Intermission I
"I didn't realize Treno was so far away," Dagger said, her eyes tracing the clouds as they dotted the sky. Before her, Marcus made a soft noise.
"About a week's travel on foot," he answered, and she couldn't tell if he was amused or annoyed by her. The lines beside her mouth tightened for a moment, but she did not look down at him.
"Four more days then," Steiner, trailing behind her and minding the read guard for them, said.
"Five," Marcus corrected, and Dagger lowered her gaze to the steady shifting of his shoulders as he walked.
"It's been three days since we left South Gate," Steiner argued, and without glancing back at his face, she knew the exact furrows that drew across his brow. She'd been on the receiving end of those captious looks more than a few times in her youth. "That leaves four to arrive at a week's end. Unless you deceive us?"
A short laugh erupted from the Tantalus man who led them, and he stopped, twisting back to look at the Pluto Captain escorting her.
"Is that amusing, brigand?" She saw Steiner narrow his eyes, fingers twitching at his thigh, and she tensed automatically, ready to step between them again if she needed to.
"That you jump to accusing me with no provocation in the slightest? No, what amuses me is that such a grand knight—" Dagger winced a little at the disparaging dip in his voice— "would know so little about a neighboring city of his home." The tug upward at one side of his mouth made it difficult for Dagger to tell if he was smirking or sneering, it was so sharp.
Steiner sputtered a moment through obvious rising anger while Marcus ignored him and turned back to the road ahead, continuing on his path toward the top of the hill before them.
"Now wait, you scoundrel—" Steiner set off after him, and Dagger jogged to keep up.
"It's unwise to enter Treno in the dead of night," Marcus called without looking around, his voice carrying loud enough for them to clearly hear him over a rush of wind. "It may be the City of Never-Ending Night, but it has its own version of days, and we'll need to wait an extra night for one. Besides," he went on as they caught up to him at the crest itself, and Dagger saw the promise of a sincere smile soften his face. "We've got an important stop along the way."
She and Steiner followed his gaze down the gentle slope, the wind rolling through the grass as waves over the sea, until they saw a small huddle of roofs nestled in the crook of the hillock's base.
"I didn't know there was a town here," Dagger said, taking a moment to glance up at Marcus.
He stood over a head taller than she, and for the first time since she had seen him on the cable car up the mountains, his jaw was relaxed.
"You know this place?" she asked, the soft spaces between her words coming as a surprise to her own ears.
The quick glance he gave her, past the broken hook of his nose, told her she'd startled him as well. For that instant, his face was unguarded and she felt her heart echo in her chest for a beat. Steiner upended the capricious pause between them.
"Seems a bit much, calling it a 'town'."
Marcus' eyes steeled again and he looked away from her, giving her only the iron line of his jaw. "It's the only market between South Gate and Treno for those traveling unprepared," he replied. "We'll need to resupply there if you want to make it to the city."
Without waiting for a response of any kind, Marcus set out down the hill, the shimmering grasses parting around his hips as they rolled in the wind. Steiner snorted his disapproval.
"I don't know if we can trust this rogue, Princess," he said to her, voice hushed as if the wind could carry it away were he too loud. The leather of his thick baldric creaked as he shifted its weight. "That boy Zidane is bad enough, but this man isn't even as genial."
Dagger looked up from the diminishing figure of Marcus to her knight, giving him a fond smile. "Steiner, you shouldn't scowl so much—your face might stay that way." She tucked the hair threatening to loosen from her tie back behind her ear, against the breeze. "If he meant us harm, he's had plenty of chances to do it."
The steady, stubborn look Steiner settled on her before he answered made her worry, but then it relaxed all at once with a sigh. "Very well. I will try and give him benefit of my doubt, for your sake."
Her smile grew. "Thank you, Steiner. Let's catch up—he's right, we do need more supplies if we're five days out." She led the way down to the small market.
Marcus was nowhere in immediate sight when they arrived, but Dagger's instinctive worry was held at bay by the myriad of stalls that greeted them. It wasn't a true town, nor even much of a village—to Dagger it seemed to be little more than the market square one would find in any town or city, with little else in the way of living quarters. There were mostly food and general supply vendors with lightweight wooden stalls that looked to her as if they would have been more suited to travel than a permanent place.
Steiner stopped to rebuild their poultice and concoction stores—potions and ethers, mostly—and so she meandered along, peering at this string of tiny vials (empty for your own personal touch, of course), or that interestingly carved walking stick (an attempt at runes, she thought, on a very non-magical piece of wood). One of the things she had come to enjoy possibly the most in her travels since she left Alexandria was seeing the happy bustle of markets like this one, and delighting in the different and sundry items from all over she could peruse.
After purchasing a small repair kit for leathers and cloth items alike, she gratefully paid for a small lunch from one of the nearby food vendors—a delicious-smelling spiced kebab with onions and smoke-charred meat skewered on it. The first bite confirmed her nose was no liar, and she was only able to savor the kebab with moderate bites from years of table manners ingrained into her. Nearly halfway through, she caught a glimpse of Marcus through a sudden gap between stalls. He sat just outside the outskirts of the market on a grouping of rocks that sat high enough on a small rise of land to see the sea in the distance. She rounded the last of the vendors to make her way over to where he sat, one leg stretched out and the other drawn beneath him, balancing a small basket. He didn't see her approaching, fiddling with something in his hands.
Curious tilt to her head, she tried to discern what he was doing as she drew closer. He held something dark and round in one hand, with the thumb of his finger braced against the side facing him. With a small flick of his wrist, the dark oval in his hand popped open and he lifted it to his mouth.
