Picking up heartbroken Lightkeeps.
“Well, get in then,” he instructed. “People are waiting on you.”
She timidly walked around the beast, and the man chuckled at her jump when it craned its head to nip at her as she passed.
“Pay him no mind,” the man apologised, patting the wooden seat beside him. “Let’s see you where you need to go, shall we?”
She nodded, climbing up and sitting beside him, though putting as much distance between them as she could.
“You hurt bad?” he asked, his manner pleasant enough.
“No,” she answered, knowing her response would not have wavered even if her injuries had been more severe. “I was very well taken care of.”
The man gave a grunt and urged the creature forward, turning the cart about, back from whence he had come.
It was not the formal exchange she had expected, but so little of this entire business had been quite as she had imagined.
Perhaps things had changed beyond the Wall.
Even if they had remained staunchly the same for Grimult’s people.
The sages had seen to that.
“You got a name?” the man posed, and her eyes flickered to him in surprise.
She steeled herself, pulling on a mantle she had long since thrown aside. “No,” she answered firmly. “I am the Lightkeep.”
One
The ride was longer than she had expected.
Penryn should have been beyond such things by now, all expectation set aside as the far grimmer reality washed over her, purging all youthful imagining in its wake.
The man beside her had given up on conversation, instead choosing to prattle on in a one-sided need to fill the silence with some sort of noise, at times suggesting that he was merely speaking to the beast pulling their cart. The horse, or so he called it, did not like going too long without a bit of encouragement, and a click of tongue and another rambling tale seemed to be necessary to keep the beast moving at all.
Or so the man claimed.
Edgard was his name, told to her—or perhaps the horse—after a long diatribe about the fine cakes that awaited him at home, not only a wife, but also a sister long widowed.
He paused then, as if waiting for some comment, suggesting that perhaps he truly was speaking to her after all, but she did not turn her head to engage.
If he had been trained for this position, it had been done poorly, or perhaps so long ago that he had simply forgotten.
He was meant to transport, not to ply the Lightkeep with details of a world she was never meant to truly know.
Although she could hardly report him. Not when she had broken enough rules herself during her time with...
She could not think of him, even now. She brought her cloak more tightly about herself, willing the weeping she had done beside the Wall to be enough. Quiet dignity was hers to call upon, but it seemed so terribly far away even now.
“You cold?” Edgard asked, peering at her with a frown. He allowed the reins to slacken, his body turning to grope into the cart behind them. It was covered by a loose tarp, presumably to protect the contents from any rain, though the day did not appear ready for such an outpouring.
Pity. It would have fit her mood much better than the sunlight peeking through the treetops every so often, bathing her in warmth.
He pulled a blanket through the opening, handing it to her with a smile. “Can’t have you chilled, can we?”
She did not bother to explain that her action had not been due to the temperature, but accepted it willingly enough. It appeared clean at first perusal, and her thoughts drifted to a bedroll that had been hers. Was that really just the night before?
Already it seemed a lifetime.
She placed it over legs and nodded her thanks. It smelled lightly of horse and some sort of sweet grass, and it was not unpleasant, the weight of it a surprising comfort even if only on her lower appendages.
She turned, her eyes drifting over their surroundings, enjoying the brief respite into silence that Edgard allowed. She could feel his eyes on her, drifting every so often and considering her, but she paid him no mind. Her hood should be up, she realised belatedly. Another mistake in a long line of foolishness, but it seemed far too late to fix it.
Before the destination, then.
When she was younger, when the maps she was set upon to learn were new and exciting, she had spent many days imagining what the other side would look like. The Wall was depicted in thick, black ink, harsh and imposing even upon a page, the beyond simple blankness.
She had decided they would be a very great people, their trees dyed in fantastical colours or purples and blues, ones that might match the threads stitched into the blanket on her bed by her minder before she was sent away.
She knew better now. It was a forest struck in two, halves of a single whole. The trees themselves were kin, so it was unsurprising that their surroundings were remarkably similar. Yet it was. And her companion was not hers, and she drew her lower lip into her mouth, wondering if it was also her girlish imagination that made her believe she could still taste him there.
Or had she fabricated even that? Perhaps she had only wanted to kiss him so badly that she had dreamt it, had believed he would respond as fervently in kind.
She blinked, trying to master thoughts that had no business remaining on this side of the Wall. She glanced down at her lap, her hands held in tight fists, her knuckles white. At least when Edgard prattled she had something to drive away her own racing thoughts. Memories. Fantasies.
She swallowed, turning back to
