Page 53 of Skalterra By Nightmare
“This way.” I tracked the path of the pipes along the wall and rounded a corner. There were more storefronts here, and I resisted the smell of simmering meat to pass under more archways.
Men and women in leather and goggles sipped from glasses where they lounged on large, stone steps around a fountain that sprayed water twenty feet into the air. Pipes hugged the wall behind the water feature, and I followed them around another corner. It was less crowded here, and there were fewer lamps to light the way.
“Getting closer.”
“To what?” Orla hissed. “Look, I’m far from being the smartest Riftkeeper, but even I know that this is stupid.”
I stopped to look back at her.
“Orla,” I said, “you’re plenty smart.”
She blushed and looked away.
“You weren’t there for the rotsbane attack after Galahad released you,” she mumbled.
“You all survived. Whatever you did can’t have been that bad.”
“I lit the steamcart on fire.”
I took a moment to gather myself.
“Did anyone get hurt?”
“Well, no—”
“Then it was fine. You aren’t stupid.” I turned to lead the way down the street.
“But Tiernan—”
“Tiernan?” I spun back to face Orla again. “That guy? Mr. Broods-A-Lot? We care what he thinks?”
“He’s only brooding because he’s mourning Caitria.” She wrapped her long, thin arms around herself. “He’s still my friend.”
My stomach lurched in a way that had nothing to do with the nasty Skal Galahad had used to form me.
“Friends aren’t rude to each other, even when they’re sad,” I said. “Friends who treat you like garbage are actually just that. Garbage.”
“Tiernan—”
“Is garbage,” I snarled. “You’re worth more than how he treats you.”
I whisked into the shadows of an alley before Orla could stop me. She hesitated on the main street, and I tried to quash the rising guilt in my throat. Maybe what I had said was harsh, but if someone had told me that bad friends aren’t actually friends, I could’ve avoided everything Linsey had put me through.
“Do you have bottles?” I tapped on a pipe that jutted out of the stone wall and dove down under the cobbled walkway.
Orla finally followed me into the alley and lifted her cloak to reveal a row of empty bottles swinging from her belt.
“That’s where you want to steal Skal from?” Orla blanched.
“Better than picking someone’s pocket.” I played with my fingernails. The diluted Skal in my veins felt like sludge, but it was still Skal and would do what I needed it to do.
“No, this is a lot worse! That Skal still belongs to someone!” Orla glanced back at the main street, but we were alone. The distant sound of laughter mixed with that of the fountain splashing. “This is the Baron’s Skal. The Baron we need tolikeus if we want help getting north.”
“No one named ‘The Baron’ has ever been a good guy.” Maybe it was the fact that Skalterra gave me the freedom to be whoever I wanted, or maybe Sarah’s comment at the Keel Watch Harbor library about being switched at birth was getting to me, but whatever it was, I liked this new Wren.
The fingernail on my right pointer finger elongated when I willed it to, and then sharpened and hardened into a steel point. I pressed it against the metal pipe and turned my wrist back and forth until I felt a small groove begin to form beneath my nail.
“That’s a new trick,” Orla mumbled. “I’ve never seen a Nightmare change themself like that before.”
