There was a crash and a shout. Tanya heard voices raise behind her, the squeak of a chair being dragged across the floor, a sliver of metal against leather. Her hands started moving automatically, efficiently dispersing the glasses from the tray.
Riley turned the key around in his fingers. Darrow watched him closely.
“You should accept it,” said the corpsman quietly. “You acted with honor in the Volcano. The money comes from your ruler. You deserve it.”
Riley glanced at Darrow, a glimmer of a smile on his lips. He took the glass of beer from Tanya’s outstretched hand and held it up to her.
Tanya nodded at him while the scuffle behind her got louder, the onlookers’ screams sharper. Greer jumped at the noise as the grapplers tumbled into the table next to them, sending it lurching to the side.
On reflex, Tanya reached out to steady Greer’s glass. She winked at him.
Then she grabbed the empty tray with both hands, spun around, and smacked both combatants on the head.
It couldn’t have hurt much, but it was enough for them both to look up woozily and briefly disengage. Tanya pulled them apart by the ears.
“Enough! Look at you two! You haven’t had more than a drink apiece yet,” she scolded, counting the empties in front of their abandoned seats, “and here you are already disturbing the other patrons’ dinners. There’s no excuse for sloppiness this early in the night, and if you don’t behave, I’ll have you thrown out. Then where will you go? Don’t smirk at me, my man.” She put her face right up against the one who was guffawing. “I can and will do it.”
The man blinked and cast a quick glance toward the bar. Tanya followed his gaze. Madame Moreagan was standing outside her office with her arms folded, watching. She shrugged, a curious smile on her face.
Tanya shoved him down. “Sit,” she ordered. “If you’re good, I might bring you a free whiskey. And, you.” She pulled the other fighter up by his shirt-front. “You go to the bar and tell that nice Lorna that I say to serve you as long as you act like a gentleman and not a second longer.” She shoved him forward and straightened the collar of his rival. “I’m glad we understand one another.”
Both men looked at each other, then back at Tanya. She signaled to Lorna that they needed another drink for the fighter, and both men, seeing that she kept her promise of a free round, meekly obeyed.
Tanya sighed and sat down, squeezing in between Jana and Greer.
“Why’d you do that?”
Tanya turned to face Jana. She was staring into her glass, looking more dejected still than Tanya had ever seen her.
Tanya frowned. “Because it was bothering me and I could,” she answered.
Jana listened to the answer, swirling her beer around. Finally, she asked, “How do you live like that?”
Tanya felt her shoulders release. “How do you not?” she answered. Jana looked up then and finally smiled—a smaller smile than usual, but a smile.
Jana stood. She stretched. She yawned. She ruffled Riley’s hair.
“I’m going to find some trouble,” she announced. “You”—she smacked Tanya lightly on the back of the head—“don’t try to stop me.”
“Never.” Their eyes met. Tanya felt a tug, a desire. She felt an impassible gulf widen between them. She smiled at Jana. Jana smiled back, dipped her hand into the pocket of a passing drunk, lifted out a watch, and slipped into the crowd.
“I had almost forgotten where you came from.”
Tanya turned to Greer. He looked flushed. “You’re good at that,” he said.
“I’m good at a lot of things,” Tanya commented. “Breaking up bar fights is just one of them.”
Greer smiled then, a warm, genuine smile unlike any Tanya had ever seen him wear. It was like the sun coming out after a hailstorm.
That night, Tanya did what she had done almost every night of her life: She played hostess at a tavern.
The Tomcat’s men, giddy from the horrors of the Volcano, eventually fell in around Riley, clambering over and across the central table. One of them started singing, and the others joined in. They sang love ballads, raunchy story-songs, and, when they found out that Tanya was from Griffin’s Port, a sweet dirge about a mermaid, doomed to become foam after falling in love with the land.
Jana eventually returned, several gold coins richer and armed with a set of obsidian dice. She set up shop by the fire, taking the locals of Bloodstone for all they had. There were a few scrapes and blows to the face from that direction, but Tanya kept an eye out and it was never anything Jana couldn’t handle.
