Page 30 of Homeward for a Spell

“Who are they?” Araphi asks as the two strangers are joined by five more. Three of them carry axes, two more carry bows, and the rest look like they’re capable of ripping trees apart with their bare hands.

“Trouble,” Sage says. “Stay here.”

Araphi certainly will not. She follows Sage and Remy toward the waiting party.

Remy waves to hail them, smiling broadly, only to murmur through his teeth, “Ah, alas. Viktas.”

“Who’s Viktas?” Sage whirls on him. “Why ‘alas’?”

Still beaming, Remy grits out, “Someone I knew some time ago. Went by a different name, and had a much different look, but I’ve kept an eye out as she settled into herself in Hexham. Goes by Viktas now. She doesn’t care much for me. Said if she ever saw me again, the blade of her ax would be the last thing I saw. There she is, third from the left, with the largest ax. We’ve something of an unpleasant history.”

“And yet you led us straight to her?”

“I’d hoped she’d moved along, perhaps to the planes beyond, or at least that she’d quit the welcome party. Who knew she’d be leading it? Besides, there’s nowhere else to resupply that won’t cost us a week’s travel or secrecy we can’t spare.”

With a disgusted grunt, Sage pushes his arm down from where it’s still waving with false cheer. “Just let me do the talking.” Then she strides forward with an easy confidence Araphi wishes she felt.

If only she wasn’t certain that Sage is walking into peril.

11

Sage

Little though she likes it, Sage isn’t surprised to find a rather unwelcoming party waiting for them. She’s known for some time that they were being watched. The villagers blend remarkably well with the surrounding forest; their cloaks and coats are marbled with scraps of gray, green, and coppery wool, patterned like wispy branches against a carpet of fallen leaves. An impressive seasonal camouflage. Even so, she heard the occasional muffled snap of a twig, the snag of cloth on autumn-bare bark. And once, she picked up the faintest scent of clean lye soap carried on the breeze; someone here has bathed recently.

But it was better to let the party chatter on, thus proving they have no reason to hide their presence. If they’d seemed to be sneaking, Sage doubts the villagers would have let them get this close. And if Nura had used her staff, or Tea her spellbook, it could have meant the difference between a watchful eye and an ambush. This far from the Queens’ Road, a little village like Hexham would be less subject to the whims of the crown than a city like Kingfisher, removed from its politics and policing as much as one can be while remaining south of Briarwall. But by that logic, the villagers have every reason to doubt a band of travelers straying far enough from the Queens’ Road to cross their doorstep. If they aren’t emissaries from Ashaway coming to collect long-forgotten taxes, they might be bandits, or pillagers from across the Jade Ocean who’ve pushed their way inland, or simply folks about shadowy business. Which, Sage has to concede, adventurers often are.

She holds up an open palm, both acknowledging the cluster of villagers whose knuckles whiten around their ax handles and signaling to the rest of her party to stay back. Ignoring Reaper’s anxious whinnying behind her, she advances steadily. “Well met!” Sage hails them simply. She won’t insult their canniness by calling them friends.

“State your business,” orders the villager Remy pointed out as Viktas—a broad-shouldered, middle-aged woman whose beauty is mesmerizing in the same manner as a stormy sky. She holds her ax as easily as though it’s made of paper.

“We’re hired adventurers on our way north to Briarwall, and eager to reach it before winter shows all of its teeth. We won’t be long on your land, but we’ve run into trouble—a pack of barbed wolves wiped out the bulk of our supplies, and nearly took us out with them. We’ve got denaris to spread around in exchange for new horses and tents and beds for the night, if you have them for rent.”

“No beds here,” Viktas says bluntly. “No inn.”

“A stable, then? We’re not particular. We’ll bunk down in straw as easily as on a straw mattress. As I said, we’ve coins to pay.”

“Queens’ coins aren’t much use out this’a way.”

“Of course.” Sage bobs her head in understanding. Not an unusual predicament when questing off the beaten path. “In that case, there’s a skilled healer among us—”

“We tend to our own well enough. Ride back the way you came, younker.” A rough country term for a young nobleborn.

Sage could laugh, remembering her childhood. The taste of her mother’s perpetual stew, almost entirely cabbage and dried peas, with the occasional bone thrown in. The buckets set in each of their few rooms beneath the leaking thatched roof, which her parents had no free time nor money to repair. And the way word flew from house to house like embers on the wind whenever soldiers from the Golden Court came across the river to “clean” the streets of the Rookery. Usually that meant hauling off anybody who looked at them askance, then demanding pay from taverners and shopkeeps for the service of jailing their own patrons.

Nobleborn, indeed.

She’s weighing her next move carefully when Viktas stalks forward, eyes flicking past her to land on Remy, judging by the anger burning in them. It’s a wonder they made it this far without the woman’s ax whistling out of the trees to find a sheath in the agent’s back. “You!” she thunders. “I warned you not to come this way again, you traitorous pile of slime. Come greet me, then, you honorless milk snake, and I’ll reintroduce you to my blade—”

“If you’ve no need for denaris,” says a voice like music just over Sage’s shoulder, “then what about pleasure?”

Sage holds her breath and dares to glance back, seeing Araphi step up to join her.

A smile like that could charm their way out of a fight, if needed.

“Speak plainly,” Viktas says after a second’s hesitation.

“Of course. As you can see from the lute strapped to my back, I’m a bard. A prize-winning bard, in fact. I’ve performed in the capital. Perhaps you’ve heard of Phi Runesong?” The likelihood of that is slimmer than the odds of staying dry in the Swamplands, but it’s a safe gambit. Araphi’s stage name could be legendary in Ashaway (it certainly isn’t) and word still wouldn’t have traveled so deep into the forest. When the villagers reward them with blank faces, she blusters onward. “Point me to a tavern, and there’ll be plenty of available beds, as no one will dream of leaving the festivities to sleep tonight.”