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There is no true night in the First. But even so, the weary must needs rest, and so Thancred was tucked securely in his bedroll under a hollow tree, shielded from the outside world by a thicket of knotty, knobbed tree roots all gnarled like the hands of an arthritic elder. He slept not alone, for there was a young girl curled up on the other side of the hollow, her thin couch padded amply by the fading purple leaves that had gathered in drifts on the wind and been trapped within by the cage-like roots. And though Thancred slept, his companion slept not at all. Through the not-night she stifled sobs and shook silently under her traveling cloak, waiting for death to claim her. And though she waited alone and sore afraid, death did not claim her at all.
It was an escaped, half-muffled whimper that woke Thancred, and in the manner of light sleepers everywhere he grumbled first, and then propped himself up on an elbow in alarm, to glance out half-closed eyelids at his companion.
“Minfillia,” he asked, “what’s the matter with you?”
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” she said, hiccuping pathetically, “I don’t want to be any trouble. Dying here is better than dying in Eulmore, or becoming a sin-eater —”
“You’re not —” Thancred tried to calm her to no avail, but she would not be reassured. Instead her panic fed her words until they tumbled out her mouth in a shaky rush.
“It must have been when that sin-eater sent me tumbling — when I lost my knife — it’s an internal injury probably, I’ve been bleeding all night and it just won’t stop.”
Thancred sat upright, bumping his head on the rotting wood above him, and muttered an oath less at the pain, which was minimal, and more at the shower of termites and splinters that descended upon him after the impact. “Let me see — let me…” and then he fell silent when he glimpsed the source of her bleeding. Blood spotted the skirt of her white dress and the drawers beneath, and he bit back the urge to strike something once he realized what had happened.
Minfillia was not injured. No. She was only growing up, and simply hadn’t ever been told enough to expect her monthly courses. Damn you, Ran’jit, and you, Vauthry. Damn your gilded prison, damn you both sending young girls to die for your so-called stronghold against the Light, Thancred thought. But his anger would not assuage Minfillia’s fears, so instead he told her this. “No no no, you’re not dying, Minfillia. This is something that happens.” He rummaged around in his pack and found some bandages, and a gauze-wrapped wad of dried absorbent moss, something to pack deep wounds with. Good.
Thancred wrapped some bandages around the moss, fashioning a sling-shaped pad of absorbent matter, and then handed it to Minfillia with another strip of linen. “I’m going to turn around, okay? You … take your drawers off and tuck the thick part between your legs, and then put this piece of bandage around your waist like a belt, and knot it off. Then you can tie the loose ends onto the piece around your waist. That’ll absorb some of the blood. Then put your clothes back on, okay?
“Okay,” Minfillia said tearfully.
Thancred climbed out of the hollow under the tree and looked everywhere else except behind him, listening quietly to her shaking breaths and the rustling of leaves and cloth as she did what he told her to.
“I’m done,” she said, after a few minutes.
Thancred listened cautiously for the sound of clothing being donned, and heard nothing but the faint chirps of the few insects that could survive the nightless wood. “You’re decent?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“Good,” Thancred ducked back into the hollow and fetched his backpack and bedroll, began stowing his gear. “Get packed up… we’ve got to go to Il Mheg.”
Minfillia blinked, and Thancred wanted to strike something at the sight of the dried tears on her face. “But what about the bounty we were supposed to collect for that sin-eater?” she asked.
Thancred forced himself to shrug with a casualness he did not feel. “We can collect it later, it’ll wait. We need to get you clean clothes, and you probably wouldn’t say no to a hot bath, right?”
“Right,” Minfillia said, her soft voice doubtful.
———
Minfillia would not have made the walk to the Bookman’s Shelves swiftly enough to avoid the pixies’ tricks, so Thancred carried her part of the way. His coat was already splattered with mud and sin-eater ichor and the Twelve knew what else, and he cared not about whatever blood remained on Minfilia’s skin or clothing. He simply had her rest her arms on his shoulders, and carried her pick-a-back, his gunblade slung over her small shoulder, and walked on at a steady, ground-eating pace.
