Chapter Text
“Again?”
Wincing, the doctor answers, “Yes, sir.”
This tray of food and water, set beside the door, is as untouched as the last ten. The soup has ceased to steam, the pitcher of water has soaked its bracing cloth, and the napkin covering the bread and cheese is as neatly creased as it was when it left the kitchens. That the wayfarer – Humphrey, Joshua corrects internally with a twist in his heart – that Humphrey has put the food out the door might be a good sign to anyone else concerned with his recovery. If their only concern was whether their patient was mobile or cogent, they might even be impressed that he’s making a conscious effort to starve himself.
Joshua is feeling too many other things to be impressed.
As he has the other ten times, Joshua indicates to the doctor that he would appreciate some privacy; the doctor nods, steps aside and departs around the nearest corner. Joshua knocks on the door and projects through it, “There is no need for this.”
He receives no response.
Refusing to entertain the possibility that this is because the young man is already dead – surely, if he were, the doctors would have told him so – Joshua offers instead, “This isn’t your prison, whatever Leon thinks. There is so much you can do here. So much you can be. And if you’d only explain what he believes you’ve done, I’m certain we can come to an understanding.”
Again, nothing.
Though the hall is empty, and Joshua has not raised his voice beyond the bounds of propriety, there is only so much penance he is willing to display within earshot of his flock. As such, he hasn’t risked it yet – and as soon as the thought crosses his mind, Alter warns him against it. You are already flying through inclement skies, she reminds him, as if sliding the tip of her claw along the back of his hand. As if the Dragon Rune has not taken every opportunity to cloud his eyes with sleeplessness and ire. If we are weak before our people, they will unseat us.
Too true, and too easy to picture. In fact, the Dragon Rune rejoices in the image.
Joshua flexes his fingers on the doorknob, but not yet tightening them to turn. “Say something, at least,” he commands. “Or show yourself, so that I know I’m not wasting words.”
When no response comes, it should be a cue to leave. If the young man wants to die, Joshua shouldn’t stand in his way. It would be diplomatic, even. Respectful. Expedient.
Hateful.
Violation that it is, Joshua opens the door and strides in.
Humphrey’s back is turned. Bare, the reopened scar is a thick line of black stitches and fresh pink flesh, rising like a toxic eruption beside the mountain range of his tensed spine. He doesn’t turn from the window: the only sign that he’s not a bespelled statue is the clench of his fists at his sides, sudden and fresh and trembling. The sword that should be on his back rests against the windowpane, wrappings shadowed by his body. He is as pale and drawn as they, his skin chapped. Is he leaving the sword at rest because there’s no need to draw it, or because he’s made himself weak?
Whatever the reason, Joshua can’t stand the sight. He shuts the door behind him, then closes another two steps, claiming the center of the room. “Humphrey,” he says, a quiet offering. “Unless you would rather I not call you that…?”
Though the young man’s back shivers with a thwarted breath, it’s not one that precedes speech.
Joshua chances another step nearer. “Do you not believe me when I insist that you can have a life here? That, whether or not you wish to continue as we have been, you can live, and grow, and learn, and be among us for as long as the gods grant you?”
That tremor, again: in Humphrey’s fists, and in the back of his neck where his golden hair has grown long enough to curl. And Joshua doesn’t doubt that it’s in his creased eyes and their fragmented lashes as well, but the young man still won’t turn around.
“Whatever you’ve done,” Joshua goes on, “whatever you believe you’ve done, you have seen what I do. I’ve lived two centuries. I carry eons more and worse within me. I have beheld some of the most heinous things that people can do to one another, and done more than I am proud of myself. You will not shock me. And yes, it is a curse, but I am here, and even if you are what Leon says you are, if you have breath, you have time. You once made clear to me that you understand: the world need not remain the way it is. You know it is difficult, but not impossible, to change your fate. And it’s a worthwhile use of the time you’ve been given. You left them. You came here. You had hope. You were content, weren’t you? With living? With living here?”
The tremors are a steady shiver now, like the tossing of leaves in a gale. The bed is unmade, and Joshua is sorely tempted to rip the blanket off it and drape it over Humphrey’s shoulders, to wrap himself over that, to lend all the warmth he has like he would to a hatchling too weak to walk. And that urge is tempered with his knowledge and memory of the young man’s eager, receptive body – the taste of his pleasure, the strength of his grip, the sound of his voice, gods, words or no words, let those bestial snarls of anger at Leon not be the last things Joshua hears from his lips.
