Brightly Woven(10)

“This is all he had left for the night,” North said, settling across the table. “Sorry it’s not much.”

He had his own plate, strangely less full than mine, and two pints, both for him, I realized. He downed one in a single swig and reached for the next.

“You know,” he continued, “I get that you’re angry. I know you don’t want to be here with me, but you not eating isn’t punishing me. You can starve yourself all you want, but it won’t do anything other than slow us down.”

“Why did you bring me, then, if you knew I was only going to hold you back?” I asked.

North glanced up at the ceiling.

“Tell me,” I said, leaning back in my chair.

“I don’t know. Perhaps I thought that burning hatred in your eyes would give way to some faster walking?” North stood up to refill his pints. “I just wanted a lovely assistant?”

“Don’t you mean slave?” I called after him.

He glanced over his shoulder. “Assistant, though, if you’d prefer…”

He was right not to finish that thought.

I waited until his back was to me before I looked down at my plate again, my heart fighting with my stomach. I would eat it, I thought, but only because I needed to be strong enough to keep going tomorrow. We still had an entire country to cross.

Looking up to make sure he wasn’t watching, I brought a spoonful of vegetables to my mouth and didn’t stop eating until the plate had been cleared. And even then, I was still hungry.

North had had only four pints, or at least four pints that I had seen, when he lurched forward in his seat.

“Syyyyd,” he whined. I turned my head away sharply, disgust settling in my stomach like a rock. The man in the pale overcoat was still there, hours later. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, trying to dodge his gaze.

An hour later, the tavern still throbbed with life and offkey ballads, but my head just throbbed in pain. And North? He was singing at the top of his lungs in the midst of them all. His usually deep and melodic voice was hoarse by the time he collapsed back into his seat. Another man sent an appreciative pint his way, which I promptly poured out at his feet.

It was like watching a man transform into some kind of beast, I thought. North’s unshaven face, usually lit with a carefree ease and an uneven grin, had taken on a pinched expression. The dark eyes that I once had thought kind, even intelligent, were glassy and framed with red. The sharp angles of his high cheekbones flushed pink with fits of laughter, which rang out loudly and unevenly over the deafening clamor.

“Syd, Syd, Syd,” he said, shaking his head.

“What?” I asked flatly. “Can we go up to our rooms yet?”

“Rooms!” He laughed. “What makes you think I got more than one? I’m not a money bag, you know.”

I sucked in a sharp breath. “That is completely inappropriate! It’s—It’s not proper, but apparently you wouldn’t know that. You wouldn’t know a moral if it slapped you in the face.”

North leaned back in his chair, whispering conspiratorially to the man sitting behind him. “Not proper, she says. After everything we’ve been through!”

The other man shook his head, as if he had been privy to our entire story. “You’ve caught yourself a cold fish, my friend,” he said, and the other men and women at his table laughed.

North rocked forward in his chair again, narrowly missing my foot. He leaned—fell, really—across the table, reaching for my hands. I snatched them away immediately. The heat was rising in my face, no matter how many steadying breaths I took. I could hear my father’s voice in the back of my mind, whispering an old proverb. Of all things in life, forgiveness is the most difficult. If we can forgive, we can let go of the insidious anger that moves our souls to grief.

It was the most difficult—too difficult.

“Give me the key,” I said. “I’ll go upstairs by myself.” All I really wanted to do was weave myself into a mood that resembled calm. North dug around in his pockets for the key.

He waved the thing through the air with great fanfare and ceremony before placing it in my hand. I closed my fist around it, wondering if I could lock him out.

“If you want, Syd, you can share my…my…” North’s voice trailed off.

I kicked my chair out of the way, pushing through the crowd toward the stairs.

“Syd!” he called, and everyone else quieted down. “Syd, I was going to let you have the bed!”

The woman to the left of me laughed so hard she was practically sobbing into her pint. I knocked into the next man, nearly taking him down to the floor. I couldn’t hold it in any longer.

“I hope you choke on your tongue, you miserable human being!”

“Wizard,” I heard him correct me weakly. “I…am…a wizard!”

“Some wizard you are!” I whirled back around. “How about using some of your magic to sober your sorry, drunken self up? And stop calling me Syd!”

I stormed up the staircase, ready to slam our door shut against the tavern’s laughter and North’s infuriating smile. My hand was tight on the railing, my eyes firmly on the trail of muddy footprints leading to the upstairs hall. The suffocating heat and movement of the tavern was behind me, but its smell was inescapable.