Page 125 of The Thrice-Bound Fool

“What?”

“More.”

“More what?”

“Than you seem. You are much more than you seem.”

“Yah, well. Thanks, I guess. You, too, you vile cow.”

We walked for a long moment, the silence heavy but brittle, eager to be broken.

“Are you ready?” she said.

I looked at the mountains in front of us. They weren’t so big or near so deep as those behind us, this would still be no walk down the village lane. Going up a mountain is brutal hard, but coming down one can be treacherous.

I didn’t know if I was ready for the trek, for what we’d face back in Manreach, or for the story I would hear on the way, but I nodded and wished I had whiskey. I listened to the sled hissing along on the snow behind us, bearing the weight of that awful book I hoped the steel in the chain mail and the iron in the trap would keep docile. Gods, after Oustrim, we’d need to get it across the Bittern Mountains as well, but maybe we could get a mount again before that. So long as the next one wasn’t eaten by, I don’t know, giant pigeons or sparrows, or seagulls. Just once I’d like to have a donkey not get murdered by birds.

Galva dom Braga breathed in deep, as you do before a song or a sad story.

I watched her breath plume in the cold air as she began.

“I saw my first goblin the same day I saw my first shipwreck. I was under sail, on my way to war. On my way to fall in love with Death, and with a queen.”