Joshua sighs, shaking back that temptation. He has been here before, and he’s already unwelcome. “And even if you would rather not speak to me,” he concedes, “my first offer still stands. If you wish to run, I will not betray you to Scarlet Moon. The alliance is over. I don’t know by what arts they would track you down, so I can’t protect you if you leave, but I maintain that Goya is not a prison. Not to me, and not to any of my people, and not to you.”
Liar, laughs the Dragon Rune.
But in the same moment that spike of pain and malevolence overtakes him, Humphrey whispers, “I can’t.”
Relief surging against the walls of his throat, Joshua takes the next two steps nearer, coming to Humphrey’s side at the window. “Can’t leave?” he asks, needing more to steady the violence in his chest. “Or can’t stay?”
Humphrey shakes his head tightly, and now that Joshua can see his profile and eyes his heart breaks all over again. Humphrey’s lips are cracked through, eyes drawn and framed in veined yellow like an old bruise or indelible filth. “Neither,” he murmurs. “Both.”
And all of that relief transmutes to horror. Respect for personal space be damned: Joshua takes Humphrey by the bare shoulders and turns him around. His flesh is chilled, his bones champing for escape.
Humphrey wrenches away, but Joshua holds his upper arms tight. The shivering goes on and on, but Humphrey doesn’t try to pull away a second time, standing stiff and clearly uncomfortable, but if he were any farther away Joshua couldn’t risk saying this aloud.
He whispers, no louder than Humphrey was before, “You can stay. If I can, you can.”
A spasm bursts through Humphrey’s skin, pulse pounding against Joshua’s palms. “You don’t understand.”
“Then tell me.” A plea as much as a command: not that Joshua can take back the incensed peak in his tone, only hope that no one else heard it. “Whether you leave or not, don’t leave me in the dark.”
Alter reminds him of their parting at the hot springs, the soldier’s antipathy for both wings of the House of Rugner – but Joshua remembers more fervently his own insistence on following the course of the war. A deserter, a thief, a murderer stands in his arms. He ran from, stole from, and killed men he believes are worse. And yet he would not – will not – undermine Joshua’s support of the same.
“Not again,” Joshua exhales, hands pressing into Humphrey’s skin, as cold and slick as the healing wound behind him.
This time, when Humphrey tries to break away, Joshua lets him: the resistance itself stings, but the cause strikes deeper. The young man steps back toward the bed, and sits on the edge like all the strength has gone out of him, head hanging and shoulders slack. By now, Joshua knows the pattern, distasteful as it can be: after a silence as ponderous as this, if Humphrey is going to say anything, it will not be now, or the second after that, or the second after that. Whatever must align in him to speak takes time, and even then.
But his body speaks volumes, and this, at least, Joshua can address.
“First, and most concretely,” Joshua says, “what would tempt you to eat? What would make it easier for you to live to see morning?”
Like the rest, this takes too long to answer. Humphrey sits, still and heavy, only his pitched posture betraying the effort within him. Whatever else, his body wants to live. Perhaps not here, but the young man has courted oblivion, not cleaved to it.
Estranged, but not unknown to you, Alter sends, a gentle warning, a thread of himself through her eyes on balustrades, in ponds, in nightmares. He may be inured from the consequences of those dark urges, but they find him like ill-timed missives. Alter is not nearly as flippant as she was the last time she implied this, but it is a warning all the same. Don’t dwell here, or the tide will catch you too.
Hoarse, quiet, Humphrey asks without looking up, “Do you grow mint here?”
Relief constricts Joshua’s heart. “We do.”
Humphrey exhales, too rough for a sigh. “Then. Forgive me. Mint and honey, like they drink in the north.”
“It will be done,” Joshua breathes. He steps back, but then the space between them is great enough to ache. Looking down at the back of Humphrey’s head, at his waning muscles and dry skin and trembling hands, he yearns to put them right. The young man healed enough to not shy from his touch, to kiss him first, to melt him with a breath and dare him with dry wit and carry that sword up and down a mountain: Joshua refuses to believe that man is gone. He was revived once. He fit in Joshua’s arms. So help all the gods and makers of this world, he will be there again. And if Joshua were in his place, he would want to hear as much.
But he is not.
If he were an ordinary man, could he kneel and take Humphrey’s hands in his? Could he risk his people seeing him like that, baring his heart, begging a mortal man for something so inconsequential as a kiss, a truth, another day alive? And even if he could, would the force that shares him abide it?