Across the Witch, there were lovers’ quarrels, debts of honor contested, jokes so funny boys peed themselves, one hysterical girl sob/yelling in the corner to weary friends, two older gentlemen trying to seal a deal for goods best left unspecified, and then there was Tanya, flitting from table to table, greeting newcomers, bringing drinks, taking orders, slipping the tips behind the bar for the other girls, smoothing ruffled feathers, applauding performances—being the tavern wench that she was, however much had happened to make her forget it.
But it was different now. She wasn’t doing it alone.
At first, she barely noticed. Greer took a tray overloaded with beer and meat pies off the bar and shuttled it to the back, held high and steady over his head, and she shrugged—he had just told her that he once worked in a tavern. It was a heavy tray; he was probably just being gentlemanly.
But then he signaled her from across the room for backup, making a face at a patron that she found she knew how to read—a too-drunk man from Tomcat’s camp needed cajoling to bed. Once she had rubbed his back and pushed him up the stairs, there Greer was again, waiting to give her a stack of empties.
The next time she turned around, Greer was hanging over the dignified dealmakers, both wizened and stern. Tanya saw one of them laugh. Greer clapped him on the back as he moved on, a rag over his shoulder.
She and Greer ran the tavern together that night. She hadn’t asked him and she never would have thought to. But there he was—competent and reliable.
When the Witch finally calmed down, she sat by the abandoned hearth, the fire burning low. Jana was gone, the Lady knew where. Darrow and Riley had both gone off to bed hours ago. There was just Greer, wiping down the table.
“Why did you do this tonight?” she asked.
He kept scrubbing, his eyes on his task. “Why did you?”
“I’m not sure,” she admitted. “I knew how to. I don’t know how to do . . . other things.”
“I think you can probably do whatever you want to do.”
Tanya smiled ruefully. “I have the quill and the trust of the Queen. But I don’t know what to report to her. I don’t know how to stop the Others.”
“Maybe you don’t know what to do because you don’t want what the Queen wants,” he said.
Tanya raised an eyebrow. “You’re skating very close to treasonous speech there, corpsman.”
He smiled briefly. “I just follow orders. I leave the strategy to my intellectual betters. I’d leave it to you if you wanted.”
The fire went out. It was dark in the Witch. Dark and empty.
Tanya shivered. “I should go to bed,” she said. But she didn’t move.
Greer looked at her. He sat, bringing his eyes level with Tanya’s. They were pale enough that Tanya’s own eyes adjusted quickly to see them. They were almost all she could see.
“When I said you could do anything,” he began.
“Greer. Stop.” A rush of distinctly pleasurable fear swept through Tanya.
“No, let me say this.” He put his hand on the table, very close to hers, but not touching. “When I said you could do anything you wanted, I didn’t mean because you had the quill or because of the Queen. You don’t need either. You, Tanya of Griffin’s Port, are equal to anything without them.”
Tanya let out a breath, but it came out a sob. Greer looked at her sharply and lifted his hand from the table, bringing it to her face.
He picked up a piece of her hair and pushed it behind her ear. He leaned closer, his unevenly cut bangs brushing against her forehead.
“Only if you say I can,” he told her.
Her heart beating fast, Tanya gulped and nodded. At the bottom of her vision, she saw him bite his lip and move closer, then his lips closed on top of hers.
She breathed and he moved away.
“I’m sorry—” he started to mumble, but was cut off as she cupped his chin with both hands and kissed him back.
It didn’t feel like it did when Jana had kissed her and her heart beat wildly, pings vibrating all over her body. But that, she thought, kissing Greer, softly, exploratively, was because Jana was Jana and Greer was Greer.
“If I’m not interrupting . . .”
At that icy voice, Tanya and Greer broke up, sweaty and awkward. Tanya accidentally dragged her fingernails across his neck and he jumped backward, toppling a nearby chair.
