Inkspice: The Mapweaver Chronicles, #2

By Kaitlin Bellamy

Something is amiss in the city of Calibas ...
That is the warning Fox and his Shavid companions are given when they find themselves in this strange place with its mad ruler. While Fox has spent months on the road now, learning everything he can about his gifts and powers as a Cartomancer, there is something in the air of Calibas that will test him further than ever before. A curious magic that lives and breathes, dangerous and illusive. Dropped suddenly into the world of political intrigue, with old friends and new companions at his side, can Fox discover the mysterious magic that fills the city, before it hunts him down?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kaitlin Bellamy
• Release date: Dec 25, 2018
• ISBN: 9781790305919

Kaitlin Bellamy

Kaitlin Bellamy is a storyteller, actor, and performer living in Orlando, Florida. In between book releases, you can find her performing in local theme parks, narrating audiobooks from her home studio, and playing Dungeons and Dragons with her closest friends. To keep up with all her adventures, feel free to join Kaitlin on any one of her social media platforms, or her website. You can find her on every platform as @ChaosPixieMagic

Book preview

For every artist, creator, and child of imagination.

You have your own unique magic. May you find a way to use it.

And for Dad,

the man who taught me to believe in mine.

Chapter One

The Tavernmaster’s Daughter

LAI SAT ON THE TAVERN rooftop, watching the storm roll in.  She hugged her knees to her chest, her bare feet braced against the cool, stone shingles.  As the warm, wet breeze began to pick up, dragging stray locks of hair across her face, Lai kept her gaze westward.  There, monstrous black clouds were docked like pirate ships on the mountain peaks, simply waiting to wage war on Thicca Valley below.

From here, Lai could just make out the goatherds in the foothills, bringing their charges in early for the day.  Below, in the valley square, Thiccans were eyeing the clouds nervously and adding a sense of urgency to their steps.  Street vendors began to pack up their wares, and shop owners closed their doors.  All through the streets, curtains fluttered in and out of open windows, as if they were waving to their friends and neighbors.  But it wasn’t long before every window in the valley was closed and shuttered, save for the one in Lai’s own bedroom that she had climbed out of.

Soon, the Five Sides Inn and Tavern would be crawling with patrons.  Miners and farmers and children of all ages would seek refuge and companionship in the common room, filling the air with music and laughter.  But for the moment, the rooms that Lai called home lay still and peaceful.  The streets had completely emptied by now, and the foothills were cleared.  In fact it was quite easy to imagine, as she sat alone on the roof, that she was the only living soul in all of Thicca Valley.

It was not a feeling Lai was entirely comfortable with.  It made her itch, somewhere deep inside where she couldn’t scratch.  She was meant to be surrounded by things and people.  She had been raised in the chaos that was the valley tavern, and life didn’t seem to make much sense any other way.  She lived alongside transient merchants and traveling soldiers.  Her supper companions ranged from young children clinging eagerly to her stories, to old men who insisted she sit and play a game of dice with them.  Every one of the valley folk was like family, and the travelers who might just be passing through were welcomed as the best of friends.  And when the Five Sides emptied, there was Picck, her cousin, who lived and worked in the kitchen.

It was a lifestyle that did not lend itself to loneliness.  Even in moments of solitude, Lai had never truly felt alone in all her life.  So when a strange new emotion settled over Lai near the end of springtime, she wasn’t quite sure what to call it, or how to manage it.  But it wasn’t long before she realized that she felt, for the first time in her life, separate.  She felt alone.  And it was a feeling she had grown all too familiar with in the months since her best friend had left Thicca Valley.

She shifted on her haunches, stretching her legs out in front of her and letting the wind pull at her skirt. The skies were growing darker by the minute, and the wind was blowing with more persistence, tossing leaves across the road and causing the trees to bend and sway.  Even so, she kept her eye on the distant scrap of highway winding through the foothills and disappearing into the Highborn Mountains.  She watched every day, waiting for the bright smudges of color that would signify the return of the Shavid wagons.  The wagons that would bring Fox home to her.  Then, at least, one thing might return to normal.

When the rain finally began to fall in fat drops, and low thunder rolled through the valley, Lai abandoned her perch with a resigned sigh.  She slid carefully back down to the edge of the rooftop.  Then, using the eaves and rough stonework walls to brace herself, she slipped easily back down into her open bedroom window, slamming it shut behind her just in time.  Rain began to pound indignantly against the glass, and a sudden flash of distant lightning illuminated all but the deepest shadows in her room.

