"Well, nobody in Frogwood lifted a finger to help, and I didn't have a lot of self-control back then. I guzzled that lake down to a dry, rocky lakebed. When I climbed out, I saw that I'd drank up the whole town. People and animals laid in the streets, dried out husks of their former selves." He paused to blow smoke rings.
"I warned 'em. I said, 'Better not sink me in the lake, boys. I don't know what I'll do.' They did it anyway, and I couldn't control my thirst. It opened up, and I didn't know how to close it again.
"'Til this day, I still feel pretty bad about it."
"You're telling the truth, aren't you?" Faben examined one of the dried tobacco leaves. "You really are walking Drought. I
knew
there was something odd about you, Chugger-lugger."
Chuggie nodded. "And the Steel Jacks want folks like me and my kind in their pocket. I suspect having me around will make it easier to take over when they make their move. So they try to bribe me or intimidate me, try to give me loans I can't repay. This one, Non, keeps on tryin' to do me favors."
"Steel Jacks don't do people favors out of kindness."
"I know that an' you know that. But for some reason the Steel Jacks think we don't."
"At least he helped you get your meeting." Faben loaded her ceramic falcon-head pipe with the freshly dried tobacco. "So now you're going north to get the goat-face purse."
"Don't see as I have much choice," said Chuggie. "I need that purse."
"You know there's a monster up there that they've been feeding the Carnies to." Faben reached across the table and touched his hand. "Maybe you don't need that goat-face purse after all."
He looked into her eyes. He hadn't yet known her for a full day, but already she felt like a comrade. Chuggie looked down at the table. "I have a woman waiting for me. They bound her out in the wilderness with conjury, an' I aim to set her free. Gonna take her away from this place. Sooner I get the purse, the sooner I get back on the road."
"Oh," said Faben. The tips of her ears turned red. "Your woman, she sounds real special."
Chuggie looked at Faben again. He reached out and patted her hand. "Don't get your feelings hurt. If you turn in your application, I'll consider you for the harem."
"Ha." Faben snatched her hand away. "Like I'd ever be caught dead snuggling up to likes of you." Faben got to her feet. From beneath a pile of clutter, she produced a crudely printed pamphlet and handed it to Chuggie.
"What's this?"
"Remember last night when you said the name of Korkorahn?"
Chuggie raised an eyebrow. "And you snapped at me like a… like a damned…"
"Have you been drinking this morning?" She leaned closer to smell his breath.
"Well, not since breakfast." Chuggie hiccupped.
"You can't go around shouting the name of Korkorahn. Not if you want to live." She tapped the pamphlet.
"
Honesty and Artifice
," Chuggie read.
In this pamphlet, Korkorahn told the truth about what the magistrates did to the Carnies.
Chuggie spat. "Is Korkorahn's
here
?!"
"Not anymore," Faben said. "He was arrested the day that pamphlet hit the streets. He vanished in captivity, or so the story goes. I believe it. They tore the city apart when he disappeared." She pulled a bottle of wine from a shelf and filled the wooden cup for Chuggie.
Chuggie looked down at pamphlet. He grabbed the bottle of wine and put it to his lips. He drank deep until Faben broke out laughing.
"I thought you'd drink from the cup."
Chuggie, embarrassed, set the bottle down and took up the cup. "How'd you and Korkorahn meet up?"
Faben poured a glass for herself. "I'm no circus clown. I'm a Carnie, but I never had an act. I was a summoner in the Woodsmen."
"A woman Woodsman?" Chuggie chuckled.
"You laugh, but as many women belong to the Lodge of Woodsmen as men. When I retired from the Lodge of Woodsmen, Korkorahn hired me as his Road Master. My job was to ensure safe passage of the Carnies from city to city."
Chuggie nodded. She certainly had an impressive résumé. And she'd known Korkorahn! He could share old Korkorahn stories with her all day. Good ol' Korkorahn.
"He and I became very close." Faben looked down at her own wine cup and gritted her teeth.
"Married?" asked Chuggie. If she and his old friend were in a relationship, maybe spending the day telling Korkorahn stories wasn't the best thing.
"Hell no," she smiled. "We'd never make that mistake. But I loved him. There's nothing I wouldn't do... You remind me of him in some ways. You don't know what's waiting for you up there, but you seem intent on going."
