Arghest and Phrin roll in from the rain-dripping forest, four days after the group divided their forces, wet and scuffed and grinning.
“What manner of time did you have, asking the village elders about that old story?” Phrin says cockily, wringing her hair out under the dome of a rain-shield spell, while Arghest takes their usual silent perch by the campfire, hands stretched to the warmth.
Bellby sums up village elders, village, and errand succinctly by spitting noisily, stonefaced. Phrin cackles.
“‘Bout as expected, then,” she says, and reaches under her jerkin to pull forth a folded parcel of oilskin. “But we got those inscription rubbings from the tombs — all the ones we wanted, legible and everything, so that’s a start, aye?”
She hands the bundle of papers off to the wizard, and plops down beside Arghest. “Is that dinner I smell?” she says happily, and cocks an eye at the newcomer around their fire. “From the village, are you? Welcome indeed you are, if you can cook!”
The newcomer beams shyly form beneath some manner of willow-woven hat, clearly marking some odd kind of wizard — not that they aren’t all odd —and presses a bowl into her hands.
“Oh,” Phrin says, tasting it. “Mothers knock me flat, that’s good. What is that?”
“Beef,” their bulwarkman says morosely, opposite across the fire. Graven has a tragic look about him at the best of times, not helped by the tufts of black feathers tattooed around his eyes, enhanced by smears of ashy kohl. He has a wasting poet’s air and colouration, sat incongruously upon a body hardened for armour and greataxe. He peers into his own bowl with a strange look on his face, as if he’s weirdly not enthused by delicious food.
“Beef?” Phrin says, spooning up broth with an alacrity more than making up for him. “Out here? Mothers, how did we come by beef somewhere there’s no cows?”
Graven sighs and points at the newcomer with his spoon. “Ask the necromancer,” he says gloomily.
Phrin pauses, spoon halfway between bowl and lips, contemplates the melting shreds of meat in it, glances between meal and cook. Finally, she shrugs, returns to shovelling the rest of the beef and parsnip into her mouth, slurps the broth from the bowl’s rim, and peers pointedly at the cooking-pot.
“Is there more?” she says, batting her eyes at the necromancer, and is rewarded with fresh smiles, another bowl, and a mysteriously produced crusty roll.
“Nobody else got bread,” Graven complains, when the necromancer skips off to check in with Bellby about his arcane contemplations.
“It’s because I’m everybody’s favourite,” Phrin informs him smugly.
