Amatesu looked at him levelly. “I had bad training in my youth.”
Zeb rose and balanced the board, made his way out the door and around to the table where Tilda sat. She saw him coming but hardly glanced over before staring again off into the crowd where John had disappeared. Her shoulders were slumped and her face, normally so expressive and warm, was only blank.
Zeb set the board down in front of her, and Tilda thanked him absently.
“Anything else, Ma’am? Buttered scone? Turtle soup? Pickled orc foot? Bucket of whiskey?”
Tilda glanced up and Zeb straightened, snapping his heels.
“Cheddar wheel? Sparrow shish kebab? Squirrel surprise? Groggy varmint?”
Tilda broke into a smile despite herself. “Groggy varmint?”
“’Tis how you know they are fresh, Ma’am.”
Tilda laughed, and it was the best thing Zeb had heard all day. She finally noticed the coffee and clapped both hands, then started dumping sugar into the cup and stirring. Zeb sat down next to her as innocuously as possible.
“You’re a very strange man, Zebulon,” Tilda said, taking a sip and closing her eyes with a contented sigh. It was very good coffee, Zeb had thought.
Tilda opened her eyes and looked at him. Her eyes were nut brown and a slight squint gave them an almond shape as well.
“What happened to you?” she asked. “When you went through the gate?”
“Was I less strange before that?”
“Not really. I am just wondering.”
Zeb frowned and scratched his head. “I don’t know if I can really say. I mean, one moment I was on the dais, then I fell into deep snow. A woman helped me up…”
“A woman?”
“Yes, in furs and a scarf. There was a man there, a one-armed mage with a staff, but only the woman spoke. She called me by name, told me to run through the next gate, and then pushed me through one standing in the snow.”
“Through another gate?” Tilda asked.
“Yes, it looked like the one in the tower but it was made out of giant tusks instead of metal. When I went through it, I fell out into woods. Nice woods. Trees, and flowers, and a blue sky above. I could hear water, like a stream, and it all seemed…familiar, somehow.”
“It sounds like it was pleasant,” Tilda said, looking very earnestly at Zeb. He nodded.
“It was. I think…I think I might have stayed. But the woman in the snow had told me not to, so I ran through a third gate. Shaped like the others but made from the trunks of trees.”
“Why did you do what she told you?”
Zeb shook his head slowly. “I don’t know. She seemed worried about me, and I trusted her. She told me to go, so I did. And then I ran back into the tower, and into you.”
Tilda’s smile slowly returned at the left side of her mouth. “I remember,” she said. “That is what I mean. You’re a very strange man. That may be why strange things happen to you.”
“Perhaps,” he said. “Though really, that was only the fourth or fifth strangest thing that happened that day.”
“Sure,” Tilda nodded. “Nesha-tari turned into about half a lion.”
“Right. And a big Black Dragon yelled at us.”
Tilda nodded. “Amatesu got shot by a demoness in skin-tight leather.”
Zeb frowned. “Darn. I actually didn’t see that demon. I saw the big pig-ape. And an upstart Circle Wizard teleported us twice without killing us. You know, falling through two or three magic gates may have been the least strange thing that happened.”
“Maybe so,” Tilda said. “I even think you might actually have hit one of the hobgoblins you were aiming at. Maybe.”
“Hey!” Zeb said, and Tilda laughed again, white teeth showing brilliantly in the morning sun on the shaded porch. He had about gathered his nerve enough to touch her hand or maybe even try and kiss her, but was disturbed by heavy footfalls pounding up the porch stairs.
“Heggenauer!” Tilda cried happily, and Zeb turned to find the blonde priest nodding at them, washed and cleanly garbed but with his steel breastplate all battered and dented.
“Matilda. Zebulon.”
“How is it a priest happens by the second you’re about to kiss a pretty girl?” Zeb whined.
Heggenauer raised an eyebrow, but smirked. “Sorry, we learn it in the temple seminary. Matilda, is the Duchess Claudja about?”
“Call me Tilda, and no. Still asleep.”
Heggenauer frowned, but nodded at them both and stepped inside the inn. Zeb turned back toward Tilda, who was looking at him with her eyes soft, and a thoughtful purse to her lips that was quite distracting.
“We’re you really going to try and kiss me just then?”
“Um. Yes. It depends. How many daggers do you have on your person right now?”
“Twenty-three.”
Zeb blinked, but Tilda’s mouth widened into a lopsided smirk that made his stomach feel fluttery.
She sat up straight, facing him, and folded her hands on the table.
“Tell me one thing,” she said.
“Anything.”
“Just one thing, Zeb. One thing that is not a joke, or a jibe, or something silly. Just one.”
She was waiting. Zeb took a deep breath, and straightened up on his own chair. He looked Tilda straight in the eyes.
“The first time I saw you was in the inn across from the Dead Possum. I’d been choked unconscious by a Destroyer of Ayon, and I came-to sprawled across a table in the bar.”
Tilda nodded that she remembered, but she did not interrupt.
“The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was you, lying on a bench along the back wall. There was a square of sunlight coming through the window, shining right on your face. I thought for a moment that I had died.”
“Did I look that bad?” Tilda asked, and Zeb shook his head firmly.
“No. You were beautiful. I thought I had died, and gone to a better place than I have any right to expect.”
Tilda stared back at him for what seemed a long time. She gave a short nod.
“That will do,” she decided. “You may kiss me now.”
*
Phin was alone in the room when he awoke, the other fellows having gone off to somewhere. He washed up down the hall and dressed in his least-dirty plain clothes, for wearing the robes of a Circle Wizard here was probably not a good idea. Before he went downstairs to look for the others, his mind turned to other matters. Phin sat on the floor by his bunk and pulled out the leather satchel he had stowed beneath it.
The book was inside, which still contained one teleport spell, but it was not on Phin’s mind at the moment. Instead he felt along the side of the leathery volume until his fingers touched the spiral shaft of the wand Phin now thought of as the Scepter of Kanderamath. He drew it from the satchel and sat looking at it for several minutes before there was a knock on his door. Phin jerked, startled, and crammed the wand back into the satchel.
“Hello?” the Duchess Claudja’s voice called through the door. “Is anyone in there?”
Phin climbed to his feet but instead of putting the satchel away he slung it over his shoulder. He hurried to the door and opened it, and the Duchess smiled up at him.
“I thought you had all gone,” she said. “Where is everyone?”
“I just woke up, and was going to look myself. My guess is the common room. Are you hungry…your Grace?”
Claudja smiled again, and slipped an arm through Phin’s.
“Famished. And if you please, do dispense with the title. It just seems silly after all that we have been through. Does it not, Phin?”
“As you wish, Claudja,” he said, and the two walked arm in arm to the stairs and down, Phin hardly even thinking about the Scepter in his satchel.
The others, minus Nesha-tari and Deskata, were grouped around a table and laughing, probably at something Zeb had said. Tilda saw them coming first and leaped to her feet to hurry toward them, beaming a smile. Claudja shook loose from Phin’s arm and hugged the Miilarkian fondly.
“I ordered you eggs,” Tilda said. “Is that all right?”
“Nine Gods, yes,” Claudja said. “Eggs and all the chickens that laid them.”