"I am," Chuggie nodded.
"I think you'll need a Woodsman," said Faben.
Chuggie froze as he was about to take a drink. "Are you saying you wanna come with?"
"I am," nodded Faben. "I feel like I owe it to Korkorahn to do my part to kill that thing that's eating up the Carnie folk. I have an apprentice who'll join us, too. Dawes. A bit of a smartass, but you can give him a slap if he runs his mouth too much. Just try not to break his jaw. He's on our side."
"You an' Dawes?" Chuggie couldn't believe it. All he could do was stare at the table in wonderment. "Good ol' Dawes."
"You know him, too?" Faben chuckled.
"Nah." Chuggie smiled, sipping his wine. "Did I tell you Haste wore a green jacket when I met him?"
"No. What difference does that make?" Faben asked.
"Never trust a man in a green jacket. I've been known to wear one myself, but only when I know I can't be trusted. It goes back to my smuggling days when I'd been hired to move a boatload of kittens and puppies across a certain border that I shouldn't mention. Kittens and puppies being perfectly legal to transport, I found myself confused about the job. The guy wanted to pay, so I went ahead and assembled a team.
"Crossing the mountain range was tricky, and we ate all but three of the men on the crew. It's not that we were hungry, mind you, or even low on food. We just hated them and couldn't bear the thought of them sharing our money. So we delivered the kittens and puppies. Probably the most adorable payload in history. The kittens were snuggling with puppies, and the puppies were wrestling with kittens. Hundreds of 'em, and not a one mistreated during the journey.
"But the owner turned it around on us. He insisted he could only pay in puppies and kittens. We didn't know anything about puppy/kitten/cash exchange rates, but what the hell were we supposed to do? We didn't like it, but we had to accept his shitty terms. In the months to follow, I learned seventy-five interesting ways to prepare puppy and/or kitten. The guy who hired us, he always wore a green jacket. Green or red, I can never remember. Actually, I think it might've been red. Ever since, I don't trust nobody in a green jacket."
Faben blinked at Chuggie.
Back in his room, Chuggie considered his preparations for the trek north as he got ready to bed down. He'd bought two goats, food, water and another night's stay at The Fifty Moons Inn. His cash stack remained good and thick, though he hadn't bothered to count it. Barring a real estate deal, he wouldn't be running out of funds during his time in Stagwater.
The rope of Shola's hair had lost most of her scent, but a few hints remained. He lay on the bed holding her hair over his face.
"Shola, Shola," he asked the hair, "where'd you ever get so much money? Bet you're sittin' in the grass right now askin' scarecrows when I'm comin' back."
He let the hair brush his forehead. "Soon, crazy lady. Real soon. Maybe tomorrow night if I'm lucky, and —."
Excited pounding at the door interrupted his one-sided conversation. Chuggie threw a blanket over the money and the hair. He put on his most sour expression and got up to answer.
"Who's poundin' my damn door so late?" he asked as he opened it.
"Fey Voletta, and it's hardly late," answered the girl. She seemed very familiar in her silky white robe trimmed with burgundy. The hood cast her face in shadow, all but her dark red lips and powder-white chin.
Chuggie'd prepared himself for an argument with the innkeeper or another tenant. Seeing the young woman in exotic dress had him disarmed and fumbling.
She smiled about as flirtatiously as cat meeting a mouse and stepped forward as if to enter.
He blocked her passage.
"Aren't you going to ask me inside?" She spoke in a slow whisper, almost a moan and pushed her way into the room. She smelled like flowers on the beach, and he could just about hear seagulls in the distance.
"Do you know who I am?" she asked. "We met last night, very briefly."
"Sorry, I had a lot to drink last night." Chuggie shook his head clear and looked at the door. How had she gotten inside, and why was the door closed?
"I bet you did," she smiled. "Like I said, I'm Fey Voletta. And you are Norchug Mot Losiat. Isn't that right?"
He cocked an eyebrow at her. "It is, but I jus' go by Chuggie. Who told you my name?"
"Non told me. I work with the Steel Jacks."
Now it all made sense. Chuggie grinned. "I get it, I get it," he nodded. "Thank you for stopping by, my dear. Won't be needin' your services tonight. Please tell your boss that I'm leavin' town very soon and —."
