produced a syringe from her satchel and sampled his blood without Ade so much as batting an eyelid. ‘We don’t have enough room at the house, so we set him up here. And Uncle wouldn’t want people to see him.’

‘Your uncle?’

‘You met him; Taret Stone.’

Agloff’s shoulders rolled in their sockets, like someone might have stepped over his grave. ‘Name’s Kira Stone.’ She nodded to her brother. ‘Ade Stone.’ She loosened the blanket across Ade’s neck and guided him up. The boy was cut and bruised, marks Agloff suspected were self-inflicted. His thin lips murmured a single rhythm, over and over. ‘Only through bleakest winter, in darkest hour, may spring’s dawn find its way.’ Words of Winter, Agloff thought. Ade produced a book from under his chair, still incantating, running his skeletal fingers across the pages.

‘Winter is all he has,’ Kira said. ‘He exists for it.’

‘Is there any chance he could get better?’ Merry asked, concerned lines woven into her brow.

Kira shook her head. ‘He has been this way a long time. Every season, weaker. Riddis lets him stay here but we can only make him comfortable.’ She went to her bag a second time and offered up a pen and wedge of paper. ‘He loves to draw and write, so.’ Agloff took a closer look at one of the notes on the wall. It was a sketch of Malvo Jask, labelled with the very words Ade was reciting.

‘When Uncle comes to visit, they just talk about his days under Winter’s banner. Ade lives the life he lost through hearing about his. Sad.’ She added the last word blankly after a pause, then lowered herself to him and kissed him by the forehead. Ade gave no flicker of recognition. His eyes glazed.

‘Uncle,’ Ade then whispered vaguely. ‘Get Uncle. I need to talk to him about something.’

Kira nodded. ‘I’ll get him.’ She caressed his shoulder before standing.

‘I couldn’t pretend to understand,’ Ariea said. ‘And I know you might not appreciate it but I’m very sorry for what’s happened to your brother.’

‘Apologies don’t make the clock go back.’ Kira sighed.

'How come you’re not a pilgrim?’ said Oxford.

‘Let me go after Ade got sick. And I wouldn’t have wanted to stay anyway. Prefer to choose what I hunt.’ She raked a hand through her ragged golden hair and passed them into the corridor. ‘Good luck today.’ Her voice was grimly apologetic. ‘Hope whatever happens after isn’t so painful, and during.’ Her eyes crossed her shadow, then she vanished down the way.

Minutes passed, and a second chorus of footsteps filed through the walls. Agloff and the others at once scattered into their rooms. Kespin Merr’s brutish frame stopped under the doorway at the end of the corridor. ‘Up. Now,’ he beckoned. ‘Councillor Riddis wants you trialled before noon. Best not to keep His Judgliness waiting.’

One-by-one, they filtered towards him, like scolded children. He clicked a pair of handcuffs around their wrists as they passed him, stringing them into a line as Kira had.

Merr led them out by a leash like street trash down onto the dock. A sailboat was just coming into harbour and a flurry of workmen cast aspersive stares. Agloff was hardened to it this time though.

They didn’t stop at the clock tower this time as Agloff might have expected. Instead, they pressed up onto the plateau of the Fort that overlooked the sprawl, where the buildings flattened and thinned towards its cobblestone walls.

Merr ordered they halt at a wide track that bordered the city wall. One-man lookouts were erected on either side down the way, each with a brazier mounted on its roof. They oversaw the treeline of a thicket Agloff could spy through the railings of a silvery gate. How well-defended this place was, Agloff thought, with the lake on one side and forest on the other.

Merr then deferred their attention to a long-bearded man, adorned in a ceremonial robe who waited at the silver gate. Two guards stood staunchly behind him, spears in the grip of their fists.

‘Thank you, Kespin,’ the bearded man said. ‘A good morning to you all. My name is Master Ishida.’

As he spoke, Merr marched down the line of prisoners, unlocking their cuffs, only to draw his pistol on them instead.

