“Have you done this before?”
“Of course,” Cura said. “But usually just by myself.”
“What if I don’t like it?”
“You’ll love it. I’m actually shocked you haven’t done it before—a girl your age? Now close your eyes and hold still.”
The summoner emptied a pitcher of water over Tam’s head.
When her hair was thoroughly soaked, Cura disappeared from her periphery. Tam gazed up at the shadowed beams of the Staff’s kitchen, the back of her neck resting on the edge of a ceramic basin. She heard the grind of a mortar and pestle, a quiet dribble of liquid, and then more grinding.
“All set,” Cura said. She returned to Tam’s side and began massaging the mixture into the bard’s scalp. It started to tingle almost instantly.
Since this would likely take a while, Tam decided to press the Inkwitch for answers to the questions she’d been holding in like a breath since their encounter with Sam Roth the day before. “So Rose has a daughter?”
Cura’s fingers froze momentarily before resuming their work. “She does, yes. Her name’s Wren.”
“Is she a druin?”
“She’s a sylf. She doesn’t have bunny ears, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
“A sylf?”
“Sylfs are what happen when a druin male and a human female conceive a child. Druin women—lucky for them—can only get pregnant once, and only with another druin.”
Tam hadn’t known that. “Then how do they survive?” she asked. “If every woman only has one child they would die out eventually, right?”
Cura snorted. “They would, yes. They have, in case you hadn’t noticed. But they’re immortal, don’t forget. Or near enough. Freecloud says they can die of old age, whatever that means to a rabbit. They’re not from here, you know.”
Tam did know that. According to her mother, the druins had come to Grandual from another realm—a doomed realm—using the sword called Vellichor to cut through the fabric of dimensions. Once here, they had quickly set about subjugating the natives—men and monsters too primitive to contend with the invaders’ sorcery and superior technology. Their leader, Vespian, forged an empire that became known as the Dominion and ruled as Archon for a thousand years.
Tam supposed that an adult hearing that story for the first time might assume it was nothing more than a fable—a fairy tale pieced together from half-truths and superstition. But since her mother had been the one to tell her, Tam had believed it without question. Both Edwick and Tiamax had seen Vellichor firsthand, and both swore that you could see an alien world in the surface of its blade. The Archon, before he died, had gifted it to Rose’s father, who owned it still.
“How old is Wren?” Tam asked.
“Four,” said Cura. “Maybe five. She lives with her grandfather down in Coverdale. We stop in every few months for a visit.”
Her grandfather? “You mean Golden Gabe? Why is she with him and not Rose?”
Cura raked her fingers through Tam’s hair. The gentle tugging might have felt nice—more than nice, even—if it weren’t for the tingling sensation, which was stronger now than it had been before. “Because,” said Cura finally, “the road is no place for a child.”
Then why are Rose and Freecloud on the road? Tam wanted to ask, but figured it was best to leave the subject alone for the time being. Instead, she asked something else she’d been wondering for a while. “Back in Woodford, Jeka said she’d never seen a summoner like you. What did she mean by that?”
“Have you seen me?” Cura’s tone was thick with feigned arrogance. “I’m hot as red iron.”
A smell like burnt vanilla tickled Tam’s nose. “But that’s not what Jeka meant. She said you fight differently than other summoners.”
“That’s because summoners don’t usually fight,” Cura told her. “They’re entertainers, mostly. They carve things out of wood, or etch them into little glass bells, and then burn them, or break them, to bring them to life.”
“Okay, so if a summoner carves a bird out of wood—”
“Then they get a wooden bird. And if they etch one into glass—”
“It’s made of glass,” Tam finished.
“Exactly.” Cura left her side, and Tam heard her using the pitcher to scoop water from a barrel in the corner. “The things I summon are different. They’re carved into my flesh, inked into my blood. So when I call on them”—cold water splashed over Tam’s head—“they’re made of flesh and blood. They’re real. Or something close to real. It’s hard to explain,” she said, returning to the barrel and refilling the pitcher.
