Wench

by Maxine Kaplan

  “Pitfire?” Tanya called. She climbed off the mare and handed her reins to Darrow—the mare was too busy looking around with disdain to protest very strongly—and followed the thief. “What’s that?”

  “Did you notice that none of the boats had oars?”

  Rough, singed, red brick appeared under her feet. “Yes, come to think of it,” Tanya said, watching her steps. The steam seemed to be lifting. “Some sort of fan propeller? There are a few fishing boats in Griffin’s Port that have those now.”

  “No,” said Jana, her face materializing. “The Pitfire”—she pointed to a wide pool of the suspect water near the Gate—“powers the canals. The pilots still have to steer—and stop, which isn’t a picnic—but they don’t have to row.”

  “But what is it?”

  Jana waggled her eyebrows up and down. “Magic.” She grinned and slid across a green, slimy patch of brick into the steam.

  Tanya was frustrated. She had asked a sensible question and received nonsense in return. Wrinkling her nose in distaste—the smell by the Gate was a mixture of ash, sweat, spoiled eggs, and fried lard—she struggled through the steam after Jana.

  “There’s no need to be glib,” Tanya said, carefully stepping over the slime. “This is your hometown after all, it’s perfectly reasonable of me to inquire as to some basic . . .” Tanya’s voice trailed off as her vision cleared and Bloodstone proper appeared in front of her. “Some basics of infrastructure,” she began again, but her heart wasn’t in it. “Perfectly reasonable . . .”

  Bloodstone hit her first as a mass of color: red streets, yellow skies. At every corner was an open brazier, throwing licks of orange flame into woodsy, wine-soaked air. But mostly the color came from the citizens.

  No one wore gray homespun or brown leather. There was wool and leather aplenty, but in bright pinks, violent greens, and unnatural purples. And the people themselves! No two looked alike. She looked left and saw a sunburnt giant of a woman, nearly seven feet tall, broad shouldered and strong, but so skinny that her collarbones looked like they could cut steak. Dressed in flowing blue silk, she was haggling with a bespectacled ball of flesh that eventually rearranged itself into a white-haired man in red-and-green striped coveralls. Tanya stepped forward and saw that neither had a stall—they were simply standing in the middle of road, arguing over the price of a giant lizard with lazy gold eyes being walked on a leash by the fleshy man.

  She looked right and gasped before she could stop herself. The spasm of fear passed, leaving Tanya feeling silly—because all she was looking at was a small, upright woman of late middle age, perhaps ten years younger than Froud had been. She was the least conspicuous person on the street, or she should have been. She was clad in a long black dress, plain and unadorned, her hair tucked neatly into a white cap. The only ornament she wore was a twisted brass chain, long enough to reach her waist. A small hourglass hung from its links, filled with some shining black substance. A breeze—sharply cold after so long in the heat—blew down the street and lifted the woman’s cap slightly, revealing a solitary green curl.

  The woman from Bloodstone that had so terrified Tanya as a child had had green hair.

  Suddenly the woman stopped on her path and deliberately turned her head. Tanya tried to follow the woman’s gaze, turning her own head, but it didn’t lead anywhere except back into the steam.

  When Tanya looked back, she found that woman’s gaze had locked onto her.

  Tanya felt a spasm skitter up her spine. The woman was looking at her as if she recognized her—had been expecting her. Tanya didn’t like it.

  The green-haired woman smiled at Tanya. It wasn’t friendly.

  Tanya’s fear evaporated in the face of simple, familiar, beautiful affront.

  Tanya may have very well met a woman with green hair from Bloodstone as a child, but not this woman. This woman was a stranger. And strangers had no business staring at visitors to their city and making sinister smiles at them. Even Uncle Tommy had manners!

  She folded her arms and approached the green-haired woman.

  She was the wielder of the quill. No one could touch her. And manners were manners.

  “May I help you, madam?” Tanya asked. “Have we met?”

  Still, the woman in black smiled. “Why would you ask that?” she asked. Her voice was pitched low and pleasant, her accent arch and patrician—as aristocratic as any duchess who had ever passed through Griffin’s Port.

