Authors: Victor Gischler
His grandmother Breen had repaired fishing nets, tackle and lures for decades. She was very old, and her sight was failing, but her fingers were still as nimble as when she was a girl. Some even came up from the river country to purchase her handiwork.
Alem paused before knocking, looked at the other cabins. Smoke rose from the chimneys of three. Hammish was tucked away. They might not have even gotten the word to flee to the city. Not that Breen would leave anyway.
He looked at the lake. It was very deep, but not far across, and he could see the large hunting lodge of a minor noble whose name Alem couldn’t remember. He’d never been over there.
He knocked.
The door creaked open. “Alem!”
Breen threw her bony arms around her grandson. They hugged.
“You got here just in time,” Breen said. “I was on my way to Agatha’s.”
“Agatha?” Alem remembered the wife of the elder fisherman was named Agatha.
“A stranger in town,” Breen said. “Agatha is in a tizzy about it. She’s so easily spooked.” She waved a dismissive, wrinkled hand as if that explained Agatha.
“Is it the Perranese?” If a scout had found the little village, others could follow. At the very least, they would take Alem’s horse. At worst …
Breen cackled. “Oh, dear me, no. Nothing so dramatic.” She closed the door behind her, turned and walked toward a cabin down the shoreline. “She’s just found some girl in her barn. Strangers disturb the goats.”
* * *
The three of them stood together, peeking inside through a crack in the barn door. It was a communal building and all of the village’s animals were inside. Agatha was a squat, weathered, sturdy woman with vacant eyes and a frowning, worried expression. As she was the wife of the elder fisherman, the barn fell within her jurisdiction.
The bleating of the goats inside was constant and annoying.
Alem turned to Agatha. “So … there’s a girl in there?”
“That’s right,” Agatha said.
“You don’t know her?”
“Never laid eyes on her before,” Agatha said. “Went in to milk them cows, and there she was in the hay, sleeping.”
“Sleeping, you say.”
“Yes.”
“Sinister.”
Agatha blinked.
“So.” Alem was trying to understand this. “You went in, saw this girl, and then … then went to tell Breen.”
“Well …” Agatha shrugged, gestured to the barn. “I mean … well …”
Alem glanced at Breen standing behind her, and the old woman shrugged.
“Would you like me to take a look?” Alem asked.
Agatha sighed relief. “Dumo bless you, lad.”
Alem entered the barn.
He found he was holding his breath as he tiptoed back to the haystack. Ridiculous. And yet, this wasn’t the sort of village anyone came to by accident. It was off the beaten path. Agatha’s reaction was comical but understandable too. Strangers popping up out of nowhere just
didn’t
happen in Hammish. And, frankly, Alem would not be surprised to find out that Agatha had never been out of the village in her life. A stranger unannounced might actually be a shock to the system.
Alem suddenly felt mature and worldly, coming from the big city of Klaar. Not bad for a stable boy.
Head
stable boy.
He peeked around the corner into the hay-filled stall. A lump under a cloak, half covered with hay. If she were indeed sleeping, then she slept the slumber of the dead because the racket from the goats was about to drive Alem crazy.
He approached slowly, trying to get a look at her.
She stirred, and Alem froze.
The girl in the hay pushed herself up to her knees, her back toward him. Her cloak fell away. The red-inked tattoos across her shoulder and down her spine startled him. There was a large circle with an intricate design between her shoulder blades, a twin line of fine runes down either side of her spine. More red lines leading up into her hairline and across the width of her shoulders. She was beautiful, strange, exotic, and Alem felt his heart beat a little faster.
He tried to focus on the circular design, but it resisted his observation, seemed to shift and move beneath her skin. He gasped.
She turned at the sound, brushing hay and strands of black hair out of her face. Their eyes met. He recognized her and gasped again.
Impossible
.
Tosh gave up struggling almost immediately. More than one pair of big hands had grabbed him, enormous, hairy, powerful arms lifting him and spiriting him along the pitch-black passage.
Trolls. That fucking whore tossed me into a fucking troll pit
.