“But what are they?” Tam asked, as another jug of water went over her head. The vanilla smell was beginning to fade, which she took for a promising sign. “That burning treant, the sea monster, that … other … thing with the swords stuck through it. Why do you have such—”
“We’re all done here,” said Cura. There was a curt finality in her tone, an edge that threatened to cut if Tam dared to press any further. “Sit up and take a look.”
The bard eased her neck off the basin behind her. Cura was holding up a hand mirror so that Tam could see her reflection gazing back at her.
Her face was unchanged. Her eyes were the same. Her hair, however, was no longer the plain, dull brown she’d inherited from her father.
It was platinum blonde.
Tam watched a smile like sunshine spear across her reflection’s lips. “Oh my fucking gods, I love it.”
Chapter Fourteen
The Big Deal
When Kaskar’s old king died a few years back, his son and successor undertook several ambitious construction projects—one in each of the north’s great cities—to help ingratiate himself to the people he now ruled. Grimtide got a grand new lighthouse, North Court a racetrack. East Bellows became home to the court’s largest library, while West Bellows boasted its most comprehensive museum. Ardburg was granted a state-of-the-art bathhouse, complete with heated pools, steaming saunas, and a wrestling gym that, according to Tam’s uncle, saw more sex than a brothel on two-for-one night.
In Highpool, King Maladan Pike ordered the restoration of the old arena, which had fallen into such disrepair that bands and bookers sometimes avoided the city altogether. Maladan’s Stone Garden, as it came to be called, was a six-tiered cylinder dug into the bedrock of the hill itself. The top-most seating ring—the only one visible above ground—was given over to expensively furnished private boxes from which the city’s well-to-do could watch the carnage below in lavish comfort. Conversely, the bottom tier was affectionately referred to as “the Pit,” and it was not uncommon for those who dared its depths to emerge with injuries as grievous as those they’d come to watch fight.
The Garden’s armoury was more extravagant than any Tam had seen thus far. There was a buffet fit for a king’s banquet, and a bar stocked with every liquor imaginable. The tiled stone floor was thick with patterned carpets, the sofas piled with so many pillows she was forced to stack some on a nearby chair to make room for sitting. Tapestries depicting great battles of the arena’s past were draped between lamplit dressing mirrors.
In one such mirror Tam found the reflection of a mercenary whose fame rivalled that of Bloody Rose herself. When Brune collapsed onto the sofa beside her, scattering pillows in every direction, Tam leaned over and whispered, “Is that the Prince of Ut?”
“The Prince of where?” asked Brune, too loudly.
The man in the mirror, his face obscured by a veiled purple cowl held in place by a golden circlet, glanced in their direction. His kohl-rimmed eyes were barely visible, and when they bored into Tam she did her best to disappear into what cushions remained to her.
The shaman scratched the back of his neck. “Did you do something with your hair?”
“Nope.”
“Cool.” Brune craned his neck to look past her shoulder. “Yeah, that’s the Prince, all right. He doesn’t have a band, you know. He takes on monsters all by himself—which
is crazy if you ask me. Everyone, no matter how good they are, needs someone at their back once in a while. Even Rose—” He broke off, nudging her. “Oh, watch this.”
The Prince of Ut’s booker, a heavyset Narmeeri whose spotted fur cloak was cinched tight beneath several chins, called out to one of the Garden’s stewards as she passed by.
“Excuse me? Hi, hello, yes.” The man spoke with the shrill arrogance of a castrated king. One of his ring-choked fingers stroked the soft fur at his collar, while the other motioned to the spread of food laid out nearby. “There seems to have been a mix-up with the grapes.”
The steward’s expression told Tam she’d rather be anywhere but here at this moment. “The grapes?”
“Yes, indeed. The grapes.”
She pointed. “You mean those grapes?”
“Yes—and no. You see, I specifically requested that the grapes be purple, and these, as you can no doubt ascertain despite your apparent simple-mindedness, are green.”
If the steward cared that she’d been insulted, she didn’t let it show. “So?”
