She mattered here. After ten years, this was her inn.
Tanya repeated that fact in her head over and over again until she was finally soothed into a fitful sleep.
She jerked awake at dawn the way she always did. The inn was still. She tucked her hair into a black knit net and crept down the stairs in her stocking feet.
The clutter in Froud’s office was of that annoying variety that makes perfect sense to its owner and absolutely no one else. One wall was completely taken up with a huge scarred wooden desk, covered in towers of parchments, neatly stacked, but poised to collapse the second they were disturbed.
She sighed and opened the first letter her hand touched.
By the time the sun was fully up, Tanya had cleaned half the desk and found nothing. No mentions of her in any letters to friends, no deeds, no ownership slips, no loans, nothing with her name on it at all. If a stranger read these papers, they would have no idea that Tanya even existed, let alone that she was practically the man’s daughter and had essentially run his inn for him for the past five years.
She heard the soldiers in the next room start to stir, checked that the office door was locked, and kept working.
By noon, Tanya was hungry, thirsty, covered in paper cuts, sore in the legs, and angry as hell. The writ wasn’t there.
Froud had never made the arrangements. She had no rights to the Smiling Snake.
Tanya let that thought sink in for a few minutes before she stood, rejected the notion of exposing herself to the sneers of that smug commander, and climbed out the window instead.
She paced the yard, the stables, moving faster and faster and faster until she was running, she hardly knew where. She found herself panting in front of the doom-seeking mermaid and screamed.
A few people stopped to look, but none of them were locals. The locals had already gotten their fill of Tanya as spectacle when she had turned up on the beach at age seven, shivering, pathetic—and alone—until, nearly a whole month later, Froud turned up and led her by the hand to the Snake.
Everything will be safe now, little bit, he had said. What do you like to eat?
Tanya wandered back to the Snake slowly, taking the long route along the docks. She stopped to watch a trading ship from across the Geode load its hold with great barrels of selenium, beryl, and tin.
Tanya leaned against the salt-whitened wooden railing of one of the few empty slips and marveled at the size of the ship, the unfamiliar symbols on its sails, the mottos wrought in foreign letters she couldn’t even begin to read. When Tanya first came to Griffin’s Port, the rise of magical engineering had only just begun, and the traders were far more uniform and far less grand. They came in narrow ships with plain sails and sold wine, lace, spices. It had been quieter, somehow—easier to hide. These days, the docks were changing constantly and smelled of strange powders and dust from the miners. Magic users needed raw natural materials to manipulate the aether, and apparently the caves around Griffin’s Port were rich in what they called “minerals.”
Tanya wondered whether she would even have survived if she had been dumped as a small child in the Griffin’s Port of today. She thought of the random fires, floods, and quakes of the last decade, and doubted it. One could plan for ordinary evils—people. But one couldn’t plan for what one didn’t know, and no one—not even the magicians themselves—ever knew what was going to happen when they manipulated matter. Not matter, she reminded herself: aetheric strands. That’s what she had been superciliously informed was the proper name for the energy the magic users tapped.
A crack sounded from the sky and Tanya looked up. Magic users made a rock bigger somewhere and somewhere else, a waterfall flowed upward. No one could figure out what magic made what change, and yet amateurs persisted in practicing with whatever they could find. Tanya supposed she couldn’t blame them; they were just making a living. But it was hell on someone trying to decide whether to wear a hat. A bolt of lightning could portend a rainstorm or sandstorm for all she knew. “Junkoff,” they called it—junk and runoff combined. As far as Tanya was concerned, it was the perfect name for such a waste of both time and normal, neutral reality.
By the time she reached the inn, the wind was whipping the spindly trees back and forth. She yanked open the door as the first fat raindrops fell. Just a natural rainstorm, then. She struggled to slam the door against the wind and leaned her head against the door for a moment, savoring the peace.
She lifted her head. Why was it so peaceful? Soldiers caroused—it was what they were known for.