Her room.  Not their room, or Father’s room, hers.  For the first time in her life, Lai had a room all to herself.  It was small, tucked away into one of the misshapen corners of the inn.  Walls and ceiling met in strange angles, and a handful of floorboards creaked more stubbornly than the rest.  But despite its coziness, it still felt strangely empty.  And though she had just moved one door down the hallway, she felt she’d gone somewhere far away every time she looked around her room for Borric, her adopted father, and found he wasn’t there.

Adopted: it was still such a strange word to get used to.  It wasn’t so long ago that Lai had believed Borric Blackroot to be her true and proper father.  He had raised her, and loved her as his own all her life.  They had never been separated for long, and they had never had any secrets.  Or so she thought.  Now, the wall between them might have been an ocean, though they both carried on as though everything was perfectly normal.

Sparing one last hopeful glance out the rain-streaked window, Lai abandoned her room and headed downstairs to prepare for nightfall.  With the ease of much habit and practice, she lit the lanterns and swept the fireplaces.  She even started the kitchen fires, knowing it would take some of the burden off Picck once he came downstairs.  She began to wipe down tables, and polish the carved mantlepiece with a thin grey rag.  And as she worked, her mind wandered.

Summer had been good to Laila Blackroot.  Where she had once been a gangly, almost twiggish young girl, she was now just shy of sixteen, and had begun to fill out in all the places that made the eyes of passing men linger.  She had forgone the braids she’d worn since childhood, instead letting her coal-black hair fall in thick waves just past her shoulders.  And it was easy for Lai to imagine, as she noticed the changes in her own body, that it was all connected to everything else going askew in her life; with the loss of her best friend, and the discovery of her true past, not to mention the sheer absurdness connected to growing up.  She often tried to put such changes from her mind.  But in the empty hours of the tavern, there was not much else to occupy her thoughts.

It was Widow Mossgrove who had first suggested Lai try and let her hair out.  It was during one of their weaving lessons.  The farmer’s widow had looked up from her own work, and said curtly, You’re letting the threads knot up.  And then, in a milder tone, she added, You might think about letting go the braids sometime.  They don’t really suit your face anymore.

And Lai had listened, as she had always done since Widow Mossgrove came into her life.  It was Fox that had first suggested their arrangement: Lai helped out around the farm, in exchange for Widow Mossgrove teaching her some of the women’s skills that Lai felt she’d been missing.  Between the old farmer woman and Picck’s wife, Rose, Lai had more than enough female influence to help her through the changes in her body and mind.  It had  been Widow Mossgrove, too, who had taught Lai how to dress befitting a lady your age, and not some ragamuffin waif.  And with that lesson had come the proper way to put a man in his place if he got a bit too friendly without her permission.

Widow Mossgrove was kind enough in her own way.  She had a no-nonsense sternness that Lai admired.  But when she found herself needing a gentler touch, Lai turned to Rose.  While Widow Mossgrove taught Lai how to sew, Rose taught her how to embroider and embellish.  Simple, practical stitches turned into needlework flowers and, occasionally, beaded hems and cuffs.  The widow’s lessons on hair and dress were complimented by Rose’s suggestions on what color ribbon might look best as an accouterment.  The subject of face powder was even brought up, though it was agreed on by both women that it should, perhaps, wait until Lai was the slightest bit older.

But while Lai could easily confide in either of them about the changes in her figure and her sudden monthly illness, or question them on the proper way to patch a skirt, there were some changes neither woman would be the slightest bit of help with.  No one would.  In fact, the one person who might have comforted Lai through all the confusion of her past was lands away.  Nations stretched between her and Fox like jarring gaps between the notes of a familiar song.  And every day that passed was one more day that Lai had to figure out something she’d never had to before: how to live a life separate from Forric Foxglove.

No one else would believe the truth behind Lai’s parentage.  No one would believe, if she told them, that she was not Borric’s birth daughter at all, but the daughter of Farran.  The Pirate God.  Lord of all the seas.  But it was Fox who had first discovered the truth.  It was Fox, too, who had discovered that Lai’s own mother had not died in a mountain accident, as she had grown up believing.  Fox had been by Lai’s side through it all.  He had been there when Lai first met Adella DeMorrow, the woman who had once been her mother.

