Chapter 11

Telise

H is emerald.

I couldn't say exactly why I did it, I just did. Maybe I hoped he'd notice before the ship departed and be forced to come back, and then get trapped here by the ice. Maybe I wanted a piece of him—something to remember him by.

Oh, but now, with the ship long gone in the distance, I realize that he's definitely going to kill me the next time we see each other.

"I'm not going to be able to stay," I tell Sden the next day. "If that troll comes back, I'm dead."

He does not look surprised. "Word's gotten around," is all he says in response. Right. Very public breakup.

"Sorry." I put down my stitching. "I really wanted this."

"Yeah. You had the talent for it, too." He sighs. "Sex only ever gets in the way. "

It was a mistake, I know that, but it was one I would easily choose to make again. After everything, I am glad I got to have him for as long as I did. It was a beautiful blip in time. Except that in the end, we just weren't after the same thing. I couldn't stand the idea of someone telling me what to do, where to go, who I was. How I felt about him was secondary. No, I had to stake my claim on myself.

But I do miss him, no surprises there. I know that I miss him the very first night after he leaves. I'd shared a bed with him ever since he'd arrived in Eyra Cove, and I'd grown accustomed to sleeping with his huge arm under my head like a pillow, the other one wrapped tight around me. Sometimes Raz'jin got hot during the night when we left the fire going and then he would sprawl out, legs taking up most of the bed, his arm still curled around me. Knowing these things about him, like how one of his toenails grows funny, or how he loves to be scratched right at the base of his neck—that's what hurts the most.

I have to sit with this for a long time and think it over, because I don't have much else to do outside of work. What did he really mean to me, after all? Now that Raz'jin is gone, it feels like there's a hole in my chest. I'm cold every night. It's like a bright candle has been extinguished.

I work hard for the rest of the winter, trying every day to lose myself in my daily tasks. But eventually we run out of raw materials, and the first ships won't be arriving for a few weeks still. We tidy up the shop, try to keep ourselves busy, but every day feels like one more step in an endless slog forward. Why do I always insist on spending winter miserable and up to my ass in snow?

As the ice starts to break apart and thaw out, it's finally time to run. For all I know Raz'jin got on the first ship back from Kalishagg, and one day soon he's going to stumble down the pier to Sden's shop and bring his hand axe to my throat, asking, Where is my emerald?

I pack up all of my gear, and as soon as the first ship comes in from Culberra, I'm on it. I drag everything back to the human city with me, and I feel like a dog with its tail between its legs. I find a note waiting for me at the post office from Deleran.

"I went back home," he wrote. "Whenever, or if ever, you want to meet me there."

I have to admit that after everything that's happened, I miss my friend. So the first thing I do is find a storage locker for all of my gear, then head to the train that will take me far out west. Once I'm in the king's city, it's a matter of taking a carriage the fifty miles to Great Oak.

I'm not looking forward to seeing my parents, but what can you do? Sometimes you have to go back home.

The whole trip I keep the emerald in my pocket, reaching in to turn it over in my hand whenever my thoughts stray back to Raz'jin. Sometimes I wonder what I could have done differently, but it all feels unavoidable, as if the cultural clash was bound to happen at some time or another.

It wasn't meant to be, and I knew that. I wish he had known it, too. Maybe we could have kept doing what we were doing until we grew tired of it.

But I have a feeling that would never happen.

My parents are shocked to see me when the carriage dumps me on their front doorstep. I haven't been home in a decade, not since Deleran and I left together to explore the world and find our place in it. My father is the first one to hug me. He's always been a softie.

"What brings you home?" Mom says, arms crossed. "You haven't even written to us in years."

Oops. I've just been getting in tussles, fucking trollkin, and almost dying while I was hung from my hands in an orc village. Not to mention ruining my apprenticeship because I couldn't bear to let Raz'jin go without taking a little memento for myself.

"Sorry," I say. "I've been busy."

"That's to be expected when you leave home to make it on your own." Dad gives Mom a look that says, Come now, welcome our daughter home . I can still read them like books. "What have you been doing with yourself? You look quite well."

It's the nice clothes and all the fish I ate while holed up in Eyra Cove. After making up a story that explains why I've temporarily left my successful craftsman's life behind, I go to find Deleran. He's probably bunking with his parents, too.

I wonder what brought him here. What trouble of his own is he escaping?

