Chapter 162 — The Foxglove, Quietly
He slept through most of the following day, waking only once for a meal Pella practically forced on him before he’d properly gotten his boots off, and didn’t stir again until well past the following dawn.
"You’ve officially set a record," Pella informed him, dropping into the chair across from his table with the easy familiarity of someone who no longer bothered asking permission. "Longest anyone’s slept in this inn without us checking whether they’d actually died up there."
"Flattering," Arlen said, working through a plate of eggs with genuine appreciation.
"It was meant to be concerning, actually, but I’ll allow you to take it however makes you feel better about yourself." She studied him a moment, sharp eyes catching the careful way he still favored one side. "Rilla says you came back looking like something the Depths chewed on and spat back out."
"Rilla’s not wrong."
"Rilla’s never wrong. It’s mildly infuriating." Pella grinned, then softened it into something more genuinely curious. "What actually happened down there? Or is that one of those things you’re not supposed to talk about?"
Arlen considered the question, turning over how much was actually worth sharing. "Fell into something I shouldn’t have trusted my weight to. Learned the hard way that not every stretch of solid ground down there is actually solid."
"That’s a very calm way of describing what sounds like it hurt considerably."
"It did," Arlen admitted. "Considerably."
He spent the rest of that morning doing very little, which felt, after three days of dungeon terrain and two separate injuries, like its own kind of luxury. He tested his ankle periodically, found it holding steadier with each hour, and eventually made his way toward the Smith’s District rather than back toward the checkpoint, his torn armor bundled carefully under one arm.
Kellan looked up from his workbench as the bell over the door announced him, and his weathered dwarven face settled into something between exasperation and grim amusement at the sight of the Ridgeback hide’s ruined side.
"Back already," he said, setting down his tools. "Thought this set had a bit more fight left in it than a month."
"So did I," Arlen said, laying the armor out across the counter. "Ground disagreed with both of us."
Kellan examined the tear with a craftsman’s careful, unhurried attention, running his thumb along the ragged edge where the outcropping had caught him. "Clean puncture, not a slash. You’re lucky whatever caught you didn’t have an edge to it, or this’d be considerably worse than a repair job."
"Can it be fixed?"
"Everything can be fixed. Question’s whether it’s worth fixing versus replacing." Kellan turned the hide over, studying the rest of it with the same practiced eye. "Rest of it’s holding up fine. I’ll patch this section properly, reinforce it a touch heavier than the original given where you’re clearly determined to keep testing it. Two days, maybe three."
"Appreciated."
"Don’t thank me yet. It’ll cost you." Kellan named a modest price, considerably less than Arlen had feared given the quality of the original work, and set the armor aside with the same careful attention he gave every piece that passed through his hands. "You’re diving considerably harder than most people your rank manage this early. Good instinct, testing yourself properly. Just don’t let the testing outpace the healing. Armor mends faster than bodies do."
Arlen left the shop with that particular piece of advice settling comfortably alongside everything else Kellan had taught him since their first meeting, and made his way back toward the Foxglove with no particular urgency, content, for the first time in days, to simply exist in the ordinary rhythm of the city rather than pushing toward whatever waited next.
He found Yveth behind the counter that evening, sorting through a ledger with her usual brisk efficiency, and settled onto his usual stool rather than the hearth-side table she’d claimed for their last, considerably more serious conversation.
"You’re upright," she observed, not looking up. "Progress."
"Kellan’s fixing my armor. Figured I’d let my legs catch up before I go looking for more ways to ruin it."
"Wise, for once." She glanced up then, something dry and appraising in her expression. "Rilla tells me you slept through an entire day. I was half-convinced I’d need to charge you for the extra night’s occupancy."
"Add it to my tab."
"Oh, I intend to." She set down her quill, studying him with the particular, evaluating attention she brought to most things, though considerably lighter now than the hearth-side conversation had carried. "You gave Rilla quite a fright, you know. Coming back looking the way you did."
"I noticed. She practically force-fed me something bitter and unidentifiable."
"That’s her way of caring about people. Mine’s slightly less charitable." Yveth’s mouth curved, something sharp and teasing settling back into her expression in a way that felt considerably more familiar than the warmth she’d shown him three nights earlier. "I was mostly annoyed you’d left without settling your tab first. Very inconsiderate, nearly dying somewhere I couldn’t collect."
"I’ll try to die more considerately next time."
"See that you do." She returned to her ledger, though her attention lingered a beat longer than the work strictly required. "You’ve been keeping strange company down there, from what little you’ve mentioned. Spiders. Snakes. Something that apparently builds traps for sport."
"Not for sport, I don’t think. Something’s living down there that wanted me to stay put."
"Charming." She glanced up again, curiosity plain now beneath the dry humor. "And did it succeed?"
"Obviously not, given I’m sitting here annoying you about my tab."
That earned him a genuine laugh, brief but unguarded, and Arlen found himself, watching her return to her work with a faint, satisfied smile still lingering, thinking that whatever this quiet, developing thread between them actually was, it felt considerably more like itself in this easy, sparring rhythm than it had in the hearth-side seriousness of a few nights before.
Pella wandered past a moment later, catching the tail end of the exchange, and paused just long enough to fix Arlen with a knowing, delighted look.
"You two are doing that thing again," she said.
"What thing?" Arlen asked.
before Pella could answer him.
"Go find someone else to bother, Pella. I’m working."
"You’re barely working. You’ve read the same line four times." Pella flounced off toward the kitchen regardless, entirely unbothered, and Yveth shot Arlen a look that dared him to comment.
He wisely didn’t.
He finished his evening quietly after that, the ordinary warmth of the Foxglove’s common room settling comfortably around him, and made his way upstairs well before the tavern’s later, louder hours properly began, genuinely looking forward, for the first time in days, to a full night’s sleep uninterrupted by pain, pit traps, or anything else the Depths had seen fit to test him with.
Tomorrow, he decided, drifting toward sleep, he’d see about tracking down Elira and Dallin. It had been too long since he’d properly caught up with anyone who wasn’t trying to kill him or sell him something.