Just thinking about it made Lai’s hands shake as she worked.  She could remember the look on her mother’s face ... a blank, empty gaze, without the faintest spark of recognition.  A face that never recalled having a daughter.  She remembered running to her mother, overjoyed to find her alive and well after all these years.  And she remembered, all too well, the realization that Adella did not know her.  Nor did she care to.  For when your heart belongs to a god, it was said, there is no room in it for anyone else.

Lai dropped her work rag, and cursed as it landed among the sooty embers in the fireplace.  She picked it up irritably and crumpled the fabric into a ball, as if by squeezing it in her fist, she might wring out the painful memories.  And, when that did nothing to sooth her mood, she stomped angrily to the kitchen, and threw the rag with unnecessary violence into the corner.

She pressed herself against the wall, closing her eyes and taking deep breaths to calm herself.  Whether her temper came from her mother or her father, she didn’t know.  But she did know it caused her to break things when it washed over her, so she pushed it down.  She kept her hands tucked behind her back, feeling at the bumps in the wall where stone met stone, tracing the tracks with her fingertips.

Borric would be home soon.  And she would never let him see her upset over this.  Never.  Another deep breath, and her anger began to ebb away.  She told herself, for the hundredth, the thousandth time, that her past didn’t matter.  At the end of the day, she was still the tavernmaster’s daughter, and always would be.  Borric had always been enough for her.  She had Picck, and letters from Fox.  She had Rose, and Widow Mossgrove.  She didn’t need a mother.  She didn’t need anybody.

THE STORM ENVELOPED Thicca Valley like a black shroud.  Rain pounded at every window and rooftop, and from the mines to the outlying border farms, the roads were hardly more than muddy rivers afloat with plant debris.  But the atmosphere inside the tavern was the starkest contrast to the raging tempest just on the other side of the walls.  It was bright and cheerful and warm.  Raucous music and laughter drowned out all but the worst thunder.  It vibrated through the floorboards, and made dishes hum and rattle on the tabletops.  The rain was hardly to be heard over the rolling of dice, the clink of toasting tankards, and the thud of wagered coins set down on wood and stone.

A fire burned merrily in the deep, circular stone pit that sat like a gem embedded in the heart of the common room.  All around it, patrons sat with their feet propped up, letting the heat dry their soaking boots.  The second fireplace, set into the far wall, burned only with smoke.  It gave no light but emberglow, and many hung their vests and cloaks to dry from the kettle hooks.  The smell of musty, wet wool mingled with the pipe smoke and the scent of sweet apple wine in the air.

Lai flitted expertly in and out of the crowds all night.  She weaved between twirling skirts swept up in dance, and ducked under arms raising tankards high in the air, delivering drinks and sweeping crumbs from the tables.  She brought food hot from the kitchen, and took discarded dishes back to be washed.  She let herself get talked into telling a story or two to the younger children, and even one that the adults listened in on.  She danced with a dozen different men, her bare feet slapping sometimes against the stone floor, other times against the wooden tabletops themselves.  She beat several of the older miners handily at a game of dice, and grinned impishly at them whenever they told her she was far too lucky a gambler for a proper lady.  When her apron pockets grew heavy with winnings, she slipped back into the kitchen to stash them away.

You’ve been a busy girl tonight, said Picck

Lai stood on her tiptoes to reach an empty spice jar on a top shelf.  Luck’s been on my side for a game or two, she said, grinning at her cousin as she pulled out handfuls of coins, and scraps of paper with names and owed favors scribbled across them.  As she stashed her spoils within the spice jar, Picck let out a low whistle.

You may have missed your calling, he said.  Dicemonger might have been more fitting than innkeeper.

Lai tucked the jar back into its place, but kept out three bronze coins.  These, she handed to Picck.  For the bakery, she said.

Panic sweeping across his face, Picck shushed her hurriedly and looked around.

Don’t worry, Father’s not here, Lai reassured him.  A floodwall broke out on the Pinedowns’ farm.  He left a little bit ago with some of the men to help fix it.

Picck smiled with relief, but with a hint of shame behind it.  You don’t have to keep doing that, he said.  But he glanced around the kitchen once more for good measure, then pocketed the bronze bits anyway.

Her cousin had been living with them for years.  His hair was eternally a tangled mess of curl, and his nose and ears were both far too large for his face.  Everything about him, from his contagious smile to his perpetually-flour-speckled clothing was endearingly odd.  In fact, it was a subject of much amusement among the locals, wondering how someone like him had won the heart and hand of a beauty such as Rose.

You haven’t told him yet, then, said Lai, and Picck shook his head.