That answer is not long in coming at all.
When Joshua turns to the door to summon the doctors, and a runner to take that order to the kitchen, every bone in his right hand throbs with a calcifying ache.
* *
The walls of the Prophet quake like they’ve snapped in half.
Bright wakes, growling and grumbling: Futch, surging clear from half- to not-asleep, flings out an arm for whatever weapon is nearest. Getting neither, his hand makes contact with Bright’s twitching tail instead – and another grumpy twitch spikes in his heart alongside Bright’s fog-edged memories of Too many storms!
Futch has to agree with that. The leg of the trip from Kanakan to Gregminster was supposed to be half as long as the one from Zexen to Kanakan; it’s taken nearly twice as long instead, and most of that can be blamed squarely on the weather. A blustery winter bled into a downright inhospitable spring, and summer hasn’t been much of a reprieve so far either as they sail north and the temperature drops in kind, faster than it would if they stayed in one place. Hence Futch dispensing with the hammock to join Bright in his blanket nest, for all the good it’s done.
If there’s yet more rain on the way, there’s work to do. Futch disentangles himself from their heap of blankets and lingering visions, and hauls himself up from the floor in search of more of them. Humphrey’s hammock is empty, his blankets bundled neatly in the sack; Futch takes them out and stretches out his arms to drape them over Bright with all the others, the smaller first, larger second. That done, he looks out the porthole: it’s getting dark, but there’s no patter of rain yet. No alarm call yet either, and the jostling of the deck above him isn’t running-urgent, so they probably have some time.
But the next flash through the porthole isn’t lightning-white: it’s a brilliant, unnatural green.
Fireworks. Not a storm, not cannons, not spells, fireworks.
Curiosity and distaste war in him, and Bright picks up on both, throwing off all the blankets and scrabbling to join him at the porthole and look out over the waves. The shimmering sparks of the green firework drift down into the water as they fade, leaving curls of smoke that shine pewter and ochre in the moons’ early light. At the last reaches of that diffuse green light, a black silhouette bobs over the surface, with only two sets of ivory sails, the largest with a gash broad enough to see the hazy stars behind.
Abovedecks, an officer shouts and the crewmen muster; down here, Bright perks up and yawps, breaking away from the window to fly for the ladder and follow some of the newly-awoken up to the deck. Bright’s enthusiasm isn’t contagious, but Futch knows his personal feelings about fireworks aren’t shared by pretty much anyone else. If Bright’s excited by them like so many others, Futch resolves not to stand in the way of it. He takes up Hemat and follows Bright up the ladder, walling his discomfort off and letting Bright’s feelings take the lead.
But the sounds of the crew aren’t raw excitement: the bosun shouts for someone to wake the captain, and orders to change the bearing to intercept, and – oh. Futch stalls mid-ladder. That’s not just a firework, that’s a flare. A distress signal.
“Move it,” the sailor beneath him chides, and Futch apologizes as he scrambles the rest of the way up and out onto the main deck.
In the year and a half (gods, a year and a half) since they set sail on the Prophet, the musters have been either routine or catastrophic, nothing between. The protocol for the dozens of storms and monster attacks is well-oiled; nothing especially nasty has befallen them since the leviathan last summer, but that entire situation felt momentous and horrifying. The response of the crew, tonight, is more than the former and less than the latter, the repeated orders that betray outright confusion, the split-second between word and deed, the gazes gawping over port shifting with the realignment of the prow.
Humphrey is watching as intently as the others. More, maybe. As straight and steady as the masts, he stands fixed on the forecastle, lips a shadowed horizontal line like the boom of the sail above him. Bright flies to his side, and alights on the rail beside him to watch the point in the dark where the new ship still slices through the tides. Futch, knowing he shouldn’t get in anyone’s way, cuts through the muster to coast to their sides. He has to lean into Humphrey’s periphery and wave to make sure he catches his attention; Humphrey’s eyes are fixed on the point in the distant dark like they’ve got hooks and lines through them.
When Humphrey’s gaze is broken, so is the pattern of his breath. He meets Futch’s attention, and nods, barely.
Futch signs, silently and carefully, Danger?
Humphrey says nothing. But the angle of his eyebrows is threaded with caution. Maybe Futch didn’t ask that question well enough.
