Wench

by Maxine Kaplan

  Another arrow whistled through the air and, to Tanya’s surprise, struck the hooded man right through the back of his hood. He shuddered and emitted a gargling sound before he hit the dirt, falling with his head against the boy’s legs.

  There was a moment of silence while Tanya whipped her head around, looking for who had shot the hooded man, but she saw no one with a bow in their hand. The silence was broken with a shout of “Yes!” from one of the dry men on the bank—a sleazy specimen, the kind of customer Tanya secretly watered down the beer for—and then Rees shouted, “Nice shot, Hart!”

  A cheer rose up among the rest of the corps, but Tanya narrowed her eyes. She was certainly no expert at archery, but she could hear, rather well, too, and that was not the direction from which she had heard the snap and the whistle. But Rees seemed not to care as he called out to one of the other men still on dry land and not nailed to a tree. “Liir, check the cargo—the you-know-what—and then work on getting us out of here. Greer, get the kid out of the tree.”

  Tanya started struggling through the muck again, wondering what the hell had just happened. She noticed Liir by the baggage and called out to him, “That’s the wrong bag. The ropes and hooks are in the green burlap.”

  He waved her off. Tanya scowled and started to protest, but then stopped when she noticed what he was doing. He was deliberately fishing out a small bundle wrapped in fine red velvet. He cradled it to him and Tanya saw a flash of gleaming wood.

  It’s that box, Tanya realized. The corpsman shouted to Rees and held it up. Rees nodded approvingly, and the corpsman took great care in wrapping it back up tight.

  She narrowed her eyes. What was in that box?

  Eventually, the few dry members of the party managed to drag the rest out of the swamp. Tanya stamped her sleeping feet and shook out her legs, made heavy with sandy mud. She was filthier than she had ever been—stiff with filth. And she wasn’t the only one. The men were stripping off their clothes and running back down the path they had come from, splashing into the clear-water lake they had passed right before the junkoff.

  Tanya didn’t even have a moment to be shocked by the nudity before she noticed that they were throwing their sodden clothes at her.

  “Oh no,” Darrow sighed. “Most of the horses lost their shoes.”

  Rees laughed bitterly, pulling off his own shirt. “That follows. There’s a village about three miles to the west, right?”

  Darrow looked like he was thinking hard and then smiled. “Yes. It’s a little out of our way, but Ironhearth will definitely have a smithy. Or fifteen.”

  He nodded. “Take the horses who threw shoes. Go slow, we need them to last. Bring Hart with you. We need one presentable corpsman anyway. Speaking of presentable . . .” He turned to Tanya.

  “Don’t even bother,” she grumbled, gathering up the sandy, soaking clothes. “Although I will say that this is a little beyond what would reasonably be expected of the average corps skivvy. You’re very lucky to have me.”

  Tanya scooped up the last of the discarded clothes and marched over to the riverbank. The younger corpsmen were splashing and laughing, relieved at having escaped first the hooded rogue and then the swamp.

  “Ahem,” Tanya said loudly, and they turned toward her. “Those of you who didn’t already throw your filthy rags at me may bring them for me to wash.”

  “And who’s going to wash the washer?” called out one of the bolder boys, who was relaxing on a rock. “Come take a bath with us, tavern maid.” The others laughed.

  Tanya met his eyes. Greer. The boy she had snatched the box from back in the Snake. Since then he hadn’t given her a reason to notice him. He wasn’t what you would necessarily call handsome. He was muscular, but short and ropy, not tall and broad the way the pretty boys are in tales. His nose was also too broad and long and his mouth strikingly large. But looking at him on the rock, with his sly, crooked smile and direct, sharp gaze, Tanya somehow felt that if she was going to have to look somewhere, it might as well be at Greer.

  “You think you’re shocking me, don’t you?” she asked, dropping the clothes on the light, proper sand of the bank. She started unsnapping her bodice, formerly green, but now a muddy gray. “Do you know how long I’ve been, as you say, a tavern maid?”

  Greer was closely observing her progress with the snaps. “Haven’t wondered really.”

