2

By the time sunrise peeked in through the window, Lira was dressed in her hunting leathers and packing everything else she owned like the sovereign spirit itself was after her.

She rolled the useless maps back inside her clothes and shoved them down into the centre of her pack with everything else she hadn't bothered to pull out. Her bedroll went on top of that, a last layer of protection against the lingering rain of last night's Wilds storm.

Lira glanced around the room as she quickly combed her fingers through her hair and re-braided the mess of reddish-brown, double checking she hadn't missed anything. Pack, cloak, bow, quiver, knives--she had everything organised except her dumb cat. Shari had wandered off somewhere shortly after waking up and would no doubt give some unsuspecting patron an early morning heart attack.

"Could have at least closed the door, Shari," Lira mumbled as she retrieved the spiritsteel knife from under her pillow and sheathed it in the belt strapped to her thigh.

Her eye caught on the letter from last night, still sitting crumbled on the floor. She could almost read the cursed words through the paper. Dear Esteemed Spirit Hunter! For a brief moment, she considered burning the damn thing, just to make sure she never had to see it again.

Instead, she just kicked it further into the corner and turned her back on it.

With her weapons secure, Lira slung her pack over a shoulder. She threw her cloak over that, grabbed her bow and hooked its accompanying quiver to her belt, wondered what it might be like to not carry your entire life on your back, and headed out the door, hoping that she'd be out the door and gone before anyone else even woke up.

She walked down the narrow hallway, cringing as the wood creaked under her boots. She forgot how loud buildings could be sometimes. In the forest, the sounds all blended in. A rustled tree branch was nothing but background noise, but footsteps on the floorboards? It was painful to feel so obviously exposed.

Lira hurried the last few steps down onto the ground floor of the tavern, hoping that by some small miracle, Shari would be waiting by the door, ready to leave.

As usual, she wasn't that lucky.

Shari had made a friend. The dark-haired serving girl from last night crouched by the bar, talking softly as she ran her fingers through the fur of Shari's head, which was firmly resting on her knees. Lira stood unnoticed for a few moments, self consciously tugging her left glove higher until Shari opened one, silvery eye and purred in greeting.

The serving girl jumped as she noticed Lira. She fell backwards, landing awkwardly on her behind and tripping on her dress as she tried to scramble back to her feet. Shari's attention was already back on the girl, nosing at her arm.

"I--uh, I'm sorry," said the girl, finally managing to get back to her feet. Her gaze was on the ground, hands behind her back. "I was just cleaning, and your--she just came over and you said last night--"

"Shari, I'm leaving," said Lira, ignoring the girl as she headed for the door.

"Wait!" said the girl, rushing past the maze of tables and chairs. "I wanted to talk to you before you left, I promise, it won't be more than a few minutes, I just--"

Lira closed her eyes, hand on the door. She'd made a mistake last night, getting too friendly with the girl. A few months of solitude and she was already soft. "Unless you have an updated map of the area, I'm not interested. I have a job to do."

"I--actually I do!" said the girl, stumbling back towards the bar. "If you can give me a minute, I'll get it from my room."

Lira took her hand off the door. She raised an eyebrow at the girl and jerked her head, sighing as the girl's face immediately lit up before she dashed off into the back.

Across the room, Shari was still sitting on the floor, her feline gaze all too judgemental and pointed in Lira's direction.

"What?" said Lira. "You want me to be best friends with her, move in, let her teach me how to keep house and deal with people?"

Shari just kept staring.

"No," said Lira, leaning her bow against the wall and folding her arms. "You know my rules. I'm not making an exception because you've got a soft spot for this one."

Shari remained where she was a few seconds longer, then pushed herself off the floor with her powerful hind legs. She politely made a path through the chairs for herself before reaching the same table they'd eaten at last night. Shari stopped, sat, and turned her head towards Lira.

When Lira didn't move, Shari pushed out a single chair with her paw, an all too obvious invitation to sit down, because Shari wasn't going anywhere until she did.

Lira stared her down, a last show of defiance to her annoyingly stubborn bond mate before she pointed a finger at Shari.

"Only because she has a map," said Lira, picking up her bow from against the wall and making her way over to the table.

She didn't sit, nudging the chair back in with her foot and leaning against the wall, but the fact that she'd come over at all seemed acceptable to Shari, who took a few steps closer and rubbed her cheek against Lira's leg.

"Yeah, yeah," she mumbled, reaching down a hand to scratch Shari's shoulder blade. "I love you too."

The girl returned not long after, looking relieved that Lira hadn't taken the chance to leave--like she could have with Shari forcing her into negotiations.

