“Well, you look firm enough,” Caiside told Freydis. “Forearms and shoulders nearly thicker than your trumpeter cousin, here.”

  We stood in my tiny sitting room, with Caiside sitting on the bench by the stove. In the daylight now I looked at her perhaps more closely than I had the night before. Freydis was sizing her up too, I’m sure:

  Caiside looked better for the sleep she had gotten. The night on the bench with the tick hadn’t done her hair any favors; it was unkempt, and hanging down over her face. But now in the light, and rested, she looked more spry. She also was usually crunching her eyebrows together, which may have made her look a bit more . . . worn than she really was.

  “Yes, you look firm enough,” she continued saying to Freydis, “but I’m not sure we want a third person coming with us. I don’t want to draw attention to our party. The fewer, the better. I’d go alone if it weren’t for my leg.” She pointed down to her one foot protruding from her long skirt.

  “You don’t want to draw attention?” Freydis said. “With you on crutches like that, there’s no way you won’t be noticed.”

  “Well, I suppose that’s fair enough.”

  “Let me see the map.”

  Caiside obediently pulled it out. Freydis unrolled it and held one side while I took the other.

  “This implies we’ll need to follow certain passes through those upper hills carefully. Hmm, ‘Cursed Massacre Agony DeathHole’? That must be the hiding spot.”

  “She’s a sharp one,” Caiside told me.

  “Indeed,” I said.

  “And what sort of place is it in? Will we be able to just enter?”

  “We will, yes,” Caiside said. “Because we will have picked up a key along the way. To open iron double doors built into a hillside.”

  “And how do we get this key?

  “You see the gully in the hills below the DeathHole? And then one more gully, beneath that? And then, next to it, a boulder which looks almost just like a decoration? It’s a real boulder, and the key is beneath.”

  “And you were told that by Slade, of course,” Freydis asked.

  “Of course.”

  “If this alkonost friend of his flew all of the items here, why can’t she just retrieve them and bring them here?”

  “Because Slade can’t speak with her,” Caiside said. “I suppose you might be thinking she could fly up and talk to him quickly through a barred window. Alas, he is deep in a dungeon. He cannot get out messages, except through me. And I cannot summon that creature. Alkonosts are proud, they will not take messages from anyone; if you want to speak to one, you need to be able to do it yourself.”

  “Mm-hm,” Freydis said.

  She was silent for a moment. Then:

  “So if you have truly obtained this map from Slade –” she held out a hand to quiet Caiside, who was about to erupt – “and if it is accurate; and if the alkonost really placed all the items there, which Slade can’t know for sure; and if we can really find this key, and it really opens the gate; and if no other creatures have found the hoard first; and if we can get it back here, or at least most of it; or even some it, from what you’re saying – then we will certainly be glad we went.”

  She paused again.

  “Well, it’s worth a try. If nothing else, it will be useful to learn more of the wilds. And it will be good to show our faces there, if they are really getting busier, as people are saying. It won’t hurt to let creatures there know that other Enkel Kanindalers may be around, after us. The OathSworn, for one, should know that they don’t just get to claim it all.”

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  “SwornBorn,” I corrected her.

  “You won’t be disappointed,” Caiside said. “I am certain that Slade rendered that favor to the alkonost; and an alkonost does not forget a service like that.”

  “How are you certain?” Freydis asked. “You met this – woman?”

  “You know, you don’t have to specify when they are women, although they are; because they are all female. There are no male alkonosts. Their lore holds that there once were males, but they disappeared at some point in the past.”

  “How can they continue to exist, then?”

  Caiside shrugged. “They continue to lay their eggs, and those eggs are always females. That’s how. It would indeed be difficult to explain, were they humans.”

  “And do they have individual names?”

  “They do. This one which Slade knows is Ilhoniviastorovavisencilavina.”

  “All that? Is one name?”

  “Yes.”

  “So that’s why you just call her the alkonost.”

  “It is quicker. Anyway, I met her in the night, up in a mountain pass with Slade, under a full moon. Her feathers were silvery in the moonlight. It was breathtaking. They are grand, handsome creatures during the day, to be sure, but at night she looked – simply regal.

  “She stood taller than Slade, barely. She walked up to him and bowed to him. It was slight; their bows are just a quick bob, with them lowering their shoulders. But I was stunned. These beings are proud, and they typically bow to no one but members of their own kind who outrank them. But she did so with Slade. It’s a sign of how thankful she is, how much she esteems him.

  “But of course it was her flight that was the most majestic. I was assisting Slade with a . . . delivery. We had transported . . . some goods over that pass.

  “Well, I’ll just say it,” she said. “There are certain goods made in Wastemoor which are not to be allowed out of the country. Goods, and animals. And that includes draft horses. Specifically, draft horses bred by the Imperial Cavalry of The Mage. But Slade managed to – acquire several of them, for buyers he knew of among the proud horse-riding people of the high plateau to the north and east of Wastemoor.”

  “That’s a curious thing about horse-riding peoples,” I said. “They are always proud. You never hear about, say, the bashful horse-riding peoples of the high plateau. You know? Or the self-deprecating horse riding peoples of the high plateau.”

  Caiside and Freydis fell silent, then, and just looked at me for a moment.

  “Anyway,” Caiside resumed. “After I assisted him with this delivery, and we were returning with our payment, along the way he wanted to hand off something to Ilhoniviastorovavisencilavina to bring to the cache, here. He told me that if we arrived at that certain pass in the afternoon, and stayed past sunset, she would come, and indeed she did. And she came flying up, so gracefully; her wings seemed to be silent from a distance, but then as she neared and then landed, you could hear the wind through her feathers. It was magical, just the only sound in the world at that moment. Quiet, but all-enveloping.

  “After her bow, she addressed him:

  “ ‘It is a pleasure to see you in this pass again, my human savior.’

  “ ‘And you, Ilhoniviastorovavisencilavina,’ he answered. ‘I am here to ask you to once again take an item valuable to me to the hideaway in the hills near my home.’

  “ ‘Gladly,’ she answered. And then she looked at me.

  “ ‘And who is this?’

  “ ‘Caiside, of Fleethaven,’ he said.

  “ ‘Were your regular companions not available for this journey?’ she said.

  “ ‘She and I have partnered profitably in several deals already,’ he answered.

  “She looked at me then, and sized me up, it seemed like.

  “ ‘Well, I suppose it’s not easy to find help for the trading you do,’ she said. And you know, I had both of my legs then, still. I’m not sure what she was trying to say.

  “ ‘Caiside is very capable,’ Slade said.

  “ ‘Is she,’ the alkonost said. “Very good. I only think that one should be careful who one selects to do business with the proud horse-riding peoples of the high plateau.’

  “So they chatted a bit more, in that somewhat formal language,” Caiside continued. “The alkonost was just regal, as I said; and magnanimous. Just a very noble being. It was an honor to meet her.”

  I looked at Freydis. She was tilting her head a bit, at this, and may have been squinting her eyes slightly.

  “And Ilhoniviastorovavisencilavina,” Caiside continued, “then allowed Slade to hang around her neck a leather bag which hung from a long loop of cloth. She then turned, pumped her wings, and rose into the night sky. We felt the breeze which they left behind, and heard that rush of air again, and watched her disappear heading to the east.”

  “Well,” Freydis said, “I hope she did fly here.”

  Image credit: нев?домий(Роки життя: до н.е.), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons