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The goblin crouches before Veth. She can't breathe still from the last blow, her lungs empty and mouth wet and hot with blood. Her cheek, mouth, pressed into the dirt. It's that taste she'll remember later. Silt and iron and decay.
"You took someone from me. Someone I love," the goblin says, narrowing its yellow eyes, full moons into jaundiced slits. Its voice hoarse and sharp. Veth tries to move, jump up, keep running, run, but claws and iron dig into her arms, her back, her legs. She hears cackles. "Can a soft-fleshed idiot like you understand how that feels?"
She gasps, inhales earth wet with saliva and blood, trying to muster the air to fight, to escape, her vision blurring. There's not much pain. She'll run. She needs to run. Just — just move, just move, and —
"Probably not," it says to her. It stands, and she can see the yellow green of its feet, for an instant before the goblin kicks her with them, her face and nose and left eye, a bright shock of pain and cut and blood — "Make her suffer."
She will remember that later, too.
They are all in a daze, all six of them, when they arrive at the inn. The day had gone quickly, in a flash, in a moment, and Nott feels both exhausted and confused by time's progression. The village is just as she remembered. But how can that be right? How can she be here, and how can these people be here with her? Why is she at the inn and not home? She has no energy, no power, left to think. To examine. To doubt or to question.
The others do the talking, pay for three rooms. Jester keeps putting her hand on Nott's head, on her shoulder. Beau finds excuse after excuse to walk by, must look like a mad pacer. Mr. Clay pats her once. Fjord is having trouble meeting her eyes. Not too much trouble. He is very, very tall, and Nott's gaze has fallen to about ankle high.
She notices, but has no strength to react. She's bone tired, but doesn't know why. She goes upstairs when prompted. That's all. She keeps thinking of the shop, how it was gone. Ashes and burnt wood. When she was pregnant, the smell of Yeza's herbs, the plants and flowers, had made her feel sick. He'd tried to invent some sort of scent-masking potion, and she'd painted the bedroom. She'd given it a sort of decorative pattern along the top beams, standing on various chairs. It hadn't turned out well, but she'd been proud of herself, and he'd been alarmed to see her climbing furniture.
Gone now. Burnt away. Along with Luke's bed, which had been hers when she was a baby, a wedding present from her parents. The shop, the counter and all the glass vials she'd liked so much, the plants hanging everywhere, the sign they'd paid an artist to paint them. All those chemicals and dried herbs. It must have burnt awfully fast.
Her mind circles and drifts around Luke, around his face, his blue eyes she loves so much, eyes he'd gotten from her, from Veth, proof he was hers and oh, he was so handsome. Oh, he was so much more pretty than she could ever be. When she thinks about him, she wants to cry. To run back to Edith's and take him, scoop him up, scare him, traumatize him, horrify him with her touch and looks and he hadn't remembered her really, he probably didn't want her, really, he —
So she skirts it. Those memories. Just as she pretends not to see the fifth or sixth time Beau walks up to her and around her as if searching for something she'd lost.
The inn's ceilings are low — high for Halflings, but Fjord has to stoop a little on the landing as he stops and passes around three brass keys: one he keeps, one he hands to Jester, the last to Caleb.
"Oh!" Jester puts her hands hard on Nott's shoulders. She'd be startled, she'd start, if she had the energy left to care. "Maybe Nott should sleep in our room tonight, Beau!"
"Huh? How's - oh! Oh," Beau says. "Yeah, sure. Like a girl's … sleepover or something? Is that a thing?"
"I agree," Yasha says softly. "I'll sleep outside…"
"You don't have to sleep outside." Fjord.
"I don't mind… I like it…" Yasha.
"Four people in one room is a lot. Why don't you room with Fjord and I?" Mr. Clay. "Or maybe Nott, you'd like to sleep in our room?"
"Or I can sleep in the boys room, and Beau and Yasha can shaaare!"
Nott knows what is being discussed even if no one will say the words. She tries to think: where should I sleep? What do I want?
She's so tired.
"It is fine," Caleb says, the first thing he's said in a very long time, his voice rough and soft. Everyone falls utterly silent. "Where would you like to sleep?" She can tell he's talking to her by the way his voice changes, can hear more beneath: a question, an answer, a statement.
"There's no need to change everything up on my account," she says. "Although maybe Jester should sleep in the boy's room, I don't know."
"Er - it's been a long day," says Fjord. "Maybe we should all sleep like usual and mix things up some other time."
