Chapter Text
Io still has not accommodated to the awful vertigo that accompanies her visions, that feeling of standing on the precipice of a cliff, fighting the invisible tether at her navel pulling her body and her will forward into the abyss.
Speaking to Caldara de Barranzi, the dwarven animancer, unsettles her even more than the erratic, flashing visions she experienced at Cilant Lîs. The woman swings from the lowest branch of the tree like the ticking pendulum of a clock, a countdown to unbearable knowing. Her skin is rubbery, her face swollen and purple from the rope around her neck. Her eyes are closed, and yet Io feels them boring into her soul. She tries desperately to break the soul's hold on her, but she feels as though she has been turned to stone and trapped in this spot for eternity.
When the vision finally releases her, she nearly topples over backward, so intense is the rush of blood to her head. It requires every ounce of fortitude she can muster to stay on her feet as the cloudy blur of purples and blues clears from her mind.
"Seventeen and a half."
Io blinks.
"Could be eighteen depending on how you count the dwarf woman."
She recognizes the deep, drawling voice of the man who had greeted her as she entered the town, but she has to concentrate to see him through her haze. He's enormous—probably not for a human, but Io has to crane her neck to look at his face. It's weathered and mostly hidden behind a scruffy blond beard, and kind green eyes watch her below arched blond brows. He takes a long drag of the pipe in his hand. She recognizes the sharp smell of whiteleaf as he exhales.
Io remembers he had been speaking to her, and scrunches her face to recall what he had said.
"I—sorry?"
"The dwarf woman." He gestures at the swaying body with his pipe. Io does not look. "You were trying to figure out whether to count her as a full person. I think you outta."
She is so confused, she can't help the laugh that slips out of her. "I don't think I can afford not to," she says, her voice returning to its characteristic softness now that she is starting to break free of her previous stupor. "She surely counts as more a person than me."
His brow quirks upward, and she feels suddenly self-conscious. Her small fingers find the hem of her sleeve and tug restlessly. After a long moment, he shrugs and extends his hand. "Name's Edér. Though to the people around here, might as well be 'Nineteen.'" Io reaches for his hand, and it envelops hers easily. His skin is warm, despite the cold rain pouring down on them. When he pulls away, she finds herself mourning the empty space left behind.
Edér looks her up and down, his gaze critical, and she shudders at the familiar feeling of being evaluated. She is not a stranger to feeling eyes on her back, but Gilded Vale is a town more suspicious of the unusual than most, and she has been fighting the urge to pull a hood over her horns since she arrived here.
His evaluation feels different, however. His eyes seem to sparkle with mischief as he looks her over, and she feels his grimace is more for her benefit than anyone else's. She realizes that from the moment he'd spoken to her, she'd trusted him implicitly.
"Don't think I'd put you much higher than twenty-two, twenty-three, tops," he says finally, and clicks his tongue in disgust. Feigned disgust—she hopes. "You look like the sort that likes to get involved."
She can't help but glance back at the tree. The bodies sway eerily in the light breeze, their stench carried on the wind like an omen. A chill of unease rolls down her spine and she wraps her arms around herself. He leans casually against the crumbling wall of the old temple, packing more whiteleaf into his pipe, seemingly unbothered by the macabre scene. Io turns back to him.
"How did you know I was looking at the dwarf woman?"
The knowing smirk he wears broadens across his face. It's the sort of smile that seems to shine actual light, even in the broad daylight. "I was smoking over here, saw you staring at her. Twice I refilled my pipe. You never so much as blinked. Your mouth was so slack I took you for a Raedric at first."
With a sidelong glance toward Aloth, Io steps closer toward him, twisting the end of her braid in her fingers. "Do you know what a Watcher is?" she asks quietly.
Edér seems to flinch, taking a step back from her and removing the pipe from his mouth. He glances about quickly before leaning closer to her, and the smell of his tobacco fills her nose. "Careful, friend." Io's heart flips at the word. She hasn't ever had anyone use it directly to her before. A wayward sense of longing overtakes her just to hear it, and she loses the rest of his warning in her momentary distraction. She only needs to see the condemning glances from the onlookers around her, and she doesn't think she needs to ask him to repeat himself.
"Either case, maybe I'm not Nineteen after all," Edér chuckles, replacing the pipe in between his lips. "No offense."
She stares forlornly at him, but finds it hard to truly feel that sense of doom when faced with Edér's affable smile.
Edér recounts his dire situation in the Dyrwood with easy jokes and flippant nonchalance. Io finds herself envying the ease with which he seems to process the darkness around him. Would Edér have cried, like she had, seeing the broken and bleeding bodies of her new friend lying on the ground so soon after she had met him? Somehow, she doubts it. She thinks of Heodan, who had smiled so reluctantly at her while they made camp in the caverns of Cilant Lîs, and feels her body begin to shake.
"Lucky or unlucky?"
Io's head swivels toward him so fast she feels a joint pop in her neck, her pulse pounding in her ears. She gazes at him with wide, terrified eyes, trying to determine the nature of his question. "Excuse me?" She has learned to keep her words polite, unobtrusive, inoffensive. She has learned to keep her head low and her voice lower, for fear that she might catch the wrong attention. His gaze is unwavering, and she cannot read it, and she shakes like a leaf.
He makes a vague gesture toward her horns, and she retreats into herself, pulling her shoulders up around her ears, as though she can physically shrink small enough to disappear.
Before she can answer, he huffs out a breath of smoke, slapping his forehead. "I'm sorry, that was probably rude. Sometimes I say the wrong things and get people all riled up. I was just wondering about the, uh. Legends."
Io tugs on the long braid of her faintly glowing hair and tries to fix her mouth into a smile. The result is a small, wibbling thing, not remotely believable. "I never know until it's too late," she murmurs, losing her voice at the end of her sentence.
She expects him to look at her with disgust, revile, or fear, and to walk off. She expects his face to change into a mask of hatred like the people around them, like so many people in her past.
But Edér smiles, a genuine smile that creases his tanned face with laugh lines, and claps her on the shoulder with one large hand. Io stares at his hand in shock, unable to move her gaze from the spot where it lay even after he takes it back.
"Better odds than I've had lately," he laughs.
Io beams at him.