The old Voeburtian highroads were still in good shape, largely due to the fairies who kept the topography much as it had been before the Flood of Light — save for their additions of rainbow-hued crystals, giant predatory butterflies, furious ambulatory flowering baskets, and tree-men who had used to be people. All those things were fairly terrifying hazards on the road. As a result, Thancred was puffing quite hard by the time he arrived at the lodge near the lake — if only because he did not particularly want the pixies to turn him or Minfilia into tree-men as well, which was likely if either of them overstayed their brief welcomes.
A musical chime rang the moment he crossed the threshold onto the porch, just a simple magical ward that announced his presence, and wearily, he stooped to let Minfillia find her own feet. “What is this place?” she asked him.
“The home of an old friend.” Thancred glanced at the cobwebbed bell-pull by the door, reached up, and tugged at it, to be rewarded with a soft clang muffled by lath and plaster.
“I didn’t think anyone lived in Voeburt any more,” Minfilia murmured, taking his arm in faint apprehension.
Thancred let her. “He does.”
The sound of soft slippers, worn and down-at-heel, soughed behind the door before its latch turned and it squeaked open. “Thancred. Thou hast found thy way to my door at last. And who might this be?”
“Call her Minfillia,” Thancred said, perhaps a little more curtly than he had intended to. Minfillia only shrank back at the tone of his voice, as though attempting to hide behind him. “We need a place to rest, and a place to clean up. Are we welcome?”
Urianger’s keen gaze lingered on Thancred, and then on Minfillia, a slow smile spreading across his narrow face. “Be thou welcome, aye, pray enter my humble abode, thou’rt under my protection. My name, fair maiden, is Urianger Augurelt. And how fashionable the bloodstains on thy garments are,” he said, as though the non-sequitur made sense. “Is this the latest fashion in Eulmore? Why, ‘twould simply be terrible if those artistic splatters were removed.”
Minfillia glanced up at Thancred, confused, but he nodded reassuringly, and let her enter the Bookman’s Shelves before he took up the rear behind her, shutting and barring the door behind him.
“I will run a hot bath, and find thee something more suitable to wear indoors,” Urianger said, bending lower so Minfillia could hear him better. “Pray await my return.”
“So many books,” Minfillia whispered to Thancred. “Even more than they had at the library in Eulmore. Does this… um, Mister Urianger collect them?”
“Aye, he does have a habit of collecting reading material. Not consciously,” Thancred said, warming himself with the memory. “More in the way … dust accretes in the corner of a remote chamber. He settles, and books build up around him.”
Minfillia did not dare to stray from the welcome mat, conscious of the blood that was no doubt soaking into the bandages she wore under her clothes, and Thancred laid a gentle hand upon her shoulder to reassure her in the minutes that passed before Urianger returned. He had with him a linen drying-cloth, one broad and long enough to protect his modesty in a bathhouse, and it fell about Minfilia’s shoulders like a cloak when he draped it about her.
“Here is a drying-cloth for thine use when thou hast washed. Meanwhile, there is warm water aplenty in a half-cask in the spare bedroom, and a cake of white soap, and a robe for thee that thou might don after thine ablutions. I will have thy raiment cleaned, and provide whatever supplies thou needest. Fear not.”
Minfillia glanced up at Thancred and he nodded. “Go with him. He’s trustworthy.” She nodded then, her pale hair swinging out of the hood of her muddy cloak, and followed Urianger further into the lodge.
———
Urianger had relieved Thancred of his various burdens, laying them on random shelves and piles of books, and brought both his and Minfillia’s bloodied garments out to “air” on the porch, with no further explanation. Then he had made a large pot of tea and gone to the larder in search of things to feed his unexpected guests. It was a good thing, Thancred thought, that they were not on the Source, for tea would have then been made up of archon loaf.
