by Kevin Hearne
That’s what her parents would be looking for: a Lady with a capital L.
And Morgan didn’t want to be found, so it made sense not to be one.
Oh, sure, she’d still be a lady with a lowercase l. But she’d keep the beard, oil it, trim it, maybe braid the silky sides and invest in some pretty ribbons. And she’d wear pants and a loose tunic and perhaps a jaunty hat. And possibly some black eyeliner, because she was going to be a pirate.
Heck, she could be whatever she wanted to be.
“Forget the barber,” she said. “Just help me find one of those dwarvelish beard rings.”
Morvin shrugged. “As you wish,” he said.
Tempest woke before dawn, silently stretched her limbs, and walked out the door. She’d gone to bed after her sisters, which was just the normal way of things; she was a night owl, after all. But she’d worn her cloak to bed and placed her pack by the door, which meant that by the time Stormy and Misty shook the tangles and ladybugs out of their hair, she would be well on her way to Sullenne. That’s where the innkeeper said anyone needing a boat might find it, as the river met the sea there, bringing together merchants, pirates, fishermen, and fishwives, although she still wasn’t sure if these were the wives of fish, or half-fish women who were married to men, or something more quotidian. Dryads knew little of the sea, after all, except that it was awfully salty and not as terrifying when one was made out of buoyant wood.
Silently shutting the door, she hurried outside and slunk to the edge of the city, her cloak pulled down tight. With the money she’d saved at Cappy’s, she stopped to purchase a weapon for self-defense on the road, but the shopkeeper proved most annoying.
“I’d like a sword, please,” she said, standing before the rough wooden counter with her back straight and her chin up. “Or maybe two, if there’s some sort of a buy-one-get-one-free deal going on.”
“Don’t sell swords to women,” the man said, somehow grunting the entire sentence. “Oy’ll sell you a Li’l Miss Dagger or a Betty Club, which is like a Billy Club but pink and weighing naught but two pounds. It even has a little mirror on the end, see, so you can check yer lipstick.” He held up the objects in question, and Tempest felt her sap rising.
The Betty Club was indeed pink and looked like it couldn’t concuss a chipmunk, and the dagger was lavender with glitter and had a rubber blade and the words Princess Stabby painted on the hilt.
“See here,” she said, but instead of a growl, it got a bit shrill. “I have a right to buy any weapon I can afford, and—”
The shopkeeper pointed to a sign on the wall that read, MOY SHOPPE, MOY ROOLS, with idiosyncratic spelling.
Tempest huffed in annoyance. “Those aren’t even words.”
“Moy shoppe, moy words,” the man said. “I make the rools. Door’s right there if ye don’t loike it.”
Tempest held her shoulders back just a little more and looked him in the eye as she made quotation marks with her fingers. “Fine. Your ‘shoppe,’ your ‘rools,’ but please know that I’m on my way to law school, and when I get my degree, the first thing I intend to do is sue you.”
He winked. “Dunno what suing is, but if you do it with yer lips, you can come on back to see me anytime.”
With a cry of disgust, she marched out, slamming the door despite the laughably misspelled DOO NOTT SLAMME DOOOR sign.
Outside, she was pleased to pay 15 percent more to the creepy halfling who sidled up with an open cloak dripping with daggers, none of which were pink. Her new weapon wasn’t the sharpest or the newest, and she was pretty sure the stains were blood and not chocolate fondue, as the seller swore, but she did name it Mr. Stabby, with full knowledge that if she ever had to use it, she would be thinking of the shopkeeper who’d tried to sell her a Betty Club.
She hadn’t wanted to take any supplies from her sisters, so she stopped at carts and shops to buy fresh fruit and vegetables, bread and cheese. In their mobile stage, dryads were vegetarians, but they weren’t all up in your face about it; in their woody phase, they were carnivores and not only in your face about it but also eating your face. She worried about Misty but knew Stormy would take care of their younger, sweeter sapling of a sister. For everything that he’d done wrong, their father had named them all appropriately. Tempest wasn’t a problem most of the time, but when she was…well, it was best to take cover. At least, that was who she’d been before Tommy Bombastic and that was who she was going back to being now that she was free.
