“It was only two glasses,” said Mizuki. She was standing in the doorway, looking over Verity, who wasn’t moving from her spread-out position on the bed.
“I have a bad head for drinks,” said Verity. She sat up, propping herself up with her elbows. “Thank you for all this. You really didn’t have to.”
“Oh, I know,” said Mizuki. “But a spinster likes some company every once in a while.”
She almost, almost made a bigger offer, to say that Verity could move in, but Verity flopped back down, and Mizuki came to her senses.
Mizuki went to her own room, which had belonged to her parents until four years ago. She no longer felt self-conscious about sleeping there, but it was a large room and felt somewhat cold with just her in it. She made kissing noises, which sometimes got Tabbins to come, but she wasn’t sure her fat oaf of a cat was even in the house.
“The truth,” Mizuki said to herself as she undressed for the night, “the truth is that magic can’t get me the things that I want and dungeons can’t either. Being alone was fun, but at some point, it stopped being fun. I want a family again.” She said the words at barely more than a whisper, so that Verity wouldn’t be able to hear from next door, but saying it out loud made her feel better, like she was at least being honest with herself.
Chapter 9 — An Unwanted Civics Lesson
Isra ended up renting a room at the Angry Plum, the larger of Pucklechurch’s two taverns, taking a room across from Alfric. She insisted that the materials from the book be taken out and distributed between their two rooms, which took a fair amount of time given how slow the storage book was and how many ordinary books were contained within it. Alfric got to glumly watch, once again, as the book provided descriptions of the books that said nothing about what information they contained. He tried to keep up his well-practiced stoicism, but his eyes went to Isra every once in a while.
On a base level, Alfric understood it. If she didn’t trust him, then she didn’t trust him, and trust had to be earned. But emotionally, it felt like a second punch to the gut to follow up the first. Not only was she going to escort him for what was really just a job for a single person, but she was insisting on making sure he didn’t run off in the night. Obviously if he wasn’t trustworthy, he would just leave, and obviously she had to prevent that, but it still stung, and he wasn’t sure that he’d handled himself as well as possible.
Once the guild message had been completed, he’d stayed up later than he would have liked to admit staring at the ceiling and rehearsing conversations to himself, both things that had already been said and things that he would say the next day.
When he woke up and got dressed, he was surprised to see her outside his door, ready to go. She was wearing different clothes than the day before, brown, but with a crimson head scarf. Her gold piercings had been returned to their places on her face. She moved into his room without a word and began loading the storage book once more. When she finished, she moved to put it in her pack.
“Let me take it,” he said. She raised an eyebrow. “I’m almost certainly stronger than you,” he said, hoping that wasn’t cause for offense. “No sense in you taking the burden.”
“Fine,” she said. Alfric loaded the book up, making sure that it was secure. There was still plenty to carry, mostly those pipes, and they split the load, with him taking more.
“Are we ready to go?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Alfric. “No, I need to fill my waterskin, but yes, after that.” He’d decided on taking his sword but leaving behind most of his armor, including his shield, which Hannah had mostly repaired the day before. The load would be heavy enough without adding more.
They set off down the road together. It was six miles east to the hex border, which would be marked with white pillars, and then once they had warped, there were another six miles to go to the next hex border, and finally, they would arrive in Tarchwood with a second warp. It would have gone faster if Alfric had been traveling by himself, thanks to his stride-lengthening boots, but he wasn’t terribly concerned about the time, and he hoped that he could make an impact on Isra, who seemed to be the second-most-capable warrior of the group. Besides, there was a lot to carry.
“I apologize for my reaction yesterday,” he said once they were past the last of the houses. “I understand that it’s hard to trust people, especially people you’ve just met, and I may have overreacted a bit. I think once we get to know each other, you’ll understand where I’m coming from and how much honor and truth mean to me.”
Isra took a long time to respond. Her face was impassive. “I’ve been stolen from before.”
“So have I,” he said with a nod. “It’s a horrible feeling, knowing that something that was yours is gone.”
Sometimes a conversation was like an akshi match, topics lobbed back and forth as quick as could be, but Isra seemed to take things like they were one of those western games played on boards with long pauses between any movement of the pieces.
“What was stolen from you?” she asked, after some more time had passed.
“Oh,” said Alfric. He hadn’t quite been ready for that question, only trying to sympathize with her. “I had been planning on being a dungeoneer since I was old enough to know what a dungeon was. I studied, endlessly, joined the Junior League, got training from experts… It was my life’s goal. I mapped out a path through dungeons as best I could, a route that would take the optimal party to heights that hadn’t been seen in decades. I made connections with other people in the Junior League, trained with them, planned with them, shared my knowledge and designs. And then, at the last minute, someone moved in to take my place on the team that I’d put together. They had all my work, all my planning, and I was left in the lurch.” He felt that familiar sour feeling in his gut. “It’s been a year since that happened. I was seventeen then, ready to be authorized to go out, only waiting on our wizard to be old enough. For a while I scrambled to find someone who would take me, but everyone in the Junior League had partied up ages ago.” And there were rumors swirling, which surely must have been part of it. “I tried going younger, to find a workable party two or three years below me, but it was awkward, and there were false starts.” Failures, though he didn’t like the word. “Everyone thought there must be something wrong with me, that there was a reason that I hadn’t been able to find anyone.” He shook his head. “All that work was taken from me. They copied my journal and used it for their own. And it worked. They’re all far ahead of me, not as far as they’d have been if I had been the one to lead the charge, but far enough that they’re getting plaudits.”
He snuck a look at Isra, who had been silent through all this. Her face was impassive.
“If I’ve been trying to rush things, this is why,” said Alfric. “I’m trying to make up for lost time.” Again, there were what might later be seen as lies of omission. He wondered whether she would ask what had taken so long, why an entire year had passed without him being able to gain traction, and he would have to admit to failed parties or perhaps use the excuse of the target on his back or his personal politics. All that, he was willing to speak freely about.
Isra was still silent, and he gave her some time to process or think while they walked. It was a story that he would share with the others, when the time was right, but it was entirely possible that he should share the other piece of it, the thing lurking in the background that he didn’t want to mention. He would have to, eventually, but he was hoping that it could wait until after their second dungeon.