  Tanya rolled her eyes. “My lady will excuse me,” Tanya said, her voice sarcastic. “I had assumed that one so high as yourself would have a good reason for soliciting my attention.”

  The woman’s eyes dropped down Tanya’s body and widened. She gasped.

  Tanya was shocked. “Really, madam,” she exclaimed. She knew she was a reasonably well-grown girl, but this was beyond the pale. She looked down to make sure her collar hadn’t slipped.

  It hadn’t—but her sleeve had. The quill vibrated, pushing up the cloth and revealing itself, sparkling like black diamonds.

  The woman acquisitively clenched her fists. Tanya stepped back, disturbed by the woman’s gleaming eyes. A strange buzzing started to gather at her temples as Tanya, panicking, realized she was physically unable to look away.

  A hand thumping on her shoulder broke the black-clad woman’s spell. Tanya gratefully turned to the source and was surprised to see Greer, staring the woman down.

  His hand still protectively encircling Tanya’s shoulder, he nodded at the woman—a formal, respectful nod. When Tanya turned back, the green-haired woman was gone, already floating up one of the canals in a red raft with literally flaming flags flapping from the navigator’s pole, the fire obscuring some device in black thread.

  Tanya turned back to Greer. “Was she . . . ?” Tanya struggled to even say the words, as silly as they sounded. “Do you think she was going to curse me?”

  “I have no idea,” he said. “This place seems kind of fucked, though.”

  He removed his hand from her shoulder and held it out for her. She accepted it, allowing him to help her across a slippery patch of cobblestone.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Greer gave her a tight smile in response and suddenly Tanya was grateful, so grateful, for Greer. Not because he had rescued her from the green-haired woman; she was sure she could have done that herself eventually. No, she was grateful for his rude stare, for his suspicion, his reliable cynicism—for Greer.

  She moved away. People had to stop touching her; it was too distracting. Tanya didn’t know how normal people got anything done. “Did you see where Darrow and Jana went?”

  Greer pointed her through the fog. “They went ahead to the tavern,” he said. “Jana was kind of a brat about it, but eventually agreed to take him.” He sounded like himself again, Bloodstone apparently having shocked the stiff corpsman from him. “Want me to escort you down the thoroughfare, tavern wench?”

  Tanya smiled back at him. “Don’t call me wench,” she said.

  Chapter

  24

  The other green-haired woman, the one who had terrified Tanya as a child, had not been lying about Bloodstone. The place was a nightmare.

  The twisted buildings oozed with slime, black and sickly white. There was greenery aplenty, but even the loveliest of the growths creeping across the road, or over the rooftops, were poison: itching ivy, hemlock, nightshade; a flowering purple plant, exotic and emitting a thickly sweet odor, made Tanya shudder to even look at. The air was humid except when an icy shudder cut through the moisture like a knife slicing rancid butter.

  Firecrackers pounded the sky, as if the city were under siege. Greer bolted them out of the path of no less than three melees—Tanya was no stranger to drunken brawls, but at least the men of Griffin’s Port had the basic decency to only pummel each other with fists. These street battlers used brass knuckles, knives, ropes wrapped around an adversary’s throat and pulled tight, all in daylight!

  There was something else abou
t the place that made Tanya uneasy, something that sank into her like a stone as they approached the large inn on the far side of the thoroughfare.

  In the Port Cities, late afternoon in the marketplace, the street was mostly populated by women. Wives, pouty older daughters, cooks—tavern maids—replenishing their pantries, bartering with the traveling traders for the occasional fine silver or silk.

  There were no women going about their boring, daily business on the main thoroughfare of Bloodstone.

  Tanya frowned as she watched a knife sharpener service a long line of men with swords, nary a housewife’s butcher knife in sight. It didn’t make sense. There had been women piloting the canal boats. In the outer part of the town, there had been women—outlandishly dressed or unsettlingly formed, like the green-haired woman, but women.

  Everything Tanya knew about commerce-based cities (which Bloodstone decidedly was, however unsavory the nature of the commerce) told her that women were making the place tick. So, where were they?