  “I see,” she said, throwing the bodice on the pile at her feet. “I’ve been a tavern maid for almost ten years. I’d bet that’s quite a bit longer than you’ve been a member of the Queen’s Corps. What are you, nineteen? And you fancy yourself a man of the world. You’ve taken a punch? Seen some bloodshed? I bet you’ve even tumbled a serving wench here and there, haven’t you?” He inclined his head and laughed. Tanya laughed right back, stepping out of the plain-spun dress of red cotton. Standing in just her shift, she started to wade into the river.

  “The thing boys like you tend to forget when you’re working on a wench is how much more we know than you do.” Some of the other boys, all of whom were now listening, started to protest and laugh, but Tanya waved them silent, carefully stepping into deeper water. “I’m not saying I know more about woodcraft or swordplay or what have you. But you’ve met, what, ten of me? I’ve met hundreds of you. Every tavern wench you’ve met knows precisely what you’re about. You haven’t fooled or surprised a single one.”

  And now Greer wasn’t among the laughers. Odd, that, thought Tanya. What little notice she had taken of Greer had been of a boy almost always laughing, either with his eyes or his mouth, though not often both. But he was just watching her curiously, listening.

  Tanya felt herself growing both warm and shivery. She shuddered. Such a sensation was wholly impractical.

  It would be much better for him to feel under scrutiny, rather than she.

  Now up to her neck in the water, she shimmied out of her shift and tossed it onto the rock next to Greer. She dunked her head under the water, swimming in place for a moment, feeling the sand drift away from her hair, strand by strand. She shot out of the river and threw her hair back, feeling the muddied water drip down her neck. When she opened her eyes, Greer was still on the rock, but she had successfully reset the energy: His legs were crossed more tightly than before and he was flushed, looking away.

  “You seem dry to me,” she told him, savoring her triumph. “Why don’t you put on something clean and bring a barrel and a box of soap, so I can wash all the dirty clothes?”

  She dived back into the water. She was a much stronger swimmer than most of the corpsmen and soon had left them far behind.

  By the time she swam back to the rock, the riverbank had mostly emptied and a box of soap flakes was indeed waiting for her, on top of a washboard from the Smiling Snake that she hadn’t even realized had been packed. There was also, she was surprised to see, one of her clean dresses.

  “Thank you, Greer,” she murmured.

  The silt from the junkoff had caked itself firmly onto the uniforms. It was nearly full night by the time Tanya finished scrubbing them all out.

  She rose and stretched. Walking barefoot back to the main camp, she smiled ruefully as her feet moved instinctively toward the dried meat and barley. She should be exhausted, but found that this felt familiar. Hadn’t she been on her feet from sunup to sundown, going from chore to chore, since she was a girl? The sun had gone down. To Tanya, that meant it was time to prepare dinner for whoever was in her care.

  Generally, though, people paid her for that.

  She made a note to charge any member of the Queen’s Corps double when she got her inn back.

  By the time Darrow and Hart rode the horses back into camp, it was truly night. Tanya was dishing up stew by the light of a miniature bonfire when she heard new horseshoes clopping down the packed earth of the road from Ironhearth. She turned like everyone else, but had to catch her breath and didn’t see the riders dismount.

  Tanya had glimpsed the sky.

  There was na
tural beauty to be had in Griffin’s Port. But it was the beauty of silvery, wet shadows floating through fog and bright orange leaves falling on the white salt beaches. She had never been near skies clear enough to see the stars. At least not like this.

  Tanya tore her eyes away from the sky only when she heard the last sound she had expected to hear.

  A girl was laughing.

  Hart was playfully bowing to a girl perched behind the saddle of his horse. She smiled down at him and slid neatly off the horse into his arms.

  “Thank you, sir,” said the girl, and the fire flashed light onto her upturned face.

  She was small and narrow, with shining dark hair flowing like a waterfall over her brown shoulders. Tanya tried to get a closer look, but when she finally caught the girl’s eye, her mouth bent in an odd angle and she glanced away as if Tanya weren’t even there.

  Normally, Tanya would have rolled her eyes and left the girl to serve herself, but instead, frowning, she gathered up three bowls, one for Darrow, one for Hart, and one for the strange girl.

