“Then what’s the problem?”

“Shall I draw you a diagram? Men can aim their piss away from their bodies. Women must urinate straight down, more or less.”

“Yes, please.”

“Yes, please what?”

“Draw me a diagram.”

“Go jump in the void.”

The sound of a buckle clanking and then the scuff of his boots across the path told her he was finished. “Your turn,” he said. “The hazardous cliff awaits your stream, my lady.”

“Stop talking about streams,” she said. Meanwhile, water flowed through her mind. Lakes, rivers, streams, she even pictured a waterfall. Think dry thoughts, she thought. Deserts, stones, cracked barren earth… Water gushed through the cracks in her barren earth, while the desert she’d conjured was flooded as a storm passed overhead.

“Just go. I swear I won’t look. And try to enjoy the experience.”

“Gods damn you,” she muttered, but she was already hustling past him, her bladder on the verge of overflowing.

“Be careful of that changing wind.”

She ignored the laughter in his voice as she shucked down her pants, squatted carefully, and uncorked her proverbial bottle. She couldn’t hold back the sigh that murmured from her lips. As she went, she stared out at the vast landscape, a gentle breeze sliding over her sweaty skin. There, with her pants around her ankles, she felt…well, there was no other word for it: free. “This is amazing,” she said.

“See? Told you.”

“I’m not finished. Don’t turn around.”

“You wound me. I wouldn’t dare betray my lady’s modesty.”

“I’m no lady, but I do have some standards.” She finished up, drawing her trousers back to her waist and then returning to Ludo’s side. “Shall we?”

To her surprise, he grabbed her hand, raised it to the sky and shouted at the top of his lungs, “Onward! To Lostwood and certain doom!”

“Want to stop for a rest, my child?” Ludo said, slinging his pack to the ground and flopping after it.

“Seems like you’ve already made the decision, so why ask, my child?” Bryony shot back. Not that she minded. She was tired, the distance between the base of the hazardous cliff and the edge of the forest much greater than it had appeared from the peak. “In fairness, the Daughters of Ereniel calling us ‘child’ is reasonable.”

“They looked that old?” Ludo asked, sipping water from his canteen.

“Older. Ancient. Like they could’ve been a thousand years old or more. Compared to them, we may as well be children. Anyway, are you still thinking about what happened in Oath?”

“No. Maybe. A little. Or a lot. Definitely one of those.” Ludo offered a half smile as he recapped his canteen and shoved it back in his pack.

“Me too.”

“You are? I thought you wanted to move on and not talk about it?”

“I’m trying to, but it’s not exactly something that’s easy to forget.”