  “Greer, Tanya!” Darrow appeared, speaking over a nearby explosion of indeterminate origin. “There you are. Jana said there’s only one real inn, so I left Gillian with the stable boy—some people rent rooms in their homes, but that didn’t seem safe.”

  A rat the size of dog ran by, chased by a pale boy with sharp teeth screaming obscenities.

  Greer laughed. “No?” he asked. “What gave you that impression?” Tanya couldn’t suppress her own giggle.

  “Herold the Wild, it can’t be my wayward protégée? How utterly delightful!”

  Tanya stopped laughing. Bracing herself for a flurry of knives, she took a deep breath and turned.

  But there were no knives—no thugs at all. There was just the Tomcat, and his arms were wide open.

  “It is you!” Completely ignoring her companions, he advanced and wrapped her in an oppressive hug before anyone could think to object. “Let me look at you.” Still holding her arms, he stepped back, swiftly taking in her new cloak, her high-quality boots, her fat traveling trunk—and her armed guards.

  Tanya wrenched herself halfway out of his grasp, pushing up the sleeve on her quill arm as she did. Just then a sparkler sailed over their heads, highlighting her tattoos and the quill, glowing black against her skin.

  The Tomcat smiled. “You clean up well, don’t you, my girl? You make your uncle Tommy very proud.”

  Greer stepped forward and again placed a hand on Tanya’s shoulder. She shrugged him off, not wanting him to make that a habit.

  “This is your uncle, Mistress Tanya?” he asked, looking at the gangster suspiciously.

  “Not by blood, sadly,” sighed the Tomcat theatrically. “But I have a great deal of family feeling for this talented young woman.” When neither Greer nor Tanya responded, the Tomcat raised an eyebrow. “Tanya, is something amiss? You don’t look happy to see your uncle Tommy.”

  She wriggled her fingers and the quill slipped into her hand. The Tomcat’s eyes widened.

  “I wasn’t sure you’d be happy to see me,” she said slowly. “All things considered.”

  “Because you turned down a job offer? Honestly, Tanya, what do you take me for?”

  “When there are chains involved, you can’t call it an ‘offer,’ Uncle Tommy.”

  “Oh, pish posh,” said the Tomcat, waving his hand dismissively. “Water quite thoroughly under the bridge, my dear—or the volcano, as it happens. The tiara ended up being sufficient, for my immediate purposes, and has yielded a very profitable partnership. And now here you are, and I have another chance to woo you. What are you doing here?”

  Greer stepped up. “Our mistress is here looking for business opportunities,” he lied coolly. “Like everyone else in Bloodstone. If you have a proposal for her, you’ll have to talk to me. I’m her protégée.”

  The Tomcat’s eyes narrowed, drifting from Greer to Darrow and back again.

  “What fine specimens of guards you have acquired, Tanya,” he said, bowing to Darrow. “I trust they won’t object to my buying their mistress dinner? You, sir!” Without waiting for an answer, the Tomcat strode past Greer and addressed Darrow, who was looking rather nonplussed, but very well muscled. “If you will take up Tanya’s baggage, I will be glad to make your introductions with the tavern’s proprietress. It helps to have an introduction with Madame Moreagan. Come!” He grabbed Darrow by the elbow, who looked behind him helplessly, but allowed himself to be taken over the inn’s threshold.

  Tanya looked up, shielding her eyes from the violent explosions still ripping apart the sky, and took in the device on the marble sign.

  The Witch, it said, spelled out in shining black script, next to a mother-of-pearl and ebony mortar and pestle.

  Tanya felt herself smile.

  She took a step back to evaluate. The tavern was apparently the only building in Bloodstone where anyone bothered to do any exterior scrubbing. Tanya could only imagine what the endless steam did to a building; the dwellings she had passed that weren’t rotting from the outside in were covered in thick layers of soot from the braziers that lined the streets. But the Witch’s alabaster façade looked brand-new.