  There was something odd about the way the girl had looked at her.

  By the time she got to the newcomers, they had already gathered a small crowd. Rees turned to her with a smirk. “Meet our guest, wench.” Addressing the girl, he said, “Jana, this is Tanya, camp skivvy. If you need anything during your stay, please let her know and she will do whatever she can to accommodate you.”

  Jana didn’t respond, because she was nuzzling Hart’s ear in a way Tanya assumed she thought was subtle.

  It passed that Jana was a cousin of the smith and had come back to camp in order to collect the rest of the payment for the horses. Hart would take the fastest horse and drop her off the next morning as the rest of the party continued down the road to the Capital, meeting up with them at a corps way station outside the city.

  Tanya chose not to join the circle by the fire, preferring to claim a tent to herself and sit in it, alone.

  She had picked one of the smallest tents. But she had also appropriated a sheepskin to line it with, as well as her pillows from her own bed at home. Propped up against them, with a lantern on one side and a plate of cookies—previously hidden away from greedy hands deep in her pack—on the other, she felt really rather comfortable. A little bored, perhaps, with nothing worthwhile to do. She was unused to leisure and it hadn’t even occurred to her to pack a book.

  She shut her eyes for a moment and dredged up a memory of a small, threadbare book, turning it around in her hands, running her fingers over the gray-green cloth. It was the first present Froud had ever given her, the first thing she remembered ever being told was hers and hers alone.

  “I don’t know how to read it,” she had whispered.

  Froud inclined his head toward her until their foreheads were touching. Then he tweaked her nose. “I’ll teach you.”

  “Tanya?”

  She opened her eyes and sat upright, startled. “What?” she asked irritably.

  Greer was looking at her curiously. “What were you doing?”

  “Thinking! Ever try it?”

  Greer chuckled a little grimly, and shook his head. “Wish I could stop,” he told her. “Might get in less trouble that way.”

  She crossed her arms. “Was there something you wanted?’

  “That girl Hart brought back wondered if she might borrow a nightdress.”

  Tanya leaned back against her pillows and lifted her eyebrows. “Did she? That seems unnecessary.”

  Greer snorted, but muffled his laughter as the tent rustled open behind him to reveal Jana. She was even prettier up close. Her nose was crooked, almost as if she had broken it, but it suited her, with her bright mouth and brighter eyes.

  Jana pushed past Greer and bent down to Tanya’s level. “I’m so sorry to interrupt you. Truly. But I do need something to wear tonight other than this dress.”

  Tanya felt herself soften. That dress did seem to fit her very badly; it couldn’t be comfortable. She handed Jana the nightdress she had unpacked for herself.

  “Is this the only one you have?” the girl asked, alarmed.

  Tanya waved her off. “I have more than one shift with me. I’ll sleep in the extra.”

  The girl slowly took the nightdress from Tanya. “Well, all right. If you’re sure you won’t miss it.”

  Tanya laughed. “I think I can do without a nightdress for one night.”

  Jana dimpled prettily and scampered out of the tent.

  “Are those chocolate cookies?” asked Greer, reaching for the plate.

  Tanya, who had forgotten he was there, smacked his hand away.

  “Out!” she ordered. He grinned, snatching a cookie before he obeyed.

  Tanya awoke in darkness to the smell of smoke.

  At first, she yawned and snuggled back into the pillows, wondering idly why no one was tending the bonfire—it was the middle of the night, someone should be on guard. But she kept sniffing the air, somehow aware, even more asleep than not, that something wasn’t right.

  Then she heard the whistling. It was expert; melodic and jolly. Then came the crashing of metal, a low moan, a spark of flame—and still the whistling, tunefully singing in the background.

  Tanya crawled forward and untied the strings holding her tent together, carefully, so as not to make any noise. She poked her head outside.

  About a third of the corps, including Rees, were tied to trees around the clearing. They were gagged and gagging, their heads rolling back on their shoulders. The bonfire itself was now smoking and spitting an evil-smelling vapor. Tanya grabbed her dress and pressed it against her nose, and then crawled a little farther out of the tent.