Instead, Urianger had laid out some small teacakes, a cold meat pie redolent of mutton and wild mushrooms, cold hard-boiled eggs, some sweet berries with cream, and smoked fish from the nearby lake, and Thancred had applied himself assiduously to the dainties laid before him once he had explained his situation.
“It’s a bloody shame, a girl her age not knowing about the changes she is going through. I’d wager you that it was probably another way for Ran’jit to control Minfillia – all the Minfillias.”
Urianger only tilted his head, his gaze all-too-piercing for a moment. “I think not, Thancred. The answer is simpler, and more distressing… ‘Tis my belief that Ran’jit has never told this Minfillia or any other about their entry into womanhood simply because none of them has lived long enough to see this day.”
Thancred’s grip on his teacup tightened, and he forced himself to put it down before he cracked the delicate bone china in his rage. “Promise me you will never tell her about that.”
“Thou hast mine most solemn oath,” Urianger said.
———
Thancred had finished blunting the edge of his hunger when small wet footsteps slapped down the hallway from the spare room to the parlor. Minfillia stood in the doorway wearing a vastly oversized robe belted about her with a sash long enough to serve as a convenient rope.
“Um. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to re-use those bandages,” she said, “but I didn’t want to bleed all over your floor, so I put them back on.”
“Ah, yes,” Urianger said smoothly, completely unfazed. “I had left the necessary supplies on the washstand, but had not remembered thine inexperience. Forgive me. Fear not this bleeding, Minfillia, ‘tis only a sign that thy womb is maturing.”
Minfillia frowned briefly, nibbling on her lower lip, her hazy blue eyes clouded with doubt. “What’s a womb?”
Thancred had to excuse himself in a hurry and find something suitable to punch.
———
Thancred punched a convenient tree for what felt like several minutes — although the pain in his swollen knuckles spoke another truth — and had just staggered inside the Bookman’s Shelves only to find Minfillia wearing a man’s shirt, one that fit her amply, like a dress. She was sitting in one of the chairs in the parlor, nibbling on a yeasted tea-cake while Urianger pointed to printed plates in a Voerburtite anatomy textbook and murmured quietly to her.
“Yes, ‘tis the elven anatomy, but our bodies are largely analogous to humes,” Urianger said, while he pointed at parts of the anatomical drawing with the tuft on a fresh new quill. “This here is the male member, what is medically called the penis. It is what most men of most species have, for some other peoples reckon their genders differently from us.”
“That’s what Thancred has, then.” Thancred felt his face crinkling in a most uncomfortable manner, drawn between horror and amusement.
Urianger remained completely unfazed by Minfilia’s innocent comment. “Verily, he and I. We are both men as our peoples describe it.”
“And I will become a woman,” Minfillia said, and the certainty of that sentence — I will — tugged painfully at Thancred’s heart. Could he afford to protect this girl until she became a woman? Or was she doomed like so many other of her incarnations, each blossom fading before it could truly bloom?
“Exactly.” It was oddly reassuring, Urianger’s detached, scholarly explanation of the genitals. Surely there could be nothing indiscreet or improper about such a thorough approach to anatomy and the process of puberty.
“And this…” Minfillia pointed elsewhere at the diagram. “I don’t read Voerburtite.”
Urianger leaned a little closer to her and nodded. “These are the testicles — the true organs of generation in a man, where his seed ripens,” he said. “They are analogous to thine ovaries, which lie within thy belly, just above the bump of thy pubic bone.”
It was Minfillia’s turn to blush slightly. “Where I’ve … started growing hair.”
“Aye, ‘tis again a perfectly normative example of what learned scholars would describe as a secondary sexual characteristic, a marker of thine sex that shows only as thy body matures. The beard and bodily hair of a man, and the breasts and bodily hair of a woman. Those are generally the signs that a boy or a girl is beginning to grow towards adulthood. Informally these testicles would be termed the bollocks, and they are held securely within a loose… purse of skin, the scrotum. Or, informally, the ballock-pouch. The entire assemblage is thus referred to as the male genitalia, or a man’s cods.”