That’s a conversation I’m not eager to have, admitted Picck.  He’s been so good to me, how can I tell him I want to leave?

But it’s to have your own place, said Lai encouragingly.  Your own bakery?  And a home for little Rivena?  And — she elbowed him with a conspiratory smirk, "any others?"

Picck grimaced.  I keep hoping she’ll forget.

"You said you wanted more children!" laughed Lai as she hopped up onto the counter.

I know, said Picck, running his dough-covered fingers through his hair.  But I said it in passing!  In the vague, somewhere-out-there-far-distant future!  I didn’t know she’d already started picking names for the little monsters!

Lai reached out and snatched a crumb tart from a nearby platter.  Better start selling these at three goldens apiece, then, just to pay for all the beasts!  And she shoved the whole thing in her mouth, grinning at him through a spray of cinnamon and gooey streusel.

Picck laughed and held out his palm.  "That’s three more you owe me for that one, then!"

Lai slapped his hand away playfully and swallowed, dragging the back of her arm across her mouth to dispatch any crumbs.  Then she took two more and started to eat them at a more appropriate pace.  For several moments the two sat in comfortable silence, listening to the muffled laughs and snatches of conversation from the common room.  Picck busied himself chopping vegetables and tossing them into the great stewpot in the kitchen fire.  Another dance was starting up when Lai asked, Did you hear me tell the Goat’s Tale?

I did, said Picck.  It might be my new favorite.

I was thinking of adding music.  Turning it into a song.

Got anything so far?

In response, Lai began to hum a little tune she’d started developing.  It was playful and lilting, echoing the way goats bounded through the grassy foothills on clear summer days.  As she hummed, Picck began to tap his fingers in time with the rhythm.  He turned countertops and bowls into makeshift drums as he worked, occasionally adding his own vocals to the wordless song.  Louder and louder they sang, adding nonsensical syllables and sounds to fill the measures, their voices and improvised instruments filling the kitchen with a joyous music at once more raw and more wondrous than the tunes that rang through the common room.  Finally, they finished with an unnecessary flourish and laughed at their own cleverness.

I think it’s perfect, said Picck through his chuckles.  Wouldn’t change a word!

We could give the Shavid fair competition with that ballad, joked Lai.  And then, the smile slipped from her face for just a moment.  She hurriedly hitched it back on, but not before Picck caught a glance.

He’s coming back, said Picck softly.  You know that.

Lai thought hard about her response, trying to put her frustratingly complex feelings into simple words.  The kitchen fire crackled encouragingly as the music in the common room faded away, dissolving into dinner chatter and drinking conversations once more.  And then Lai said, carefully, What if we’re not us anymore?

How do you mean?

I mean, he’s off on all his adventures, isn’t he?  When he comes back, he’ll be a Shavid.  And I’ll be ...  She glanced down at her own soot-stained feet and flour-covered skirts.  And then, she asked the simplest question she could.  I’m growing up, aren’t I?

If you’re old enough to ask, then you already know the answer, said Picck.  And what’s so terrible about growing up anyway?

"Is your closest childhood friend still around? said Lai.  And by his silence, Lai knew Picck understood.  She sighed and slid from the countertop.  He’s coming back, one of these days.  But he won’t be him, and I won’t be me, and we won’t be us."

She started to go, but Picck caught her by the sleeve.  Hang on there, my little spot of gloom and darkness.  He looked her over with a scrutinizing eye, then uttered a resigned moan.  Wait, just a moment.  He turned and ducked down to rummage through the bottom shelf of one of the cupboards.  When he emerged, he was holding a small stack of parchment envelopes, tied together with twine.  He looked hesitant, holding them to his chest protectively for a moment.

Picck! demanded Lai, reaching out to snatch the letters from her cousin.  How long have you had these?  There were four letters, all addressed the same, in emerald green ink with a matching wax seal.  Fox always used green.

A few days, said Picck sheepishly.  A couple of weeks for one of them.  As Lai glared at him and opened her mouth to say something spiteful, Picck said hurriedly, "You just get in such a mood when you read them!  And I thought ... maybe if I could hold off giving them to you for awhile, it might get easier.  There was apology etched in every bony angle, and he shrugged helplessly.  But perhaps tonight, you needed to remember that he’s still there.  And you’re still you, or whatever you said."

