A cynical twist tugged at his lips. “I’m a moth, remember? Where she goes, I follow. The tours, the contracts … All of it, I do for her. To be near her. To protect her, if I can. I’d rather be a father than a mercenary, but Rose …” His ears canted sideways. “Well, motherhood isn’t really her style.”
No shit, Tam thought. She tried to imagine Fable’s frontwoman nursing a babe, or spooning peas into an infant’s mouth, and failed miserably.
Freecloud gazed down at Rose, studying her face as though intending to paint it from memory. “I don’t blame her, of course. We are what we are. I fell in love with a tigress. How could I ask her to be anything else?”
At last, Tam heard a commotion in the cavern below. Thumps and grunts and growls heralded the return of Farager and his fellow hunters. Cura stirred restlessly on her pallet, threw an arm across her eyes, and fell back asleep.
“How did you and Rose meet?” Tam asked.
“Violently,” said the druin, though his expression was wry. “I was sent into the Heartwyld to parley with Lastleaf, who was preparing to attack Castia and wanted my father’s help in doing so. Unfortunately for the so-called Duke of Endland, my father is a stubborn ass who refused to send even a single golem. Unfortunately for me, Lastleaf was a vindictive lunatic who didn’t deal well with rejection. He imprisoned me, and might have ordered me killed had a brave young satyr not set me free.”
It took Tam a moment to clue in. “Roderick?”
“Roderick,” he confirmed, smiling wistfully. “The two of us fled. Lastleaf sent his sylfs after us, but they found Rose instead.”
“Wait, sylfs?” Tam said. “Like Wren?”
The druin’s ears nodded affirmation. “Sylfs are often outcasts, but Lastleaf was nothing if not inclusive. He employed them as scouts and assassins. They ambushed Rose and her band, which, as you might imagine, did not go well for them at all.”
“She killed them?”
“Most of them, yes. But one of her bandmates was gravely injured, and since I felt responsible for having led the sylfs to them, I offered to escort them to the edge of the forest. Rose was hopelessly lost by then, and far too close to the Infernal Shire.”
Tam had never heard of the Infernal Shire, but it didn’t sound like a wise place to wander into accidentally.
A log in the fire split, belching a flurry of red sparks. Freecloud looked toward the tunnel mouth, and Tam could hear the satyr’s voice echoing from the passage.
“The edge of the forest came and went,” Freecloud said. “We crossed the mountains and found the Republic’s army preparing to repel the Heartwyld Horde. Every day I promised Roderick we’d get out of there and go home, but every night I … decided otherwise.”
Where’s Brune to wink conspiratorially when you need him, Tam wondered.
“And then Lastleaf came storming from the forest with a hundred thousand wyld things in tow. He destroyed Castia’s army and laid siege to the city. I could have escaped on my own and abandoned Rose to her fate, but by then it was too late.”
“You were in love,” Tam said.
“And always will be,” uttered Freecloud, a moment before Roderick sauntered into the cave.
“We’re back,” announced the booker. He was bundled head to toe in mismatched furs, arm in arm (or arms, rather) with one of the yethiks, a black-furred one with a spear clasped in both right hands. Brune was with them, laughing and talking excitedly with Farager. They were all of them dusted with snow; Tam could feel the cold clinging to them like a jilted lover’s scent.
Cura blinked awake and rolled over on her blanket. “Find anything useful?”
“Nope,” said Roderick.
“We found Doshi,” Brune said. He was carrying the Spindrift’s unconscious pilot in his arms, and now lowered him onto a vacant pelt. “The daft bugger was clinging to one of those whirly engines. He begged us to leave him be and let him die. We barely peeled him off before the whole thing went into the lake.”
“Should have let the cur sink,” Rod muttered, dusting snow off his hat.
“We rescued this as well,” said Farager. He knelt and offered something to Tam.
“Oh,” she said, recognizing Hiraeth’s sealskin case. Her stomach clenched as if steeling itself for a punch. “Is it …?” She fell silent, afraid to ask.
“Smashed to bits, I’m afraid.”
Tam closed her eyes.
