Chapter 8: The Man in the Hat, Part 3

"This will just take a moment."

List hissed as Arden removed the improvised bandage from her left eye. The fabric had already started to stick in place, and the air stung on the raw and exposed wound. The priest paused a moment, taking in the damage.

"You're going to have some scarring. Healing gets somewhat messy with older wounds," he said. "But you're lucky. Any deeper, and you might have lost the eye."

A dull warmth spread across List's face as Arden spoke a healing prayer over her injury, and for the first time in her life, the hellborn girl got to experience the crawling sensation of her skin magically knitting itself back together. She shuddered from head to tail, but once it passed, the skin on her face was whole, and as good as new—save for the bright scar that now ran down the side of her face.

"Thanks," List muttered.

"If I understand the situation correctly, it's the least I can do," Arden said. 

After Arden's display in front of the mob, the three of them had left while the villagers were still too shocked and afraid to stop them. Valerie's saddlebags were missing from her horse, but they were in too much of a hurry to worry about that, and the removed weight did mean Valerie's horse was able to carry her and List, at least for the time it took to get clear of the village. Now that they were far enough away to feel safe from any retaliatory mobs, they'd finally come to stop to let the girls eat breakfast and try to recover from the fact that they'd both nearly been executed less than an hour ago.

Valerie had taken up the job of preparing breakfast while Arden worked on List's eye, partially to try and avoid this very conversation. But she could only pretend to be so busy with digging dried rations out of a pack and heating a pot of coffee over a fire.

"List? Would you mind giving me a moment alone with student?"

"Oh no, sure," List said, sitting up in a hurry. "I should probably be on my way, anyway."

Valerie's eyes went wide. "What?"

"Well, not that I don't appreciate the rescue or the healing, but I'm not really a people person," List said. "Besides, you've only got the two horses."

"I can't just leave you all alone out here in the middle of nowhere," Valerie said.

"If you'll recall, I can handle myself," List said.

"If you'll recall," Valerie retorted, "you were half-starved in a cage when I met you."

List briefly considered saying she could have gotten out of that cage all on her own, but decided that lie was probably too blatant, even for someone as naive as Valerie. Instead, she went with, "I got unlucky. Won't happen again."

"List—"

"Valerie," Arden interrupted. He gestured meaningfully off to the side with his eyes.

Valerie stood, mouth slack, looking between List and Arden, suddenly having two arguments at once without actually being able to get a word out. 

List waved her off. "Go. Have your student-teacher talk."

Valerie looked like she wanted to protest, but settled for saying, "Don't go anywhere. Please."

"Sure," List said without making eye contact.

Valerie bit her lip, but after only a little more hesitation, followed Arden off into the trees. 

Just clear of earshot of their impromptu campsite, Valerie braced herself for the lecture she'd been dreading since Dr. Siren had saved her and List from death by hanging.

"Would you mind telling me exactly how 'scout for information' turned into 'battle a lycanthrope on your own?'"

Even knowing it was coming, Valerie still cringed at the exasperation in the doctor's voice. "I didn't know it was a werewolf."

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"That doesn't make it better," Arden said, frowning.

"I was trying to gather information! But the sherif was on the verge of transforming, and List was trapped," Valerie said. "I was worried he was going to kill her, or else blame whatever he did on her. And then things just . . . got out of hand."

Arden's frown deepened. "You're lucky it was just a werewolf. If you'd been up against something like a demon or an ochre, you'd be dead."

"People were in danger," Valerie said. "What was I supposed to do? Let them die?"

Arden was quiet for a moment. "Do what you think you must. But staying out of danger and waiting for reinforcements is a sound strategy in the face of a threat you aren't prepared to face. And conversely, charging into a fight you aren't prepared for just because the fight is there isn't bravery, or heroism, or initiative. It's near suicide. And if you had gotten yourself killed, you wouldn't have done anyone any good doing it."

In other words, "Yes, you should have." 

It made perfect, pragmatic sense. Everything Dr. Siren said always did. But Valerie still chafed hearing it. "But we stopped it."

"Yes. You did. By the skin of your teeth, and without explaining yourself to the villagers. Which led to the mess this morning." Arden shook his head. "Which you wouldn't have even lived to see if your friend hadn't turned out to be capable of killing a werewolf."

Valerie wanted to argue. But the truth was, she could still recall in vivid detail what the inside of the werewolf's jaws had looked like, how they felt clamped around her wrist as they crushed her bow. Even with List's help, she almost died. If she was being completely honest, it was disingenuous to even use the word "we" when talking about stopping Darshan for how lopsided their contributions to the fight had been.

"Speaking of which," Arden said. "Perhaps you can enlighten me about how exactly she did that, seeing as you seem so set on getting her to travel with us."

"She can, right?" Valerie asked instead of answering the question.

"Given what she said, I'm not sure she wants to," Arden said. 

"She doesn't have anyone else, or anywhere else to go." Valerie's voice was like a child who'd just brought in a stray, and was now desperately pleading with their parents to keep it. "The only reason she got caught up in this at all is because she was digging through the villager's garbage for food. Can't we at least get her to the next closest town that won't try to kill her?"

Valerie wasn't sure what response she expected, but it wasn't what she got.

"Is she dangerous?"

She opened her mouth to deliver an emphatic "no," only to be stopped by her own memory. List, encircled in the crackling red whip, the light diffusing through the rain around her, blood gushing from her wounds, and a smile plastered on her face.

But she still didn't say yes either.

She didn't have any real reason not to. She'd known List for only a little more than a day, and most of their short conversations had ended in the hellborn telling her, in so many words, to shut up, or fuck off, ideally both, in either order. When she lined up everything she could say she actually knew about List, none of it should have inspired confidence.

Except for their fight with the werewolf. Face to face with the mortal peril of a lycanthrope bearing down on them, Valerie and List had thrown in together without a second thought. An implicit exchange of trust had passed between them, as naturally and easily as a hello.

And it was that implicit exchange that buoyed Valerie's final answer out. "Not to me."

For his part, Dr. Arden Lee Siren raised both his eyebrows in surprise. He'd been expecting a denial, and to have to lecture Valerie on what constituted, on a basic level, something dangerous, and how anyone who could kill a werewolf qualified. Her answer didn't just mean she recognized the possible danger in List, but also had already grasped that danger wasn't always a bad thing, so long as it was pointed in the right direction. 

Her confidence surprised him most of all, though it probably shouldn't have. She was the exact age where a young person's confidence in their own beliefs was at its most disproportionate to their actual life experience.

Oh well. There could only be so much harm in inviting along another traveling companion to the next town. And he really was curious to learn more about this mysterious werewolf slayer Valeire had stumbled onto.

"Why don't we ask her what she thinks about all this?" he asked, and Valerie smiled.

She might not have, if she'd known that List had left camp the moment she and Arden had disappeared out of sight.

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