Thin Freedom

The mud caught Rishi’s heel before Baldur’s Gate fell out of sight.

He shifted his weight onto his staff and pulled his boot free with a wet scrape. Beside him, Maeril stepped around the same rut without breaking stride. Her hawk passed overhead, ash-pale wings cutting across the low sky.

The rain had not settled into a proper fall. It drifted over the Coast Way in fine veils, beading on their cloaks and turning the road’s dust to paste beneath their boots.

Behind them, the city held to the Chionthar: walls, smoke, wet slate, towers and roofs pressed close around the river.

Rishi did not look back. Not yet.

The satchel tapped against his hip with every step. Inside lay their book, the first thing he and Maeril had made together: folded paper sewn beneath a leather cover. A gate, a bridge, a circle, and a hut marked its face.

His staff found firmer ground. He stepped after it.

The road had not softened because they had been blessed. It remained mud, stone, ruts, weeds, and distance.

Maeril walked near enough that he could hear the small sounds of her passage: the knock of her staff, the pull of a damp boot, the buckle at her pack shifting when she moved.

For the first mile, she did not make a single complaint.

Twice, Rishi saw her look back. Her shoulders stayed loose and her pace did not change, but her gaze went toward the city through the rain—toward the bridge, her canopy, the life she had left in other hands.

Each time, she faced south again.

Rishi matched her pace and said nothing. The leaving hurt. That did not mean it was wrong.

The last buildings gave way to farms, hedges, and fields silvered with rain. Mist lay in the ditches. Wagons passed with grunted greetings and the smell of damp wool. Crows argued from fence posts and rose when the travelers came too close.

In Baldur’s Gate, Rishi watched doorways, hands, shoulders, breath. Who was about to fall. Who was about to strike.

Here, his attention moved to the washed-out edge of the road, a branch stirring in a hedge, the depth of a wagon rut. He marked where a wheel might catch or a foot might turn.

The same vigilance, with more room around it.

Maeril followed his gaze to a broad puddle ahead.

“You’re doing that thing again,” she said.

He glanced at her. “Walking?”

“Pretending walking is ordinary while your eyes write a report about every puddle.”

“The puddles may become relevant.”

“Gods help us if Candlekeep asks for a sequel. On the Thresholds of Suspicious Puddles.”

The corner of his mouth lifted.

“I would expect you to write the appendix.”

“I would. It would be better than the main text.”

They walked on.

The miles took the city from them by degrees. First its voices faded. Then the smell of smoke and river water. Last went the sense that someone might still call their names and make them turn.

Rishi felt each absence.

Lantern Hall remained: its cots, clean cloth, Elisa’s blessing, the wounded who came to the door. He had placed the keys and watches into other hands. Trusting those hands was not abandonment. It was what made the next southward step possible.

Beside him, Maeril touched the strap of her pack, checking a buckle that had not moved.

“The stall will hold,” he said.

She snorted. “Of course it will. I frightened three grown men and a twelve-year-old into competence.”

“The twelve-year-old may be the most reliable.”

“Absolutely. He fears me properly.”

Her hand stayed on the strap.

“It feels strange,” she said.

“Yes.”

“I wanted this.”

“You did.”

She looked at him. “You are very annoying when you understand me.”

“I will try to be confused later.”

“See that you do.”

Her fingers released the strap.

By midday, the rain had thinned to mist. They stopped beneath a copse whose branches collected the water only to drop it on them in heavier portions.

Maeril sat on her pack and wiped a drop from the end of her nose.

“This is not shelter,” she said. “This is a tree arranging the rain.”

Rishi handed her the tea.

She drank, complained about the road and their provisions, then demanded to know why Candlekeep had failed to raise a suitably dramatic sign announcing itself.

“We are not there yet,” Rishi said.

“All the more reason for a large sign.”

He drank his tea and let her complaints fill the space the city’s noise had left behind.

When they had eaten, they shouldered their packs and returned to the road.

The land rose through the afternoon. Near the top of a low hill, Maeril stopped. Rishi halted one pace beyond her, planted his staff, and turned.

Baldur’s Gate lay behind them, dark against the river and softened by mist. Smoke blurred its edges. The walls no longer loomed; a thousand roofs had become a single shape.

Maeril planted her staff beside her and stared.

“Does it look small to you?” she asked.

Rishi considered the walls, the smoke, and the lives packed between them.

“No,” he said. “Concentrated.”

The hawk drew one circle above them.

Then Maeril turned south.

“Come on, monk. Before we start feeling poetic and become unbearable.”

He followed.

Toward evening, the clouds broke into long gaps. Pale light crossed the wet fields and flashed in the puddles and wagon ruts under their feet.

They chose a shallow hollow behind a rise, far enough from the Coast Way that passing carts would not see their fire. Scrub trees broke the wind, and the road remained visible from the hollow’s edge.

Rishi cleared stones from the highest patch of ground, set the tent, and faced its back to the wind. Maeril crouched beneath the scrub and searched the sheltered roots for kindling the rain had spared.

Neither needed to tell the other what came next.

The first flame smoked, sputtered, and went out. The second caught, faltered, and died. On the third try, Maeril shielded the kindling with her body while Rishi fed it twigs no thicker than thread.

Blue held at the flame’s base. Orange climbed through the wood.

They watched until the fire could survive without their hands around it.

Maeril lowered herself onto her cloak with a sigh and stretched her legs toward the warmth.

“Well,” she said, “we have left the city, not fallen into a ditch, and produced fire. I call that successful fieldwork.”

Rishi sat across from her and placed the satchel within reach.

“High standards.”

“I am a wizard. My standards are inconsistent but dramatic.”

The last cart passed on the road above them. Its wheels complained over the wet ground, then faded south.

Stars appeared through the breaks in the cloud. Without walls to return every sound, the night seemed larger than any room Rishi had known. His next breath went deeper than he expected.

Maeril looked up through the branches.

“Listen,” she said.

He did.

No wheels. No boots. No voices.

Wind moved through wet grass. Insects called from the ditch. A coal shifted in the fire. Far off, an owl called once and fell silent.

“The world is bigger than Baldur’s Gate,” Maeril said quietly.

“Yes.”

“That seems rude of it.”

This time, Rishi smiled.

She saw, and smiled back.

They ate beside the fire. The food was plain, the tea bitter, and damp had already worked through the ground cloth beneath them.

Rishi drew the oilskin-wrapped book from the satchel and set it beside his knee. Maeril laid her staff across her lap. Above her, the hawk settled onto a low branch, feathers puffed against the cold, its eyes still open.

Nothing came out of the dark. No omen marked the road. No attack came.

Freedom had offered them no grandeur. Only mud, rain, a fire won on the third try, and room enough to choose where they slept.

It was thin.

It held.

When the fire burned low, they banked it with damp earth. Rishi checked the oilskin around the book and buckled the satchel closed. Maeril drew the waxed cover over both packs and weighted its corners with stones.

Before she stood, she glanced north, toward the rise that hid the city.

Once.

Then she went into the tent.

Under the canvas, Maeril shifted on her bedroll and went still. Rishi listened until her breathing settled, then let his own follow.

For the first time, they slept with the city behind them and the same road ahead.