The next day, there was no sign of the catbird, and Severine was fidgety and distracted.

  Which made Runa fidgety, too.

  Severine was here to relax. The whole reason she was sticking around was to rest after hauling herself through the Cauldron looking for new enchanted weapons to sell. If she wasn’t able to rest here, then what reason would she have to stay once Runa’s pay came through?

  And even with the careful distance Severine was keeping between them—the wordless suggestion that despite what almost happened in the attic, nothing else would happen—Runa wanted her to stay.

  As more than a friend.

  And telling Severine that would require something other than avoiding the subject entirely. Then she would at least know for sure.

  There was nothing else for it. As soon as her morning’s work was out of the way, Runa took her to the Sweetmeadow.

  “This used to be your job?” Severine asked, picking her way past what Runa had warned her was a stand of carnivorous plants. Runa stalked behind, whacking a few flower-heads with her light stick when they nibbled too close to Severine’s shins. You might think it was best to lead from the front, but in Runa’s experience, it was just as useful to see what your companions were about to step in, as walk ahead and risk them wandering off behind your back.

  “People hired me to help them reach whatever treasure they’d convinced themselves the Cauldron was hiding.”

  “And was it? Hiding treasure, I mean.”

  “Sure. All sorts. Some of it wasn’t even cursed.” She scowled, remembering the artefact that had exploded on her down in Dawdledale. “And some of it was really bloody cursed. Don’t look at that bird for too long.”

  “What? Why… not…” Severine stifled a yawn. Runa put her hand over her eyes and turned her around, then glared at the little round songbird that had been hopping merrily closer and closer to them. It cheeped at her, opening a mouth that extended past the base of its beak and snakelike back into its ball-shaped, feathery body, then hopped away.

  “So it doesn’t eat you,” Runa explained mildly.

  Severine’s eyelashes fluttered against her palm. “Oh. That makes sense.”

  “And that’s why people hire guides.” She dropped her hand as her skin started to warm up too quickly. Anyway, the bird was gone. “But not you. Watch your feet here.”

  “Not me. I—why are you lifting me over this stream? It’s only ankle-deep, I don’t mind getting my feet wet.”

  “It’s deeper than that. And it has teeth.”

  “Oh.”

  Runa put Severine down on the other side of the stream. What would have been several leg-shortening steps for Severine was one long stride for Runa, and that was what she focused on—stepping over the stream—rather than the memory of Severine’s waist against her palms.

  She’d acted without thinking. Which was the only sensible way to act, when you saw someone about to go paddling in the Sweetmeadow. But still.

  Her hands had been around Severine’s waist. And even though it was no different to any other time she’d hauled a client away from certain death in the Cauldron… it was very different.

  Runa rubbed her hands together absently, not certain if she was trying to get rid of or preserve the memory of holding the other woman.

  Maybe this hadn’t been the best idea, after all.

  “What were we talking about? Right.” She sighted across the gently rolling slopes of the Meadowsweet. The edge of the region was a half mile off or so. Easy enough to get to. “You cut your way in. So you didn’t actually cross the Cauldron? You got in on the mountain and cut yourself out from there, too?”

  “You’re asking, have I experienced the exciting drama of the Cauldron, with its many cursed lands all boiling together? No. I experienced one cursed mountain, and all those tooth holes I told you about, and that was enough. Especially when it exploded.”

  Runa laughed. “Come on. Let me show you what the Cauldron is really like.”

  They crossed the Meadowsweet, through shin-deep grass that whispered on the breeze, past clusters of flowers that hungered for flesh. They gave the ominous corn a wide berth. Runa showed Severine how even the shallow-looking creeks were actually dangerous. She threw a twig in and they watched it swirl deeper than should have been possible, in what looked like less than a handspan of water.

  Something darted out from one of those underwater caves that you never saw until something darted out from under them, and snatched the twig in a flash of glowing fangs.

  “It’ll be disappointed,” Runa noted. “Not what it was hoping for dinner.”

  “And this is where you decided to take me on a romantic walk?”

  “Romantic?”

  Runa stopped and stared. Neither of those were smart to do in the Cauldron. Severine stared back at her. That wasn’t smart, either. At least one of them should be keeping an eye on their surroundings.

  But…

  Severine’s lips crooked into an uncertain smile. “That’s what this is, isn’t it?”

  Runa opened her mouth to protest—then rethought. “If it was…”

  “Because if it is,” Severine said at the same time.

  They both stopped and stared at each other again.

  Severine looked part hopeful, part afraid. Runa was terrified of what her own face looked like.

  She felt confused. Elated, but confused. And her confused face looked a lot like her worried face, which she was worrying about. The problem usually was, they both looked like her angry scowling face.

  None of her potential faces had put Severine off yet.

  “If it is,” Severine repeated slowly, “that would be…”

  Her own expression flittered through several more emotions, too fast for Runa to track.

  “Good?” Runa suggested hopefully.

  Severine’s face broke into that crooked smile. “Good,” she agreed.

  The sun was halfway down the sky when they made it to the place where the Sweetmeadow rubbed against the Night.

