Page 78 of Wizards & Weavers
Even more laughter, interspersed with crueler words and japes. Braiden’s ears burned red. Elyssandra’s emerald eyes smoldered as she glared around the room.
“You should all be ashamed of yourselves,” she said, her voice on the edge of cracking.
As they made for the doors, Braiden threw Dudley one last plaintive glance. The bartender shook his head, his face as stony as ever, then went back to polishing his mugs.
Someone muttered just loud enough for Braiden to hear as he walked past.
“Sounds like the wind wizard is full of hot air.”
Braiden bristled. He balled up his fists, but said nothing. The nerve of them. He’d used that very insult on Augustin himself, but that was different. Augustin was his party’s wizard. Augustin washiswizard.
The doors to the tavern closed behind them. Augustin’s shoulders were rounded again, his demeanor droopier than ever. Even Elyssandra’s eyes were downcast, sadly studying the cobblestones.
Weathervale felt oddly still. All that momentum they’d built from their fleetfoot run was gone in an instant, like someone had squeezed all the air out of them. Braiden gazed at the ships on the dock. No wind in their sails. His heart sank into his stomach. They couldn’t just leave the Underborough to its doom.
“Come on,” he said, rubbing one fist angrily at his eyes. “Follow me to the shop.”
Chapter
Twenty-Nine
Braiden Beadle sighedas he stared out the windows of his craft shop, watching as the sun began its steady descent. The world already seemed so much darker.
He was back at the beginning, back to before this all began, and he hated feeling so helpless. He rubbed his face blearily, sitting behind the counter, resting his weary legs and his even wearier heart.
Augustin’s fleetfoot spell did have some consequences. Belated and mitigated as the effects were, there would still be some muscle soreness, the wizard had explained. But behind Braiden, pacing in and out of the storage room, at least one person appeared to be immune to the spell’s aftereffects.
“Ungrateful louts,” Elyssandra muttered to herself. “They can’t see beyond their noses. Don’t they know how terrible this could be for all of them? For all of us?”
Her feet stomped against the floorboards as she harrumphed back and forth, glaring at the mountain of sweaters in the storage room when she walked in one direction, glaring out the shop windows as she stalked in the other.
Braiden forced a laugh into his voice, anything to lift his spirits. “If you keep that up much longer, you’ll gouge a linestraight into the floorboards. If you don’t stomp your way beneath the ground first, that is.”
She stamped her foot and stopped in place, hands balled into furious fists. “It’s not fair. Those adventurers at the tavern? Those can’t be the same people I met at the encampment, the ones who made hearty party soup. Where’s the spirit of community? The sense of what’s right?” She flung an arm out at the mountain of sweaters. “How can we possibly move all this stuff? There must be dozens of them, Braid. Maybe hundreds.”
“Granny Bethilda and I made far too many sweaters.” He shook his head and sighed. “Some were for practice, and the others? I think we were trying to use up the yarn that wouldn’t sell.”
Elyssandra walked over to the counter, pulling up a chair next to Braiden and slumping into it sulkily. “They’re very good pieces of knitwear. I’m sure you and your grandmother did a wonderful job. I’m just so angry at all those bloody adventurers.”
“Look at you, cursing after such a short time away from the Summerlands. Very unbecoming of a princess.”
She smacked his shoulder, but chuckled back. At least he got a little laugh out of her.
“Be serious, Braiden. I only wish we could have brought Warren with us up to the surface. That would have convinced the adventurers on sight. Now all we have left to count on is Augustin’s grandmother.”
Braiden turned hopefully toward the windows again. The night had fallen thick and dark over Weathervale, like a blanket of the finest othergoat wool. What Braiden wouldn’t give for a good night’s rest, or a nap.
But he knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep, not while Augustin was still out there. Something in Braiden’s gut told him the wizard hadn’t been joking about stuffing Elder Orora into a sack if she refused to comply.
“This is so frustrating,” Elyssandra said. “Not to mention nerve-wracking. It feels like we should be doing something, but what? Steal some apple carts from the night market, dump out the apples, use the carts to bring the sweaters down the dungeon?”
“Sounds like a huge waste of apples. But that’s a good start. At least you’re coming up with ideas.”
Elyssandra sank deeper into her chair, then clutched her stomach. Braiden didn’t need to listen very hard to hear it gurgle.
“Oh, good,” she grumbled. “And now this bottomless pit of a stomach needs filling again.”
Braiden rose from his chair. “I can fix us something to eat. I haven’t done any shopping since we went down the dungeon, but there has to be something left in the ice box.”