She follows Caleb into the door on the right, into a small room with two small beds. Quilts and bedding folded on each narrow bed. A pewter pitcher and cup on a table. Nott fingers her flask in her cloak, thinking how thirsty she is. No. How sober she is. She is numb, but not the numb of dulled senses, the edges blurry and soft and easy. Everything is in sharp focus, and too hard to forget.
She goes to the bed farther from the door, pressed up against the wall. She wants to crawl under it, her goblin brain, cramp herself tight in the dark and the corner where it is safe and the walls are around and behind her, in the dark, can't be ambushed, can't be hurt, safe, safe and tucked away, no scraps of pretty useless cloth, just protection and dust — she can smell the dust, traces of spiders and mice and creeping things, even in a clean place like this, her goblin nose saying food! good! — safe! hide! then eat! — and the scent of human behind her, close behind her, fear and sweat and vomit, weakness — attack it, rip it, it is a threat, kill it, it is weak —
— Nott lifts herself onto the bed, pushing pillow aside to curl up against the headboard and the wall —
Think:
Do I remember these things? Do I remember the way the herbs smelled and the way paint smells, the heavy scraping sound the chair made, or do I remember Jester's paints and other chairs and other plants? Do I remember Luke or was it Kiri who would imitate people when she was learning to talk? Do I remember the way the bed would sink in the middle and the quilts smelled dusty, always dusty, and I tried to give them a good wash and lost Yeza's grandmother's handmade quilt in the current? Dragged it back muddy and wet through the dirt, covered in grass and leaves? I was so angry, I was so upset, I ruined it, I did it again, but I couldn't just leave it, couldn't just let it drift down in the river, bogged and dragging in the current, around the bend and snagging on rocks where the river narrows and picks up, tattered and drifting down to the place I
(probably)
died? Do I remember that? Or do I tell myself I do? Do I repeat the story until it sounds true, but do I know it happened? Did it happen? What did the quilt look like? If I touch my stomach can I remember having a life inside me? What does Luke look like? What did he look like a year ago? What did he look like when he was born? If I tell myself: he has brown hair and blue eyes, will I see it? If I tell myself: I remember Yeza's face, do I?
Think:
Did Yeza have a grandmother?
Did I?
Silt.
"You'll tell us your clan's location in the morning," the guard says. It's not a question. She barely hears, isn't really listening, except that her heart is racing and terrified and she notices everything, notices everything, the uneven stone floor, the part where it's damp for some reason, the guard has on boots, the guard has a shortsword and a dagger, her arm hurts!, the jail is dark, no windows, stone, she smells rats, she smells shit, she smells sweat, she smells mold, her arm! hurts!, the cell door hurts her ears, it's loud, it's noisy, her heart! is racing! the grip on her arm is released and she is falling! forward! face first onto the stone (there is hay on the stone, it is old and moldy, can't eat)! Pain! Loud noise! Her face hurts! Arm hurts! Loud sound! Footsteps!
Fading!
And she scrambles to her feet, hands braced on the floor, long nails digging for cracks and fissures between the stones, breath loud and heavy…
It starts to fade a bit. The rush of goblin attack fight flee. Her nerves. Her heart is still racing and she licks at her dry lips, all around her mouth, far as her tongue can reach. Hoping for just a drop more cherry wine. It had been sweet. It's been a long —
Danger! There is someone! Else! Here!
She leaps and scrambles into the darkest corner of the cell, which is closer to where the body is, so she compromises with the second-darkest corner, curls up to crouch, widening her eyes to see: a lump. Big. Human sized. Her nostrils flare. Sweat, human stink, human waste. Fear. (no threat. you can kill it.)
Rot.
It has stirred at all the sounds, is up on its elbow. Pale skin. Medium hair. Pale eyes. She can see enough in the dark to peg it as a human.
Hello, friend, it says cautiously.
Male. He says. She doesn't move.
I would say there is no reason to be scared… at least, there is no reason to be scared of me.
He speaks strangely. She hasn't heard a voice like his before: something in her says north. The north. What's north? What does that mean? How does she know what that means? There are people from the north, who —
Would you like some water?
Don't —
Her voice comes out thin and rough and squeaky and she jumps at the sound of it coming from her mouth; she hasn't spoken in a while. She hasn't spoken Common in even longer.
She knows how to speak Common.
It takes some effort, to say more, to find the nerve:
Don't patronize me!
…Alright.
The man shifts, sits up. He tries a sort of smile thing in the darkness, but she can see enough of his face and smell enough of his fear to know he is lying.
But it has been a very long time since anyone has spoken even this kindly to her.
(Has anyone ever…? She thinks suddenly of silt and water and herbs.)
