Wayfarer (Wanderlust 2)

Chapter Twenty

Winter very slowly gave way to spring. Days in the palace passed by with maddening repetitiveness. They ate meals with the governor, and had to entertain themselves the rest of the day. Sometimes they attended Singings. Sometimes Jale would take them into the valley to try skating again. Sometimes they would invite Rayni up to the palace.

Tanden spent hours looking at books, doing whatever he could to learn about the rest of the country. Soren spent hours thinking about what he had realized at the Tier Kuin-shon. Making sense of his own feelings was one challenge, but figuring out how to talk to Tanden about them was something else entirely. Tanden was the one who was good at words, and Soren needed to be sure he could hold his own before broaching the topic. While Tanden read and studied, Soren ran fake conversations through his head, trying to prepare himself for anything Tanden might say.

The snow didn't just disappear. Over the course of a few weeks, it melted a bit on warmer days, only for fresh snow to fall on colder days, to melt again the next day. The roads of Esler Tigo were covered in muddy slush, which soaked through boots much faster than the fresh snow had. Jale assured them the weather was normal. She also refused every time Tanden suggested they start the journey back to Till. She was bored too, she promised, but it just wasn't a good idea to travel yet. They had to wait until the weather would be a bit more predictable.

It was one of the warmer days when Soren decided he had thought and imagined and wondered long enough. He went for a quick walk first to clear his head, just wandering aimlessly around a few streets near the palace. It was warm enough that he hadn't bothered with his fur jacket, just a thick wool shirt. Snow melting from the rooftops dripped down like rain. It would have been beautiful if not for the dirty, wet snow on the ground.

He found Tanden exactly where Soren expected him to be, in the library. There was a table near a window that Tanden had sort of claimed for himself. He was there, with three books open and spread around a piece of paper. A long quill fluttered as he quickly wrote something.

When he got closer, Soren realized that paper was the map he had bought in Till. Tanden was carefully adding notes to it.

"What are you doing?"

Tanden's eyes flickered up, like he had to check who had interrupted him, before going back to the book he was copying from. "The capital of the Tiya province is called Esler Tiya. The capitals of Till and Tier are called Krier Tier and Krier Till. I thought maybe it was directions, something like East Tiya, West Till. But now I think it has to do with whether the patron is a god or a goddess." He finished what he was writing and placed the quill into the ink pot. "I know we're not getting to Esler Tiya or Krier Tier on this trip, but maybe we could come back someday."

"Do you think Jale would let us hire her again?" Soren joked.

Tanden laughed. "Yes. She loves us." He looked back down at his map. "This country is huge, and every province sounds so different. I would love to see more of it. I'm sure Ivern's doing a fine job with the Wanderlust, but..."

"You're homesick," Soren said.

"Not a word I ever imagined using to describe myself," Tanden said. "But yes. I'm homesick for our ship."

"And West Draulin."

Tanden glanced up sharply. For a second he looked like he was going to argue and be defensive, then he sighed. "Yes. All right. And West Draulin."

Soren looked around. They weren't alone in the library, but unless Jale was hiding behind a bookshelf there was no one who would understand them. Still, he felt that the conversation he wanted to have needed to be more private. "I want to talk," he said. "Let's go somewhere."