“Just kidding!” Farager laughed and set the case down at her knees. He unlaced the toggles so she could confirm that the instrument’s whitewood face and slender neck were undamaged. “See? It’s totally fine. The back half of your boat was mostly intact. We found this wedged under your cot, safe and sound. I had you going there, didn’t I?”
“You …” stupid fucking asshole, Tam almost said, but instead she smiled. “You really did.”
Chapter Thirty-seven
Sharing Smoke
The yethiks had salvaged quite a lot from the Spindrift before it sloughed through the ice and was lost to the lake. They were sorting through it all in the cavern below. Most of it belonged to Daon Doshi, since his quarters had been in the stern, but the man didn’t seem to care that their hosts were already dividing the spoils among themselves.
The captain woke for long enough to bemoan the loss of his beloved skyship and launch a feeble attack on Roderick, who punched Doshi out of panicked reflex and knocked him out cold.
“I don’t think he likes you very much,” Brune remarked.
The booker cradled the offending fist and shrugged. “Yeah, well, he’s not exactly the cat’s pyjamas either.”
Tam’s heart went out to the captain. The man had cherished his freedom more than anything, and might still have it had Roderick not pushed him overboard. Left sprawled by the booker’s retaliatory punch, he looked sad and small. His colourful attire, which had previously lent him an air of eccentric worldliness, now made him look like a mummer who’d gone rooting through a brothel’s laundry for his latest costume.
He made his choice, she reminded herself, when he obeyed Hawkshaw and refused to let us warn the others.
Had Doshi suspected his employer’s motive for wanting the Simurg dead? Tam didn’t think so. The captain had spoken optimistically about the future—about a time after his tenure with the Widow—which didn’t make sense if he’d known his mistress planned to make war on his entire species. The man had been chasing his freedom, she concluded, and nothing more.
“Come,” Farager said. “Let me introduce you to the band.”
Cura looked hopeful. “The band?”
“You mean the Raincrows?” Brune tugged his scarf loose. “I thought they—”
“Died?” The axeman shook his head. “Nope! Terrik, Robin, Annie—they’re all here, safe and sound.”
“Really?” Tam asked. There were many dozens of yethiks milling around the salvage below; she tried to spy Terrik’s shock of red hair among them.
“No, not really!” Farager cackled and slapped his knee with a sackcloth hand. “They’re dead! The Simurg made bloody icicles out of them! Except Annie, who I’m pretty sure got ate.” He frowned. “Eaten? Ate? Whichever it is, she’s as dead as the rest of ’em.”
Brune shouldered up to Tam as Farager set off down the ramp. “Was he always this warped?” the shaman asked.
Tam pursed her lips, recalling a night at the Cornerstone when Farager had insisted on setting his drinks on fire before consuming them. He’d lost his beard, both eyebrows, and most of his hair by the time Tera kicked him out. “Pretty much, yeah.”
Everyone but Doshi, Rose, and Freecloud (who refused to leave Rose’s side) followed Farager below. Tam’s gaze was drawn to the spires of rock in which the yethiks made their homes. Only the lowest rooms could be entered on foot, while those higher up required one to climb using painted handholds affixed to the rock face. The colour of the handholds seemed to designate where each path led, and Tam found herself following a bright yellow path up and around the soaring
column.
“Band,” Farager was saying, “is the yethik word for family.” He signed as he said this, touching the thumb and forefinger of each hand and overlapping them. “And family means the whole tribe.”
Brune dragged wet hair from his eyes and made a topknot of it. “So do they have names?”
“Of course,” said Farager. “They choose their names based on their favourite things.” He indicated a pair of yethiks rooting through a flame-eaten chest. “That black-furred one is Smell Of Wet Stone, and the other is First Snowfall.”
Cura grinned. “First Snowfall, huh? I like that. What—hey, that’s my stuff!” She shooed off the yethiks, grabbing a book entitled Skeletons in the Closet: A Necromancer’s Guide to Coming Out from the hands of Smell Of Wet Stone.
They left the Inkwitch organizing her clothes into two piles: one for surviving garments and another for those too damaged to wear. But since most of Cura’s outfits could be described as “flimsy black rags,” it was hard to tell which mound was which.