But they weren’t trolls. They rounded a corner, and the dim light from a single candle showed Tosh he was in the iron grasp of the two “cudgel brothers,” as he’d come to think of them; indeed, from the angle at which they carried him he could see one of the cudgels stuck into a wide leather belt.
The candle was on a small table with a jug of wine, a wheel of cheese and a plate of thick, dark sausages. They set him upright next to the table. Tosh could see chairs now and a small stove. The “smaller” brother—a foot taller than Tosh—whispered, “Keep it down, eh?” before removing his hand from Tosh’s mouth.
“This here’s our hidey hole,” the bigger brother said.
In the candlelight, the brothers looked strange and unreal, like they’d been mashed together out of clay, their ears and lips thick, bald heads large and round.
“I’m Tosh.”
“We know,” said the bigger one.
Tosh frowned. He’d hoped they would tell him
their
names.
“Sorry, gents, but I forgot how you’re called.”
“I’m Lubin,” the smaller brother said.
The bigger brother thumped his chest with a massive fist. “Bune.”
“Glad to make your acquaintance again.” Tosh took in his surroundings. He was in a natural cavern augmented with stone work and buttressed with thick, wooden beams. Part of the ceiling overhead was natural stone, and part was thick wood. It had the look of a place long used. “So what is this place and why am I here?”
Lubin sat down on one of the chairs, grabbed the jug of wine. “A cave.” He drank, smacked his lips and handed the jug to his brother.
“Perranese,” Bune said then drank deeply.
Ah. Clear as mud
.
They handed the jug to Tosh.
He shrugged.
Why not?
Tosh drank and almost spit it out.
This for damn sure isn’t the good stuff
. He braced himself and took another, smaller swig to show he was a good sport. He handed the jug back to Lubin.
Tosh cleared his throat, belched fire. “Okay, fair enough that maybe I don’t want to meet any Perranese troops right at this particular moment, buy why are
you
down here?”
“Better to be safe,” Lubin said. “The new bosses won’t hurt the whores.”
“Men like whores,” put in Bune.
Ah. The intellectual one
.
“But it is different for armed men. We are here only to protect the women, but these foreigners might not understand. Better to be safe for now and wait.”
Lubin took another swig from the jug, then handed it to Bune, who drank and then held it out for Tosh again.
Yeah, why not? It’s not as if I’ve got anything else to do
.
He drank, winced; a mellow warmth spread through his body. The stuff wasn’t half bad on a second go.
The high-pitched ring of a small bell startled him. Tosh glanced up, saw a little brass bell in the corner where the wooden part of the ceiling met the natural stone. A length of thin, brown twine led up through a hole in the wood. Somebody above yanked on the twine again, and the bell rang.
“What’s that?”
“That’s Mother,” Lubin said.
* * *
“Come in,” she said.
Tosh entered the third-floor room and closed the door behind him.
It was a nice room, and in that sense it didn’t seem to fit in with the rest of the Wounded Bird. It was more like a nobleperson’s study: padded leather-covered chairs, a large polished desk, oil lamps hanging overhead providing good light, not smoky. He looked down and saw he was standing on a thick carpet with an intricate pattern, exotic, probably hauled all the way from Fyria or some other far-off land.
As if you know how the nobles live, idiot. Just pay attention to the lady
.
She wore a blue silk dress of a modest, modern cut and could have passed for merchant class or minor nobility, but Tosh already knew who she was. She ran the Wounded Bird, although whether she was the owner or merely running the place for somebody else, Tosh didn’t know. She tended toward the plump and had rosy cheeks, cool blue eyes, black hair streaked with white. A handsome woman, probably quite fetching in her younger days.
“You’re Tosh?”
“Yes.”
She looked him over, eyes shrewd, and Tosh suddenly felt strangely exposed.
“They call me Mother.”
“No name?”
“I have a name,” she said, “but it wouldn’t mean anything to anyone. But everyone in Backgate knows who Mother is.”
“Thanks for taking me in,” Tosh said.
“Don’t,” Mother said. “It wasn’t my idea.”
Uh-oh
.
She tilted her head, considering. “Not that I
necessarily
disapprove.”
Tosh shifted his feet, rubbed the back of his neck. “Well … thanks anyway.”