Raz'jin

I'd thought that by the time two weeks had passed and I returned to Kalishagg, at least some of the sting would have faded. But I'm just as furious as when I left Eyra Cove. I don't acknowledge the other thing, the deeper thing: The blinding hurt that lies inside my ribs like a lump of iron.

It's easy to find Blizzek, because he's sitting on the same stool at the bar as when I left. When I drag myself in, his eyes go wide.

"You look like you've been through hell," he says.

"Thanks for the warm welcome." I sigh as I order a drink of my own.

"So, did you find any?" he asks. I know what he means— the emeralds I went to the Frattern Islands to find in the first place.

I want to tell him everything, but I can also predict exactly what he'll say and do in response, and that doesn't bring me any comfort.

"No. You were right. Pointless."

Blizzek squints at me. He clearly doesn't believe a word I'm saying, but he's never been the type to pry. "Not my business," he always says.

Much to my surprise, he's been seeing an orcess regularly, and that's why he's still here. But his coin is running out just like mine, and we both know that means it's time to cut ties and go prospecting again.

"The Southlands," I say immediately. I want to get as far away from contested territory as possible. I can't risk any chance of seeing her again. She wouldn't be foolish enough to stick around Eyra Cove after robbing me blind—she's not that stupid—so there's no point going back after the ice thaws. Besides, the south is a great place to spend the winter, as warm and humid as it stays nearly year-round.

Blizzek frowns. "The pickings will be slim."

"Maybe we won't hit it big, but we'll stay warm. There's day laborer work there, too."

"Day labor?" He studies me, like there's a mystery on my face he just has to figure out. "What the fuck happened, Raz?"

I've shown my ass. I haven't done day labor since I was a youngster just getting out into the world on my own. It was always beneath me to spend my days swinging a pickaxe at someone else's quarry, pulling out iron and coal to feed some other rich guy's family, or clear-cutting a great, magnificent mountain. Blizzek knows that isn't me.

But right now, I feel like I want to destroy something beautiful .

"I'll go with you," he says, "but I'm not doing any of that day laborer shit. That's all you, bud."

"Fine." I throw back my beer. "How's your lady going to take your leaving her?"

He shrugs. "It was never for keeps. I just didn't feel that thing, you know."

I know exactly what he means.

"Mate material," I supply.

"Right. Nothing like that."

I'm almost envious of him, to never have to feel what I feel now—the misery of finding that one, and then having it ripped away from you.

It's like Blizzek can read the words right off my face. "It's not worth it, Raz," he says, pretending like he's talking about himself. "All that mating shit, that's the old way. The way our parents did things. Not the way we do."

He's wrong. He just hasn't found his own other half yet.

"Sure," I say. "Of course. Let's go buy some train tickets, then."

It's the longest train trip I've ever taken. We pass the days playing Rampage, and I lose most of the coin I have left making bad bets. This puzzles Blizzek, too. I'm not usually such a poor player, but I keep betting everything on weak hands.

It's like the winter doesn't even exist this far south. When we finally step off the train, a warm wind hits me square in the face. The grasses seem to go on forever, ending at a green-blue sea. Huts dot the landscape, each with its own pasture full of sheep or cows or horses. It feels like rewinding in time.

We try to prospect, but the Southlands are a popular destination for freelancers of all kinds, and there's not much left to find. We hike far from the sea into the hills, using Blizzek's detector to see if we can find anything. We stumble across one thin vein of copper and even though it's almost worthless, it's better than nothing.

"This was a stupid trip," Blizzek says one night, chewing on his mutton. "All because you got your heart broken, huh?"

I freeze with my food halfway to my mouth.

"Yeah," he growls. "I knew it. I could practically smell the stink on you." I open my mouth to explain, but he waves a hand irritably. "No, you don't need to tell me anymore. I get it." He wipes his hands on his pants, spreading the grease around. "You've basically given up."

I suppose he's right. Nothing seems to carry much weight now. I could wander off into the wilderness and walk until I couldn't walk anymore, and then let a lion devour me, and it wouldn't make a difference.

"What's the point?" I ask. Women and money—that's all a troll wants. Now I have neither.

"Being alive is the point." But Blizzek isn't going to waste his time trying to comfort me. "You could always join the war effort if you're in the mood to die."

This idea, more than any other, sticks to me like a burr. Even after I wave him off dismissively, saying, "I'm not going to throw my life away in somebody's stupid political game," I know that it's exactly what I'm going to do.