Tanya whirled around, but the fine men of the Queen’s Corps were already hiding whatever had silenced them. All Tanya saw was a glimpse of a rather plain-looking box made of some polished wood.
Tanya caught her breath as a swift current of rage ran through her blood. That. Damned. Box. She recognized it immediately. It was the one that had distracted her as Froud died.
One of the corpsmen, a short, tanned one with gray-blue eyes, moved in front of it, blocking her view.
Tanya wanted to bring beer mugs down on every single one of their heads. But they were corpsmen and she was a tavern wench and thus had no outlet for revenge, except to make them extremely uncomfortable.
She put a hand on her hip. “Am I interrupting something, gentlemen? I’d hate to be in the way.”
The corpsman smiled, a sunny, crooked specimen that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “No, miss! We were just packing.”
“Well, I’m certainly happy to hear that.” She took a step closer, peering around his square shoulders. “Is that box yours?”
“Yes,” he said too quickly, moving again to position his body between her and the table. “Just mine.”
Tanya was faster. She darted behind him and was sitting on the table, box in hand, before he even thought to stop her.
“Yours, huh?” Tanya smiled and tossed it from one hand to the other. “Doesn’t really look like it, does it?” She tossed it lightly in the air and the corpsmen gasped.
Tanya laughed. “It’s just a box, boys. I may not have the athleticism of a member of the Queen’s Corps, but I can catch a box, especially one as light as this. What’s in this thing, anyway?”
The men shifted uncomfortably, but none ventured an answer. Tanya gave an elaborate shrug and threw it underhand as high as she could—
—and for a second, it was as if time slowed. Tanya looked up at the box, arcing back down to her in a perfect, uncanny spiral. She thought she could hear bells chime and feel warmth gathering in her toes, spreading to her knees, to her thighs—
—and then a broad hand shot out, snagging it from midair and pulling it out of sight. A voice behind her answered, “Nothing for a tavern wench to worry about, that’s for sure.”
Tanya whipped around to see Rees. She folded her arms. “When are you leaving?” she asked.
“Tomorrow,” he said, pocketing the box. “We are eagerly awaited.”
That’s when Tanya noticed yet more corpsmen carrying barrels out of her kitchen and forgot the box. “Where are your men taking my food?”
“To the barn. My men are taking my provisions to be bundled into cargo for the horses.”
Tanya ran across the room into the kitchen. It was almost completely bare.
“All of it?” she called from the kitchen. “You’re taking all my food stores?”
“Pickles and all, my lady,” he called back cheerfully. “We’re also taking your cashbox, all the beer, the wine, any medicinals you have lying around, blankets, extra boots, there’s a very nice hammer in that little room—”
“Thank you, I understand,” Tanya cut him off. She surveyed the empty shelves and walked out of the kitchen to face Rees. “What direction will you be traveling?”
He cocked his head. “Through the Marsh Woods. South. Southeast, actually. Why?”
Tanya visualized the map in Froud’s study. “You’re heading to the Capital?”
“Yes. Why so curious?”
Tanya eyed
the man, frowning. “Why are your men so poorly provisioned?” she asked. “It doesn’t make sense for a corps assigned to the Capital to be so in need of supplies.”
“We have a long journey to the Capital,” he said flatly. “I don’t need to explain the workings of the corps to you. Anyway, I’m locking the door when I leave, so you should pack up your belongings, too, such as they may be.”
Tanya was only half listening, trying to work out the math in her head: How much beer could she buy on credit? And would enough people patronize a technically broken-into tavern—one that had recently seen a death, no less—in time to pay back the debts?
“All right, then,” Tanya sighed, heading toward the stairs. “I’ll be ready to leave with you the day after tomorrow.”
“With us?” Rees whipped his head toward her. “Meaning what exactly?”
Tanya turned. “You’re going to take me to the Capital with you.”
He folded his arms. “Am I? Why should I do that?”