Okay. I'll have some water. Her voice fretful.
You're welcome to it. We appear to be roommates. He is wary, scared. He is scared. Of her. He is a human and she is not.
He holds out a metal cup and she can't move to take it, can't move out of the shadow where he will see her, can't reach out with her claws and wrong number of fingers, can't risk touching his skin with hers, can't, can't, can't.
He places it on the floor after a moment. What's your name?
It's been so long since she's spoken to anyone. She almost answers, "Veth."
The Goblin chief's wife likes to summon Nott sometimes. Nott has no choice, but she isn't attacked: the widow likes mostly to look at and sniff at her, take in her misery and use it as fuel for her anger: make pointed comments about how powerful and brave and cunning her husband was, how clumsy and weak and foolish Nott is.
"Not even being a goblin fixed you," she'd once cackled.
It had been early on. Earlier on. "I'm not a goblin," Nott had mumbled, already knowing the response:
"Nott a goblin," the chief's widow sneered. "You think you're so much better than us? So strong and fierce? You think you can just kill people's loved ones? Is that it? Is that?" She'd slashed out and sliced Nott's face, Nott had flinched but hadn't escaped or turned away.
You think you're so great, Nott a goblin? Nott an anybody? You think anyone will bring you back again? You think you matter? No one misses weak fleshed killers like you! No one misses murderers! You're lucky to be alive!
The first time Nott had slept in the same bed as Caleb, on purpose, she hadn't slept at all. Too frightened, too unnerved. He'd crawled under the one thin blanket fully clothed but for his boots, and she'd seen his toes sticking from his left sock and thought: someone really ought to mend that, before changing it to let's just steal a new pair tomorrow.
Let's. Let's! She's not even used to that yet, the word let's, and now she's supposed to sleep in the same bed as a human man? She's a married woman! What would people say?
Except Nott is tired, and the room is cold, and she doesn't think of Caleb as a 'man' anyway, he's just Caleb, and he sighs when his head touches the pillow and she just stands where she is, twisting her hands. "Okay!" she squeaks, "so I'll wake you up in a few hours and you can take second watch —"
"There is no need for that," Caleb says, "I have warded the room."
Nott is silent, trying hard to think of a second argument. Aha!: "So, I'll wake you up in a few hours —"
"Nott…" Caleb sits up. He hadn't even removed his scarf. Nott has the weird, itchy urge to take his scarf away from him. Fold it over a chair, or on a clean patch of floor. And his coat, for that matter. And his books. She looks away. "We should get some rest. That is why we spent our coin on an inn, did we not?"
"I thought there would be two beds, and I don't want to sleep too close to you, because I'm afraid I'll touch you, not in a weird way, but accidentally, like my hand or something, and it'll be weird! Because have you seen my hands? I have claws! And four fingers! Also, it's a really small bed, and it would be weird, and I'm not ready for—" Nott squeaks. Sure, she'd shared a bed with her brothers when they was little, and that's what this feels like more than betraying a marital bed or anything — she can't say it. She's not sure if it's real, or just a story she made up, sometimes.
Caleb's expression softens, opens up in a way that floods her with guilt and remorse. "I am not afraid of that. Your species does not bother me even slightly." She looks at the floor. Her heart isn't beating, she's pretty sure. "Very well," he says with a small sigh. "Wake me in a few hours, and you can sleep in the bed and I will take the floor. I do not want to force you into a situation…"
"No, it's okay," she mutters, feeling her face darken with embarrassment for how useless and weird she's being.
"Ja?" his voice careful.
"I'll sleep — I'm small, so I can just stretch out on the end, and…" she takes a deep breath and hops up. It's an easy fit, even lengthwise. The top of her head butting up against his calf. She can feel the warmth through the blanket, smell the sweat and dirt…
And it is incredibly comforting.
It has been so long since she has touched anyone, anything warm and living and kind, and Nott curls up on herself, clutching at herself, terrified she is about to sob and give herself away, how badly she wants to throw herself over his leg, against his side, hoping he'd put his arm around her and she would be held and hugged and safe and protected and warm and comforted and
She makes a very embarrassing high pitched noise. Eyes pinched tightly shut, body curled tight as she can go, fists pressed against her mouth and nose until she almost can't breathe.
Remembers a bed that would sink in the middle, the feather mattress understuffed, how Yeza would sink contentedly down in the middle portion and she'd always scrabble for the sides, pretending to hate it more than she did, kicking her feet out over the edges —
Gasping —
Caleb sits up and she stays still, frozen and scared. Listening to rustling noises, feeling the bed shift around. Then something heavy and warm drapes over her. A book in a sewn pocket drops against her knee. Caleb's coat covers her.