Together, the three of them watch as the ship realigns to intercept the twilit vessel, slowly rounding the waves as the captain and mates are roused to resolve the situation. It’s not fast. Turning alone takes time, let alone catching the wind, and it’ll be at least an hour before they meet broadsides. Bright’s claws flex on the railing a half-dozen times as he asks Futch, Should we help them? Why aren’t we helping them?
We are helping them, Futch tries to reassure him, the candid sense of these things take time shoving its way past his reservations into Bright as almost a warning. It’s more they are than we are since it’s clearly the crew’s decision.
Bright grumbles, tail swatting Futch’s ankles as his wings fan back. We can go look. We can help.
But I can’t, Futch winces to think, but is too late to stop it. Bright is right: this is exactly what they’d be good for, if they could go together. But without Futch there to contextualize what they’re seeing – what both sides are seeing – Bright would be a target. Or worse.
That part, Bright understands – We shouldn’t be alone has a dozen awful memories in his mind, and all of them sift through to Futch one fragment at a time – but he still huffs and snarls. And they have edges of their own, moments of alignment and rightness when they reunite, stitches and seams that have only gotten stronger as they grow. Are we one or aren’t we?
And yet, We are is incomplete.
When Futch reaches down to stroke Bright’s scales, Humphrey’s hand is already there, resting between Bright’s horns. That slight peak in Humphrey’s knuckles, the strip of air between his skin and Bright’s chitin, is the same as the grip that used to hold Futch back from fights or cliff edges. Even as Humphrey’s eyes keep tracking their progress toward the distressed vessel, he’s sensed Bright’s agitation. Futch is quietly, but frankly, amazed. And since he has permission to do this, he lets his hand stay there too, all three of them anchored together.
Bright’s anxious thoughts level to a background hum, like the drone of elder dragons while the humans sing, though hardly as deep. If that’s the best they get for now, then it is what it is.
The captain and mates make their resolution, and the ship continues its rounding arc until the trajectory is clear. Yes. Help is on the way. Futch sends assurance to Bright, but it doesn’t quite work. Possibly because it doesn’t quite work on him either. Whether or not they should be helping right now, they should be able to. And they’re not.
But of all the things Futch has and hasn’t been able to wall off through the years, this one is volatile. And since he literally just let it slip through, he’s ready and waiting with the deflection this time. Just like on a pass with Humphrey: he can learn and do better next time.
Without a scope, their sightline nears at the same pace of the ship. The distressed vessel is much smaller than the Prophet, flying two flags above the mast with the slashed and tilted sail. Their mast is fine, but the main boom is snapped like a felled bough, so, no wonder. The bottom flag with the laurels and blue compass, Futch recognizes as belonging to the Island Nations Federation, but the top isn’t ringing any bells. He wracks his memory for a good two minutes trying to remember what country uses a gold frame around a gaping pelican, when it dawns like a slap to the forehead: that’s not a country, that’s a merchant signal. Like the Prophet’s own Lightfellow swords-and-moon crest flying above the Zexen stag-on-orange.
A moment later, they’ve drawn near enough to hear the grateful shouts of the crew through a bullhorn. “Zexen merchants!” the caller cries with a rounded accent that Futch has heard at a few ports. “Are we glad to see you!”
The bosun quacks back through a horn of his own, “Here to help! Clear some space for boarders!”
“Will do! Send a carpenter if you’ve got one awake.”
The Prophet draws alongside and drops anchor, drifting into place until the names emblazoned on their hulls run parallel, and Futch reads, clearly and in gold-on-stain, Scholtenheim Reinbach V. Maybe from relief, maybe from nostalgia, or maybe because that’s just a really stupid name for a ship, he bursts out laughing, and looks up at Humphrey.
Humphrey’s face hasn’t moved. It hasn’t even shifted like the waves. Steady as the stars, still as the moons.
Futch’s laughter tapers down. Clearly he’s missing something.
But the crew sets up their plank, and drops it down. The crew on the Scholtenheim eagerly scrambles to slide it into place and lash it down, and one of their officers steps up to wait at the join and waves to the captain. “Sir! We are truly indebted to you.”
“What happened?”
As Futch circles the forecastle to climb down and hear a little closer, he picks up most of it: the Scholtenheim’s captain explains that the inclement weather three days ago was the last straw for their main boom, and they’re prepared to pay for lumber and labor if it’s on offer. Futch is perched on the stairs with Bright right behind him listening to all this when he feels a hand clamp down on his shoulder. Humphrey, of course.
Humphrey, who can’t hear any of this. Right.
