Chapter 52.4: Just Like That

“I’m sorry,” Penny said, much more simply than she’d expected. She was genuinely unsure what, if anything, to say next.

Jinkke drew an exasperated breath. “Yes. You just said that.”

“No,” Penny said, shaking her head. “Not about running into you. I mean about last night—or this morning.” Frustration made her shake her head even more. “Night, morning, whatever the hell it was. I was…” She floundered for the right word.

Cold understanding dawned on Jinkke’s face. “Inconsiderate?” she offered. “Childish?”

Scratching her face uncomfortably, Penny averted her gaze. Something inside her riled up at the words, but she shoved that aside. Jinkke was right. “Yeah. Those things.”

“Thoughtless?” Jinkke went on. “Brash? Self-consumed? Tactless, indelicate, rude?”

Penny lifted her eyes to the sky, absorbing the list of adjectives that rolled so effortlessly off the asura’s tongue. She rubbed hands up her face, working herself to stillness. She would take it. For Minkus, even for Jinkke herself, Penny would take whatever she needed to, to make things right.

Jinkke hardly took a breath. “Boorish, unkind, discourteous, hard-hearted, uncaring?”

Penny gritted her teeth as the list continued. She scanned the verdant plateau, just to keep from snapping on the asura in the middle of an apology she genuinely wanted to make.

“Maladroit, ungracious, insensitive—”

“Yes, OK!” Penny finally broke. She pulled her arms tight around her middle to keep them from flailing in frustration. “All of those things and everything else you can…”

Penny let her words fall off as she met Jinkke’s eyes. They weren’t alight, per se; the gravity of loss still weighed at her, but there was pleased mischief there. Looking Penny right in the eye, her levity continued to grow. “Merciless, cruel, pitiless—”

“What in Torment?” Penny demanded, glowering openly. “You’re making fun of me?”

Jinkke’s lips parted in an impish grin. “It’s about time you surmised it. Even an asura can’t continue listing synonyms forever.”

None of the flamboyant curses in Penny’s head bridged the gap to her mouth. “What— what’s wrong with you? I was—”

Jinkke raised a hand in acquiescence, but she couldn’t stop the snicker that escaped her lips. “My apologies. I couldn’t help myself.” She paused, collecting herself a little. The mischief left her expression, replaced by a brighter light. “I do comprehend your intent, though, and it’s alright. I appreciate your apology.”

Penny’s brow descended in uncertainty, narrowing her gaze as she peered down at Jinkke. “Just like that?” She might have filtered out the question if she hadn’t been so damned tired. Gods, she sounded like an idiot.

Jinkke huffed, the smallest breath of a laugh, and she pulled the thing in her hand against her chest, taking it firmly in both hands. Her eyes glistened with a new rise of tears, and only then did Penny realize what it was she’d been holding all this time: Minkus’ focus— weapon— thing.

“Of course just like that,” Jinkke said with a thoughtful shake of her head. She glanced up at the human again. “It wouldn’t honor my brother in the slightest if I held that, or nearly anything else, against you.” Jinkke considered something that brought a hint of a grin back to her face. “Smoke and sparks, if I refused to absolve a friend, Big Brother would have given me a lecture for it: one of those soft-spoken, sympathetic lectures that are impossible to contradict.”

At the thought, Jinkke almost beamed, and Penny wasn’t far behind. She knew precisely what Jinkke was talking about, and there was no question about it at all. Teary eyes and all, Minkus would have given her a doozy of a speech for not forgiving a…

Penny stopped, her face tightening in thought as Jinkke’s chosen word struck her. “Friend, huh?”

Once again she felt like an idiot the moment the question left her lips, but that wasn’t worth her time. There was something else—several other somethings, really, but one came racing violently to the forefront. It shoved every other thought aside now that she’d cleared the mental debris.

Penny stammered, “Hey, I— uh…”

Against her will, her gut seized in sickening knots, and though she tried to keep cool, Penny found both her free hands clenching and unclenching spasmodically. There was no fixing the fact that she’d left Minkus at Thaumacore, so her hands, of their own volition, sought for absolutely anything they could set to work fixing.

 Jinkke arched an eyebrow: grief, curiosity, and touches of annoyance vying for control. Penny cursed herself, but whatever impetus she’d felt to resolve the issue dissolved under the weight of that expression.

“Never mind.” Penny sighed, forcing cool distance into her voice—or at least she hoped so. She sniffed, gesturing away in the direction Jinkke had been moving before Penny had interrupted. “You need to go be alone or something. I get that.” Preempting any possible questions, Penny started backing toward the tent, quietly adding her gratitude. “Thank you, Smalls.”