“So …” cooed the booker, glancing pointedly toward his master. “His grace does not eat green grapes. He only eats purple grapes.”
The woman blinked. She looked at the table and back again. “Those grapes are green,” she said.
“Yes, I can see that. Those grapes are green. Which is why—”
A roar shook the Stone Garden, so loud the lamps overhead swayed on their silver chains. The steward made use of the distraction to slip out unnoticed. A moment later Cura descended the armoury stairs. “The Wererats are victorious,” she announced.
“Victorious over what?” asked Freecloud.
“Wererats,” she said, perusing the buffet table before selecting a peach and biting into it. “Crazy, right?”
Roderick came clopping down after her. “We’re up next!” he announced.
“What are we up against?” Rose asked. She’d ingested her customary dose of Lion’s Leaf a few moments earlier, which dulled her voice and robbed the light from her eyes.
The booker rubbed his hands together. “Orcs!”
“How many?”
“They’ve got a whole warband in the cells by the look of it—I told them to choose the twelve biggest, meanest, greenest bastards they could find. That’s three for each of you, provided Tam doesn’t run in and shoot them all first.” He winked at the bard. “Nice hair, by the way.”
She beamed. “Thanks.”
“I knew it!” said Brune, stroking his beard as he admired her new look.
Rose looked into one of the dressing mirrors, locked in a staring match with the void-black gaze of her own reflection. “We’ll fight all of them,” she said.
The satyr’s eyebrows nearly knocked the hat off his head. “Say what now?”
“All of them. The whole warband.”
Silence engulfed the armoury.
Rose’s double looked out from the confines of the lamplit mirror, searching out the eyes of her bandmates, one by one. Brune took a breath that made a barrel of his chest before nodding his assent. Cura smirked and sunk her teeth into her peach. “I like those odds,” she said.
“I don’t,” murmured Freecloud. “But I do like the stakes. Death or glory, right?”
Rose’s reflection grinned. “Death or glory.”
The whole warband turns out to be seventy-seven orcs strong, and though Tam never feels the need to embellish that number, many others do. It will be said, or sung, or slurred by bards and boasting drunks in days to come that Fable took down a hundred, a hundred fifty, no—two hundred orcs that afternoon.
The truth, as far as Tam is concerned, is incredible enough. One moment she is watching a wave of green, growling, iron-edged madness rushing toward Bloody Rose and her bandmates, and the next …
… a brown-furred bear roars loud enough to rattle hearts. His hooked claws reduce metal to scrap and slash open bodies as if they were skins bursting with brackish wine …
… a summoner braces herself as an inked stallion kicks free of her flexing arm. Metallic wings unfurl like sails behind its straining neck. Its hooves hum with lightning, drum like thunder, pound like rain as it plunges into the fray …
… a druin’s sword sings like a struck bell as it cleaves the air. He moves with a predator’s purpose: every step a calculation, every strike a certainty. His heart is a spinning coin with his lover’s face on one side, his daughter’s on the other, and whichever way it lands, he loses …
… a woman cuts, hacks, slashes, and strikes—a whirling storm of fire and steel. Born in shadow, her destiny eclipsed by the brightest of stars. What else can she be but a comet, burning bright enough to draw every eye as she streaks toward some unfathomable fate?
When the bits and pieces of seventy-seven dead orcs are carried, raked, and scraped from the blood-soaked stone of the arena floor, it is announced that the Prince of Ut, unwilling to be overshadowed by Fable’s extraordinary feat, has withdrawn from the title match.
The crowd boos their dismay, until Rose re-emerges, alone, from the armoury gate. She will fight in his stead, she declares. Eager to please the baying crowd, the wranglers set loose a marilith: a snake-tailed woman with six sword-bearing arms that looks, Tam thinks, like she belongs among the abominations inked on Cura’s flesh.
Rose destroys it, but she does so with dramatic flair, as if the arena is a stage and every witness a bard who, when they leave this place, will sing her praises to any who’ll listen. When she finally permits the marilith to die—hewing its head off with both swords—she drops her blades and stands with arms outstretched as the crowd clamours like supplicants before their god.