  Severine stared. “It’s just shadow. A solid shadow. Like—” She lifted a hand, and hesitated. “Like I should definitely not try to touch it.”

  “Good. You’re learning.”

  Severine flushed.

  Runa stepped forward. “See how it starts so suddenly? The edges of lands within the Cauldron are always distinct. They don’t shade into each other, the way some people think. If you walked the whole length of this border, you wouldn’t find a single plant that was cut off half in the Sweetmeadow and half out of it. Even the streams turn back on themselves or sink belowground rather than run into some other land.”

  Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  Severine walked carefully forwards and knelt by the border. She looked up, along the meandering line that separated the Sweetmeadow from the Night. Summer grasslands and flowers on one side; pure darkness on the other.

  “It doesn’t seem like it should be real,” she breathed.

  “It shouldn’t.”

  “You know what I mean. And—why is it real?” Severine’s expression turned fierce. “The Dread Mistress Vellugar brought all these places together. Why? If she could lock them like this, prevent them from spilling out into each other, why not lock them up where they were in the first place? They’re more dangerous like this, all together. You can’t just prepare for one type of landscape, and season, and bad magic, you have to prepare for all of them at once.”

  Runa shrugged. “I don’t think she meant for people to come and explore them.”

  “Had she met people?” Severine answered her own question. “She was a lich. Maybe she’d forgotten. If she cared at all. I mean, they didn’t care, did they. That’s how they almost destroyed the world.”

  And ended up building this one. Was this such a bad world? Even this bit of it?

  Runa’s fists tightened automatically. As though she was defending herself—but against what? Her own thoughts?

  For all the time she’d spent in the Cauldron, she’d never let herself think about what it meant that the Cauldron existed. She knew how it worked. She knew why it worked, or at least, she knew that it was all because of Vellugar’s ancient spell. She’d learned how it worked. But she’d never let herself delve deeper than that.

  Because that sort of thinking was what wizards did. It was what the most irritating sort of client did, yarning into the night and making sure everyone heard their reckons about the Cauldron and its true purpose, and how Vellugar’s disappearance meant it would never become what it was meant to be.

  Thinking about that was too close to thinking about what it might mean that she liked the Cauldron as it was, and not for whatever perfect, purified utopia it was meant to be.

  “Runa—”

  “Mm?” Runa did a quick scout around them. Nothing too fatal had snuck up while she was floundering around in her own thoughts.

  But Severine had sounded distracted, too. Runa watched as she got up the nerve to say what was on her mind. “Is the Night… moving?”

  Thank all the gods and liches, an easy question. “Yep.”

  Severine’s eyes widened. She gazed at the solid wall of darkness. “It’s definitely the Night moving and not us, though? Right?”

  “Don’t worry. I’d feel it if it were us. We’re not going to walk back the way we came and find we’ve suddenly drifted away from the Rim.”

  “Not that I’d be worried if we had. Obviously. Because I have a Cauldron guide with me.”

  “Obviously,” Runa agreed gravely. “You know why most people visit the Cauldron?”

  “To find treasure.”

  “You know what they look for in the Night?”

  Severine’s eyes lit up. She did know. “Uh, something that almost always ends up with them dead?”

  “Come over here.”

  Runa held the flat of her hand against the very edge of Night. Cool nothing washed over her palm. She let herself not think about it too hard. Let herself think, well, after this, we’ll go home, and sort out something for dinner, and get tomorrow’s bread on, and I can watch Nobody In Particular avoid Severine and Severine complain about how there isn’t any coffee, whatever that is—

  There.

  “Give me your hand.”

  Severine shouldn’t have been so quick to put her hand into Runa’s. She’d only saved her life twice, after all. That wasn’t much to base this much trust on.

  But she did. Her hand was a lot smaller than Runa’s. Delicate. Like her waist.

  “Hold it out like this. The way I was just now. The back of your hand flat against the palm of mine.”

  “I thought we weren’t meant to touch it?”

  “Touching’s fine. Just don’t get too deep.”

  Severine made a low, choked noise.

  Runa held her hand against the border to Night, then pressed in.

  Severine gasped. “It’s solid.”

  “More solid than air. Weirder than water. You can breathe in it, but it doesn’t feel good.”

  “What’s that?” Severine leaned forward, and Runa slung her free arm around her to keep her from falling in. “There’s something in there.”

  “Just wait.”

  “It’s coming closer.”

  It was, getting clearer and brighter by the second, but Severine didn’t move away. She kept leaning forwards, and would have toppled right in if Runa didn’t have her arm around her.

  How in the hells had this human survived as long as she had?

  “It’s not going to attack us, is it?”

  “Now you ask me?” Runa raised her eyebrows. “No.”

  “It’s almost… oh. Oh, it’s beautiful.”

  The Night wasn’t water, and the creatures flocking to the warmth of the blood in their hands weren’t fish. They were crystalline beads of light, jewel-like and shining.

  “They’re like stars. Or the crystals of a chandelier,” Severine breathed. “They won’t hurt us?”

  “No. They just show other things in there where you are.”