"It's cold in here," he says. "I hope this helps." Giving her hair a quick stroke that makes her shiver.
"Caleb?" she asks after a long time.
"Mm, ja?"
"…Isn't it more polite to offer the girl the first shift in the bed while you sleep on the floor? I mean, just in general."
"…Sleep well, my friend."
They make her the torturer's assistant. This means: get rid of the bodies, after the torturer is done asking them where their food and money is and then killing them. This means: bring the body to the cookfire. Usually.
Nott spends hours trying to drag the first body (human man, blonde, young, his face destroyed) she's told to dispose of into the forest, deeper, where maybe it can rot peacefully and not be eaten. When she's caught and beaten, she spends hours trying to sneak the second body (halfling man, old, no one she knows) into the river. Gets it to the shore and then freezes when the water laps at her bare ankles. Sits there for hours until she's caught, the body at her side.
Silt.
She gives up. Takes the bodies to the cookfire after that, they're dead now anyway. Tries to be extra sure of where the food she's eating comes from. They make fun of her, mock her, even the ones who aren't outright cruel, and her picky eating is a favorite target. They love to tell her 'this is venison!' and cackle.
After a few months, the torturer tells her it's her turn. Hands her a knife and a bound halfling woman (black hair, scared brown eyes, no one she knows). Find out where her money is, the torturer says. He sits back.
Nott's hand trembles. The knife shakes. The woman looks at her desperately. She knows what she's supposed to do: first the fingers, then the eyes, then the nose, then the throat. There's never money. Never food. It's just sport.
She raises the shaking dagger twice. Third try she grows calm. Her hand stops shaking. Veth cuts the woman's throat quick and clean, kills her in one cut, drops the knife and flees into the forest for good.
It's another long road in the middle of nowhere, but the day is warm and they've eaten recently and Nott is feeling pretty okay about things. Stuff. Life.
"It is not that difficult," Caleb is saying, about magic. "No, it is difficult, but I don't think it is impossibly so."
"You can say that, but I've never known anyone who can use magic as well as you do. Or at all," Nott says. The road is dirt, uncultivated fields on either side of them, long grasses and wildflowers. It reminds her of home.
"I can teach you, if you'd like."
"Can you teach me to do cool firebolts? Can you teach me to make weird rainbow light orbs? Can I have a cat?" Nott asks, amusing herself, not believing it possible for one second.
With a snap and a wave of his fingers, Caleb's cat appears and perches heavy and warm on Nott's shoulders. She pets Frumpkin. "Sorry for trying to eat you the other day," she whispers. "You startled me. Instincts, you understand." The cat headbutts at her gently.
"Ah - er, I don't know about all of that," Caleb says, "but magic, in general, would not be hard for someone as clever as you to pick up on. I will think of a few basic spells you can choose from and we will try to study."
"Oh, I'm just kidding," she says, scratching Frumpkin. She's a pace or two behind Caleb, her legs are short and small, but he's a pretty slow walker and it doesn't feel weird, and the day is sunny and warm and she is pretty sure she is happy. "Who ever heard of a goblin wizard?"
"I'm almost certain I have," Caleb says vaguely, in his way which means he's not so much trying to reassure her as he is trying to recall in detail some vague factoid that Nott really doesn't care about. She smiles up at his back. All awful teeth.
"…You really think I'm clever?" she asks shyly, mostly just wanting to hear Caleb say yes.
"Of course! You are one of the brightest people I have met," he says, smiling back over his shoulder at her.
Nott walks a little taller, feels almost like — like a girl, a normal girl, messy braids, freckles, grass stains on her skirt — Yeza, my friend thinks —! —
If she looks up at him and not at her limbs, her hair, her body, she almost feels halfling, walking down a road with her best friend on their way to Trostenwald. Bright day, no hoods or masks, just the light.
He thinks he's being sneaky, Veth can tell, but she can see Yeza coming out of the corner of her eye for a solid thirty seconds before he's up to her.
She counts those seconds, and tries to decide what she wants to do about it. If she should just turn and run away, or walk gracefully away, or stick it out. Staying put wins, narrowly. She brushes the flowers she's spent the morning collecting under the hem of her skirt.
"Hi," he says.
"Hi," she says. Her voice comes out sullen; she can't help it, not exactly. It's also hard to look at him, so she just looks down at her lap. Thinks: some books, the heroine is described as beautiful and graceful, lounging in a meadow, as her young suitor approaches (tall, usually on horseback). Not Veth! Not Veth, who can feel her braids coming undone, has grassstains on her skirt, has no suitors and never has and never ever will.
