It wouldn't hurt to talk to her, Xuxa insisted.
'She talks to you?' Cordyan asked.
'She,' Baylee growled in irritation, 'won't shut up. She's worse than the mother I never had.'
'You had a mother,' the watch lieutenant said, shaking her head.
Knowing the woman didn't understand, Baylee said, 'I'm sure I was born to a woman, but Fannt Golsway was the only parent I ever knew.'
'I didn't know. I'm sorry.'
'They didn't tell you everything about me?'
She shook her head. 'I saw the likeness of you that Golsway had in his rooms.'
Baylee was taken by surprise. 'I wasn't aware that he had a likeness of me.' He'd never sat for a painting, and the old mage had never mentioned getting one of him. 'Are you sure it was me?'
'Yes,' she replied. 'It was a very good likeness.' She wrinkled her brow, perplexed. 'It was signed by someone named ‘Vi.''
'That's not a name,' Baylee said. With the understanding came a return to the sharp hurt he'd first experienced when he'd heard of Golsway's death, but it was also a bit of a balm. 'Those are Golsway's notations, not a signature. He drew the picture.'
'Golsway drew that picture?' Cordyan seemed genuinely surprised. 'He could have been a very well paid artist if he'd wanted.'
'He was a man of many parts,' Baylee admitted. 'But the only things he ever drew were things he wanted to-' He stopped short, his voice suddenly thick with emotion.
'Only things he wanted to what?'
'Only the ones he wanted to remember,' Baylee finished.
'I see. I'm surprised you didn't see this picture. It held a place of prominence in his private rooms.'
'I've not been-' Baylee stumbled over the word home. 'I've not been back in some time.'
'The housekeeper told us there had been some discordance between yourself and Golsway.'
'Back to work, lieutenant?'
Cordyan smiled. She poured water from her waterskin onto the handkerchief and rubbed the back of her neck. 'I never stray far from it.'
'There were some problems,' Baylee admitted. 'I think we were on the verge of working them out.'
'What problems?'
Baylee gazed down at her. 'And if I choose not to answer?'
She shrugged. 'Then I have more to wonder about when we resume our travels.'
'You had parents, I assume,' Baylee said.
'Of course.'
See? Xuxa put in. Already you're finding common ground.
Baylee ignored her. 'Did you ever rebel against your parents?'
'Perhaps, at times.'
'And how do you get along with them now?'
'They're dead,' Cordyan replied.
The answer caught Baylee off guard. He hesitated, forgetting about the argument he'd been building toward. 'I'm sorry.'
'It happened some time ago,' Cordyan said. 'An accident'
Baylee searched her face for any signs of lingering pain, but read nothing. Over the last three days he'd noted that the watch lieutenant could keep her own counsel. 'My disagreement with Golsway was much simpler than either one of us would allow it to be. I thought I was grown, and he didn't agree.'
'So you left?'
'According to the Lady's teachings, each of us must find our own path. The reward of that path of independence is in how much closer you can be to those whose lives have touched yours.'
'Where need and want are one.'
Baylee nodded. 'You follow the teachings of Mystra?'
'I am an interested observer, but not a passionate worshiper. Not yet. I take it you are.'
'To be a worshiper is so simple,' he said. 'All you have to do is look around you. When you are taught where to look, you will see the Lady's work everywhere. Just as I see Mielikki's.' Despite his first allegiance to the Lady of the Forests, he also owed a great deal to the teachings of Mystra.
'As yet, I do not share your confidence.' She looked back at the group. 'I'll leave you to your book.' She turned to go.
Baylee watched her. Over the last three days, he'd maintained his own company. Xuxa kept him in conversation all during the day, and watched over him at night when his thoughts busied themselves while he stared up at the stars. But it wasn't the same as talking to someone who didn't know him, someone who didn't try to guess his every thought.
'Wait,' he called. He capped the inkwell and replaced it in his pack.
She turned, looking up at him.
Baylee dropped easily out of the tree, brushing journeycake crumbs off his breeches. 'This is a journal. I was just making notes.'
'About what?'
'The things I can remember from the last few days,' Baylee explained. 'Conversations I can remember having with Golsway in the days before I left his house.'
'May I see it?'
Baylee gave it willingly. The journal was thick with parchment, most of the pages filled with his writing. Each entry was dated.
Cordyan looked at the last page in the book that he'd been working on. Drawings covered the page on the right, while script covered the facing page. 'This is the woman you saw that night?' she asked.
'As well as I can remember,' Baylee agreed. He studied the drawings. He'd kept most of them simple, drawing the drow female's face from a number of angles, front, and profile.
'These are very good.'
'I'm a poor artist,' Baylee said, feeling uncomfortable. It was one thing for someone to compliment him on his researching skills or on his ability to recover a particularly fragmented vase even though he'd never seen it whole before.
'How can you say that?' Cordyan flipped back through the pages, finding the renderings he'd done of the circlets that had imprisoned the skeleton warriors. There were even renderings of the skeleton warrior kneeling as it had with its face turned toward the sky. The tattoo had been exploded in another view, and the whole of it drawn in as best as Baylee could imagine.
'Golsway taught me,' Baylee said. 'It is not so incredible. But when you've uncovered some of the masterpieces we discovered during our journeys, the way some of those artists were able to work in the mediums, whatever modest talent I may have pales by comparison.'
Cordyan ran a finger along his pages of script. 'Your handwriting is beautiful as well.'
'Golsway never accepted anything less than my best,' Baylee said. 'He always told me that an explorer wasn't worth his salt if he made records no one could read.'
'So what do you write in here?'
'Anything,' Baylee replied. 'What I think, what I hear, what I see. Any conjectures on my part. Sometimes information I can copy down from reference books.'
Cordyan flipped the journal open to the first page. 'You write a lot.' She flipped through the pages, opening to maps of areas Baylee had walked through, seeing faces of people Baylee had seen, seeing a handful of pictures here and there rendered in ink and sometimes chalks of picturesque areas where the ranger had camped.
'It's a big world.'
The watch lieutenant stopped at a page that had a drawing of the pirate ship that had attacked a merchanter Baylee had traveled aboard. 'You've only been working in this journal for the last three months.'
Baylee glanced at the notation on the front of the journal and saw that she was right. 'Yes.'
'You travel a lot,' Cordyan said.