"I'm sorry," said the girl, almost out of breath. She dropped a few scrolls on the table and started working at the clasps that kept them rolled. "I thought I knew where I'd put it, but someone moved them, so I had to check storage and--"

Lira set her bow against the chair and waved the girl out of the way, taking over the clasps. She had them open in a few seconds and raised an eyebrow when she saw the mess inside. Smudged lines, bad spacing, crossed out labels. "Where'd you get these maps? Are they the originals or something? Scribe work is all over the place."

The girl's cheeks went red. "Well, yes. I made them. They're mine."

Lira looked down as Shari stood up and wandered back behind the bar, her faint blue glow on the ceiling the only hint she was still nearby. "Why would your maps be more accurate than anything else at the markets?"

The girl's glances after Shari looked almost worried, which struck Lira as odd. She thought the girl might go after Shari, but instead, the girl drew in a loud breath and focused back on the maps.

"There was an earthquake a few months ago that opened up a ravine," said the girl, pointing it out on the maps. "Nothing much else to do around here, so me and my, um, friend, decided to go exploring. We ended up mapping it out over an older map of the area, or tried to. There's a lot of rockslides still, so it might be a little off, but--"

"It helps," said Lira. "I have another map with a ravine, so at least now I know which one is accurate."

"There's something else, too," said the girl, reaching into a pocket folded into her skirt and pulling out a smaller, hastily rolled piece of parchment. "One of the patrons left this for you last night. She wanted to go up to your room to give it to you, but I promised I'd make sure you got it before you left instead."

Dread was already curling in Lira's gut as she took it. She turned it over, and saw the seal.

A crying woman, collecting tears in her cup.

Jaw clenched, Lira ripped open the seal, not caring if she tore the paper. Inside, scrawled in a far messier script than usual, were the same four, spirit-cursed words that every other damned letter started with.

Dear Esteemed Spirit Hunter!

"I don't suppose this patron is still here?" asked Lira, scrunching the letter in her fist.

"Um, no," said the girl. "They left last night after they finished their meal and gave me the letter. Why?"

Lira threw the letter on the table. "So I can shove this letter somewhere they'll never be able to get it out of."

The girl instantly picked it up, automatically smoothing out the paper before she seemed to realise that perhaps she shouldn't be reading it. "What do you want me to do with i--"

"Burn it, eat it, use it to wipe the floors down for once, I don't care," said Lira. She grabbed her bow and stalked towards the door. "Shari! We're leaving!"

The girl's eyes scanned over the paper. "I don't understand, what's wrong with the letter?"

"You'd think after I ignored them the first ten times, they'd get the message," muttered Lira, pulling her cloak straps tighter as she glanced at Shari, poking her head over the top of the bar with ears twitching. "You coming or not?"

"They're just asking for help!" said the girl. "Isn't that what you're supposed to do? Help people?"

Lira gave the girl a smirk. "That's what everyone keeps telling me."

She pushed open the door and strode outside into the rain, slinging her bow across her back.

Shari wasn't next out the door. It was the girl, who ran after her down the cobblestone path and grabbed onto her cloak.

"Are you going to come back after you've closed the Rupture?" said the girl.

"No."

Lira tried to keep walking, but the girl pulled harder on her cloak.

"Then take me with you," said the girl, her eyes wide. "Take me with you. I can leave--right now. I can look after myself, I--"

"No."

"Then I'll follow you. I'll--"

"Follow me and you'll get yourself killed," said Lira, shoving her off. "You wouldn't even make it out of the Wild lands today. Something would grab that long hair of yours, and you'd be dead before I could get a shot off. No."

"Then I'll cut it off!" said the girl. "Give me the knife, I'll do it right here, and prove--"

"Where do you think I'm going after I close the rupture?" said Lira. "Back to the capital, to live in a cushy house and receive praise from the Kingdom for doing my job like the rest of them?" Lira sneered. "You picked the wrong spirit hunter to latch onto. No one is worth anything in this whole damned kingdom, especially not some serving girl from a backwater inn who makes one map and thinks she's invincible."

Lira knew her words had struck home the same way she knew when she'd landed a killing blow on a spirit: the light in her target's eyes died.

"Stay here and at least you'll be alive," muttered Lira, turning away. "It's all I've got for you."

Her boots sloshed in the mud as she left the path and continued, heading straight towards the faint, blue light in the distance that marked the Rupture's location.

Shari would catch up.

Lira just needed to get out of here before the urge to look back over her shoulder won out over the old, hard anger that kept her walking away from everything she couldn't change.

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