by Dan Fish
“She’s worried about the Edge,” Sorrows said. “Orc patrol is for new recruits, not hired blades.”
“The Seph,” Fen said, lifting his glass, pointing a finger. “She thought you intentionally didn’t banish them. Maybe the elves suspect collusion. Maybe they keep you around to pull double duty hunting the Seph. Elves don’t like the monsters any more than you do.”
Sorrows shook his head. “We’ve been through this. Shen was there to keep me off balance, nothing more. There’s no Seph conspiracy or Seph underground. If there was, I’d have come across it by now.”
“Maybe it’s nothing more than keeping you on assignment with Davrosh. You could be partners for the next hundred years or so. How long does a dwarf-elf live?”
“Gods, no,” Sorrows said. Julia, he thought. He sighed. Rubbed his eyes with his fingers. “They’re good. I hate them, but they’re good.”
“Then be better,” Mig said. She rested on a cushion leaning against the wall. She had a strand of hair and was twirling it around her finger.
Fen gave a sharp laugh. “Better, sure. There’s a first time for everything.”
“Be better?” Sorrows asked. “And how do I do that?”
Mig smiled.
“You’re Solomon Sorrows. You’ll figure it out.”
✽✽✽
FEN FOUGHT THE whiskey for a spell, but eventually he fell asleep on his cushion. Mig yawned, quietly rose, and walked over to Sorrows. He’d moved into a corner, stretched his legs out in front of him and folded his arms across his chest. He watched her approach.
“You could have told me,” she said softly.
She placed a foot on either side of his legs and lowered herself onto him. The fabric of her dress slipped up to her thighs, pulled tight against his legs as she straddled them. She lifted a hand, brushed the hair from his forehead.
“I know,” he said.
“I’m serious about loose ends, Sol. I know Julia was special to you. I’m not telling you to forget her, but you need to let her go.”
“I know.”
“Do you? You disappeared for a year.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I know you are, and I know it’s difficult. Your job and everything you’ve been through. I want you to be happy. I thought I made you happy.”
“I am. You do.”
“A year, Sol.” A tear slipped onto her cheek.
Sorrows said nothing. He wrapped his arms around Mig and she pressed into him, rested her head beneath his chin. She smelled of lavender and orange blossom. He held her tight until she fell asleep, then carried her to bed and laid her down.
✽✽✽
HE LEFT FEN’S house quietly and started the mile walk back to the tavern. The sky had turned from starry black to gray, and the silhouette of the forest emerged around him. He had his cloak, his quiver, a coin purse, and a rucksack with enough food for a few days. The air was crisp with fall. Frost sparkled on the ground. His breath swirled in a cloud in front of him. His legs felt strong.
He didn’t hurry. He followed a packed earth path until it emptied onto a cobblestone road. Walked the road like a shadow, caught glimpses of his reflection in shopwindows as he passed. The elongated shape of goblin glass stretched his image, made him seem taller than he already was. It squeezed his shape into something thin in the middle and thick at the top and bottom, like he was being squeezed by some invisible hand. It made him think of the elves and the Seph and the bow.
The horizon blushed with sun hidden by clouds. Long wisps of dull crimson that would turn to dazzling orange and yellow as the day woke and morning bloomed. The haze of wood smoke lingered overhead. A north wind pulled at his hood, whispering of a winter that hadn’t yet found its teeth. The tavern appeared before him, wide and tall beneath a canopy of maple, oak, and pine. The windows were black, the front door would still be locked. He found a stretch of wall free of branches and waited.
✽✽✽
HE WAS LEANING against the trunk of an oak when he heard footsteps approaching on the road ahead. He looked up. Wished he hadn’t.
“Where’s Oray and Ga’Shel?” he asked.
“Already left,” Davrosh said. “Slipped the god-stream an hour ago.”
“Forest-walking? Who? Ga’Shel?”
Davrosh gave a quick snort. “He’s stronger than you think. Definitely stronger than your goblin friend.”
“But not strong enough to bring all of us back to Godscry?”