The words stopped Penny mid-stride, her eyes widened as a series of thoughts leap-frogged over each other to an embarrassing realization. Gods, what was wrong with her? That nickname, Smalls—she’d based it on what she’d always called Minkus, Biggie, which of course had been derived from a childhood insult. Minkus had been fine with it, even liked it, but Jinkke hadn’t felt the same way, and somehow, that mattered to Penny now.

Before the asura could respond, Penny flung up her hands in new apology. “Gods damn it, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t call you that. I know what calling him Large meant to you, and—”

Jinkke raised a hand, and Penny quieted. For a long moment Jinkke considered silently.

With a nod, she finally met Penny’s gaze again. “I think he would like it. I like it.” Legitimate satisfaction creased the corners of her eyes—eyes that might as well have been her brother’s.

Jinkke nodded again, squeezed Penny’s hand lightly, and then strode away across the camp, once again clutching the focus tightly in both hands. She only briefly looked back over her shoulder. “Thank you, Penny.”

Penny watched her walk away across the camp, pains worse than the physical ones weighing her movements.

Sweeping a sweat-weighted lock of hair out of her face, Penny cursed herself again. She felt a little better, but what she’d smoothed over with the asura—with her friend—was just the beginning. Friends or not, how in Torment was she going to absolve herself of leaving Minkus behind? Jinkke may have forgiven her for being an ass, but would she be willing to do the same for Penny’s dishonoring Minkus’ sacrifice the way she had? Necessity or not, it was one of the first ways she could have repaid him for saving her, and Penny had failed. There was no way Jinkke had missed that point; the little genius caught everything that happened around her.

Jinkke now out of view beyond a neighboring tent, Penny let her head fall to her chest. All the hair she’d brushed away fell back into a near-solid curtain that obscured the overly bright world around her.

“Good afternoon, Miss Arkayd.” The voice almost surprised her.

Against her will, Penny straightened, parting the shelter that had, for one sweet moment, separated her from the world. Before her, clad all in Vigil woolens, despite the heat, was one of the two camp medics. She smiled and gave Penny a curtsy. Truly, a curtsy. The woman must have been some kind of noble before signing up with the Vigil.

“Crusader Hope,” the woman offered with a light touch to her own chest. “We met last night, of course, but I never expect new patients to remember that after a trauma.”

Penny nodded. The woman’s chipper demeanor still struck her as put on. It wasn’t fake, really, but where Minkus’ temperament had bubbled out of him like a spring, this woman’s geniality felt like it had a small pump helping push it to surface. It was at once annoying and impossible to hate. 

Penny forced what smile she could, figuring the medic deserved that. “Yeah,” she replied, “I remember.” How could she not? A healer named Hope? It sounded like the start of a children’s fable.

In one hand Crusader Hope held a black leather case that must have been far lighter than it looked. With the other hand she gestured to the tent flap behind Penny. “I came for today’s healing with Yissa. Is she in?”

“Yeah,” Penny said, blinking her thoughts clear. She pointed through the tent wall to where she’d last seen Yissa settle onto her cot. “She’s asleep.”

The medic woman nodded, stepping forward on cat feet to poke her head silently past the flap. Just as gingerly, she pulled back, lowering her voice. “It seems you’re right.” Good, little Vigil healer that she was, she didn’t miss a beat. “If you’d like, I can tend to you first. We’ll let your friend continue to rest while she can.”

Friend. The word caught Penny again. It had always meant something more to Minkus than it had to her; she’d known that. Now, though, Penny had the distinct feeling it meant something more to his sister as well. She didn’t know how she felt about that.

The throb in her leg brought Penny back to the current moment, and she sighed. “Yeah, OK. Might as well get it over with.”

“Lovely,” the other woman said, stepping forward to pull back the flap in utter silence. With a toss of her curly head, Hope gestured Penny inside. “We’ll be quiet,” she whispered. “Head to your cot.”

Penny did as she was asked, moving directly to her spot as the medic stepped aside to pick up a stool from the scholar’s side of the tent. She brought it alongside the charcoal gray cot just as Penny sat down, doing nothing to stifle the grimace that stretched across her face as pain flared to life in her leg again.

Crusader Hope lowered her case to the ground beside the weathered stool but kept her eyes focused on Penny. “If you’ll just lie down and pull back your tunic, I’ll start by removing the bandages.”

Penny obliged, drawing her legs up, lying back, and pulling up her top to make her bandaged side as accessible as her leg—she was still pissed about how much of her pant leg they’d cut off to get at those wounds. The medic settled down on her seat and started rifling through the leather case, filled with orderly rows of glass bottles and vials. Selecting one and slipping into a small breast pocket, Hope leaned toward Penny and began removing the bandage at her side. Tropical, summer air touched the wound and somehow still felt cold.