It was impossible to stay mad at Picck, and Lai felt a smile creeping to her lips in spite of herself.  She whacked him playfully across the arm with the stack of letters, then hugged him and whispered, Thank you.  As they pulled apart once more, Lai looked at Fox’s letters.  One of them was thicker than usual.  Two had torn and ragged edges, as though they’d been through quite a lot on their journey back to her.  For a moment, Lai let her fingers brush the twine that held them all together, toying with the knot.  But then, she stuffed the packet, unopened, into her apron pocket.  Then she cleared her throat and said, Well, back to work with me, then!  I’d better go take more of those miners’ money!  She sighed dramatically, crying, "Oh, what a shame!"  Then she caught up her skirts with a flourish as she began to flounce back to the common room.

Picck chuckled as he returned to his cooking.  Weren’t you supposed to be turning into a lady these days?

At the door, Lai turned and flashed him her biggest grin.  Didn’t take, she said.  And, with a mocking salute, she turned and swept back into the crowd.

THE WORST OF THE STORM passed several hours later, but the rain kept a steady drumbeat on the roof all through the night.  The Five Sides emptied in waves, with whole groups leaving each time the rain let up a bit.  Borric returned in the early hours of the morning, drenched in mud from head to sopping boot, and Lai and Picck sent him immediately up to bed.  Finally, Lai sent Picck up as well, saying she could close up on her own.  With a grateful yawn, Picck dragged himself upstairs to his rooms, where Rose and Rivena would already be asleep.  For a solid hour, Lai did nothing but focus on her work.  She scrubbed every tabletop and swept the hearth with a voracity that sent soot and dust flying into the air.  She mopped mud and puddled rainwater from the floor, ignoring the gentle thwack, thwack, thwack of the letters in her pocket, bumping against her leg with every step.

It was only once the tavern was as spotless as mortal hands could make it that she finally sat, by the dying embers of the fire pit, and pulled the envelopes from her pocket.  She peeled back the wax of the first with a practiced calm, and let the folded pages fall into her lap.  Then, finally, with nothing but the sound of the dying fire and the rain to keep her company, she began to read.

Dear Lai,

I’ve just come from the Corners in Brookwind.  It’s the oddest little market.  All the shop fronts along the proper roads are so crowded already, that they made a ruling years back that only the street corners have enough room to be used for tents and booths for out-of-town vendors.  Our company alone must have spread across five blocks!  And with no room to bring in the wagons, my job was to keep running back and forth to camp, to bring more of the wares as they needed them.  I feel like I’ve been running all week, though we’ve only just been here for two days so far.

We’ve camped with two other merchant groups, one that specializes almost entirely in jewelry.  I’ve been thinking about buying something pretty to send back to Mother, but I’ve spent most of my free coin on a better pair of boots (the old ones wore clean through the sole.)  So it’ll have to wait.  And don’t think I’ve forgotten your birthday is coming up.  I expect I’ll find something for you one of these days.  I’ve been looking, I swear I have, but nothing seems good enough.

The other merchants – not the jewelers – said they’re planning to head up through Sovesta in a few weeks.  I’ll send this letter with them.  They’re leaving in the morning, though, so I’d better say all I mean to quickly.

If ever Lai had been glad she learned to read, it was when these letters from Fox arrived.  She pored over every word, savoring every tale from the road.  If she could not be having adventures at his side, at least she could dream about them.  She read every line as though it were the most thrilling story of daring and heroism.  And though she’d only met a handful of the Shavid personally during their brief stay in Thicca Valley, so long ago, she felt she knew them all as close friends from Fox’s letters.

She stretched across the wide seating stones that encircled the fire pit, and let herself fall into his ink-and-parchment stories.  She read until the rain wore itself out, until it was nothing more than a gentle sprinkle, trickling and tapping on the windowpanes.  And as she fell asleep by the pit, letters read and carefully folded again, she could almost hear the Shavid’s songs, coaxing her dreams into far-off places and exotic lands.

Chapter Two

Wanderers

THERE WAS A RED HANDKERCHIEF tacked to a tree by the river.  Fox could see it clearly from where he stood, several dozen paces downstream.  He adjusted his stance ever so slightly, then slipped a throwing knife from his belt and hurled it, aiming for the center of the makeshift target.  Almost before it hit, he had another knife in the air, and then a third.  When he finished, all five of his finest throwing knives were buried deep in the center of the handkerchief.

Not bad, said Neil, lounging nearby with a book and a careless expression.