The rest of the room had gone quiet, the bustle of the men slowing as they strained to hear. Tanya looked around at the corps. Most of them were skinny and unshaven, their cloaks ragged and poorly patched.
She stepped off the staircase to face Rees. “I have a proposition for you.”
He smiled. “Let’s hear it.”
She crossed her arms over her bodice. “It’s not that kind of proposition. It’s very simple. I need to get to the Capital and it’s easier for me to get there traveling with a party of Queen’s corpsmen than it is by myself.”
Rees snorted. “You wouldn’t make it a day alone.”
She ignored the barb, as it was probably true. “So, I’ll trade with you.”
“What could you have to trade?”
She looked him in the eye. “To speak frankly, you make a very poor showing. You’re obviously an important corps, or else why would you have a writ from the Queen and Councilman Hewitt himself? And yet you had to ransack a tavern just to feed yourselves. Your men have been barely eating, whether because they didn’t have food or any notion of how to prepare it, I don’t know. Their uniforms are in terrible condition. I haven’t been in the stables, but I’m betting the horses look as shabby as the men. I can fix all that. If allowed to join your party, I will cook, do the laundry, mend any rips, and curry the horses. I promise you, by the time you reach the Capital, you’ll be shining.”
Rees narrowed his eyes. “You’ll come along as a skivvy? Do all the maid work? And you’ll follow my orders?”
“Within reason, yes. I will,” Tanya answered, hoping that she wouldn’t regret it. “I believe that if you think about it, you’ll realize that you’re getting the much better deal: a first-class cook and seamstress for no additional expense. All I’m getting is the, let’s say, pleasure of your company through the Marsh Woods.”
Rees pursed his lips and nodded. “Deal,” he said, brushing past her to the kitchen.
Tanya followed, meaning to dig out her secret cache of chocolate, but a burly, wide-eyed corpsman stopped her.
“Excuse me, miss,” he said, his voice halting and gentle. “If there’s something you need doing in the Capital, I’d be happy to do it for you.”
Tanya looked at him suspiciously. “And you are?”
“I’m Rafi Darrow, miss, from Grimstock Village in the Glassland Meadows.”
“And why should I trust you to do anything for me, let alone something so important that I’ve decided to leave my home—yes, my home—in order to accomplish it?”
Darrow knit his eyebrows together. “I don’t wish to pry . . .”
“Then why are you?”
“Why are you, Miss Tanya?” he blurted out. “Why do you need to go to the Capital?”
Tanya turned and walked up the stairs to pack. “You heard your commander,” she said, her back to Darrow. “If I want my inn back, I have to take it up with the Queen and Council.
“And that’s exactly what I intend to do.”
Chapter
3
About three quarters of the men had horses, and there were several more donkeys dragging wagons laden with supplies. Tanya had expected to be riding on one of those wagons, but when she started to clamber on top of the sacks in one of the stronger-looking specimens, someone slipped hands around her hips and pulled her back to the ground.
She shook the hands off and turned around. “What do you think you’re doing?” she asked Rees.
He looked down at her. “Funnily enough, I was just going to ask you the same thing.”
“I’m riding on the wagon. I checked. This one doesn’t have anything that heavy on it.”
Rees leered. He reached out and brushed the rolled flesh of her waist. “I don’t know. I don’t think the wagon can take the weight.”
Tanya wasn’t impressed. She had done her filling out in the hips, chest, and rear over three years ago, and she was quite used to this sort of nonsense. “It can take it.”
“I don’t think so, my lady,” answered Rees, making “my lady” sound more like an insult than Tanya would have thought possible. “It would be irresponsible for me to tire the donkeys.”
“And it’s more responsible to compel me, who has never spent any time traveling and has no knowledge of woodcraft, to match the pace of trained corpsmen? You call that commanding?”
Rees shrugged. “I need the donkeys.”
Tanya narrowed her eyes and shouldered her belongings, neatly rolled up in a tight bundle secured with rope. She turned her back on Rees and started walking.