Futch fishes for the appropriate signs, and conveys it the best he can, mouthing the words as he goes. “They were damaged in the storm. They’re paying for help if we can give it.”
Humphrey nods, but it’s slow. Almost wary. Though he could easily speak his reservations aloud, he instead signs, Learn. Get in close. Watch and listen. I’ll take Bright below.
But why would this be anything but – Oh.
They’re not even safe at sea.
Mutely, Futch nods and makes it clear he understands what’s being asked of him. Humphrey gathers Bright up and coaxes him away from the railing – with Futch’s anxiety kicked right back up, Bright’s reluctant to go, but he’s starting to understand orders in the field too. He flies down to meet Humphrey at the base of the steps, and even precedes him down the ladder to the deck below.
No one stops Futch from finding a place at a corner of the plank. He genuinely assists in steadying it as people rush back and forth, carpenters crossing onto the Scholtenheim with their tools, uniformed officers coming back onto the Prophet chatting animatedly with the captain about their troubles. Futch definitely can’t follow and stalk them, so he concentrates on the Scholtenheim’s crew instead.
From what he can see, it’s mostly humans, a couple of Beavers exchanging pleasantries with the Prophet’s carpenter and engineer, and a few Nay-Kobold topmen. All of the officers he’s seen so far are human, and the one hovering behind the carpenters is as old and withered as his sneer. None of them look particularly Harmonian: the only human people with light hair so far are old like that officer, plus one skinny man about Georg’s age who’s either gone fully white early or started off like that, but his skin is tanned like Wyatt’s was, not burnt like Humphrey’s gets. As far as Futch can tell, that white-haired guy is watching the Prophet the way Futch is watching the Scholtenheim. Well, fine, maybe he’s worth watching too. But then the really old guy by the broken boom, probably the bosun, starts bellowing at the topmen to uncouple some specific ropes. Which dominates everything else on the Scholtenheim’s deck.
It would help if Futch knew what Humphrey wants to know, exactly. But maybe the answer to that question is everything, or even anything. Well, anything to do with the Guild. But the Guild hides in plain sight, that’s the whole point. Nash, the Highlander and his team, Cresid and hers, Yves and Nitin, none of them were what they seemed, but there are potential friends out there who don’t deserve to be distrusted from the start, right?
Whether that’s true or not, he needs to get closer to hear anything of substance. And an excuse just reared its head – or, well. Its lack thereof.
“Let me get that,” Futch calls as he swings up the plank and jogs over, easily catching the end of a swinging rope that the Nay-Kobold topmen are struggling to reach now that they’re only halfway down from the rigging. One of them gets a little huffy about it, but the other two thank him and swing back up to brace it from higher up now that someone’s anchoring it.
That first Nay-Kobold, though, bristles his tail and hisses, “Who invited you?”
“No one,” Futch admits, holding tight to the line; whatever it’s holding up is pretty hefty and unbalanced, so no wonder they didn’t just grab it from the air. “But you don’t want to bust up the deck too, right?”
The Nay-Kobold grumbles, but bounds up to join his crewmen. The Prophet’s carpenter takes notice though, and looks up from his saw to project over, “You don’t have to stick your neck out.”
Futch laughs and grips the rope tight. He’s got the perfect excuse. It’s even true. “The sooner this gets done, the sooner I get back to Toran,” he says, and if his grin is a little forced, the effort of bracing the boom’s weight is a half-true excuse too.
The carpenter shrugs, and a couple of crewmen laugh with him. A moment later, the weight lessens on the rope – the Nay-Kobolds in the rigging, probably – and someone else counts off, and then a rhythmic sawing screeches through the air. Five slices, and the rope nearly jerks out of Futch’s hands; two more, and the boom cracks on its seam, doubling the load. Futch flexes his cold fingers and holds on tight, weight in his feet, but, gods; even shared, that’s a lot.
(That Nay-Kobold’s snickering might be intended for him. But Futch refuses to drop that weight until he’s told. And even then.)
“‘Ware above!” the Scholtenheim’s bosun hollers, and then another order at the carpenters.
Two more slices and a hearty kick, and the boom swings free. Futch’s breathes past his heels and holds on tight–
–and his right hand tempts him in memories of Bright and Chaco and Black, But why not taste the air?
Gritting his teeth, Futch drills his feet down and hardens his stance. He’s the counterweight here. Not some log and rope. Not when there are other people holding on.
Even if it would be beautiful, it’s not for him anymore.