‘I am Master of Judgements,’ Ishida continued. ‘No doubt you’ve already heard whispers of the Judge’s awesome power. There is no need for you to prepare a statement or assemble evidence. The Judge determines guilt or otherwise with absolute precision.’ He cleared his throat. ‘You stand accused on two counts, of trespass of the Winterian seat of Fort Wilder, and of being fugitives from the Order of Winter. At the behest of the Old One himself, you are to be tried and judged to ascertain the truth of these claims. Move them.’

Merr hoisted them by the arm and prodded each one to the gate.

‘So, what do we need to do?’ Memphis snapped.

‘Walk only into the forest. And keep your wits about you. The deeper you get, the more you fight it, the worse it gets. But I trust you will find the way. They always do.’

‘What gets worse?’ Memphis growled.

‘You’ll see.’ Ishida directed the guards that the gates open. ‘The young one stays with me,’ he said, and coaxed Lady over. Merry told her it was okay, and they would see her soon.

‘Lesser men have mistaken him for a God,’ Ishida said. ‘Don’t try to understand it. We would not pretend to understand his nature, but his nature is compelling.’ Agloff had no care for Ishida’s riddles. He wanted to meet the Judge and be done with it. Any sense of dread, he stifled it in the very pit of his being.

He began to take shallow breaths, like the air was precious. At Ishida’s calling, Agloff’s legs carried him into the treeline and the gate yawned shut behind them. Ishida left them with a terse smile and Agloff closed his eyes, unsure of whether he should expect anything to happen yet, if at all.

When they opened a second later, the sprawl of Fort Wishbone, the gates and walls vanished behind him. Instead, marshy forest stretched infinitely in all directions. He squinted one way, then another; it was like the scene was painted on top of itself, fractal patterns of trees that receded into timeless infinity. Agloff walked slowly. He traced his fingers over a fork where the branch of one tree had punctured the trunk of another. It was a violent place.

The Fort was definitely behind Agloff, so if he kept going straight, then, surely, he would get where he needed to go? He called out for the others, but an ill silence answered. It was as if he weren’t part of that world. Every few seconds he assured himself he was still going straight as his legs pulled one way or another. ‘No,’ he would order them. ‘Forwards.’

Was it a drug, he thought? Or an illusion? Reality was hidden beneath his senses. Agloff hoped realisation of that fact might shatter his delusion but no.

He blinked and ahead the trees bowed into an archway. Spindled branches tapered away into a ceiling of sorts, and a mud track emerged at his feet. It summoned him, like the will of its temptation was greater than his own. He fell through, into the clutch of a heavy fog.

Agloff half-expected to choke but its weight passed through him. Every lead-laden step he took, the world sprung from nowhere.

Ahead of him, jets of mist spiralled upwards, then collapsed into a dense shadow. He saw it take the shape of a man, featureless. Like a cloud that had taken on fleeting form. Then, the grey tones became saturated by colour and the vague edges solidified, into fabric and flesh. Agloff blinked and saw his own face in place of the fog. Ragged. Scarred. Sickly. Not my face, he thought then. Eron’s.

They circled each other; the shadow’s movements were his own. It shared his curiosity. Instinct said this was bait. Summoned from Agloff’s nightmares but he took pity on the shadow. He reached a hand and met its fingertips. It was sad.

‘Hello,’ Agloff said. He retracted his hand, and the shadow followed.

‘Hello, Agloff,’ said the shadow.

‘You’re not Eron.’ Agloff whispered to himself.

The shadow stopped and this time Agloff obeyed. ‘Where were you?’ it said. ‘I’ve needed you.’ Its eyes sparkled like diamonds. ‘Where were you when they took me?’ The voice creaked as floorboards did. ‘Agloff. You‘ve left me in that place. You left me to Jask. Now, you’re living my life. Mine. And what are you doing with it. You’re moping after some girl who’s had enough of you.’ Its sadness turned to rage. The lines across its eyes cut into its features with a twisted handsomeness.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

Agloff dropped to his haunches, hands closed around his ears. ‘No,’ he repeated.