A rain of purple petals flutter down from the sky, spiralling through slanting tiers of sun and shadow. Tam plucks one from her hair and cannot help but smile.
Roses. Of course.
There was a party at the Gnarled Staff afterward. The Outlaw Nation would disperse in the morning—some of them heading home, while others would find another band to attach themselves to while Fable set out alone to fulfill their contract in Diremarch. One by one the Outlaws paid a visit to the long trestle table at which Rose and her companions sat, and said their good-byes. Penny was particularly upset that Brune was going north without her. She clung to the shaman’s arm like a shipreck survivor to the last spar of her shattered craft.
Plenty of mercs showed up as well. The Wererats, who’d skirmished for Fable in the Garden earlier today, were around somewhere, as were Youth Gone Wyld, who were actually four men in their late fifties whose idea of “touring” had regressed to attending parties they weren’t invited to.
Korey Kain, who was the archer of a band called Shark’s Breakfast, stopped by to say hello, and to show off the swell of her baby bump. “Her daddy’s gone off to put a boot up the Horde’s ass,” she declared proudly. “I’d be there too if my armour still fit!”
Tam was wedged on a bench between Cura and Brune. Rose and Freecloud were seated opposite, while Rod’s chair capped the end. Their table was crowded with brimming tankards, empty bottles, and plates littered with the scraps of an epic meal. The shaman and summoner were arguing over which of Grandual’s courts was best to retire in if the Diremarch contract proved as lucrative as they hoped it would. Roderick was eating something that crunched like a mouthful of chicken bones and was probably a mouthful of chicken bones.
Tam, meanwhile, was doing her best not to make it obvious she was listening in on Rose and Freecloud’s conversation.
“… needless danger,” the druin was saying. “We’d done our part. There was no reason to fight the marilith.”
“No reason?” Rose took a drag on her halfpipe and sneered through the smoke. “Did you see that crowd? Did you hear them chanting my name? Do you think Golden Gabe ever killed a marilith by himself?”
The druin’s ears were rigid with anger. He opened his mouth to retort, but then clamped it shut, as if the prescience had warned him that wh
atever he was about to say would earn more ire than it was worth. “The tour’s finished,” he said with forced composure. “Remember, you promised—”
“No more Lion’s Leaf.” Rose traced the sign of the Summer Lord over her heart. “I promise.”
“It made you careless.”
“It made me entertaining,” she replied, exhaling another stream of smoke into the air above her head. Her expression grew serious. “And I needed it, Cloud. You know that.”
The druin put a hand on hers. “Listen, you’ve got nothing to—”
“Bloody Rose!” The voice—gruff and gravelly—belonged to Linden Gale, who swung an axe for the Wererats. He was a hulk of a man, and his broad face had the look of leather chewed to scrap by a starving dog. “Settle a bet for me, will ya? Rumour has it you’re headed to Diremarch. They say you’ve got a contract with the Widow of Ruangoth.”
Rose didn’t bother turning to face him. “We do.”
They had an audience, Tam noticed. Conversations nearby lapsed into silence. Drinks paused on the way to lips. Pipes were forgotten, their smoke languid in the loaded air.
“What’s in Diremarch?” Linden asked.
“Snow,” said Cura.
“Rocks,” said Brune.
“Your whore mother,” said Roderick.
There was a collective gasp from the tables around them.
“What?” The booker raised his hands, pleading innocence. “His mother’s literally a whore! Linden, back me up here!”
The big mercenary gave a grudging nod. “That’s right.”
“See? I told you. She works at that hole-in-the-wall brothel up in Fetterkarn, right? What’s that place called again?”
Gale looked mildly embarrassed. “The Hole in the Wall.”
“Lovely establishment,” said Roderick. “And their goat’s head soup is”—he kissed his fingers—“to die for.”
“I’ve heard another rumour, too.” The Wererats’ axeman seemed eager to steer the subject away from his mother. “I’ve heard you’re going after the Simurg.”
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