Author's Note: This was initially meant to be part of a larger chapter, but I felt it could stand alone and wanted to get it done and out there so I could move on. It also started off more restrained. Then Xanos decided to play and ran away with it a little. Sorry!
Nadiya was pacing. She had been doing it since her return from the temple of Segojan, and showed no signs of stopping.
I had reading to do. I tried to ignore her.
This was easier said than done.
Our hosts, in exchange for a handful of the gems we had taken from the derro's cave, had fashioned for her a loose tunic and trousers of gray spidersilk to replace the rags the rest of her clothing had become. Because I did not want to have my lungs forcibly extracted from my chest cavity and turned into bagpipes, I had not made her aware that while the cut of her clothing was fully as modest as her Bedine upbringing demanded, the effect was somewhat spoiled by the fabric, which was thin and clinging and sent my mind down paths that made having my lungs torn out seem like a comparatively harmless distraction.
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I bent over my book and tried to think placid thoughts.
Words like spiders crawled across the book's pages. I could not touch them, not without damaging the ink, but I could marvel at the prospect that I might have been the first person to read these pages in well over four thousand years. The fact that anything was legible at all was remarkable, as was the fact that this little bundle of parchment and leather had survived not just the first but also the second fall of Undrentide.
Much as I did not like to think of Undrentide, it had been a spectacular discovery – a Netherese city which had fallen so suddenly and buried itself so deeply beneath the sand that, after the initial impact, whatever had not been destroyed by the fall had undergone something like a mummification. Untouched by both time and treasure hunters, Undrentide had endured millennia – only to be uncovered and destroyed as a consequence of the power-hungry scrabbling of a rabidly insane medusa.
I had tried to rescue what I could of Undrentide. Aside from the turquoise scarab on its chain around my neck and the gold band on my left forefinger with its channel of silver beads, I had also come away with this book. There had been a great library there, with row upon row and shelf upon shelf of books and scrolls which after thousands of years were still miraculously intact. I had taken three of the most well-preserved that I could find in the little time I had to spare, and they had traveled with me, swaddled in layers of linen and oilcloth, all this way. I had barely looked at them, too afraid to expose them to the elements. Down here, however, in the cool and dark, I thought the reward might be worth the risk.
Silk swirled by me. Nadiya was still pacing. Now she was drumming her fingers on the hilt of her sword. I entertained a brief fantasy of stringing her up by her thumbs and tickling her with a goose feather until she agreed to stop with the bloody pacing, discarded the idea as likely to result in a goose feather being shoved so far up my nose that I started grazing on marsh grass and flying south every winter, and selected a clean sheet of paper from the nearest pile.
Carefully, I slid the paper beneath one crackling yellow page of the book before me, one fraction of an inch at a time. It was extremely delicate work. The ancient parchment was brittle and tended to either break into fragments or fall entirely to dust if it was bent in any way, and so the entire page needed to be turned in one even movement.
I held my breath. I flipped the page. I let out the breath. The page fell lightly into place. Success.
I picked up my quill, a fresh sheet of paper, and began to transcribe the new page, jotting running translations in the margins as I went.
My quill scratched. Steps echoed on stone. Silk rustled. Fingers drummed.
Tap tap tap.
Taptaptaptap.
My patience snapped. I jerked upright and threw my quill across the room. It left a perfect chrysanthemum of black ink blooming on the far wall. "Will you kindly stop doing that?!" I roared.
She turned and began galloping back the other way. "Doing what?" she replied tersely.
"That infernal pacing."
Her fingers clasped and unclasped on her sword hilt, white-knuckled. "I do not think I can."
She paced away, her back to me. I watched her go. I knew it was a terrible idea and if I had any sense I would stop immediately, but my eyes seemed to have gained veto power over my brain. "I can see that."
She turned and shot me a look. "Then why did you ask me to stop?"
I ground my teeth. "Don't you have something to hit?" I asked.