‘You dragged her to nowhere and think you’re sorry. Sorry doesn’t cover it. You don’t get to mope and feel sorry for yourself like some kid.’ The shadow stood over Agloff. Its darkness touched him. ‘You’re my brother who always promised he would find me? I am disappointed.’

‘I said I tried—’ Agloff could find no strength in his voice to summon the words. The fog drained him. He pushed his hands through the dirt, holding them up to the shadow like some pious man.

‘You tried. You tried.’

‘Yes.’

It knelt down, ‘You disgust me. You failed all of them, not just me.’ It turned to consider the forest and Agloff brought himself to stand.

‘I’m coming for you, aren’t I?’

‘You need to ask yourself that?’ it snapped, back turned. Its posture carried a menace Agloff’s had never possessed. ‘What have you done? What have you really done to help me? This whole time you’ve just made a mess and let other people clean it up.’

‘I left Backwater; I went to the Underground.’

‘No. At Backwater, years came and went, and you gave up even trying entirely. I became a daydream. Some other life lived. You were two weeks from signing a ten-year apprenticeship with a blacksmith.’ The shadow shook its head. ‘No, Oxford took you to the Underground, on Marty’s orders. You were just the cargo who nearly got himself killed on the way. Idiot. Like a whiny little kid who can’t do what his parents tell him to. Maybe having none does that.’

Agloff pleaded with the shadow. ‘I escaped March Town. I wasn’t useless.’

‘And the pilgrims were only there because of your mistake, right. Or why else did Merry and Memphis’ home get blown up. You just sat quietly and took it, you let Oxford take the blame.’

‘I told them it was my fault and I think about it every day what I’ve done to those people. What about the Underground?’

The shadow laughed. ‘Do you want me to name everyone that died because you were there? Not least Marty and Fall. Neither had to die.’

Agloff placed a hand across his wound. ‘I paid for that.’

‘Too lightly,’ the shadow snapped. It paced in a trail of mist.

‘I got shot. I nearly died. The girl I like hates me. And I screwed over the rest of them. I took Oxford’s home, his wife. I took Merry, Memphis and Lady’s home. I paid for what I did. I do, every night when I try and sleep.’ Agloff straightened himself, his breathing ragged as he stared at the shadow’s back. Finally, it looked at him.

‘She doesn’t hate you. She just blames you for everything. They all do. They wish you were gone. But you couldn’t even run away last night properly, could you? Ariea was right, you are a coward.’

Agloff fell to his knees again. ‘I was coming for you.’ The line was his last defence, the same line he had told himself for so long.

'Was coming for me? So beaten. So defeated.’

‘Am.’

The shadow lowered to its knees and smiled darkly at Agloff’s broken face. ‘I don’t believe you.’

‘I went to Wilder,’ Agloff protested.

‘For what? Fort Wilder was a fool’s errand. You knew that. After all, what reasonable person might expect there to be a shred of whatever you claimed you were hoping to find, eight centuries after the fact? It was an excuse to look like you were doing something rather than nothing—’

‘It wasn’t.’

‘—That for all that shit you spouted about finding me, you had half a plan to follow through. That was the plan, wasn’t it? One final hurrah at Fort Wilder, then say ‘oh well, nothing’s here, let’s call it a day.’ Wilder but no further. It was a natural point for journey’s end. To escape this hole you’d dug yourself. Then you could concede to Ariea ‘you told me so’ and call it quits. But you didn’t count on Jask’s persistence, did you? He outplayed you. He read you like the open book you are. A coward. Clinging to the nearest way out.’

Agloff tried to stand but the shadow struck out at him and he collapsed into the dirt. ‘No.’