A look of understanding and delight began to dawn on Minfillia’s fair face. “So that’s what ‘bollocks’ means.”
Urianger chuckled, the sound low and warm. “Mine friend Thancred hast been careless with his tongue, I take it.”
“Well,” she said, shrugging, “he told me to go for the bollocks in a fight… now I understand more.”
Urianger nodded his approbation. “Aye, and he has taught thee well — a man’s testicles are most sensitive to blows, and a good strike can reduce even the stoutest man to a mewling pup in a matter of seconds. Moreover, the region is richly supplied with blood vessels. Seest thou that artery in this diagram? That is the femoral artery, which feeds the great muscles of the thigh and fundament, and branches to supply the rest of the leg with blood. A stab wound there will kill unless there is a healer available, and a swift and puissant one at that.”
Minfillia looked up then, to glance at Thancred, and then burst out laughing at the expression on his face. “You’re all scrunched up,” she said, and then flinched a little. “Is something wrong?”
“No —” Thancred said, finding the smile he felt beneath his anger. “No. Learning is good. Learning is nice. And I don’t think I could have explained everything as neatly and as correctly as Urianger has.”
“Aye, mine experience is largely anatomical.” Urianger said, his own smile turning just a little mischievous. “I believe Thancred would be the best teacher to explain to thee how the sexes come together in congress to create new life.”
Thancred blinked once, realizing belatedly the trap Urianger had sprung upon him. “I’m not going to —” he hissed, his face heating with sudden consternation.
“You’re not going to?” Minfillia asked entirely innocently. “You’re not angry, are you?”
Thancred wanted to flinch at the way she cringed a little. “No, I’m not angry. I’m … I’ve had a colorful past. I don’t know if I’m the most suitable teacher for this part of things. But it’s an important lesson you have to learn, so I’m going to try my best.”
Minfillia nodded, seeing his seriousness, and waited for him to take a seat at the table. Urianger rose smoothly, taking the teapot with him. “‘Tis empty,” he said graciously, “and thou wilt need more tea for the explanation. I shall boil more water.” At that he exited the parlor and vanished into the kitchen, giving Thancred the space to speak.
“Urianger’s explained the anatomy to you, right?” Thancred asked, taking a sip of his now-cold tea. His knuckles felt stiff and sore. “And that you’re becoming a woman slowly but surely.”
“Yeah.” Minfillia nodded.
“Did he mention pregnancy to you?” Thancred continued, determined to do his best.
Minfillia shrugged, and picked up another teacake. “He said I could become pregnant and have a baby. But nobody’s ever told me how.”
“Okay.” Thancred closed his eyes briefly and took a breath, cudgeled his thoughts into order. “When two people start to care for each other, or sometimes just because they like the look of each other, they get physically close. They hold each other, and they kiss. It feels good, because it’s supposed to be. And when you keep doing that, eventually your bodies become ready to go further than that.”
Minfillia’s clouded gaze rested upon Thancred, her attention wholly on him, and he drank another mouthful of his cold tea, tried to find the right words.
“In that moment,” he said, grasping for words, ”if the two people are a man and a woman, they can do something more intimate than just holding and touching and kissing. The woman can part her legs and allow the man to access her vagina, and he can put his penis into her. They will move together for a while, and eventually it feels so good that he spills his seed in her. Inside her body, if the timing is right, his seed finds hers, and they unite to form a new life — a fetus, inside her womb.”
Minfillia blinked, looking upward as she thought. “You said if they were a man and a woman. You can do this even if you don’t have one of each?”