Farager pointed out a few other yethiks with names like Berries Frozen On The Branch and Stars Reflecting On Ice. “Oh, and see these two?” The creatures he indicated were both huge and white-furred, with puckered scars crisscrossing their chest and arms. “They’re brothers,” he said. “The big one is Bashing In A Deer’s Skull With A Rock, and the smaller is Pushing My Thumbs Into My Enemies’ Eyes. Great guys,” he added. “Maybe the best hunters in the band. Aside from me, obviously.”
Another gaggle of yethiks were rummaging through Roderick’s clothes, most of which were utterly destroyed. The booker went to join them, lamenting the loss of his wardrobe with the same theatrical despair as Doshi mourning his ship. The satyr wailed over fire-ravaged scarves, wept over scorched silk blouses, and nearly tore his beard out over the remains of something he referred to as an ascot, except the thing in his hands looked to Tam like a charred squirrel.
The influx of so much new bounty brought the “band” out in droves. They shuffled from their nooks bearing possessions they’d grown tired of, or curiosities they’d found while exploring. They bartered by using their top two hands to haggle in their silent language, while the bottom two proffered the wares they’d brought to trade. Items on display included glowing crystal shards, simple jewellery, a variety of painted hide armbands, and an assortment of figurines carved out of stone and horn. A few brave souls brought armour and weapons they’d looted from the Dragoneater’s lair in the adjoining crevasse.
The bard spotted two yethiks in the midst of an apparently heated negotiation. One was offering a basket of hard white potatoes, while the other held a blade with three edges that Tam suspected was Quarterflash, the legendary longsword of Fillia Finn. She watched, dumbstruck, as the potato farmer took possession of his new weapon and began swinging it wildly.
“So how did you end up here?” Brune asked Farager as they toured the bizarre bazaar. “Doshi said you guys … uh, didn’t last very long against the Simurg.”
“Seventeen seconds,” Tam said, drawing sidelong glances from the others. “Or something like that.”
Farager grimaced. “Yeah, well, it felt more like seven seconds. Maiden’s Mercy, it was over quick. We didn’t stand a chance against that thing. We should never have taken that Wyld-spawned contract to begin with.”
“Why did you?” asked Roderick. “I mean, no offence, but the Raincrows weren’t exactly known for being the best of the best.”
The man’s lower arms bobbed when he shrugged. “That’s exactly why we did it. Well, that and the gold, obviously. Five thousand courtmarks is a lot of money.”
Tam shared a glance with the booker and Brune, neither of whom seemed eager to tell their guide that Fable had been offered ten times that amount.
“We’d been treading water in the arena circuit,” said the ex-Raincrow, “but one night in Bastien an ogre got the jump on us and our reputation went to shit.”
The satyr stroked his beard. “I heard about that. The thing turned out to be a mage, right?”
Farager signed a greeting to a doddering old yethik using four canes at once. She clack-clack-clack-clacked by, smiling toothily as she did. “The wrangler—may he freeze in hell—claims he had no idea, but I suspect he wanted to give the crowd a show. The second the fight started the ogre threw a fuckin’ lightning bolt at Robin. Fried him in his boots. The poor bastard had an awful stutter ever since, and he’d piss himself whenever something startled him. And believe me: Everything startled him. Anyway, things went downhill fast after that. We put our name in for the Megathon’s grand opening but didn’t make the cut. After that, we got desperate. We knew we needed something big to get ourselves back in the game.”
“So you took on the Dragoneater,” said Brune.
“Aye, and got our asses kicked. It hit us with its breath straightaway—stopped three of us in our tracks. Annie got an arrow off, I think, but you’d might as well hit a mountain with a mace for all the good it did.” Farager sighed and shook his head. “Hubris, man. It’s killed more heroes than monsters ever did.”
That, Tam thought, is a damn good line. She would try to remember it for later, maybe use it in a song …
They came across a yethik pawning more of Daon Doshi’s belongings, including the chest of alchemical grenades, which would have obliterated the back half of the skyship had the fire touched it. The creature traded one of the explosive clay balls for a frozen fish, and another for an anatomically embellished minotaur statue. At least Tam assumed it was embellished, or she doubted minotaur women would survive copulation.