‘Yes. You led Ariea all this way down a road you don’t even have the stomach for yourself. Might that finally break her when she finds out. And might that finally kill her?’ The shadow said it with such finality, the conviction that it would.

How dare he.

How dare he claim to know Ariea, in all her perfection and imperfection. Thoughtlessly, Agloff roared. He threw an arm through the fog and his fist cut the shadow’s body as though it were cloud. Its form shattered into a thousand stones, pelting the mud like hail.

Like that, it was gone.

It was the worst of his imagination. But no more than that, Agloff told himself. He let himself fall to his backside and panted in the remains of his nightmare. The greater terror was whether he believed it. Had he truly been so beaten when he went to Wilder? In his moment’s release, he could not say, and that terrified him.

The fog yielded and Agloff half-expected the scene to twist into something otherworldly, but it carried the same sickness as before. He looked at the thousand stones where his shadow had shattered, orbiting him in neat rings.

One-by-one, they splintered. Each fragment sprouted spindles like loose spools of thread, and Agloff saw them stiffen into eight legs, and the pebbles a body. Agloff stumbled backwards, his heart falling through his insides and a hot buzz swelled inside him.

Where there were stones, suddenly an army of spiders scurried at him with ugly speed.

He picked a direction, any direction; they were all the same. Stumbling and tumbling through the forest, he ran, arms outstretched like feelers. The creatures wailed hellishly and Agloff’s ears rang. He swept this way and that, guided by instinct, dodging low branches and upturned roots. The faster he went, the faster they chased him. Like some awful dream, Agloff could not cheat his imagination.

His legs became heavy and the world slowed past him. Trees crawled through his vision. Slower and slower. Until the more he ran, the more everything was determined to stay still. The awful wailing swelled louder and Agloff thought his eardrums may burst.

They must be right behind. The scurry of their movements seared his ears. He turned to look. Spiders closed around him. Their spindly legs danced through the air. He snapped his eyes shut, expecting to suffocate in their embrace but no.

On touch, each burst into a point of light. His world fizzed in a spate of flashes; their blotted shapes burned onto his corneas. He breathed hard. Of course it was spiders, he thought. This place knew his fears. How to compel him to feel all the awful things in the world. It would pass, he told himself. It had to pass.

Again, the mist began to ebb at Agloff’s feet, from the forest floor, like a river coursing round rocks. The mist rose and collapsed into a second shadow some way ahead of him, but this time it wasn’t Eron. Arms raised, it drew back a simple hood and ripples of dark hair puffed out beneath. As Agloff moved towards it, the land sloped upwards. His legs grew weary, and he drew shallow breaths as the air became suddenly thin.

It was like the spiders: no matter how close Agloff got, he never quite seemed to reach the figure. If he stepped forward, the world stretched more.

Then, the world flattened. Trees melted into the soil in murky swirls as if the land were an oil canvas. The ground bubbled. Fresh grass punctured the topsoil to climb up towards the light and the shade above parted into a dazzle of clear sky. Ahead, Agloff could see nothing but grass plains, bobbing up and down like waves out to the horizon. He looked back; the walls of Fort Backwater stood triumphant in the near distance.

Slowly, strength returned to Agloff. The sensations were so vivid: the folding of the grass beneath his shoes, the passage of wind over the contours of his face. He walked on, circling the woman. But her back was always to him. The faster Agloff paced, the faster she stayed still. The world tethered him to the same, immutable spot.

He could never see her face. It was more than unsettling. She was always looking ahead to some journey, She could never look back, no matter how long he waited.

‘Stay,’ he whispered. ‘Make everything right and just stay.’ He saw another life there, where she alone raised him. Marty was a family friend who never left. Ariea was the girl he liked next door. It was uncomplicated between them. There was no room for Eron. Was that so bad?

Then the mirage subsided, the oily swirls turned the fields to trees, blooming from the ground and the sky sank into a bleak darkness. Where the woman had stood, a great tree trunk faded into view. A monstrous thing, generations of gaunt branches splintered from each other into messy knots of grey leaves. But there was something reassuring in its form, like Agloff could be sure this thing was real and not of his own creation, that it was a friend.