“Aye.” Thancred had thought he was beyond blushing at this point, but something about Minfillia’s earnestness shamed him. “Some men find pleasure with other men, and some women find pleasure with other women. I’ve lain with men and women. The specifics differ, of course, but it’s still good. Congress with another person isn’t just to make children, despite what some people say. It’s a way to express affection. A way to share joy. There are as many reasons to lie with another person as there are reasons not to.”
Minfillia nibbled at her lower lip, heedless of the crumbs that rested just out of reach of her teeth. “And all this happening,” she said, gesturing to her abdomen, “ is my body becoming ready for … this?”
“Aye.” Thancred said.
“I don’t know if I want to have — to lie with anyone yet.” Minfillia murmured, her teacake forgotten in her hand.
“That’s fine,” Thancred said, “everyone grows up at their own rate. You take all the time you need. And if anyone tries to force you, fight back. You’ve every right to kill to defend yourself. Forcing someone to have sex — to lie with you is rape. It’s one of the most heinous crimes that can ever be committed.”
It was hard to watch the fear enter Minfillia’s gaze as she absorbed what Thancred had said. “People will do that?” she asked.
“Selfish people, aye.” Thancred explained, as gently as he could, “Thoughtless ones. People who think their desires matter more than others’ right to be left alone.” Largely men, Thancred thought, but he wasn’t sure if that would be strictly helpful. Women had the capacity to be selfish and nasty as well.
And then Minfillia asked the question that Thancred dreaded most. “What if I want to lie with someone in the future but don’t want a baby?”
Thancred’s tongue obeyed his mind only a full minute after Minfillia had spoken. “There are ways to avoid pregnancy,” he said, feeling the full weight of his awkwardness slowing his speech. “Some people use sheaths, which go over the penis, and prevent a man’s seed from entering his partner’s body. Other people use herbs or potions to prevent their body from becoming fecund. There are also things you can do with a partner that bring pleasure, but without actual penetration.”
“Hm.”
A miracle, perhaps, that his explanation did not spawn more questions. And then Thancred barrelled ahead, because he knew this had to be said. “I guess since I’ve told you all this, I should probably also tell you this. It’s okay to want to explore your own body. Since your body is private and your own, this should probably be done in a private place, safe, when you’re alone. But there’s nothing wrong with touching or feeling your own body and seeing what its reactions are. It can feel good, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”
“So… not while we’re sleeping under a tree in Lakeland.” Minfillia said slowly, deliberately, as though she had not just been told that it was okay to rub one out by a man that she saw possibly as a father, or an older brother. Damn Ran’jit, damn Eulmore, and their wretched lack of explanations.
Thancred felt his face heat further. “Please,” he begged, “never while I’m there.”
Minfillia’s giggle was like music, pealing merrily, and it was only then that Thancred realized she was making a joke. It was then that Urianger returned, bearing a refreshed teapot upon a tray.
“More tea?” he offered, and Thancred was content to have his cup refilled.
———
Urianger’s improvised anatomy lessons continued to the supper-hour. They had picked through most of the food in the parlor at that point, so Thancred simply excused himself and nosed about in the kitchen for something edible, with Urianger’s permission. In the larder he found a hanging flitch of bacon, smoked and salted, some sausages in an icebox, and a basket of eggs. Unripe blood tomatoes rested in another basket, and so Thancred poured some oil from the cruet upon the stove, lit himself a cookfire, and made everyone some breakfast. He returned, slightly greasy from frying bacon, platters of food laid upon a tray, to hear Urianger speaking thus.
“Thy monthly courses are simply a way for thy body to balance its own humors. As the ovaries prepare to generate their seed, they gather nourishing aether and the corresponding humors to support said seed in the womb, in case a fruitful conception occurs. In the absence of said conception, the flow of aether wanes, and the body sheds the excess blood thus. ‘Tis like the tides, or the cycles of the moon, which is why some may also call a woman’s monthly courses her moonflow. Some people have cycles which are regular as the moon, and others may not be so. All bodies are individual and different.”