  A sound of a rough blade on wood drew her gaze and there she discovered the source of the endless whistling. Jana, dressed only in Tanya’s nightdress and a kerchief around her nose, was dancing around the supply wagons, whistling that happy tune, and smashing them to kindling with a sword.

  Chapter

  4

  Tanya’s mouth fell open and she nearly dropped the dress as she watched the girl step back and forth daintily, twirling and slashing a bundle here and overturning a barrel there. She might have been at a square dance, except for the destruction she was happily wreaking.

  Jana did a wild dip-and-spin move and then swaggered rhythmically toward the final, untouched wagon, stopping every few seconds on the way to sidestep, first to the right, then the left, then the right again.

  She vaulted into the wagon and pawed through it, casually glancing at each item before tossing it over her shoulder.

  Tanya looked around her nervously. Those of her traveling companions that she could see were either nodding off or closing their eyes in pain, quite aside from being firmly knotted to trees with good, strong rope from Griffin’s Port. She peeked into the nearest tent and found a small clump of sticks and leaves tied together with string, smoking quietly, but potently, in the corner. Experimentally, Tanya lifted up the cloth covering her mouth and smelled the same sour odor from the bonfire. She quickly put the cloth back up and backed away from the tent.

  Jana’s whistling got louder as she tossed out boxes and bundles more rapidly.

  Tanya stood next to the bonfire, utterly unsure. Nothing in Tanya’s life had prepared her for this scenario. What did one do when a little smithy tart takes out an entire corps and destroys their camp before your eyes?

  There was only one thing she knew how to do.

  Tanya walked swiftly over to the wagon and cleared her throat loudly. Jana stopped whistling and turned to face her. The smile died a little on her lips when she saw Tanya’s stern expression—what the delivery boys in Griffin’s Port called her “shark face.”

  Tanya put her hand on her hip. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  Jana’s eye crinkled in a way that made Tanya think she was smiling. “I’m looking for something,” she explained, and then turned back to the wagon.

  “And why have you incapacitated the corps?”
>
  Jana snorted, tossing her hair back. “Because if they were awake it would be harder to get away with the—ah, here it is!” She hopped off the wagon and unwrapped the red velvet triumphantly.

  Tanya stepped forward, eyeing the item in the other girl’s hand. “I know that box,” she said, more resigned than curious.

  “It’s not about the box,” said Jana excitedly, moving so that she was standing next to Tanya. “It’s what’s inside the box.”

  “Lady of Cups,” Tanya muttered. “What in Lode is in that damned box?”

  “No idea,” Jana answered cheerfully. “I’m not even supposed to look.” She looked at Tanya and smiled broadly. “Gonna anyway. Wanna see?”

  Tanya sniffed. “It couldn’t possibly concern me.”

  Jana shrugged. “Your choice,” she said, and started backing up into a patch of moonlight, far enough away from the fumes of the bonfire that she loosened the kerchief around her mouth and nose and let it fall to her neck. Still facing Tanya, she opened the box.

  A white light briefly exploded around the box’s edges. Tanya felt the light on her skin and met the other girl’s eyes, bright and black in the moonlight, before they were hungrily drawn back to the contents of the box.

  Tanya frowned. Did what was in the box concern her? No, it did not. But was it fair that Jana got to see it, and she, Tanya, who had been holding that box at the moment of Froud’s death, didn’t? No, by all the gods and demons there were, it was not!

  Tanya charged, snatching the box away from Jana’s hands—which were as wide and rough as Tanya’s, now that she was looking.

  “Hey!” cried Jana.

  “Oh, hush up, you’ll get it back,” snapped Tanya. She looked down and felt her heart unaccountably skip a beat.

  The box held a feather. A feather quill, to be exact.

  It was a paragon of a feather: long, pure white, with a smoothly curving shaft and a wide swath of plumage, tapering to the left exquisitely.

  And it was glowing.

  Tanya looked closer. Jana’s hair brushed against hers as they peered inside the box. The feather wasn’t just glowing—although it was certainly doing that, shining out a bright, white light, stronger than anything Tanya had ever seen come off a lantern, strong as the two moons themselves. It was also glittering. The feather sparkled like it had been sprinkled with a thousand tiny, twinkling diamonds.