  It was a very large, squat structure—a pleasingly symmetrical rectangle. To its left was the tidy-looking stable, and to the right was a tall fence. Through the slats of the fence she could see a flash of an onion patch and an ancient crab apple tree.

  Greer sighed and followed Darrow, pushing the iron door handle.

  Tanya followed him in. Immediately, she was hit with a thick, spicy smell, laced with a familiar bitterness that kept her nose twitching, trying to figure it out. She was puzzling over it when Darrow, pointing, said, “The lady behind the bar told us you should take that one,” and led her to the table nearest the fire, already set. Tanya lifted up a silver dish cover and realized that she was starving.

  She sank into the plush red leather of the chair, too fixated on the meal to even question why she was being given the best seat in any tavern, and fell upon the food.

  And the food was not bad at all. The lamb chop was a minute or two overcooked and a little greasy, but the red wine sauce was rich and warming—better wine than I would have used to make sauce, Tanya noted. The mashed potatoes were featherlight and buttery, but could use a touch more salt and maybe a pinch of pepper? The greens she found she couldn’t criticize at all. The cook on them was fine, but it was the flavor that made them the bright spot of the plate. The charred garlic had more snap and bite than any she’d ever eaten and the leaves and roots themselves were savory and bright, balanced perfectly between acid and earth. She wondered if they came from the fenced-off garden.

  She poured herself a glass of cider from the jug someone had placed at her elbow and took a breath. Scolding herself for still caring about tavern management—and realizing that the table had been set for one, Greer, Darrow, and Jana having been served at the bar—she finally took a moment to take in the Witch.

  Thirty seconds was all Tanya needed to realize she’d located the women of Bloodstone.

  The main room of the Witch was, to an untrained eye, exactly what one might expect of the tavern in a town like Bloodstone. It was cold gray stone dripping with damp, the dim lighting furbished by kerosene-soaked rags burning precariously in high-placed sconces formed out of unceremonious lumps of iron—more like repurposed chains from a prison camp than sconces.

  There were two long tables and six matching benches stretching across the room between one wall, where Tanya sat by the fire, and the other, actually a vast bar—and they were chaos. A wrestling match had overturned an entire bench and the pounding from the spectators kept knocking a nearly passed-out fellow headfirst into his stew.

  The rest of the room was kept in overpowering shadow. The tables in these corners—for the room really did appear to be almost all corners—were quieter, more subdued, and much, much more frightening.

  The bar was the true masterwork. The shelves in the back stretched all the way up to the soaring ceiling, an e
ndless ribbon of narrow ledges, every inch of which was covered with unlabeled bottles of different shapes and sizes—orange, red, blue, purple, green, some even bubbling. The bar itself was gargantuan yet modeled on an elegant curve. It was an impressive sight, made even more impressive when you noticed that the entire apparatus, from the storage to the bar top to the stools, was made entirely of bones.

  Not bone scraps or carved bone—bones. Fingers, feet, femurs . . . and skulls. Lots and lots of skulls. Not all of them were human, but not all of them were not human.

  The Witch was all this—every sight, sound, and smell backed up every nightmare Tanya had nursed of Bloodstone as a child. But Tanya was no longer a child and could see behind the facade.

  The food had been fresh, well prepared, and conceived with care. All the surfaces were rigorously clean. The bite Tanya had smelled in the air felt familiar for a reason—it was bitter lemon solution, the best solvent Tanya knew for getting water stains out of wood. There was clean linen on her table.

  Tanya reached out a hand to graze the stone of the wall, which appeared slimy and damp. She took her fingers away and rubbed them together. She smelled them and smiled.

  It wasn’t mildew or unchecked condensation. It was beeswax.

  It was playacting. It was theater.

  There were women here. More specifically, there were women like Tanya here.

  She leaned back in her chair, sipping icy-cold cider out of the correct glassware, and saw a flash of light at the far end of the bar—the swinging door of the kitchen.

  The kitchen was lit with a pure, sanitary light that made Tanya want to go take a bath in it. She caught sight of an older woman in a black dress, counting keys with pursed lips, before she crossed the bar into a small office, shutting the door behind her.