She sees his knees appear at the edge of her vision as he sits down opposite her. She looks up, and then back down, embarrassed.
"I wanted to … to apologize to you," he says finally. (She sneaks another peek. He's blushing, but she feels that sullen unhappiness.) "It was pretty shitty of me to ... kiss you like that."
With a crowd of other boys fifty yards behind him, he means. Cackling behind hands. He'd run up to Veth along the road, said something about always liking her, which had been a lie, since no one really liked Veth and she could see the other boys — but he'd asked if he could kiss her.
She'd said yes.
She knows why, she doesn't want to think about why. She'd said yes because she was surprised he'd ask, surprised because it was obviously some joke at her expense, obviously some dare or prize, punishment for a bet he'd lost or challenge to win: look at Veth! Sixteen and weird and awkward! Who'd want that? Nearly flat chested, baby round face, grass stains on her skirt and stockings? Pockets full of strange things? She's not stupid. Veth's not smart, but she's not stupid.
But he'd asked instead of just doing it. And — and —
When would she ever get the chance again? When would anyone ever want to kiss her? Why would they?
She'd wanted to know what it was like.
"It's fine," she says now, a few days later, behind her house, sitting on her knees in the grass. "I don't care, really."
"Well, I care. It was a shitty thing —"
"So then why did you do it?" she asks sharply. "If you think it's so bad, then why didn't you say no, or just run off?"
Yeza doesn't have an answer for her. He looks at her blankly, and then down at his knees. "What are you doing?" he asks, not unkindly.
"Nothing," she says. "Looking at flowers."
She draws back her skirt a bit to reveal her small collection.
"You like flowers?" Yeza asks politely. He's probably still feeling guilty. But she can't tell him she wanted it, liked it, even knowing it was a stupid dare, not without sounding like a total freak, so Veth doesn't call him out on it. She can always just turn and leave. That's always an option. She knows it makes her weird, but she also doesn't care.
"I guess," she shrugs. "Sure. I like flowers."
"Are you going to press them?" he asks. "In a book?" he adds, at her expression, which must be confused because Veth hadn't had any idea what he meant until he clarified.
"Oh… maybe." She fidgets. "I like collecting things," she admits warily. Not sure why she is, except that it's honestly been a long time since this has happened, some kind of… conversation. With someone who isn't her father or older brothers.
"Like what?" he sounds curious, but she's still wary.
"I don't know. Buttons." No, that's weird. Her mind goes blank, scrabbling. "Flowers, maybe." Girls like flowers, it's normal to like flowers, so she'd thought: maybe if I started gathering flowers, and I was the girl who walked around with flowers, people would think I was normal. Normal-ish. More normal. These five had been the work of about an hour, but they do nothing, spark no feeling in her: they're pretty, and searching for different flowers was interesting, kind of fun, but now she has five flowers and… nothing. "Maybe plants," she says.
"Oh, really?" Yeza says, and for some reason he seems kind of almost excited. "I spend a lot of time in the woods, you know," he says, gesturing in the forest's general direction.
"You're apprenticed to the apothecary," Veth says.
"Yeah!" He cocks his head. Like he wants to ask her a question, like how did you know? It's not like she knows much about him. She just notices things. "Maybe we could go on a walk sometime," he says. "Collect plants."
"Are you asking me because you feel sorry for me?" Veth asks bluntly, twisting her fingers in her skirt.
He shakes his head no. "I'm asking because I'm sorry. And, uh," he clears his throat. "Actually — it was my first kiss. So I feel bad." He doesn't say too, as in, it was my first kiss, too. Like he's too nice to say it.
Veth bites her lip. "Okay," she says. "Let's give it a shot."
Nott wakes up with her head pushed up into the soft part of Caleb's side, a kink in her neck, and her foot dangling off the side of the bed. Outside the inn, the morning is cloudy and cold. She is mostly covered in a quilt, and Caleb is snoring on his side, his elbow knocking at the crown of her head. Frumpkin draped over his neck and shoulder.
There are things still unsaid, things still to do. Things to learn. People to find. Things to say, secrets to abandon, stories to share.
Husbands to rescue.
She is frightened and she is anxious and she is not brave, not strong, not clever. Not particularly. But she's warm. She's okay. The edge of her panic eased, the dullness lapped away, the emptiness, the too much, fixed with rest and daylight.
The second bed unslept in.
She'll give it all a shot.