Zeb tried to be nonchalant as he kept an eye on Tilda and John out on the porch, but Amatesu was not fooled for a second. His conversation with the shukenja had trailed off into silence for quite a while before he remembered to look over at her. When he did, Amatesu was smiling at him faintly.
“I’m sorry, what?” he asked.
Amatesu lowered her eyes and sipped her coffee.
“You should ask if you may go with her,” the shukenja said.
Zeb blinked. “What?”
“With Tilda.”
Zeb stared at her. “I don’t even know where she is going.”
Amatesu glanced at him with an eyebrow raised. “Do you care?”
“Not even a little bit.”
Amatesu smiled again. “Then ask.”
Zeb looked back out the window. Tilda and John were speaking intently, and Zeb thought Tilda looked troubled, or sad.
“Do you think she would say yes?”
Amatesu set down her cup. “I do not know, Zebulon. But I know that if she leaves and you have said nothing, you will regret it for the rest of your life.” The Shukenja’s smile faded. “One should not have regrets, if it can be helped. They are very burdensome, and the large ones never become less so.”
Outside, John stood up at the table, slung his shield and turned away. Tilda said something Zeb could not hear through the window, and the man paused at the top of the porch stairs before he took them down and walked away. Tilda sat alone, staring after him.
“Someone should take Tilda her coffee, at least,” Amatesu said.
“What?”
Amatesu pointed at Tilda’s untouched cup, sitting atop a polished board beside a seashell mounded with sugar, and a tiny glass ladle.
“Tilda’s coffee grows cold. Some kind soul should take it to her.”
Zeb narrowed his eyes at the shukenja. “You know, you are very cunning for a priestess.”
Amatesu looked at him levelly. “I had bad training in my youth.”
Zeb rose and balanced the board, made his way out the door and around to the table where Tilda sat. She saw him coming but hardly glanced over before staring again off into the crowd where John had disappeared. Her shoulders were slumped and her face, normally so expressive and warm, was only blank.
Zeb set the board down in front of her, and Tilda thanked him absently.
“Anything else, Ma’am? Buttered scone? Turtle soup? Pickled orc foot? Bucket of whiskey?”
Tilda glanced up and Zeb straightened, snapping his heels.
“Cheddar wheel? Sparrow shish kebab? Squirrel surprise? Groggy varmint?”
Tilda broke into a smile despite herself. “Groggy varmint?”
“’Tis how you know they are fresh, Ma’am.”
Tilda laughed, and it was the best thing Zeb had heard all day. She finally noticed the coffee and clapped both hands, then started dumping sugar into the cup and stirring. Zeb sat down next to her as innocuously as possible.
“You’re a very strange man, Zebulon,” Tilda said, taking a sip and closing her eyes with a contented sigh. It was very good coffee, Zeb had thought.
Tilda opened her eyes and looked at him. Her eyes were nut brown and a slight squint gave them an almond shape as well.
“What happened to you?” she asked. “When you went through the gate?”
“Was I less strange before that?”
“Not really. I am just wondering.”
Zeb frowned and scratched his head. “I don’t know if I can really say. I mean, one moment I was on the dais, then I fell into deep snow. A woman helped me up…”
“A woman?”
“Yes, in furs and a scarf. There was a man there, a one-armed mage with a staff, but only the woman spoke. She called me by name, told me to run through the next gate, and then pushed me through one standing in the snow.”
“Through another gate?” Tilda asked.
“Yes, it looked like the one in the tower but it was made out of giant tusks instead of metal. When I went through it, I fell out into woods. Nice woods. Trees, and flowers, and a blue sky above. I could hear water, like a stream, and it all seemed…familiar, somehow.”
“It sounds like it was pleasant,” Tilda said, looking very earnestly at Zeb. He nodded.
“It was. I think…I think I might have stayed. But the woman in the snow had told me not to, so I ran through a third gate. Shaped like the others but made from the trunks of trees.”
“Why did you do what she told you?”
Zeb shook his head slowly. “I don’t know. She seemed worried about me, and I trusted her. She told me to go, so I did. And then I ran back into the tower, and into you.”
Tilda’s smile slowly returned at the left side of her mouth. “I remember,” she said. “That is what I mean. You’re a very strange man. That may be why strange things happen to you.”
“Perhaps,” he said. “Though really, that was only the fourth or fifth strangest thing that happened that day.”
“Sure,” Tilda nodded. “Nesha-tari turned into about half a lion.”
“Right. And a big Black Dragon yelled at us.”
Tilda nodded. “Amatesu got shot by a demoness in skin-tight leather.”
Zeb frowned. “Darn. I actually didn’t see that demon. I saw the big pig-ape. And an upstart Circle Wizard teleported us twice without killing us. You know, falling through two or three magic gates may have been the least strange thing that happened.”
“Maybe so,” Tilda said. “I even think you might actually have hit one of the hobgoblins you were aiming at. Maybe.”
“Hey!” Zeb said, and Tilda laughed again, white teeth showing brilliantly in the morning sun on the shaded porch. He had about gathered his nerve enough to touch her hand or maybe even try and kiss her, but was disturbed by heavy footfalls pounding up the porch stairs.
“Heggenauer!” Tilda cried happily, and Zeb turned to find the blonde priest nodding at them, washed and cleanly garbed but with his steel breastplate all battered and dented.
“Matilda. Zebulon.”
“How is it a priest happens by the second you’re about to kiss a pretty girl?” Zeb whined.
Heggenauer raised an eyebrow, but smirked. “Sorry, we learn it in the temple seminary. Matilda, is the Duchess Claudja about?”
“Call me Tilda, and no. Still asleep.”
Heggenauer frowned, but nodded at them both and stepped inside the inn. Zeb turned back toward Tilda, who was looking at him with her eyes soft, and a thoughtful purse to her lips that was quite distracting.
“We’re you really going to try and kiss me just then?”
“Um. Yes. It depends. How many daggers do you have on your person right now?”
“Twenty-three.”
Zeb blinked, but Tilda’s mouth widened into a lopsided smirk that made his stomach feel fluttery.
She sat up straight, facing him, and folded her hands on the table.
“Tell me one thing,” she said.
“Anything.”
“Just one thing, Zeb. One thing that is not a joke, or a jibe, or something silly. Just one.”
She was waiting. Zeb took a deep breath, and straightened up on his own chair. He looked Tilda straight in the eyes.
“The first time I saw you was in the inn across from the Dead Possum. I’d been choked unconscious by a Destroyer of Ayon, and I came-to sprawled across a table in the bar.”
