Fifty-One: The Flying Map

  At about mid-day we could smell water; it was the mist coming up from the crashing Rupestrine. Soon we were near it, and we could see how some travelers might have fallen in as Azara had warned. The river had bit into the hillside, here, and carved out an unexpected cliff edge.

  “Sure enough, that gorge,” Slade said. “Let’s go down close and look at the water.”

  And now I really noticed something which I had sort of half-grasped for a few days: Caiside was having more difficulty walking with us. I remembered now that she’d had a harder time than us threading our way up the rocky hill to Azara’s bower; I had attributed that just to the slope, but now I saw that she was slower even though our current path was flat or even slightly downhill. Uncle Slade and Freydis and I kept finding ourselves out in front of her by some distance. We would stop, often wordlessly choosing to do some little task like adjusting a boot, or scanning the treeline, in an effort to make it look like we weren’t stopping on her account.

  But Caiside caught on to this after about the third pause.

  “No need to wait up for me,” she said, as she crutch-step-crutched, step-crutch-stepped. “I am getting along fine.”

  “Are you sure you are all right, Cass?” Slade asked her.

  “I am adequately mobile for this journey.”

  “I’m not saying you’re not. Just checking on you.”

  “Are you worried I’m slowing you down?”

  “Not at all,” Slade said. But his tone suggested he had more to say, and sure enough he then added:

  “You know, you could have left this up to me. Up to us.”

  “That would have been quite difficult with you in the Mage’s dungeon,” she said.

  “You knew I would be getting out, though.”

  “You were confident you would be,” she said. “I was not.”

  “You knew I had been talking to Lennard the dungeonkeeper.”

  “Talking, yes. But it was never a sure thing he would actually spring you. I’m still surprised he pulled it off. The man loves his wife – the part he has at home, and the part locked up in the statue – but he’s not the warmest cub in the den.”

  “But here I am,” Slade said. “And here you are – with my map.”

  “Which we are all sharing!” she said.

  Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

  “But you didn’t even tell me you were going to take it!” This poured out of him. “I just looked for it, and it was gone! For all I knew, someone had discovered it, and figured out what it was, and delivered it to the Mage herself!”

  “That did not happen!” Caiside objected.

  “But what if you had lost it?” he said. “Or if you had not made it here at all? What if you had been waylaid, or simply distracted along the way?”

  “‘Distracted’? What do you mean by that?” Her voice was rising; both of theirs were. They kept moving, their eyes on the rocky ground, but they sniped at each other as they went.

  “Yes, distracted,” Slade repeated. “For example if you had stopped off for the summer, or the winter, or both, at Caerlonn. Or Plains City. Or Emerald Lake. It would not have been the first time.”

  “Do you have no more confidence in me than that?”

  “Did you, or did you not,” Slade demanded, “once spend the Withered Branches vigil days in Caerlonn, and then remain there until the Thin Ice Watch festival half the year later?”

  “That’s how long they continued adding to the Sacred Rubbish Heap, week after week!” she shouted. “It was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to participate!”

  “Of course! And what other once-in-a-lifetime opportunities might you have found!”

  “I am here with you!” she shouted. “It is so unfair to blame me for something that did not happen!”

  “But did you know how much I worried about that map, in the weeks before I got out? How much time I had spent with Ilhoniviastorovavisencilavina to make sure it was accurate?”

  “Did you want these two here to get your hoard, or not?!” she demanded. “How many times had you spoken of it to me? ‘It would be tragic if I were to perish here,’ ” she said, imitating his voice, “ ‘after all my amassing, and not even my family were to benefit from it all,’ blah blah! If I had not taken this upon myself, that treasure might have gathered dust forever while you rotted away in that dungeon and your nephew here earned meager coppers for the rest of his life playing ‘The Flouncy Bride’s Jig’ on repeat in Enkel Kanindal barns!”

  “Come on, now, Caiside,” Freydis said, but she continued:

  “You should be thanking me, Slade! It was I who introduced you to half the smugglers you knew! I was the one who made you acquainted with those idiots who stole the alkonost egg – ”

  “And how wise was that?” he demanded.

  “But without them Ilhoniviastorovavisencilavina would never have had reason to be indebted to you, and you would not have been able to squirrel away all your treasure! It would all be sitting on display in the Mage’s parlor room right now, a wunderkammer for her toadies!”

  “Well you just know exactly how my life would have gone, do you?” he demanded.

  By now we had reached the edge of the cliff. The Rupestrine crashed in white water bends below, quite noisy, and it was matched by Slade’s and Caiside’s voices. Such a beautiful scene, unfortunately being ruined by their spat; and I felt that what then happened was going to happen well before it actually did:

  Caiside brought her crutches together beneath one arm to be able to take off her pack, and very quickly she reached inside, retrieved the map, and crumpled it up.

  “I won’t waste my time around the ungrateful!” she shouted.

  “No!” Slade yelled at her, but before he could intervene she tossed the balled map over the cliff. We saw it fall down, carelessly, as if glad to get away from the quarrel, and disappear into the river.

  .

  .