“Sorry for your rude awakening,” Mother said. “But we had to get you down into the cave. I can offer you better hospitality now.”
Mother gestured to a chair near the desk. Tosh sat.
She turned to a silver tray behind her on which was a crystal decanter and matching crystal wine glasses. She filled one, handed it to Tosh.
He sipped. Better than the brew he’d been swilling downstairs although it didn’t spread that warm feeling through his limbs as quickly. “Thank you.”
“I have a brothel to run,” Mother said. “Part of that is keeping my girls happy, and it lifted their spirits to take you in and treat you nicely. I imagine you represented every father, brother and granddad killed by the invaders.”
Tosh didn’t know what to say to that, so he sipped more wine.
Mother paced slowly as she spoke. “A sour little officer from the Perranese army came to tell me what I’d already guessed. We’ve been asked—
ordered,
actually—to open for business. Their general isn’t a fool. He knows what it takes to keep soldiers in line, and discipline can only take you so far.”
“What did you tell him?”
She smiled tightly. “Why, that we were only too eager to oblige, of course. We reopen in two days.”
Two days. Damn.
“My immediate concern is what to do with you,” Mother said.
“Me?”
“You.”
Tosh cleared his throat. “Maybe you need another man about the place. Another bouncer?”
“There are times when an extra pair of hands might be useful,” admitted Mother. “But to be frank, Lubin and Bune are generally all the muscle I need. More than enough, actually.”
Tosh again didn’t know what to say. He emptied the wine glass. Mother did not offer to refill it.
“The Perranese are rounding up the remains of the Klaar military and putting them into labor gangs to clean up the battle damage,” Mother told him. “So it could be worse. No executions. Prisoners are given a warm place to sleep and three meals a day.”
Ah, so Tosh was getting the old heave-ho from The Wounded Bird. This was Mother’s way of breaking it to him gently, but Tosh didn’t relish the idea of becoming a war slave. He frowned, reconsidering his earlier idea of gathering supplies and climbing over the city wall.
“You’re not warming to that idea as an option, are you?”
Tosh shook his head. “No, ma’am.”
Mother sighed. “Can’t say that I blame you.”
She rubbed her eyes, tired, sagged against the desk. It was odd to Tosh to see even this small dent in her poise. She’d probably been through a lot in the past day or two.
Yeah, well, so have I, lady
. The desperate ride from Ferrigan’s Tower, the harrowing battle, the botched escape. It hadn’t been Tosh’s idea of a laugh, not a moment of it.
“We don’t tolerate idle hands at the Wounded Bird.” She cleared her throat, straightened herself, lifted her chin and cast an appraising eye on Tosh. “Can you cook?”
Alem watched Rina Veraiin from the doorway as she sat at his grandmother’s small, wooden table sluggishly spooning soup into her mouth. Both spoon and bowl were simple, wooden. The soup was thin, but at least it was hot.
She’s a long way from the castle and fine things. I wonder how she ended up in Hammish
.
He’d tried to pepper her with questions back in the barn, but Breen had intervened, immediately recognizing that the young lady was in no condition to be pestered. His grandmother had put her in the chair by the fire while she warmed the soup and sent word through the village for spare clothing.
She still had the fine cloak draped around her shoulders but underneath wore a ragged wool sweater provided by Agatha. Her husband had grown too fat for it five winters back, she’d explained. The pants were too long and had to be rolled up and were so patched they could have been part of a carnival jester’s costume. Nobody in the village was fool enough to give up their boots in the middle of winter, not even for a duchess, but they’d managed to scrounge a pair of canvas summer shoes. They’d be soaked through after ten steps in the deep snow but were better than nothing.
There were still a few stray bits of hay in her mussed hair, and with the ragged clothing, she looked like … like …
She’s beautiful. All you have to do is look a little more closely and you can see the duchess there
.
Ragged hand-me-down clothes can’t hide that
.
Alem closed his eyes, shook his head.
What are you daydreaming about, thicko
?
Rina picked up the bowl, drained the last of the soup, wiped her mouth on her sleeve.
She looked around as if seeing the interior of his grandmother’s cabin for the first time, and blinked at Alem. “What village is this?”