  “Um—”

  “We’re safe for the next minute or so. Here.” She scooped up a handful of the Night and drew back, with Severine’s hand in hers and both their hands dripping with beads of light.

  The sparkle sprats swirled around their linked hands, reflecting the Sweetmeadow sun like a thousand concentrated rainbows. Then Vellugar’s magic tugged at them, and they swarmed back into the Night.

  Severine breathed out slowly. “That was incredible.”

  “Mm.”

  She blinked, and looked up slowly, seeming to register for the first time that Runa had her arm around her. That their bodies were pressed together.

  And her hand was still in Runa’s.

  “Ohhh,” she said, “this is a romantic walk!”

  The tension in Runa’s chest unwound. She smiled. “Guess so.”

  The sun was going down, so they did need to move fast to beat it out of the Cauldron. But there was still time to act like they both hadn’t noticed they were still holding hands, and to forget to let go, and talk about how beautiful the sparkle sprats were and how it was a shame you couldn’t get closer without painting a sign on yourself that said GET YOUR LUNCH RIGHT HERE, and to let the conversation drift and settle and dart off again like lights swirling in the Night.

  “They are jewels, aren’t they? I’ve heard of people wearing things made of them.”

  “Sure. One of the few creatures in the Cauldron that don’t lose all their glitter when you take them out of it.” Severine looked confused, and she explained. “I said most people hire me because they’re treasure hunting. Used to be, the cursed beasts that roam these lands counted as treasure. People would hunt them, chop them up and take the best bits home again. The hides, or the heads, or—” She gestured at her own tusks. “Sort of thing.”

  Severine looked appalled.

  “Not people’s tusks,” Runa said quickly. “But everything here is magical, and some of them can do stuff, right? Problem is, any curse that you take out of the Cauldron wants to come back. You can un curse it, but that’s when your fire-breathing chimera head on a stick suddenly turns back into half a grass snake and someone’s old billygoat. So people started just looking for treasure. You can take the curse off a pot of gold and it’s still gold. Most of the time.”

  “Huh.” Severine thought about it. “So the sparkle sprats… stay sparkly?”

  “Clear diamonds, ready-cut and shaped like little segmented wormy fish things.”

  “And you didn’t fish one out for me?” she teased.

  “If you don’t have a way to take the curse off, they’ll dig straight through your body and anything else in the way trying to swim back to the Night.”

  “…Oh. Then you not saving one for me was actually really sweet of you, thank you.”

  “Don’t mention it.” She stretched. “Anyway, that’s why these days it’s mainly treasure, or information. Treasure, it’s obvious why people want that. Information… people have some sort of theory about how some part of the Skeleton War turned out the way it did, or why it didn’t turn out another way, and all the sites are in here, pretty much, so they come to prove their side of the argument.”

  “That’s what Ninnius and Anklopher hired you for.”

  “For all the good it did them. They marked the job as satisfactory, but…” Runa kicked a stone. “We didn’t exactly tick off all the things they wanted to find.”

  Whatever they were. The tomb they’d both been so vague about.

  They couldn’t actually have been after the Blood Lord. Nobody would want that.

  “It gave them plenty new stuff to argue about, though. Maybe that’s even better?” Severine stretched. “And you’re never tempted to go after the treasure for yourself?”

  “I’ve got better things to do with my time than wait around for a wizard to purify some cursed gold.”

  “And you never…” She adjusted her weight, uncomfortably.

  Runa’s eyebrows lifted. “Never what?”

  “Well, all the information your clients were after. Secrets of the Skeleton War. You were never tempted to find any of them yourself? Use them?”

  “No.”

  Severine slumped and perked up at the same time, which was a hell of a thing to watch. “Oh.”

  “I guess I’ve seen enough people who did want to take the Cauldron’s power and use it to rule the world to see how well it tends to go. There’s usually a lot of mess. And they never pay their guide fees.” Runa put her hands on her hips, gazing out across the patchwork landscape. “They want to change the Cauldron. Use it for what they want. I’ve always found it best to just let it be what it is.”

  “No dreams of greatness?”

  “Nightmares, maybe.” Runa squinted at the horizon. Sunset was still a ways away, but something felt… off.

  A Nightlurker had shown up on the other side of the border before they left, drawn in by the sparkle sprats’ excitement. She hadn’t mentioned it to Severine because it wasn’t like the thing could cross the border into the Sweetmeadow by itself, and because this was turning out to be a romantic walk, damn it, and she was enjoying the slow way they were taking it together. Too much saving people from certain doom and they tended to jump into bed too early, in Runa’s experience, and jump out again just as quick once the adrenaline wore off.

  Not her bed, obviously. Other adventurers’ bedrolls.

  She didn’t want that with Severine. She wanted something different.

  She also didn’t want to get jumped by whatever was making her instincts tell her something was about to go seriously wrong.

  “Stay close,” she told Severine.

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know yet. Something we won’t like.”

  She knelt to pat the grass. The Sweetmeadow was jumpy.

  Like the Thornwaste had been.

  She really didn't like that.

  think would happen, Runa? No cursed beasts would show up?

  HearthCon this weekend - two days full of cozy fantasy chats, panels, and workshops!