Madame Moreagan watched them fumble, her arms crossed. “May I have a moment of your time, Miss Tanya? I believe your bodyguard can clean up the rest of this mess without you.” She turned and went into her office, pointedly leaving the door open a fraction of an inch.
Tanya stood. “I should . . .”
“Yes,” said Greer, jumping to his feet and grabbing up the rag. He began to furiously scrub the already clean table. “I’m fine here.”
“Uh, OK.” Greer was looking anywhere but at her. She could relate—she wasn’t sure she wanted to meet his eyes just then either. She didn’t know what she’d find there, what she wanted to find, what he would find in her eyes . . . She didn’t know anything.
There had been no reason for her to kiss Greer. She had never kissed anyone before; she’d only been kissed.
She turned, straightening her hair, her skirt, whatever else she could think to straighten.
Thank the Lady of Cups for Madame Moreagan, she thought. She needed to have an interaction with absolutely no emotional content whatsoever. She set her face to neutral and strode into the office, closing the door behind her.
She stifled a curse. Madame Moreagan’s office looked uncannily like Froud’s. There was a flower on the heavy wooden desk, a single pink rose in a simple crystal vase, and a bunch of dried lavender hung in the corner, perfuming the space with a clean, womanly smell. But everything else was the same: the same dark wood and tall lanterns, the same locked boxes and overstuffed bookshelves. It was the same size, the same shape.
It was, in fact, what Tanya had always imagined the office at the Snake would be once it was hers.
Madame Moreagan caught her looking. “Does everything meet with your approval?” she asked archly.
Tanya forced herself to look the tavern keeper in the eye, but it didn’t help. If this office was what she had always imagined would be hers, then what was its owner? Her future? Her true self? “How may I help you?” she managed.
Madame Moreagan sat back in her chair. “You had led me to believe you weren’t interested in joining our little operation here at the Witch,” she replied. “What changed?”
“Nothing’s changed,” answered Tanya uneasily.
The older woman cocked her head to the side. “People who attempt to commandeer my tavern have previously found themselves on the wrong side of a crossbow—the lucky ones, that is. I think, however, that you knew that. And yet you did it anyway. Why?”
Tanya didn’t answer. Madame Moreagan smiled. “That’s all right. It was more of a rhetorical question. Something for you to ponder. Perhaps while you read your letter.”
“Letter? From who?”
“I’m not sure. I didn’t read it.”
“How polite of you.”
“Nothing of the sort,” corrected Madame Moreagan. “If messages are delivered to my tavern, I feel no compunction of any kind about reading them, regardless of the addressee; if the Witch is implicated, in even the smallest way, then it is my business.”
Tanya frowned. “Then why . . . ?”
“I didn’t choose not to read it,” answered Madame Moreagan, reaching into her sleeve and pulling out a slim rectangle. “I wasn’t able to read it. That interests me.”
She handed it over to Tanya, who recoiled from the cold—a sharp, spiky, familiar cold.
It was a rather fine envelope that looked to be made of cream-colored vellum. But it was thoroughly encased in a shining layer of silvery ice.
“I tried melting it,” commented Madame Moreagan. “Obviously. I even used a little magic powder that will usually set anything on fire. But it was quite impervious to my efforts.”
Tanya turned it over in her hands. Her name, “Tanya of Griffin’s Port,” was fuzzily visible through the ice, but there were no other directions. There was, however, a thin line of sterling silver running through the top edge. Madame Moreagan watched as Tanya ran her finger across it.
“I saw that,” noted the tavern keeper. “I suppose the only way to open that letter is to somehow remove the silver, to create an opening for the envelope to fall out.” There was a pause. “Do you have a way to do that, Tanya?”
Tanya was luckily too cold to flush and hastily jammed the letter into her pocket.
“Thank you, Madame Moreagan. For my letter, and,” she added, “for not shooting me with a crossbow.”