“We’re not going to Godscry.”
Elf scholars perform a variety of calculations with a variety of formulas. They study life, the gods-realm, magic, everything. They determine ways to measure. They invent ways to influence. They measure, influence, and measure again. They make small changes. The smaller the better. The less they influence, the more they understand how things react to that specific influence. Precision. Accuracy.
Sorrows wasn’t a scholar. Had never been the scholarly type. But he understood basic concepts like the distance between two objects. Knew the greater the distance, the more time was required to cover that distance. Knew time could be shortened by increasing speed. Basic concepts. Easy to understand. He knew Tam to Hammerfell was close to twice the distance of Tam to Godscry, which meant twice the time spent with Davrosh. He knew that without slipping the gods-stream, twice as much time with Davrosh became four times as much. Basic concepts.
“Gods shun that,” he said. “No way in hells am I spending two months slow-footing with you. We wait in Tam. Fen can take us in a couple weeks.”
“No chance,” Davrosh said. “We leave now. We stick to the road. Ga’Shel will be ready sooner than your goblin friend. He’ll find us and take us the rest of the way to Hammerfell.”
Sorrows shrugged. “Whatever gets us there faster.”
“My way does,” Davrosh said. “Get used to it. I know what I’m doing. When we get to Hammerfell, let me do my job.”
Get on her good side, Mig had said. Sorrows pictured Mig as he had left her, lying in bed with her hair spilled out beneath her. He kept the image in his head and forced a smile.
“You’re the boss. I’m just here to help.”
“Don’t patronize me.”
Sorrows held up his hands. Said nothing.
“Orchole,” Davrosh said.
Sorrows sighed. Her good side.
Chapter 10
DAVROSH WAS A creature of habit. She woke an hour before sunrise, coughed and snorted to clear her throat and sinuses, and spat phlegm on the ground. She’d done this every morning since they left Tam. She rummaged in her rucksack for a stash of dried fruit and nuts, which she proceeded to loudly chew with her mouth open, sounding like she had stuffed her cheeks full of wet rocks. She had done this every morning. She left camp to piss but stayed close enough to be heard. She scratched, spat some more, swished water in her mouth. She stomped and scuffed when she walked, adjusted her rucksack every twelve steps. She talked in her sleep, unintelligible words and moaning that only stopped once she started snoring. She did this every day. A creature of habit. Today was the seventeenth day.
“Looks like more rain today,” she said.
“Does it?” Sorrows said.
Davrosh adjusted her rucksack. “I think so. Clouds are building to the west. They’ll be here mid morning, I bet. Sleep well?”
“Sure.”
“Good. Me too. I slept like a rock. Back’s a little stiff, but my pack’s light. We’ll need to set snares tonight.”
“Great.”
She stared at the road ahead. “You think we’ve been making good time?”
“I think we’d make better time with Fen.”
“There’s a village two days out. We’ll restock, sleep at the inn. Will be nice to have actual beds.”
He said nothing. She glanced at him.
“Great,” he said.
“What’s with you?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re acting like more of an orchole than usu
al.”
“Seventeen days slow-footing. No sign of Ga’Shel. And you refuse to let me call Fen.”
She adjusted her rucksack, studied him for a moment. Opened her mouth, pressed her tongue into a tooth, made a squishing noise. Kept making the squishing noise until Sorrows cleared his throat. She stuck a finger in her mouth, started scraping at her teeth.
“How long have you been seeing his sister?”
“A couple years, I suppose.”
“She’s pretty.”
Prettier than you, he thought. “She is.”
“They have any other brothers and sisters?”
He snorted. “They’re goblins.”
She adjusted her rucksack. “Suppose so. They live together? Fen and his sister?”
“Mig. And yes. They’re close. It’s a twin thing.”
“Twins? Interesting. Common enough for goblins, though. I always wondered what it would be like having a twin.”
He glanced at her. She was staring at the road, brow knit, small frown. A thinking face.
“Tough news about your sister.”
