Page 3 of Homeward for a Spell

“Alas, my employer’s purse is empty. But maybe you’ll accept an opportunity?”

Sage leans against the alley wall across from the Agent, crossing her arms. “What kind of opportunity?”

“A job.”

“In town?”

The Agent shakes his head. “Decidedly out of town.”

“Another party, then? I’ll pass, but good luck to you. Gaffa will have a hard time finding a ranger willing to travel through winter who hasn’t been contracted and well paid for the trouble already.”

The Agent laughs and puffs his pipe. “It won’t be Gaffa’s problem to solve. I’ve been hired by a new client. One whose purse is much, much heavier. And I’m looking for a change in leadership. I need someone I can trust to get the job done right this time. I’d bet it was you who located the goods on this last journey, am I correct?”

She blinks in surprise. Sage never mentioned as much at the Mare’s Milk. Nobody had. But of course, as the ranger hired to guide them to the caves and keep them fed and sheltered along the way, it was Sage who’d charted a path by the stars to Gaffa’s best guess of a location. And it was Sage who’d found the caves where frost violets grew at the threshold, promising rarer plants within that thrived in freezing cold…and, as it turned out, attracted fire beetles. The Client might be bothered by their late return, and fairly so, but they’ll have no reason to complain about the spell components the party brought back.

The Agent takes her startled silence as confirmation. “I thought so,” he says with a nod. “In addition to finding people, I’m particularly talented at reading people. I’m looking for someone reliable, someone capable, and someone hungry. Someone with the skills and the grit and the ambition to venture out when lesser adventurers are ready to hide under their quilts for the season. Not just a ranger, but a leader.”

To buy herself time to think, Sage plucks the Agent’s pipe from his hand without his offering it up, and takes a long pull that’s sweet, salty, and bitter at once. She tests out the thought, tastes it with the tobacco: Sage Wilderstone, party leader.

She ought to say no.

She’s just come back from one disastrous trip with little to show for it. Her knee could do with a rest, loath as she is to admit it (and she certainly won’t be admitting it aloud). Besides, the weather will only worsen as the days shorten. No, she should stick to the plan she made when she left the tavern. Find local work until the ice melts in spring, then hire herself out for another expedition as soon as possible. Another client, another agent, another party leader. A competent one this time, gods willing.

And yet…

“Where exactly would I be leading a party?”

He fixes Sage in his gaze. “The Northlands.”

“You aren’t serious!”

“To the Graywood, more precisely.”

The Graywood is a vast pine forest in a wide valley encircled by the Kald Mountains. It’s perpetually awash in thick fog—hence its title. Little grows between the trees but fungi, and the beasts that creep and stalk are paler than the fog, white as snow and bone. Sage scoffs, handing back his pipe. “You expect me to find adventurers of quality willing to travel this time of year,” she asks, “and to the Northlands at that?”

“If you’re willing, others will be. What about those two fighters you left in the tavern? They seemed sturdy.”

“No,” she says at once, then more quietly, “no. I don’t work with party members twice. People get…The job changes when things begin to feel personal.”

The Agent shrugs. “Regardless, I don’t expect you’d have a problem finding takers. I’ve been spreading word and made sure to mention the prize pot, which I should say is substantial. The Client isn’t short on denaris, and is willing to spend more of them than you’ve seen in your life in exchange for discretion and expedience. Besides, I’ve already found you a fixer—one of the best in the business. You’re welcome!” With a flourish of his self-satisfied grin, he pats his broad chest.

“You?” She grimaces. An agent joining a party is far from standard. In fact, she’s never heard it done.

“While anonymity is critical to the Client, lest their competitors or ill-wishers catch wind, they’ve a lot riding on this venture, and wanted the option to remain in contact throughout. They offered plenty of coin to compensate me fairly, and then some. Besides, it’s been some time since I’ve felt anything but cobblestones beneath my boots. Perhaps I miss the unbeaten path,” he says, a wistful shine in his dark-brown eyes.

Certainly, Sage can relate to that. “But if you’re coming along anyway, why not lead a party yourself?”

“Leadership isn’t my area of expertise, alas. No, I’m going to serve our purpose as I can and make sure our findings are delivered safely and swiftly to the Client’s man in Kingfisher at the end of the expedition. I’m an asset, I assure you. Now just find yourself a spellcaster…unless you can cast?”

She can’t. At least, not in the way of natural casters like her best friend, Margot, who holds organic reserves of magic inside her just as some plants and animals do. Or like warlocks, who perform rituals and favors for patrons in the planes beyond in exchange for a small share of their magic. Or wizards, who spend the bulk of their lives bent over textbooks in libraries, studying the languages of those planes in order to request or command magic without the necessity of obedience to any particular devil or deity.

What Sage can do is her job, and preternaturally well; her mother once theorized that she was blessed by some divinity of the woods at birth. She can smell the ghostly embers of a campfire days after it’s been extinguished. She can tell the direction of a branch cracking in the night by the difference in time it takes the sound to arrive in each ear. And she swears she can sense danger like a physical thing, even in pitch-dark and perfect quiet, the moment before it presents itself.

But all of that is difficult to explain, and since she can’t, for instance, mutter a charm and turn the Agent into a ghostbear, she shakes her head. “I’m not a caster.”

“Well then, get one. We’ll need them for the job, and there’s no point even trying without one.”

“Casters are rarer than ever these days, natural or not, or haven’t you heard?”