Page 8 of Homeward for a Spell

But faster even than that, the girl has vanished from her eyeline, dropping to crouch on the floor. She spins on her heels, staying low, and as Babbock staggers past her to grasp at nothing, she sweeps her walking stick into the giant’s ankles from the front, sending him tumbling. He lands in the straw and spilled ale with the grace of a felled tree.

By the time the barkeep has found the source of the commotion through the crowd, the girl is standing in front of their table, her cinnamon-colored eyes wide with youthful innocence.

“You lot, what’s happening here?” the barkeep demands as a well-built woman with a handsome scar across one high cheekbone helps him grab Babbock under the arms and haul him up.

He mutters half-sensible curses through the waterfall of blood from his broken nose.

“I’d guess a few too many ales and not enough biscuits to soak them up,” offers the Agent, who never budged from his chair.

Sage watches as the pair drag the giant toward the tavern doors to shove him out. Only once the heavy wood thuds behind him does Sage sheathe her daggers and sink cautiously back into her own seat. Then she frowns up at the girl. “What’s your name?”

“Nura,” the girl chirps.

“How old are you, exactly?”

“I’ll be twenty soon.”

“Twenty?” the Agent scoffs. “In three weeks or three years?”

Nura’s brows knit together as she eyes the Agent’s graying beard, then studies Sage. “How old are you two?” she asks, a bit of the cheer slipping from her voice for the first time.

“That’s valuable information,” he answers coolly. “Can you afford it?”

Rolling her eyes, Sage volunteers, “I’m twenty-six.”

“I bet you started out young, though.”

Ignoring the insinuation that she’s young no longer, Sage confirms, “Too young. And I wouldn’t have made as many mistakes if I’d waited.” This is truer than the kid can possibly know, and pondering it makes Sage physically itch for the road. For rocks and roots and loam beneath the soles of her boots, cold air scraping through her lungs, a forest full of threats and possibilities on which to focus her every waking thought…

“But you’ve seen I can fight,” Nura insists, jarring Sage back to the present. “And ask around the pits. I’ve been sneaking out to enter myself in matches since I was fifteen—and winning. But they won’t put me in the high-stakes matches, and I can’t make enough money in the opening rounds to settle my family so I can leave Kingfisher. How else am I supposed to see the world, if nobody ever gives me a chance?”

Nura can’t possibly know what she’s getting into. Nor is she prepared for the towering pines and opaque mist of the Graywood, judging by her threadbare overcoat, which is both too small and too big at once. Her shoulders strain its fabric while the sleeves are cuffed thrice over, and the hem falls below her knees. Sage really isn’t as tall as her long limbs suggest when seated, but even so, Nura barely comes up to her chin.

She sighs. “Come back tomorrow with your match record. You can get it from the bookmaker of the pits. And…and bring a parent. Or a guardian. Your milkman. Any grown-up in your life, okay? Bring me that, and I’ll front you a portion of your pay for supplies. You’ll need much warmer gear for this trip.”

Once Nura leaves with a last giddy smile, breaking into a run even before the tavern doors swing closed behind her, the Agent slumps over the table. “Look,” he says with a groan, “it’s your party, your choice, as promised. But this district is teeming with fighters who could use that girl for a toothpick.”

“Fighters like Babbock?” Sage sniffs. “I know who I’m betting on. Besides, if we’re avoiding the Queens’ Road, the villages we’ll be passing along the way will be isolated. Suspicious. It’ll go better for us the less threatening we appear. Sliding beneath notice will be our asset in terrain like that, not brute shows of strength. If her record’s as good as she claims, she can come. Besides, I thought you wanted hunger in our party members.”

The Agent nods in concession. “I suppose our pocket-sized fighter will pair well with our salmon god’s chosen healer. Bumble, was that his name?”

“Bramble. And while we’re on the subject of names, I can’t keep calling you the Agent. Shouting, ‘Look out for that ice fiend, Agent!’ would be insufferable.”

“I take your point. You there, what’s your name?” the Agent asks the serving boy who’s been ordered to bring them fresh ales every half hour, justifying their table in the tavern. The mugs are piling up, but the tavern keeper doesn’t seem to care whether they drink the ales, so long as they pay for them.

“Remy, sir’ram,” the boy says, setting down their fifth and sixth mugs alongside the others.

“An excellent name,” the Agent cheers, then turns back to Sage. “You may call me Remy as well.”

Sage sighs, vexed anew that the Agent is an inescapable condition of her leadership. He’s cunning, she’ll give him that; naming himself after the nearest person gives her nothing to work with, no opening to guess at the meaning of his chosen alias, because lies can be clues more potent than the truth. In fact, now that she thinks of their first meeting in the Mare’s Milk—how willing he was to trust the culinary opinions of sailors, coupled with his ignorance of a good boil—she’s fairly certain that his nautical getup was no clue at all, but a disguise assumed to move beneath notice in a port city like Kingfisher. Likely, he’s as much of a sailor as she is an heiress. “Listen, Remy. We’ll be traveling together for weeks. Is this air of mystery really necessary?”

“Well, if that isn’t the stew calling the soup hot!”

“How’s that?”

“I don’t vouch for my clients hiring party leaders without a little informational digging. But I could hardly find a soul who’d known you longer than a season at a time. No one you’ve traveled with could tell me where you came from, or where you’d been before attending that school you dropped out of in Olde Post without a certificate to show for it. You’re a mystery too, Sage Wilderstone.”

That isn’t fair. Sage can easily think of someone who’s known her longer—Margot Greenwillow, her dearest friend, who’s currently cuddled up with the deposed Clauneck heir. Yael is Margot’s opposite in every way, yet her perfect complement. But it’s true that even Margot doesn’t know Sage’s whole story—or, really, anything about Sage’s life before they met at Olde Poste Community Magical School three years ago. Perhaps there’s only one soul in Harrow who does, but she’s half-certain they’d spit in the face of anyone who dared to ask them about Sage.