Frowning critically at his own work, Fox strode forward to inspect his aim.  True, all five blades were very close together.  But not close enough.  Not like he had seen Farran do.  With a grunt, Fox pulled them from the tree and went back to his starting mark.  As he aligned and corrected his stance, he said, I’ve seen those hilts so close together, you couldn’t slip a blade of grass between them.

I think you may be measuring yourself a bit unfairly, said Neil as Fox let his knives fly once more.  Your tutor wasn’t exactly mortal.

Irrelevant, retorted Fox, and Neil chuckled, finally looking up from his book.

In my land, people were not so cavalier about their gods.

Then nobody ever had one follow them around before.  Fox yanked his knives from the tree again, determined to keep practicing.  It was true, his own standards were inordinately high.  There were many who would argue that Fox was rapidly becoming the best knife thrower in the company, despite his youth.  And by mortal standards, that would be enough for most.  But there was truth in Neil’s words: Fox’s tutor was not mortal.  He was not a man, to be measured against the standards of other men.  He was the pirate god, Farran, lord of all the seas.  And it was him that Fox was determined to impress.

As always when thoughts of Farran passed through his mind, Fox caught himself glancing about, hoping to see the familiar flicker.  The shadow of the god’s spirit.  And, as always, he was met with nothing.  After all the times Fox had once wished that Farran would simply leave him be, he now wished just as strongly that the god would reappear.

It was with a fresh surge of frustration and guilt that Fox threw his knives this time.  The last time he had seen Farran in person, they had argued.  Fox had blamed him for the death of a friend, and sent him away in anger.  After that, the god had appeared merely as a ghostly echo.  Always watching, hovering in the shadows of Fox’s life.  Until the Underbeast: the horrible monster that had made Fox a hero.

Shuddering with the memory of it, Fox wrenched his knives from the tree with such force that they tore the handkerchief, already riddled with holes, clean in half.  It was a creature that still crept into Fox’s nightmares.  A creature that had dwelt in the darkest places of the Beneath, the very soul and skeleton of the Highborn Mountains.  And Fox, leading his father’s merchant caravan through it, had defeated the monster, but at a cost.  Farran had stepped in, using his own strength and power to help hold the beast off and save Fox’s life during the battle.  And then, he had flickered away like the last breaths of a dying candle.  Fox had been hailed as a hero by the caravan, and by their families back in Thicca Valley.

But Farran had not returned since, neither in the flesh, nor in the ghostly shadow.  And though there was a brief moment that Fox had been sure he saw a flicker of the god, overseeing his departure with the Shavid, the months had worn on without another sighting, and Fox was beginning to doubt that he’d ever seen such a thing at all.

Now, Fox tugged the scraps of handkerchief from the tree and wandered over to flop down next to Neil.  He handed the shredded crimson cloth back to his friend, asking, Where did you get this, anyway?

Neil shrugged, tucking the fabric in the pages of his book to mark his place, then closed the volume.  Came across it in town.

It’s not very practical, remarked Fox, stretching out on the riverbank.  It’s fairly thin and flimsy.  And it smells ... odd.  Flower-ish.  Like — And then, as the truth dawned on him, he started to laugh.  Oh, who was she?

If I were a better man, Neil mused, I would remember her name, wouldn’t I?

Fox shook his head.  That poor girl.  Charmed by your exotic nature, was she?

Neil chuckled and aimed a kick at Fox’s side.  Nonsense.  She was charmed by my scholarly air and my devilish brilliance.

"Yes, I’m sure that’s what she’ll be telling her friends about.  Still chortling, Fox said, What happens when you pass back through these towns, anyway?  Do you ever remember any of them?"

Only the truly interesting ones, admitted Neil.  And then, he heaved himself to his feet with a groan and said, Come on, then.  We should go back with something to show for it, other than what’s-her-name’s shredded handkerchief.

They passed the rest of the morning in companionable silence, scouring the riverbank for a very specific root that Radda, their company’s leader, had requested.  They stuffed their pockets with the thick, green, gristly things, rolling their breeches up past their knees so they could wade into the shallows as they worked.  The day promised to be hot and sticky, but the river was cool and refreshing, and Fox always enjoyed these chores better with Neil at his side.

It wasn’t that he didn’t get along with the rest of the Shavid troupe; he liked them all very much.  They were quickly becoming a second family to him, and a larger family than he had ever known.  But there was a singular bond between Neil and Fox that could not be matched by any other of Radda’s Players.  For, while the rest of the company were born and raised into the Shavid life, Neil and Fox were different.