“Why?” she asked.
“The killings. Her birthday. You must worry about her.”
“What did Oray tell you?”
“Only that she turns twenty-seven soon.”
“And you think because she’s my sister, my emotions will get the better of me.”
“Won’t they?”
Davrosh frowned, shook her head. “They’re all sisters to me. The four who were killed as much as Nisha. You don’t understand because you’re human.”
“Maybe you’ve already been compromised, and that’s why you haven’t found the killer.”
She adjusted her rucksack. “You really are an orchole.”
Get on her good side, Sorrows thought. He also considered his own sanity. He extended a hand. “Give me your pack.”
“Piss off.”
“Give me your pack.”
“Why?”
Sorrows shrugged. “To give your back a break.”
Davrosh kept walking, glancing between Sorrows and the road ahead. She tapped fingers against the straps on her chest, then stopped. She slipped the rucksack off, set it on the ground. Unclasped her cloak, worked herself out of it, one arm at a time, folded it and put it in the bag. She handed the pack to Sorrows.
“You’re still an orchole,” she said.
She undid the top two buttons on her jerkin, stretched her arms, took a deep breath. The air was cool and damp. The sun was tucked behind clouds. A good day for travel. They kept walking.
“You knew the four girls?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “I knew them. Mari the best, but I had met all of them a few times before. And then again, of course, on their birthdays.”
Sorrows glanced at her. “You were with them the day they were killed?”
Davrosh nodded, said nothing.
“Gods, you might have told me earlier.”
Davrosh shrugged. “I don’t need to tell you anything.”
She looked away like something caught her attention. Sorrows didn’t notice anything more than leaves falling from trees.
“Were you at the party? Did you see anything suspicious?” he asked.
“I wasn’t, and I didn’t. I was only with them the morning of. I did their paint. I do a lot of the face and body painting in Hammerfell.”
Sorrows said nothing, closed his mouth when he realized it was hanging open. Davrosh stared forward. They walked in silence. But it was a thinking silence. The kind of silence that led to revelation. The kind of silence Sorrows knew better than to break. He waited until the scuff of boots and a cleared throat announced Davrosh would speak. Then he turned, and she looked at him.
“The Maiden’s Dance is sacred to the dwarves. Like the Feast of Nine or the Eve of Silversong. They would never use an elf for something as sacred as the Mask of the Stone Mother, but even dwarves have a measure of vanity. And my painting is better than most.”
“Most?”
“Better than any dwarf. They ignore my elf half and look at me with one eye closed for a day.”
“But you weren’t at the parties?”
“I was invited. I’m always invited. But I never go.”
“You show up alone, paint some lattice work around wrists and ankles, a mask of vines and flowers around their eyes, then leave? You might be three quarters elf.”
“What would you know? I never had a Maiden’s Dance. And you saw how the goblins looked at me in the tavern. Increase that one hundred-fold and you might understand what it’s like being half-born at a dwarf celebration.”
“Look who you’re talking to, Davrosh. I’m an outsider everywhere I go. But I still keep a few friends.”
The clouds had crept from the horizon to the sky overhead. The autumn colors faded, gone dull beneath a veil of mist that carried the rumor of rain. Sorrows straightened his cloak, pulled at his hood, shook his sleeves down his arms and over his gloves. Wind whipped Davrosh’s cloak and skirt, snapping the fabric with deft, cold fingers. The weather was turning quickly, like milk left in the sun.
“I have friends,” Davrosh said. “Ga’Shel joins me when I paint. The daughters find him handsome, and he applies a restoration spell, so the mask doesn’t smudge. Afterwards, we have lunch in the mountains. Or we watch the boats float by on the river. Believe it or not, I get along with most people I work with.”
“Except me,” Sorrows said.
“Except you.”
“Because I’m an orchole.”
Davrosh lifted her eyebrows and held her hands out wide. Precisely, she was saying.
“How many of them did you accuse of murder?”
She shrugged. “You were a good guess.”