More crewmen, from both ships, steady the swinging log; when enough of them have caught it, Futch and the topmen are told to let go, so he does, and they do. Nothing hits the deck, and more instructions are passed around, and Futch takes his excuse to linger and listen, like Humphrey told him to.
Over the next couple of hours as night truly settles in, he hears plenty that might be useful. The boom is down, the sails and ropes come next – that’s an adventure – and only that one huffy Nay-Kobold seems to question Futch’s presence or act like he’s not on the Prophet’s crew. Which is fair, he supposes; a year and a half at sea would turn anyone into a sailor, at least a little. The carpenters are deferring to the Prophet’s but the bosun is prickly and protective and sour. When the lead carpenter says that the repair will take at least two days, probably more, a couple of the crewmen laugh and joke about it, but the few that don’t openly scowl and grouse from the rigging. They certainly act like a crew that’s been together for a long time. So even if there’s something to worry about, it’s probably not all of them. But is that what the Guild would want them to think? Or are they like Duke, just getting strung along in plans too big for them?
Arrangements are made to properly lash the ships together for the next couple of days, and permissions given for the crews to mingle on the decks. The members of the Prophet’s crew within earshot seem happy about it, and most of the Scholtenheim’s too, but if the officers are a little stiff and uncomfortable. Is that out of the ordinary? Or is that people in power saving face? Like Joshua at festivals, and in those still-really-awkward dreams? Definitely not a good thing to think about right now, with the feel of gravity’s counter still lingering in Futch’s palms and toes.
Well, at least it will give him more time to do what Humphrey wants him to do. It’ll be like going out and getting into trouble. But he should still go back to the hold and tell him first. And make sure Bright’s okay with it, since two days of being mostly locked up in the hold are bound to tick him off.
So with a couple of the others, he crosses the plank back to the Prophet, and helps them lay a second one, and swings himself down the ladder belowdecks to check in with the others. The nest of blankets is more orderly than when he left it, with Bright curled up sleeping and twitching against Humphrey’s side. And Humphrey doesn’t rouse as Futch comes nearer.
There are so many reasons to smile at that, and they all stitch together like pieces of a pattern bringing a garment to life. Even under the heaped blankets, it’s clear that Bright’s grown bigger than both of them, though he might not be as heavy as Humphrey in his armor yet, and that’s a triumph on its own. But that Bright is still acting like he could fit himself inside either of them brings a lump into Futch’s throat. He may be smaller than any other four-and-a-half-year-old dragon Futch has ever seen, hardly larger than an ordinary dragon of two would be, but it wouldn’t take notes from Harmonian breeding experiments to prove what he is to anyone now. The tips of his horns poke past the blankets, and the spines on his tail twitch and fan as he flies through his dreams. And while most of his face is buried in blankets, it’s clear that beneath them, his snout is nestled into the crook of Humphrey’s neck, just like he does with Futch.
And Humphrey, calmly asleep with his sword weighing down the blanket hems on his other side, looks as restful as Futch has ever seen him outside of those dreams. His cheeks are softened and slack under his beard, his breath level, though out of pace with Bright’s. These last few months, Humphrey’s had an easier time falling asleep, immune to the call of the watch or all but the nearest footsteps. Which might be a double-edged sword, but Humphrey deserves peace. And rest. And that he can do it so casually and protectively with Bright is wonderful. For him, for Bright, for all of them.
Okay, so Futch will wait until morning to reveal his findings. None of them are that impressive anyway. At least, not yet. But if he’s going to be getting drunk with the crews and figuring out more, he should probably write things down so he doesn’t forget by morning.
There’s always a blank notebook or sheaf of paper nearby these days. Futch checks his pockets to make sure he still has his: he does, but his pencil stub is worn down. So, careful not to wake Humphrey and Bright, he tiptoes over to the provisions and roots through the highest-priority satchel for a new one, or some of Zweig’s charcoals.
…It’s not like Humphrey to leave that satchel untied.
Or for the contents inside it to all be shoved to one side.
Back teeth crunched together, Futch roots through the rest of the satchel, plucking out the pencil he needs but checking for the rest to be safe. Ricard’s book is still in place. So are all the notes from Harmonia with the bullet holes in the center. Joshua’s letters and the cipher grille are in place with the writing kit. All the little treasures they’ve gathered through the years, and all of the paper and ink they’re relying on now for complex discussions, they’re all where they’re supposed to be. And Futch’s traveling papers are folded neatly in their leather file.
But Humphrey’s are gone.
* *