He looked past it. Ariea, Oxford, Merry and Memphis were spaced evenly in its shade. They exchanged blinkered stares, with the same implicit conviction in their eyes that they had reached their destination.

Then some absurd thing happened. A voice spoke in Agloff’s head. But for the first time in his life, it was not his own. ‘Good afternoon, and many congratulations,’ it said.

Agloff jolted, tried to shake the voice from his head, but it clung to the fringes of his consciousness, a mind within his own. Like a zit beneath his skin, he could feel its thoughts turn through the folds of his brain.

Oxford spoke first. ‘Am I mad, or?’ They all shook heads. Where the others retreated, he stepped forwards, his palm outstretched towards the unknown, as it was towards his wife beneath the Underground. He walked forward, curious without regard, without self-preservation.

Fear set into Merry and Memphis’ faces. And Agloff knew then that that walk had plagued each of them in equal measure. He thought the forest might have been aflame to Merry and Memphis; haunted by the charred silhouette of March Town. Might Ariea have met the husk of her father again, in that last moment of living. And Oxford’s demons ran deeper than Agloff’s. But each kept it well hidden. They were stronger than the world that made them now, Agloff saw that.

Then the voice within them replied. ‘You’re not mad yet.’

Oxford stuttered, but his approach was undeterred. ‘What the actual—’

‘I am Erobo, judge and juror of Fort Wishbone. I sincerely apologise, for all that you have seen. Your eyes are aged beyond your years.’

‘You made us see those things?’ Ariea’s face was lit with rage. ‘You did everything.’

Erobo erred. ‘It’s a side effect of my searching your minds for the truth.’

‘So, you’re what? Telepathic?’

‘Yes,’ it said blankly. ‘The good people of Wishbone preserve this place for me, give me a home. In return, I trial their vagrants and villains. No thought is hidden. But rest assured, I only look where needed. It is the gravest disrespect to peer further.’

Oxford took a step forward accusingly. ‘What were you looking for?’

‘Your identities only.’

‘So why the nightmares?’ Ariea snapped.

Agloff thought he heard Erobo sigh. ‘I suppose an explanation is owed. This place makes people scared. You were on trial after all. Has everyone told you about the ominous Judge and how people go mad? Your heart rate rockets, there’s adrenaline in your blood. Fight or flight: your body’s stressed, prepared for a threat. There isn’t one, but thanks to me you now have a heightened capacity for hallucination. So, your subconscious fills in the gap. You’re scared because you expect to be scared. In future, likely, you wouldn’t have as adverse an experience. At the very least it would be palatable. In time, it may even be pleasant. You were scared, with an invader searching through your minds. I didn’t control what you see, but I feel it.’

Ariea said nothing, her rage unabated.

‘What are you?’ Memphis said.

‘We are a hive of millions of organisms, that think as one. We permeate the forest, the air, the soil. At this tree most strongly. As you walk my air, you breathe me. In a way, I become part of you. Don’t worry,’ he added as their shoulders tightened and bodies recoiled. ‘Harmless in the long-term.’

At last, Oxford touched a hand against the tree. ‘You’re alien… right?’

‘Yes. Hope that doesn’t frighten you. I am the last of my people. I arrived eight-hundred years ago. My shuttle crashed a way west of here.’ There was a heavy pause and Agloff and the others eyed each other, startled. They realised what he did.

The meteor they heard arrive during the wedding. They had seen the crater those centuries before, from the crest of the Underground, the deep valley that cut into the earth.

Erobo gasped at their shared realisation. ‘You saw it! Coincidence is a beautiful thing. When I arrived, I had a body like any being. I walked to this place, fatally injured. When we die, our brains disintegrate, into this. And we join with the living world around us. But my stories can wait for another time.’