“I think we should probably confiscate these,” she said. “They’re really dangerous.”
Farager signed back and forth with the one trafficking the firebombs. “You’ll need to trade for them, I’m afraid. She wants your scarf,” he said to Tam. “And Roderick’s hat.”
The satyr crossed his arms. “Out of the question.”
Brune made a grumbling noise. “Rod …”
“They might kill themselves!” Tam pressed.
Roderick snorted. “They can blow themselves to smithereens for all I care, I’m not giving—” He froze. His jaw dropped so low he could have swallowed a watermelon whole, and he swiped the hat off his head. “Here.” He handed it over, motioning frantically for Tam to do the same. “Give her the scarf. Go on!”
The bard did as she was ordered. Once the transaction was complete, the yethik sauntered off to flaunt her flashy new attire, while Tam and Roderick found themselves the proud owners of a chest full of explosives.
But not only explosives, she realized, when Rod snatched up something from inside. It was spherical, but unlike the grenades, which were wrapped in wool sleeves, it was shrouded in black velvet.
Farager looked from Rod, to Brune, to Tam, all of whom were grinning from ear to ear. “What is it?” he asked.
Rod pulled the cloth from the glassy black scrying orb with a deliberate flourish. “This,” he announced, “is how we’re getting home.”
The band kept mostly to themselves over the following days. They didn’t reminisce about their fight with the Simurg or discuss the implications of the Widow’s deception. Tam couldn’t know for sure, but she suspected each of them (excluding Rose, who was grappling with the fallout of her overdose) were combating their fear and uncertainty however they knew best.
Cura read, or slept, or wandered off alone for hours at a time, while Brune, embracing his newfound fain, accompanied the yethik hunters on their forays into the Brumal Wastes. All but one of these excursions proved relatively uneventful, with the exception being the day Brune sniffed out a clan of rasks waiting in ambush. The ice trolls were killed or driven off, and the shaman was hailed as a hero. The hunters urged him to choose a proper yethik name, so he was known to them afterward as A Pint of Ale And A Hot Bacon Sandwich.
Rose grew stronger by the hour. After two days spent vomiting black sludge, she appeared to make a full recovery. That evening, however, she suc
cumbed once again to the fever’s clammy clutches. She begged Freecloud to find her more Lion’s Leaf—or a drink, at least, to take the edge off her craving. He offered neither, and suffered a split lip while keeping her confined to their niche. Fable’s frontwoman threw up one last bellyfull of bile before the fever broke.
Tam spent her free time exploring the cavern. She climbed as high as she dared up one of the pointed spires. She considered going higher the day after, but then her monthly cramps arrived and made the idea of scaling a sheer rock face as appealing as swallowing a handful of nails.
Instead, she asked Farager to teach her some of the hand signals the yethiks used to communicate. He began with the basics—hello, good-bye, thank you—before moving on to the most crucial aspect of learning a new language: the swearwords. Within hours she was calling Roderick a shit-brained asshole to his face while the satyr clapped appreciatively.
“What did you just say?” he asked.
“I said your hair looks nice.”
“Really?”
“Sure.”
He raked a self-conscious hand through his straw-coloured mop. Tam wondered how long it had been since the satyr had gone undisguised for days at a time, without a hat to hide his horns. “Thanks,” he said.
On the morning of the third day she ventured into the Dragoneater’s lair. It wasn’t overly impressive. There were no heaps of glittering gold or chests overflowing with gemstones. There were plenty of bones, however, and lots of snow, as well as the occasional discarded weapon or scrap of rusted armour. She did stumble upon the hull of an old ship but couldn’t discern whether it had plied the skies or the seas before it ended up here.
Shouldering her bow and grazing her fingers over the fletching of the arrows at her waist, Tam wandered out of the defile and onto the shelf of rock overlooking Mirrormere.
It was snowing lightly. The breeze off the lake went rifling through her clothes with freezing hands. The hole made by the Simurg was already glazed over by a pane of ice and blanketed by drifts of snow.
Bloody Rose Page 29