Page 51 of Skalterra By Nightmare
“We won’t be long,” he assured her in a hushed tone.
“But the Baron—” Orla protested.
“Doesn’t scare me, and shouldn’t scare you either. You know I’ve handled worse.”
She nodded against his head, and Galahad grumbled for Ferrin to hurry. He pulled away from his niece and gave me a tiny salute as he followed Galahad over the uneven floors to the stairwell.
“Orla, rest up,” he called back. “Wren’s the only one of you with Skal. She’ll keep watch.”
Ferrin and Galahad’s boots echoed down the stairwell, and Orla watched the empty hallway with apprehension.
“They’ll be fine,” she said, more to herself than to me. “The Baron is a bit intense, but— well, you heard Ferrin. He’s faced worse.” She gave me a brave smile. “I knew you were still alive. Tiernan said you were probably reduced to Skal particles swirling inside the rotsbane, but Galahad would never let that happen.”
“Right.” I snorted. “Couldn’t let his favorite weapon go to waste.”
I glared at Tiernan’s bowed head down the hall as Orla led me through the open door of her room. The space was small and sported a dusty wardrobe and thin bed with a lumpy mattress that smelled like damp straw. Bright lights pushed against the moth-eaten curtains that obscured the window, fighting back against the otherwise drab atmosphere.
“Galahad only pretends to be terrible.” Orla fell backwards to sit on her mattress and tried to smooth down the brown sheets where they wrinkled around her. “He does it because he’s afraid we’ll all figure out he’s secretly a softie.”
I gravitated towards the window but hesitated with the curtains in my hand.
“A softie?” I repeated through a laugh.
“It means kindhearted and gentle,” Orla explained. “Sorry, it’s easy to forget you aren’t familiar with all our phrases.”
“I know what it means. We have that word too, and it’s not one I’d use to describe Galahad.” I pulled the curtains back to reveal a view of the river below. Water flowed parallel to the street below us, and while our side of the river was barren and quiet, busy shops and restaurants lined the cobbled road across an arched stone bridge. Glowing pipes dipped in and out of walls in a dizzying tangle of steamed Skal. People in robes, cloaks, and leather milled between storefronts despite the late hour, and the Skal-glow that emanated from wrought iron street lamps kept the night sky above obscured.
“Oh,” I breathed.Maybe the chainmail and the parapet from my first encounter with Skalterra had thrown me off, but the elaborate network of pipes weaving between bright shops and stone terraces was a shock. There was still something aged and rural compared to the neon cities I was familiar with, but it was more than I had expected. “I didn’t think you guys had all this.”
“Beautiful, right?” Orla sighed. “This is only my second time here. You should see the Baron’s mansion.”
“You mean where Ferrin and Galahad are going?” I thought I recognized Galahad’s leather duster making its way through the crowd next to Ferrin’s coiffed hair. They stepped through rain puddles that reflected the lights of the shops in hues of yellows and oranges.
“Yes.” Orla played with the hem of her cloak where she sat on the lumpy bed. “It’s a risk leaving us here, especially with no Skal, but it’s a greater risk taking Fana. She’s valuable, and the Baron likes valuable things.”
Ferrin and Galahad turned a corner and disappeared behind a merchant’s booth. I pressed my lips together. Galahad’s diluted Skal sat heavy in my stomach, uncomfortable and hot.
“If it’s such a risk to not have Skal, what if we went and found some?” I asked.
“Skal is expensive. Usually we replenish our store at private springs owned by the Sovereign families or by their Riftkeeper. But on the street? Buying enough Skal would bankrupt us. Ferrin will see what the Baron is willing to give us, and then we’ll use that to get to Tulyr and restock there.”
I silently watched the Skalterrans across the river for a moment. Despite the variety in clothing styles, almost all of them wore bottles of glowing Skal at their hips.
“This mission benefits all of Skalterra, right?” I asked. “Keeping Fana alive and the Frozen God in his glacier?”
Orla nodded, but her lips drew into a frown.
“Of course. The Four Magicians built Skalterra as a safe place for magick to exist.”
“But we can’t just ask for Skal, and tell them we’re saving Skalterra?” I watched a woman in a bustled dress down a vial of glowing liquid on the cobbled street beneath us.
“Definitely not.” Orla laughed. “Some Skalterrans wish we could return to Keldori and view our world as a prison, so they aren’t really big fans of the Riftkeepers.”
“Okay.” I straightened up. “Then we take Skal without asking.”
I pushed away from the window, back towards the hall. Orla rushed to follow me.
“I don’t know what’s normal in Keldori, but here we don’t—”