"Services?" she cut him off. "What services might those be?" The flirtatiousness had gone from her voice.
Chuggie stared at her. His mouth fell open. Some women were too volatile to accept his tendency to say the wrong thing at damn near every opportunity.
"You think I'm here to
fuck
you? You think I'm a whore? No, no. I'm nobody's whore, old man. Old…
whatever
you are. Since you bring it up, I've never slept with anyone. Not for money or status or anything else. I bet you can't say the same, can you? If anyone in this room is a whore…" She pointed an accusative finger at his face. Her fingernails were the same deep red as her lips.
"Whoa, whoa, take it easy," he said. "If you were me, you woulda thought the same. This Non character has been trying to enlist me since I got here. You're a pretty girl, and you said he sent you. The pieces fit, but I was wrong and I apologize."
"You're wrong again. I didn't say he sent me. Nobody sent me. I'm here on my own." She smiled mischievously.
"You came on your own." Chuggie's mind scrambled to process everything. Was she playing games with him? "Why would you come here on your own?"
"I heard you were going on some sort of archeological reclamation. Thought it might be fun to go along."
Chuggie studied her for a moment. "I don't think that's a good idea, miss."
"Why not?" She took a step toward him.
"For starters, you might get your pretty silk robes dirty."
"That would never happen. I'm far too graceful." She rubbed the fabric between her fingertips. "If you wore fabric of this quality, you'd take care of it, too. Go ahead, feel it," she said. "What do you think it's made from?"
"Rat guts," he said, taking a seat on the only chair in the room.
"It's human skin," she said, pulling back her hood.
Elegant, intricate scars swooped and curled across her pale face. These were the self-inflicted designs of a blade worshipper, which made her even more of a riddle to him. Each line, dot, and curl told a story. Some shapes represented people she'd killed, others indicated techniques mastered. Blade cultists were perfectionists by nature, the exact opposite of Chuggie. How could such a person stand to be around someone like him, who constantly bumped into walls and tripped on open ground? At the very least, this girl was interesting.
"You have to have a lot of skin for a whole robe." She twirled on one toe with a dancer's grace. "You have to beat the skin, stretch it, treat it with chemicals. You have to be careful not to over bleach, because that will destroy the tissue. It's a very long process. I won't even tell you how many different men went into these robes."
Chuggie lit up his tusk pipe, hoping a cloud of smoke could keep the strange young woman at her distance. "What about the red edging? Dyed with the blood of children?"
"It's crimson velvet," she said. "Not everything's about killing."
Her red, fire-like hair curled to match the shapes of the scars. Her eyes looked like superheated emeralds set in ivory. Damn these women and their eyes.
"So take me with you," she said. "I can handle myself. Don't worry about that."
He shook his head. "Sorry, I can't. It's not that I'd mind if you were around. Problem is — if I'm tellin' the truth here — I think you could be a little distracting. I don't know what's up there, and I'll need to be on my toes."
"That's a load." She shook her head in mockery.
"I don't even
know
you, girl. Why in bloody, screaming, shrieking hell would I bring you along on a… a fuggin' suicide mission?"
"Because if you go alone it
will
be a suicide mission."
"I'm prepared, equipped, an' fed." Chuggie clapped his hands on his belly. "I got a squad of thirty or forty men, ready to kill and die accordin' to my whims. They're savage brutes, y'see, every damn one of 'em. For me to even consider them for the mission, each had to go into the forest unarmed and bring back a drakana claw. They haven't had nothin' to eat besides the blood o' the innocent for the last six days, and I think I… yep, I can hear 'em howlin' right now. I'm in good hands. All's I need now is a night of rest, an' I'll be ready to whoop ass from here to spring."
"Then bring me back something nice." She bent down close enough to kiss him, and he caught her beach-flower smell again. "There'll be something nice waiting for you when you get back."
Chuggie felt her breath on his face and a tingle in his loins.
Without another word, she turned and left. He locked the door behind her and spent the next several minutes reminding himself this was all for Shola.
On the east side of Stagwater, Dustiv Dawes sat with a couple friends in a tiny tavern called The Stone Hat. The bartender, a matronly gal named Rosie, smiled and listened to him like always.