She stopped. Turned again. Glared. "Are you volunteering?" she demanded.
"I would like to think that I have a better instinct for self-preservation than that, thank you." The next time she passed by, I gave into impulse and snagged her by the sleeve. "Cyric's Balls, woman, would you please just sit down. What is wrong?"
Reluctantly, she sat. Her lower lip acquired a slight pout. If I ever felt like dying horribly, I would have called the expression adorable. "I am bored."
"Really? I thought you have been entertaining yourself by getting thrown into walls by Avulsteina."
"That was this morning."
I looked up at the carved stone ceiling. "Morning?"
She made a face. "You know what I mean. Do not play games with me, Xanos. I am not in the mood."
"Fine." I gestured. "If you need a distraction, why don't you fetch me that quill?"
Her head turned to follow my gesture. A lock of hair fell across her face. She brushed it away impatiently. "The one you threw across the room?"
"Yes."
She turned back to me. Her expression was sardonic. It felt disturbingly familiar. "Why should I do that? You are the one who threw it. You pick it up."
"Because after I think my arse has become permanently fused to the floor, and if I try to get up you will regret not going over there and getting me my quill because I am going to fall over on top of you and then you'll be sorry. And flat. But mostly sorry."
She rolled her eyes. The faintest traces of a smile played at the corners of her lips. "Very well, but let it be known that I am only doing this because I do not want to be flattened," she said, and stood. I watched her cross the room, bend over, retrieve the quill, and return. "Here," she said, and passed the quill to me. "You should move around more often," she told me. "All of this sitting is not good for you."
I was probably going straight to the Abyss for what I had just done, but the view had been worth it. "Are you worried?" I found myself asking lightly. I twirled the quill in my fingers. "About Xanos?"
She sat next to me, absent-mindedly shoving her sword out of the way, tucking her legs up beneath her, and leaning her weight on the hand nearest me. "I do worry about you," she said sincerely. Her cheeks reddened. "When you are not being deliberately obnoxious, I mean."
I smirked. "In other words, never."
And there it was at last – a smile. "Almost never," she corrected. She leaned closer.
Scales rasped. Brown's head snaked in from the front chamber. He yawned, showing a vivid red tunnel of a throat, a long purple tongue, and a mouthful of teeth like serrated daggers. "Gnrf. Good morning!" he said, once he was done. The rest of him squeezed through the door after his head. "Or whatever time of day it is, I really have no idea anymore," he went on. "So. What's going on? What are you two doing? Anything fun?"
Nadiya startled up and away from me so violently that she almost somersaulted backwards. Somewhere along the way, her legs became entangled in her scabbard. She fought to disentangle herself, muttering under her breath. I thought I heard at least one curse.
I replayed the last several minutes in my head, felt my face flush, and abruptly cursed myself for a fool. And possibly a hopeless idiot. I shook my head and turned back to my writing. "Nadiya is bored," I said curtly.
"Oh." The dragon cocked his head at her. "I know! Would you like me to teach you how to read?"
The Bedine finally managed to fight her way back upright. She stared at the dragon through an untidy veil of hair. She tried to blow it away from her face. It fell back. "W-what?" she stammered. "We were not doing anything! What are you talking about?"
Brown blinked, seeming nonplussed. "Why, reading, of course! It's a wonderful skill and you really ought to have it." The dragon sat down in front of us, curling his tail around his feet. "We can start with any language you like. I suppose Common would be easier, since you already speak it. But I could teach you draconic, too, if you want." His jaws parted in a draconic grin. "It'll be a lark!"
Nadiya was frowning. Sitting up slowly, she pushed her hair back from her face again. "I…suppose so."
Brown beckoned. "Come here, come here, let me show you." After she moved to his side, he clawed a sheet of parchment from one of the piles, dipped the tip of one talon in an inkpot, and wrote her name in large, blocky letters. "This is your name. Nadiya." He tapped the first letter. "Let's start with the letter 'N'."