“No, I wasn’t. You need to stop thinking I was,” Sorrows said. “Because I didn’t kill those girls. Which means you’re missing something. Which makes it a piss-poor guess. And one that stuck me with you. On this road. Slow-footing to Hammerfell.”
“Ga’Shel will be here—”
“Any day now. So you said yesterday, the day before, and the day before the day before. Yet here we are walking. And now the rain’s starting.”
The only thing worse than rain is rain that comes early. Like a guest that shows up on your doorstep when you don’t want a guest in the first place. This was among the many reasons Sorrows didn’t have a doorstep. He and Davrosh kept walking but stopped talking. He reluctantly returned her bag after she reminded him a second time. She got into her cloak before the rain turned heavy. But the rush left her garments askew. Her hood covered a third of her face and she struggled to pull the clasps in front of her. Her jerkin was still undone and pulled tight against the swell of her breasts.
“Gods shun it,” she said.
The problem was her rucksack, which she had slung across a shoulder before donning the cloak. He gestured.
“You need to take off your bag. I can hold your cloak.” A grin threatened. Probably a laugh, as well.
She threw the cloak into the mud, dropped her bag, and went back for the cloak. She was clasped, hooded, and red-faced within a minute. She stomped off down the road. Sorrows caught up in a few long strides. She tried to stay ahead of him but took two strides to his one. Impossible. She’d have to run to outpace his walk. Basic concepts. Easy to understand.
“If you’d prefer, I could walk backwards.”
“Orchole,” she said.
The mud faded from her face and cloak. A line formed above the hem of her skirt where magic struggled to keep up with the grime splashing up from the road.
Get on her good side.
“Vanilla and tobacco?”
“Piss off.”
“Gods, Davrosh, relax. It’s good magic. Smells nice.”
She glanced at him. “Not very elf-like.”
“It’s better,” he said. “More like a dwarf, if dwarves used that kind of magic. With elves, it’s always floral or herbal. Lilacs and cinnamon or roses and
thyme. Like walking through a flower market. But after a while, it just smells like arrogance.”
Davrosh stared at him, then turned and muttered something that sounded a lot like still an orchole, but Sorrows couldn’t be sure. She adjusted her rucksack.
“Tell me about the murders,” he said.
“Where do you want to start?”
“Walk me through the first, from the moment you were contacted.”
“It was night. Or early morning, I guess. I was at home. Oray sent a runner, told me to come to Hammerfell Tower. When I get there, one of the Sturm household servants is waiting. Mari’s been killed. Ga’Shel and I grab our cloaks and leave. When we arrive, the entire household is gathered in the great room of Sturm manor.”
“Nice place?”
“Yes. Huge estate. The Sturms are an old family. Been around for millennia. Wealthy. Involved in local government. Mari’s bedroom is on the second floor, near the back. Her windows overlook the family hunting grounds. We walk in. Mari’s lying on her bed, arms spread wide, an arrow sticking out of her forehead, eyes open and staring.”
“Gods, to walk in on that,” Sorrows said. “Bed tossed, blood everywhere, body lying in the middle of it all.”
Davrosh shook her head. “No blood, no signs of struggle.”
“No blood?” Sorrows asked. “How’s she got an arrow in the head, but no blood?”
“The paint, Ga’Shel’s magic. It keeps the mask clean.”
Sorrows shook his head. “It’s not like the killer’s sticking a pin in a tomato. There would be splatter, mess. And no one’s going to just sit and stare at an arrow pointed at their head. She’d fight. Try to escape.”
“I’m telling you, no blood. Bed made. Mari lying in the middle.”
Sorrows sighed. “What was she wearing?”
“Still in her Maiden’s dress. Still with her jewelry. Cut gems on her earrings, cut gems on her necklace, silver bracelets and anklets. The full ceremonial garb.”
“The killer’s not a thief.”
“Right.”
Sorrows nodded. “And he’s waiting there when she comes up from the party, or else she’d have taken off her jewelry. Removed the ribbons from her hair, changed into a sleeping gown.”