Seven hours later they were still walking, despite the fact that the light was sneaking behind the trees and the moon was almost up. Tanya’s ankles were swollen and her stockings caked with mud up to her knees, but she regretted nothing. Rees hadn’t bothered her since they began walking. She should have realized she could do whatever needed doing without the courtesy or assistance of corpsmen.
Then Tanya slipped and slid up to her hips into a thick and viscous gravelly swamp.
She shook off her pack and threw it to the side, sighing with relief when she heard it land on solid ground. She heard the men swear loudly, the horses whine, and the squelch of the swamp as her traveling companions also found themselves stuck.
It was darker now and there was a mist rising over the swamp, along with a sick smell, like rotten eggs. Tanya squinted and made out the figure of Darrow, also on foot, thrashing around as well as one could thrash whilst glued to a . . . whatever it was.
“What is this?” she asked him.
He shrugged helplessly, apparently too anxious to answer.
She heard Rees call out through the darkness. “Everyone stay where they are. We’ve hit some junkoff.”
The men all groaned and Tanya opened her mouth, appalled. “You didn’t consult a scout?” she shouted angrily. Everyone knew that travelers had to plan around potential junkoff now; what was there one week might not necessarily be there the next. Off-season fishermen had developed a sideline of selling weekly updates to annotated maps—overpriced, Tanya was sure, since the work could be done by children, but an essential public service nonetheless.
She heard mirthless laughter through the mist. “It’s clear you’ve never left Griffin’s Port. Nobody has time to map this shit. Crap, half-bit magicians are multiplying like rats—junkoff is everywhere.”
“Well, if you don’t have time, then by all means get your entire regiment drowned,” spat out Tanya, struggling until her arm was clear. “Apologies for expecting professionalism from a commander of the Queen’s Corps.” She hit the mud angrily. Corpsmen had always been among her most favored guests: courteous, tidy, and with a discretionary budget simply perfect for tipping. Standards must have really fallen.
Tanya struggled to move her legs through the sludge, one part sand, one part salt, one part sulfur, and one part mud. Junkoff: natural phenomena spontaneously bursting into existence due to sheer disorganization and incompetence.
The overlay of aetheric str
ands spanning the known world had been discovered before Tanya could remember—a web of invisible, interconnected threads of energy emanating from every raw material found in nature, vibrating at different frequencies. The problems came more recently, when it was discovered that anyone with just a smattering of training, a little bit of psychic ability, and something that passed for a wand could begin manipulating those strands.
Tanya liked it when “magic” just meant knowing what plants and rocks did what, how to read the information readily available in the stars, poems that helped you focus on specific problems, etc. Or, as Tanya preferred to call it, “common sense.”
Tanya kicked hard, groaning with the effort, but the movement plunged her shoulder into the swamp. “Damn it,” she yelled, even more stuck than before. She regained her footing and twisted around. Two or three of the corpsmen had halted the horses in the back of the baggage train before they could fall into the swamp with the rest, so at least most of the supplies were safe.
One of the humans who had been spared by their quick thinking was a rangy kid who was currently laughing, leaning against a tree, still clean as anything. She screwed up her mouth to scold him when an arrow whistled over her head and bolted his shoulder to the tree.
He stopped laughing and started screaming.
A hooting sound traveled from tree to tree. Tanya followed the sound with her eyes, twisting in a circle. There were shadows in the trees, hidden by leaves and swamp-smog. One of the shadows jumped down.
His face was hooded, but she could tell that the figure striding through the sticks and leaves toward the boy was confident in his ability to hurt. The man put his hand against the boy’s chest and he cried out even harder.
“Where is it?” The hooded man’s growl was enough to make Tanya’s legs twitch uneasily. She was almost glad she was in the swamp.
Tanya watched the boy gulp manically, screeching as the hooded man pressed his shoulder against the tree, exposing more of the bloodied arrow shaft. Eventually the kid ran out of oxygen and just gasped.
Wench Page 2