Agloff wondered if the Erobo’s abilities went the other direction, if Agloff could touch Erobo’s subconscious. Because as the voice spoke, Agloff felt pangs of guilt, of shame, inside him. A sickly, terrible shame. But it wasn’t his own.

‘Can you tell us then, if we’re guilty?’ Ariea said.

Agloff’s mind turned on the avenues that lay before him now, each equally real until Erobo said one word or the other. His future had never felt so indeterminate, so out of his hands, but he knew the answer of course.

‘I think it is obvious to all of us you’re guilty of that of which you are accused.’ He paused. ‘But it’s within my discretion to say I don’t consider existing a crime worthy of the name. You have done no wrong, friends. It seems you each equate a guilty verdict to a death sentence, so I have no intention of allowing Stone to send you to Winter. You are acquitted. Your secret is safe.’

The others nearly collapsed in release. Merry slipped to her knees and laughed at the forest. ‘Thank you,’ she breathed. ‘Thank you.’

Agloff turned to Ariea and fell into her arms thoughtlessly. He squeezed her so tight he thought she might argue, but she did no such thing. He spread his fingers across her back and a smile came over him as they parted.

‘I’m sorry.’ He said it for the final time, with all conviction. ‘That I had to put you through that. But this is over now, right? This is good? We’re free?’ He needed her assurance.

Ariea nodded awkwardly. ‘You don’t have to tell me. Now, we just have to pretend to be someone else for the rest of our lives,’ she said, half-seriously.

‘If it’s means I’m still around, doesn’t have to be a bad thing.’ Agloff stared at her face a moment. Her mind looked distant. ‘It wasn’t real,’ he said, sensing her unease. ‘They’re bad dreams.’

‘Believe me, what I just went through is nothing compared to the alternative I saw last night.’

‘Point taken,’ Agloff said sheepishly.

‘It’s not what I saw.’ Her eyes rolled. ‘It’s whether I believe it.’

Agloff took her meaning well enough. Eron’s words hung over him like a shroud of unspoken truths, truths he was scared to know, to admit even to the worst version of himself.

‘Are you okay?’ Agloff said then. She wasn’t, of course, but she was so strong. He didn’t mean like a question. It was an invitation, an offer to be there for her where he had failed once too many. It was an admission of wrongdoing, its meaning lost to anyone but them.

‘We’re broken people, so no. But yeah, I’m fine.’ Her tone softened. ‘Thank you.’

‘We could…’ started Agloff.

‘We could what?’ He could see her eyes read him as he did her. She hunted for any sign of remorse, to repair what was broken.

‘If you wanted to go for a walk or something down the lake. Just talk, you know. About last night, or stuff, or…’

She nodded, brushed streaks of hair out her eyes then cocked her head to the side. ‘Yeah. Last night’s a good place to start. I have nowhere to be anymore.’

One corner of his mouth curled into a smile. ‘You know I kinda wish, thinking about it, that I came out on my birthday now. I needed that drink for all the shit that happened afterwards.’

Ariea Finland laughed for the first time in a while. ‘That’s a lie. You could never hold a drink since Copen’s. But I’ll admit it was kind of shit without you. Maegen was very disappointed. Not that it lasted all that long, because, well….’

‘Were you disappointed?’

‘Disappointed I didn’t get to see you embarrass yourself again.’ She deftly dodged his meaning. ‘You’re really an adorable drunk.’

‘We could get a drink.’

Ariea held her arm and dipped her head. ‘Soon,’ she said with a distant happiness. ‘But not yet.’ He had to earn that, he knew.

Agloff’s words knotted in his throat and the moment tapered into a silence. He angled his head, spying a lonely cloud through a gap in the canopy and wondered if this might be for the better. At the very least, he could go to Winter on his terms. If not, he could stay in Wishbone and laze over the dock, dangling his feet in the bay and watch the ships come in with Ariea, Oxford, Merry, Memphis and Lady, content in their company. And would that really be such a bad thing?