Hope’s face went oddly unreadable. “Were you able to get some sleep?” She was already peeling back the first of the leg wraps and assessing it with those inexpressive eyes.

Internally Penny swore, knowing that such a question would have a direct impact on her escape from the camp. Against an impulse to simply tell the woman what she wanted to hear, Penny shook her head. Lying wouldn’t gain her anything. “No,” she said with a tight scowl. “Not a damned wink.”

Crusader Hope tsked, still revealing and inspecting wounds. “It’s understandable; you saw a lot yesterday. Without sleep, though, my work is going to lose quite a bit of its potency, and your healing will take much longer.” She offered Penny a sympathetic smile. “It’s important that you rest.”

The camp, Penny had learned, had two medics. The other was strictly a trained field medic: probably capable with his poultices, tonics, and what-not, but he hadn’t a lick of magical ability. Hope, on the other hand, had some natural talent with healing magic, but after seeing what Minkus had accomplished time and again, Penny wasn’t impressed. Assuming Hope was right, though—assuming sleep really did matter to the crusader’s process—there was no telling how many of these sessions Penny would have to endure before she’d fully recover.

“Yeah?” Penny laughed mirthlessly before catching herself and lowering her volume again. “Well, I’ll keep that in mind when I’m not sleeping again tonight.”

“Would you like something for that?” The response was quick but gentle, rehearsed.

Penny turned her head, craning some to look past the edge of the cot to that open leather case on the thick, canvas floor. “Depends. You have any blood whiskey in there? Wine won’t do the trick.”

The crusader chortled lightly, catching the humor. 

“Afraid not, Miss Arkayd.” She said it almost apologetically. “We don’t have any alcohol here—at least not beyond what we use for cleaning wounds. The Captain is very firm about keeping a dry camp.”

“Excuse me?” Penny’s whisper came near to a hiss. “You’re telling me no one here has anything? No liquor? No wine? Not even beer?”

Hope shrugged, shaking her head, then went back to removing the last of the bandages down Penny’s leg.

Penny gawked, twisting her face in disbelief. It was no surprise that the old man would both voice and enforce such a rule, but there were always people willing to work behind, beneath, and around authority—always. She said as much to the medic, but Crusader Hope simply reassured her that that wasn’t the case in their camp; there was too much respect among Gelwin’s people for that. There was rumor the supply team would occasionally enjoy a drink on their pickup runs, but she was certain none ever came back into the camp. Simply from exhaustion, Penny let the medic win the debate—but there was no way it was true.

The other woman dabbed one of her tinctures into Penny’s bared wounds—It burned. She finished and bent down, returning one vial and pulling out another. She extended the new one to Penny, and said in the same low, considerate voice, “This would give you much better rest.”

Penny nearly asked what it was, but she thought better—as if any name the woman gave would mean something to her. Instead, she shrugged and reached for it.

The vigilwoman almost giggled, pulling the glass tube back out of Penny’s reach. “Not just yet,” she said. “I’ll administer it tonight. Otherwise you might not make it to the mess for dinner.”

“Really?” Penny arched an eyebrow. “That much kick?”

“That much kick,” the crusader agreed. “I’ll bring it back tonight. For now, though, please lie back.”

Penny obeyed, and Hope changed the topic of discussion, asking Penny about her life outside the last several days. She was trying to politely distract and calm her patient before starting into whatever magical, hand-wavy practice she had to employ, but that was not the right question to ask. Penny’s mind raced back into the well rutted paths it had formed over the last days, and she fell silent. Both of them did.

Penny’s eyes fell to the other side of the tent, to Jinkke’s cot. It stirred the mental flurry again. But as she took in the asura’s few possessions aligned neatly on the canvas floor, everything seemed to narrow down to Minkus’ leather backpack.

The leather was hardly new now, scuffed and stained by the previous day and all the hikes, wagon rides, and engineering work that had led up to it. The bag had always borne the marks of use before, she knew, but she’d never paid much attention to it. It was Minkus’ bag, and he’d toted it everywhere they’d traveled since Divinity’s Reach and for who knew how many years before. It was weathered, stretched, and soft where it had been flexed and loaded and unloaded and tossed more times than anyone could count. But beneath the layer of travel grime, it had a sheen that spoke to the way Minkus had cared for it; Penny had never seen him oil the thing, but it seemed like he had. It had held all the things that Minkus had deemed important enough to keep with him as he’d traveled the world, and now it held something of hers. She could almost see the randomized pile of seraph and centaur parts inside its largest compartment, and it felt somehow appropriate.

For the next hour—or hours or weeks or gods-knew-how long—the woman hovered hands over each of Penny’s wounds in abject silence, leaving Penny nothing but her own thoughts and the sensation of icy spider legs dancing inside her injuries. The latter was awful. The former was less so.