“Do you know why I didn’t?” she asked. Tanya shrugged. “Don’t shrug at me like Jana. You know why. I didn’t stop you because you were doing an exemplary job. And don’t you shake your head at me! The Witch isn’t easy. I don’t imagine Griffin’s Port smiled at a tavern wench hitting customers over the head with a tray, but it was exactly what was needed here. You saw that.” The sun began peeking through the window. Madame Moreagan opened a folder on her desk and started looking through papers, checking off list items with a fountain pen.
“You have a talent for this, Tanya,” she said, her eyes on her work. “It’s not just the result of training and experience. Even if you choose not to stay at the Witch, you might consider what it means to turn your back on a talent.” Madame Moreagan looked up. “I’m busy now. You may go.”
Chapter
32
Tanya walked into back into the main room of the Witch. Greer was gone.
It was that liminal moment in a tavern, when light illuminates the empty floor and anticipatory hush prevails. Tanya stood in front of the bar, taking in the orderly row of bottles on their shelves. She might almost be back at the Smiling Snake, about to start another long day.
There had been no time to think back then.
Tanya hummed a melody she remembered from the woman who’d left her on the docks as she walked back to her room.
Sitting on the bed, she drew out the Queen’s letter and, using her blouse as paper, removed the silver seal, and opened the letter from the Queen.
Dear Tanya,
You might be wondering how I got a letter to you so quickly. I certainly hope you are—you’re no use to me at all if you’ve stopped questioning things that don’t make sense, simply because “magic.”
It is magic in a way, but nothing that required any great power, merely careful preparations and the initiative to take advantage of my own prison.
For several years now, I have been using my Winter Underground to systematically tunnel throughout Lode. I have constructed a complex network of ice tubes across my kingdom, installing waypoints, manned by loyal corpsmen, at strategic points. With such a network complete, sending missives through these tunnels requires nothing more complicated that speeding up the crystallization of ice through the careful and specific energizing of atoms. I am aware that this is beyond your understanding. I am also aware of how diminishing you find the experience of ignorance—in this case, set your mind at ease. It is beyond the comprehension of anyone who is not me.
You may have noticed that I have a particular facility with ice. It is not a mere aesthetic preference. It is because, one hundred and nineteen years ago now, the Council inexorably stitched me—bod
y and essence—into the Glacier.
Partially, it was to preserve me. You worked in kitchens, so you must know: Nothing keeps meat fresh like freezing it. I told you I was a child for a long time. I was not speaking figuratively.
They wished to keep me a child and they wished to keep me paralyzed—or frozen, if you wish to be whimsical about it. I like to think they thought themselves very clever to be actualizing such infantile metaphors. Regardless of their intentions, I cannot leave the Glacier. I can go as far as the field you departed from, and even then, I can stay no longer than twenty-two minutes or I freeze solid. I do not thaw until I have been back in the Glacier for at least forty-three days, and I am weak for several months after. As you may imagine, I spent years experimenting with my limitations. They have proven quite immutable to date.
They made a mistake, however. The Glacier may be in me, but I am just as much in it. I adapted. I learned. I made do. And I prevailed.
You should now be wondering why I am telling you this. Why would I make myself vulnerable by sharing such a secret with anyone, even my private secretary? If you are as smart as I hope, you will have guessed: It is because I need something from you.
I created the Royal College of Aetherical Manipulation for a very specific purpose. I directed their research in such a way that bent it to my intentions, which were of course to seize my throne from those who would take it from me, in the past, present, and future. To ensure that outcome, I needed tools to control all the magical industry in Lode, and hopefully, someday, even farther. My investments led to young Lord Rollo’s pet project: the quill. It was a brilliant piece of engineering, and I have no doubts that I would have wielded it quite effectively.
But then something quite unexpected happened. A tavern wench fed it with her blood.
The quill was not designed for blood magic. It was actually quite modest in scope before you commandeered it. No trained magician would have been so foolish as to risk even accidental blood magic. I certainly wouldn’t have. But what’s done was done and suddenly you, and only you, Tanya, could literally move mountains. You could raise tidal waves. I don’t believe you’ve even begun to imagine what you could do if you tried. You can fly, Tanya.
Wench Page 31