"Shellfish!" she exclaimed, and his attention darted up to her, free hand raised slightly in defense, and she saw now the small bright knife in his fingers.
"Didn't see you there," he said, arm relaxing as she came to stop by the rocks he perched upon. Closer, she saw the basket balanced on his tucked leg housed both unopened and opened shells nestled in a cloth. He nodded to the skewer she held.
"Those're good, aren't they?"
"Oh—yes! I am surprised how good they are. I've never had one before."
He lazily tossed the empty shell on top of the small pile of its similarly-fated fellows in his basket and plucked another from the other side. "Seems to be quite a bit you've never tried before," he noted, focus on the shellfish.
"There is, but I could say the same of you were our positions reversed." She watched with growing fascination how he deftly wedged the sharp edge of his knife into the tiny gap that bisected the valves of the shell. Bracing his thumb against the back of the blade—not the shell as she previously thought—he flicked his wrist and popped the shell open, a small puff of steam escaping.
He glanced up and caught her staring, and though the question was cordial enough, his voice was rough. "Would you like some?"
Quickly, embarrassed without quite knowing why, she shook her head, adjusting the grip on the slender skewer of her kebab. "Oh, no, I just—do you always open them that way?"
A small, sly sort of grin crept over his lips in the space of a breath. "Every one," he replied, then lifted the opened shell to his mouth to suck out the steaming meat within.
Placing the empty shell down, he wiped a trail of stray juices off his lips, and motioned to her with the knife. "Your kebab will get cold if you don't finish it soon," he reminded her, the roughness quieter than it had been before. Eyes still on her, he picked up another shell to repeat his process.
"I—oh. Right." She tried to will away the heat that flooded her cheeks, and he cast his eyes back down to his knife, sparing any look he might have given her.
Feeling awkward simply standing there, she joined him in sitting on the rocks, the only sound of his approval the quiet crack of another shell opening.
"How does royalty eat shellfish?" he asked her after she'd taken a few more bites of the kebab and had lost any pause in the air to delighting again in the spices tingling her mouth.
"Usually," she began, after finishing her mouthful, "the shells are already open and we use forks." She twisted around to see him and caught a glimpse of his tongue flicking out to scoop the juices from the bottom shell. She told herself the heat in her throat was from the kebab. "Ah, that is, I always thought the steaming opened the shells."
"Sometimes." He picked up another. "Usually when they've cooked past their best."
Her eyes followed his wrist. "Their best?"
Hands hesitating a moment, he cracked open the valves. "Here," he said suddenly, leaning down and surprising her with an offer of the steaming shellfish, cupped and nearly encompassed by his palm.
"What?"
"Trust me," was all he said, still holding his hand out to her.
"I—all right. Okay." Taking the shell with her free hand, she peered at it. The meat inside was a few shades darker than she was used to seeing, but she had to admit it did smell quite appetizing.
"It won't poison you," he grated, misreading her pause, and she chuckled nervously.
"No, I don't suspect it will, but how do I...?"
"Oh, right," he said, "forks. Just tilt the edge up to your mouth and scrape your teeth over the inside while sucking. Should come right out."
Dagger felt his eyes on her as she did as he instructed. The shellfish meat was still hot inside the warm shell, but yielded to her teeth and an appreciative noise thrummed from her throat of its own accord. Glancing back to see a half-smile tugging along his mouth, she nodded.
" 's really good," she told him, even as she felt a warm trickle of juice escape down her chin.
To her surprise, he reached out and wiped away the trail with his thumb, the strange half-smile still on his face and a tilt to his eyes that tightened a hidden cord inside her.
"Better than a fork," he said, not quite a question, drawing his hand back.
Finding her voice caught somewhere in her throat, she nodded instead, watching him pick up another shell for himself.
"Your kebab," was all he said, prying the shellfish in his hand open.
Her voice came back in that moment, a sound of affirmation as she dropped the empty shell into his basket and returned her focus back to the skewer, speckled with dark spices.
"There you are!" Steiner's booming voice called out from behind them. He carried two more cloth sacks he hadn't started with when they arrived with him. "I've been looking everywhere for you, Princess!"
"Dagger," she corrected him firmly.
"It's not a big market," Marcus drawled. "Couldn't have been looking too hard."
"I have been getting resupplied," Steiner snapped back, the flash of anger in his eyes bright.
Dagger partially covered a chuckle with her knuckles. "Calm down, Steiner, and have lunch with us. We'll finish supplying and head out after."
"But he—" Relenting, Steiner sighed. "Very well. Where did you get that stick?" he asked, motioning to her kebab. "I shall have one of those."
"Around the corner that way," she told him, pointing in the direction of the vendor.
Marcus watched him leave and shook his head at her after Steiner had vanished behind the row of stalls.
"Don't you find him more hindrance than help?"
A fond smile wound its way across her face. "He's only doing what he believes is right, protecting me."
He was still for a moment, studying her. "And what of your worry?"
The weight of all that had happened, of what she needed to do, sank back into her stomach like a stone into a pool at his words. "Perhaps."
Author's Note: This isn't exactly part of the main story, but a side chapter from Garnet's point of view. It's set between chapters three and four. It originally was a prompt back on tumblr before I even started posting Lie Through Your Wolfteeth, but I wanted to put something up on here due to taking a longer to work on chapter four than I intended, as a thank you to everyone who's read and enjoyed the story thus far!