Skarsh Waterscale's Arc

Chapter 12 of 12

Skarsh came out of the arch and stood in the sun with the shed plate no longer in his hands. The woman was already looking at the water. She had counted the days without him asking. Three days up. Twenty-one left on the contract when they set out. Now seventeen. The current that had helped them here would fight them all the way back, and the river bent long between this mound and the marsh. He said the number to her in her language. She nodded. She said she was content. She said if the days ran out she would go with the hunter and it would not undo what she had chosen at the gazebo. He heard her clearly and did not accept it. The drake came up onto the bank and circled him twice, making the low noise it used when it did not like a plan. Skarsh crouched and spoke to it in his own tongue. He told it to go ahead downriver at its own speed and find the knight who had stood with him against the hunters, and to bring her word. The drake stopped circling. It slid back into the water and was gone before the woman had finished tying her pack. They traveled hard for four days. Skarsh swam beside the woman's raft and pushed against the current when her arms gave out. On the fifth morning they rounded a bend and saw a blue tent pitched on a gravel bar, gold cord at its seams, a horse tied in the shade. Dame Elara Brightshield stood at the water's edge in her plate, arms crossed, the drake dripping beside her. Behind her, at the tent flap, Prince Folly waited without a sword. Elara did not waste words. She said the prince had ridden three days to meet them because she had asked him to. She said the hunter's contract could be bought out at court price by any noble house, and that Folly had brought the sum. Folly stepped forward. He said he had signed the draft that morning. He said he had known what he felt for the woman and known she did not feel it back, and that those were two different things, and he had confused them once and would not again. He held out a folded paper. He said the debt was cleared the moment Skarsh carried it to the hunter. He asked nothing in return. Skarsh took the paper. He looked at the woman. She was crying without sound, one hand flat against her mouth. He understood then that he had not saved her. Elara had. Folly had. He had only kept her moving on the river while the people who owed him nothing arranged what he could not. He folded the draft into his belt pouch beside the wet leather. The debt to the hunter was gone. The debt to the woman had not moved. The debt to the two standing on the gravel bar was new, and his.