Minfillia nodded, absorbed in the illustrations in Urianger’s Voerburtite anatomy book. This was an aspect of Urianger that Thancred had had little opportunity to behold before. He was in his element, teaching, explaining, soothing — and a smile stole thoughtlessly upon Thancred’s face as he marveled upon how fatherly Urianger seemed in this moment.
“And these diagrams,” Minfillia pointed to another illustration on the next page, “those are the … the vulva, yes,” she said, her speech gaining confidence as she remembered the terms being discussed. “Why are all these drawings different?”
Thancred glanced at the detailed medical illustrations, sexless, clinical, and began to lay the plates down upon the parlor table and clear empty ones away.
“Ah, yes. Each illustration is a permutation of how the hymen may form. The hymen being a thin membrane of tissue that may or may not occlude the vaginal canal. ‘Tis commonly called the maidenhead, for the popular conception is that a woman will bleed the first time she lies with a man.” Thancred wasn’t sure which of the Twelve to thank for Urianger’s dry explanations — he wasn’t sure he could have explained this part with as much grace.
Minfillia blinked. “She does? Does it hurt?”
Urianger shrugged. “In actuality, many women possess a hymen that is largely perforate, as in this diagram, or one that is little more than a ruffle of tissue around the vaginal opening, as here. So many women do not bleed, and the experience should not be painful. Moreover,” Urianger continued, “many who lead active lives will have torn their hymen and therefore not have it as any impediment to lovemaking. ‘Tis a poet’s fancy, no more, no less, utilized to make the notion of a first lover more dramatic. Whether one bleeds or not should be no indication of character, experience, or virtue.”
“Sex seems … slightly complicated.” Minfillia said with a little frown.
“‘Tis a wonder, is it not, that the peoples upon the face of Norvrandt manage to perpetuate their numbers? Aye. ‘Tis a wondrously complicated subject, which is why taking thy time to be acquainted with thy body is often the best course of action.” Urianger looked up then to see the supper that Thancred had laid out. “Ah. Thou hast my thanks. Methinks the books should be put aside lest we spill the yolks of eggs upon them — a supreme insult to the artist who limned these figures.”
———
They ate, and then Urianger drew the shades to the large front windows of the Bookman’s Shelves, and escorted Minfilia to the spare room.
“Thou hast learned much, and studying is tiring work. ‘Twould be best if sleep followed study. See, the bed is made, and tomorrow thou shalt rise and enjoy a repast under my roof, before thy travels continue with Thancred.” Minfillia let Urianger escort her to the small, immaculately-made bed and tuck her in, and then he went to a closet in the bedroom and drew out a heavy coverlet, and then drew it over her. “In case it rains and turns chill in the intervening hours. Rest you well, Minfillia. There is a bell on thy nightstand. Pray ring it if thou hast need of us.”
“Thank you,” she murmured, and then turning her head upon the pillow, she closed her eyes and settled determinedly into slumber, and Thancred’s heart felt fit to burst with the warring passions within. He loved Minfillia, this new one, who was not like the girl he loved in the Source. He loved this Minfillia differently, too, as a father loved a daughter — but he feared also the loss of her, as he had lost his own Minfillia.
What Urianger had told him earlier lingered upon his mind — that Ran’jit had simply not taught any of the Minfillias about puberty because they had not lived long enough to experience it. Was loving this child not foolish, then?
Urianger seemed to spy the feelings warring in Thancred’s heart, for he drew him silently through the lodge to his upstairs bedroom.
“As for thee,” Urianger said then, lighting the candles within his chamber with a minor conjuration, “there is not another spare bed in this household. We shall simply have to share.”
“As we did when we were younger, aye,” Thancred said, moving to shed his clothes.
“Nay,” Urianger said, “pray wash and refresh thyself before doing so. I will heat some water.”