The road was well traveled and not at all a fetid mire like some country lanes, but Tempest felt more comfortable walking in the grass along the edge. Her feet could almost taste the soil that she would one day root in—and sooner rather than later, if she wasn’t more careful around people like Cappy. She kept her hood down always over her face and hair, praying no one would see her for what she was and make unfair demands or try to trick her again. She would have to harden her heart to keep from hardening her body, even if it meant she had to keep walking when a cart horse went lame on the road with a piteous whinny or a small child got scratched by an old dwarf’s pet raccoon and screamed melodramatically. After a full day of walking at her quick pace, unencumbered by her sisters but weighed down by her heavy heart, she decided to sleep during the day and walk at night.
It was faster that way, and as much as the sun energized her, the moon had its own power. She met a tinker once and bought a small and out-of-date halfling law book from him, and she read a chapter every dawn and every dusk, hoping to brush up her vocabulary and possibly learn how to better threaten sexist shopkeepers.
“Mens rea,” she would say out loud as she walked, enjoying the words. “Sidebar. Circumstantial evidence.”
“Who?” an owl once asked back.
“The defense rests!” she replied, feeling like the book was truly sinking in.
The owl flew away, which meant she’d won.
Finally she stood before the city gates of Sullenne, just after dawn one day. It was quiet and almost beautiful if you squinted, and it didn’t smell too much like garbage if you held your nose, which was all one could say about Sullenne on the best of days, really. She kept her hood down as she paid her fickel to enter, and the sleepy guard didn’t ask her to reveal her face, thank goodness. Apparently people in cities valued their anonymity as much as she did.
Sullene itself wasn’t much to see through the constant drizzle, but Tempest felt wonderful. For the first time, she’d chosen her own destiny, set forth, and made it happen. She hadn’t been tricked or forced into healing anyone, and no birds had tried to nest in her hair, and Mr. Stabby hadn’t left her belt unless she had to cut up an apple. And she was still flying high from her first courtroom victory over that owl.
Tempest spent her day sightseeing, which was a tad difficult when one had to keep covered by a deep hood and regard said sights through rain that was dirty and gray with an a, unlike cleaner forest rain, which was grey with an e. At dinnertime, she followed a pair of halflings to a brightly lit restaurant, assuming that if their stomachs were grumbling that loudly and they were that hungry, the food had to be decent.
As soon as the waitress seated her, she knew her assumptions were wrong.
The scent of greasy meat hung on the air, and the walls glinted with splattered fat and halfling fingerprints. The sticky menu felt like the inside of someone else’s nose. Said menu told Tempest that this place, called Dinny’s, was part of a chain that bragged it was open twenty-five hours a day, 366 days a year, which meant that they had to be so busy feeding halflings that they never had a moment to stop and swab everything off with a lemony-smelling enzymatic cleaner. Still, it seemed like she was the only person who wasn’t eagerly anticipating her meal, as the dining room was crowded and loud with happy chatter and the sound of bilious halflings releasing their various gases into air that was, unfortunately, already pretty beefy.
She couldn’t do this. Even the vegetarian options on the menu came with a side of some sort of meat lovingly called EATUM. The salad came with meat dressing, meat croutons, and olives, which was the last straw. She had to get out and find a nice soup buffet.
As Tempest abruptly pushed her chair back to stand, it thunked into something big. Something heavy. Something that grunted and muttered, “Who the forelock do you think you are, huh?”
She twisted in her chair and found herself staring at glossy brown legs, the only things visible in the limited field of her hood. When she looked up, she saw the man riding the horse—inside a building? Good groves, city people were strange.
No. It was a centaur. She’d never met a centaur before and she’d heard they were violent and bad-tempered and mostly stayed in their fields, where they always had plenty of room to maneuver and bash one another with maces.
But here was a centaur, in the Sullenne Dinny’s, being very cross with her indeed.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, keeping her voice low. “I didn’t see you there.”
“Oh, really?” the centaur said, pawing a hoof. “You managed to miss a person who weighs as much as a wagon full of watermelons and could crush your little head like one?”
“Well, yes,” she said, aiming for honesty. “It’s a very busy Dinny’s.”
She wanted to scoot her chair back and stand to prepare to run away, but she realized with a jolt of fear that the giant angry centaur had blocked her in with his body. She couldn’t move her chair without slamming his forelegs, and judging by the precise flames painted on his hooves, he wasn’t going to like that one bit.
“Oh, so now I’m not a person?” the centaur said.
“That’s a completely inaccurate conclusion to draw based on what I said,” Tempest muttered, trying not to panic. “I was lost in my own thoughts. Having a rough day. Just wanted to leave. And my hood is kind of hard to see around.”
“So pull back your hood and look me in the face, bro,” the centaur said.
Tempest didn’t want to, but she didn’t want to make him any angrier, so she did it.
The centaur’s face so high above changed dramatically from aggressive anger to…
“How you doin’, pretty thing?” he said, waggling his eyebrows.
Tempest sighed. “Not that great, honestly. Would you mind if I stood up?”
The centaur stepped aside, and she was able to scoot her chair away from the table and stand. When she looked up, she saw his belly button, which was deeply uncomfortable for her but seemed to amuse him. He had more lint in there than she would’ve expected.
“My name is Vic,” the centaur said, puffing out his chest, not that it needed puffing. “Short for Pissing Victorious.”
“You’re doing what?” Tempest recoiled, staring down at her bare feet.
The centaur stomped a hoof in annoyance.
“I’m not—I mean—not right now,” he growled. “It’s a name. Centaur names work like that, you know—a gerund followed by an adjective. What’s your name, little filly?”
Tempest tried to edge around him, but he moved his hindquarters and flicked his tail, boxing her in. Her instinct was to bow her head, make herself small, and try to get through the evening without causing any drama. But then she recalled her years with Tommy Bombastic, and her will coalesced. Never again would she let some man make her feel small, tell her where she could go and when. She pulled her dagger and put the point against his equine belly.
“I’m not a filly, and I’m not telling you my name, but I will tell you that my dagger is named Mr. Stabby and that’s definitely not chocolate on the blade. Now, you are going to stop blocking my path or—or—or…I am going to turn your eight-pack into a leaky keg.”
For a moment he didn’t move. She added some pressure on the dagger, just the tiniest bit, so that it was on the verge of drawing blood. It made him squeak and Tempest marveled at the feeling of power that gave her.
Finally backing off and giving her room to pass, the centaur grumbled, “Nobody was blocking you, honey. You don’t have to be such a mare about it. You’re not even that pretty.”
Instead of arguing, Tempest darted around him into the safety of the room at large. All around them, conversations had continued as halflings, dwarves, and humans alike shoveled greasy food into their mouths and went to great lengths to avoid getting involved. If anyone had noticed her distress, they’d done nothing about it. And no one would meet her eye now.
It was a world that definitely needed more lawyers, and Tempest was getting to like the taste of arguing. She spun around and pointed at the centaur.
“You were blocking me and now you’re gaslighting me about it, and I don’t owe you nice or pretty,” she barked before walking with as much dignity as she could toward the door. “You think you’re the centaur of the universe, but you know what else? Nobody likes this tough-guy act. It makes you come off as sad and insecure. So there. I rest my case.”
The centaur didn’t seem to like that—she could feel him walking behind her, his huge hooves making the boards bow under a little as they clopped down.
“You shouldn’t talk to people that way,” the centaur said. It almost sounded apologetic, but she didn’t look back. “Especially not to people who are bigger than you.”