Cans of water were standing ready for that purpose at Urianger’s nightstand, and he laid out a cake of good soap, a bone-handled razor, combs and brushes and other necessities, before mixing a handful of fire crystals into one of the cans. The aether began to spread through the water, heating it, and puffs of steam began emanating from the gap under the lid in a matter of minutes.
Thancred scrubbed himself at the wash-stand, completely unconscious of his nakedness — had Urianger not seen him thus countless times? And had he not also seen Urianger unclad on various occasions? They had been friends long enough, and had slept in the same bed before. This was nothing he had not done before.
The hot water felt like a blessing upon his hide, a whisper of civilization and comfort, and Thancred came from the washstand feeling rather more human than he had before. He was no stranger to living rough, but he had perhaps forgotten how good it was to live instead of survive. This visit to Urianger had been necessary, but it had also been a respite for him.
“Urianger,” Thancred murmured, climbing naked between the sheets, “thank you. Thank you for helping me teach Minfillia. And for your hospitality.”
“Thou art weary, Thancred. I can see the baggage under thine eyes,” Urianger murmured. He had changed into a long linen nightshirt while Thancred had been occupied, and the fabric felt crisp against the skin of Thancred’s arm. “Sleep. I will watch over thee in thy slumbers.”
The sheets of the bed were coarse, but clean and beautifully scented with potpourri and cedar. And the down-filled pillow was a soft, encompassing caress about Thancred’s head. Wearily, he closed his eyes against the eternal Light, and slept.
———
Thancred slept as he only could when he knew he was safe — deeply, dreamlessly, committed wholly to slumber. As a result, he woke last after Urianger and Minfillia had preceded him to the parlor, to find some quantities of egg-shells and leathery toast awaiting him.
Long accustomed to the consequences of rising late, Thancred simply poured himself some tea and stirred sugar into it, only to be surprised by Minfillia entering the parlor, dressed already for traveling.
“Mr. Urianger is preparing a luncheon,” she said, picking up the used dishes one by one. “You were so tired, I told him to let you sleep through breakfast.”
“Thank you,” Thancred murmured, before he began to sip at his tea. And then he spotted the new belt worn across Minfillia’s hips, with knives sheathed upon each side. The leather was well-worn, with a waxy bloom, and the handles of the knives were beautifully inlaid, sized perfectly for Minfillia’s small hands. “Where did you get these?” Thancred asked her.
Minfillia traced the tooling upon the belt with a reverent finger. “Mr. Urianger noticed that my old knife sheath was empty. I told him I’d lost it in Lakeland, after we fought that sin-eater. He told me that he might have a replacement, and gave me these. They’re lovely.”
“They are.” Thancred watched as Minfillia drew one expertly, and took it as she extended it handle-first to him. The blade was whisper-sharp, curved cruelly, with a triangular-cross section to make a larger wound channel. “This looks like old Voerburtite work.”
“It is. Mr. Urianger said he found them in a place called Wolekdorf, and made a trade for them because it seemed ill for them to rest in a coffer going entirely to rust.”
“You’ll use them well. I know it.” Thancred handed the knife back to Minfillia, who sheathed it confidently, the movement automatic.
“Where will we be going next? After we leave this place?”
“Lakeland. We’ll have to go back to Fort Jobb. We’ve a bounty to collect.”
“Okay.” Minfillia nodded. “But we have to do something first,” she said. Crossing the parlor she took up something white and shapeless — Thancred’s coat, now clean as the day he had traded for it in the Crystarium.
“Oh?”
Minfillia nodded. “Before we leave, we have to go out onto the porch and scream that we’re going to twist the wings off whoever removed the fashionable stains on our clothing.”
A sudden understanding dawned upon Thancred’s mind on how Urianger had managed to escape the omnipresent pixie menace, and he burst out laughing loudly enough to startle Minfillia, who dropped his coat. “It’s okay,” he told her, between huffs of amusement. “It’s okay. I’ll explain after we leave Il Mheg.”