Just then a large party crowded in the door, and Tempest realized she was trapped between Vic the man-horse and thirty hungry dwarves, all hung with Telling Cudgels, which meant they were on some sort of Meadschpringå field trip and would be looking for a fight. If she let that fight start, so many innocent people could be hurt, and then…well, they would want healing, and she would know their wounds were her fault.
Desperate now, she scanned the dining room for any kind of succor—or a sucker, whatever would give her an out. But the first person she found meeting her eyes was a man with a lush golden beard and the most sympathetic eyes she’d ever seen.
“Are you okay?” the man mouthed. “Need help?”
It only took her a moment to make her choice. She nodded and hurried to his booth.
“Hey, where are you going?” Vic called.
“To sit with my friends, and they’re allergic to horses.”
She wasn’t watching him, but she sensed him deflate. Well, too bad. He had terrible manners, and she was already halfway to a better situation. The man with the beard slid over and patted the bench in a way that could’ve been creepy but wasn’t, and Tempest sat down.
“Thanks for that,” she said. “That guy wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
“Yeah, I know a guy like that too.”
Tempest gawped at the bearded man and realized…she was a bearded woman. Or something along those lines. In any case, they didn’t appear dangerous and hadn’t yet blocked her into the booth. The other person in the booth, sitting across from Tempest’s bearded savior, appeared to be a man, and probably not a smart one. He had paused in chewing, meat spilling out of his mouth, and there was a waterfall of white bird plops down the front of his shirt.
“By gallbladder,” he whispered. “Issa dryad!”
Tempest immediately pulled her hood back into place. “Quiet. Please. And before you ask, no, I won’t heal you. Or do anything else. I’m not that kind of dryad.”
The poor fellow looked scandalized at the very idea. “Cor, no, miss! It’s just that I used to work for a dark lord, see, but not that dark, more crepuscular really, and he was forever trying to find magical creatures—not that you’re a creature, as you’re obviously a person, although your hair might be termed a houseplant, if I might be so bold. But he was always looking for a dryad or drynad, as you will, an’ he told me what to look for if I was out ’n’ about an’ the trees started talking, but not in the magic-mushroomy way, an’ you look like that.”
The bearded person tensed and clutched a dagger under t
he table as the centaur walked by, giving them all the evil eye. But Vic kept going, and the bearded person relaxed, and Tempest realized that she had also gone tense and needed to chill.
“So I’m Tempest,” she started.
“I’m Morgan,” the bearded person said. “And before you ask, I’m a woman. She/her. I just woke up like this one day. I may have been given a cursed rose that put me to sleep or—anyway, it got weird. Long story. And this is Morvin—he’s harmless.” Morgan exhaled and put away her dagger. “So was that guy an old boyfriend or something?”
Tempest scoffed. “Uh, no. That was a random stranger who decided he could push me around. I’m actually running away from another dude just like that. Also a long story, and although I know travelers in restaurants like this generally retell their adventures, I’ll spare you. Do you know anything about how to buy passage on a ship?”
Morgan grinned, and she had a very pretty grin, which the beard only served to accent. “As a matter of fact, we know a captain who’s hiring. His ship leaves in the morning. I’m sure he’d take you on.”
Tempest felt the flutter of hope. “Is the ship going to Bustardo?”
“Why Bustardo?”
“Um.” Tempest realized that even if she’d been wrong about Cappy, she had to trust someone, and she liked Morgan better than anyone else she’d met so far. “I want to be a lawyer, and there’s a school there.”
Morgan was nodding. “Yes, I’ve heard about it. Bogtorts School of Law and Order. Bustardo is quite near the Mack Islands, where the ship is going, so I’m sure that would be a reasonable port to stop at.”
“But I don’t know anything about sailing,” Tempest protested.
“Neither do she,” Morvin said, pointing a thumb at Morgan. “Ain’t stoppin’ her. I reckon nothing does.”
“You’re not going, Morvin?”
Morvin wagged his head. “Naw. I ain’t fond of seas, because of the monsters in it, you know, but also I realized one day that the whole dang thing is a huge fish toilet—”