Lette studied the woman in the cave’s entrance. The way she held her weight on her feet. The position of her hands as they hung at her sides. The way her eyes moved.
Lette relaxed. Whoever this woman was, she was not someone who carved her way through life with steel. She had taken Lette’s words of invitation at face value, rather than as an invitation to remain somewhere Lette could keep an eye on her. She was another one like the farm boy, Will.
Well… not exactly like him.
There was something to the farm boy. She could not put her finger on it exactly. Though she thought perhaps she would like to. He was not thick in the chest and arms the way she had liked in some of the mercenaries she had known. But there was none of their preening pride in him either. And he was lean, and had the hard, flat muscles of a man who worked with his hands for long days and nights. She had known a boy like that once, a long time ago. He had been sweet. And when she had left him he had borne the same utterly idiotic expression as well. As if her kicking him in the balls was the first time he’d realized he had them.
And still, despite her assessment, when the woman in the cave entrance finally started to move, Lette instinctively dropped a blade into her palm. Then, grimacing, she slipped it back into its sheath.
Maybe Balur was right. Maybe the only thing she was suited to was death and mayhem. It would be hard to explain away the maim-first-and-use-torture-to-ask-questions-later instinct if she was trying to live the life of a seamstress.
She was not the only one watching the newcomer. Balur had narrowed his eyes. “Why were you hesitating before you were coming in?” he growled.
The woman froze once more. Lette could just make out her eyes beneath her hood, large and brown. There was a fright in them, yes, but it was not alone. Curiosity lingered there as well. Not exactly what Lette expected.
She could feel the weight of the blade in her sleeve.
“Had it crossed your mind,” Will said stepping forward, utterly oblivious to danger, “that she might be intimidated by the large lizard man covered with other people’s blood?”
Balur shrugged. “Goblin blood. Goblins are not being people.”
“Well actually—” the woman in the cloak said, then hesitated. Her gaze flicked out from beneath her hood, nervous and quick.
Could it be a ruse? It was difficult to mask the signs of readiness, but it was possible. Lette was doing it herself now. Long days of practice and punishment let her hold her shoulders loose, keep her fingers curled slightly.
Yet with one flick of her wrist…
She found herself thinking of Will. The look of horror that would be on his witless face if a blade buried itself in the woman’s throat. That shouldn’t bother her, but it did. A bit. Well, a very little bit. But even that infinitesimal hesitation was new.
Maybe it was change. Maybe she was changing.
She risked giving the farm boy an appraising look.
Balur’s attention hadn’t wavered. “Actually what?” he growled at the woman.
“Well,” she said again. Lette saw her lick her lips. “All I really meant was that there was an interesting treatise written in the previous century by Friar-Abbot Matteson about whether goblins were intelligent enough to be qualified as people, or whether they were a lower life-form more akin to animals. He, you’ll probably be glad to know, agreed with you. That their personhood was negligible. But on the other hand, he was also a big proponent of using broccoli as a siege engine. That’s pushed a lot of the current academics in the other direction. The current wave of thinking is that if goblins were treated civilly they would behave in a more civilized way. The trouble is, of course”—she laughed slightly, a nervous chuckle—“finding a town that wants to make that gamble should we prove to be wrong.”
Considerable silence met this statement. Firkin seemed to have no patience for it.
“Knew a goblin once,” he said. “Called himself Marvin.” He nodded a few times. “Lots of bones in him,” he added after a moment’s thought.
The silence decided to hang around a little longer.
“You are talking a lot,” Balur said eventually. His eyes were still suspicious slits.
“Yes,” the woman agreed. “As the young man pointed out, I’m rather nervous. And I do tend to ramble when I feel that way.” And then with absolutely no segue whatsoever, “You’re an Analesian, aren’t you?”
Lette noticed that Balur’s hammer’s head had left the ground. Not by more than half an inch, barely enough to be noticeable, but enough to make the mask of nonchalance that much harder to maintain.
“How are you knowing that?” Balur sounded belligerent. Lette knew he could get terribly precious about his exotic mystique.
“Well,” the woman coughed twice, “the Analesians are pretty much the only race of eight-foot-tall sentient lizards, which does narrow it down a bit.”
“She’s got them smarts,” said Firkin, still lingering by the wall where Lette had pinned him. “All in her head and coming out her mouth.” He nodded. “Like when you squish them ants’ heads.”
“Look.” Will tried to step between Balur and the woman. Lette couldn’t decide if he was brave or stupid. Or possibly a dangerous mix of both. “I don’t think we need to threaten violence to anyone just because they read a book once in their life. Can’t we just make a fire, and all dry out so we make it to the morning?”
For a moment, Lette allowed herself to step away from herself. Step away from her frustration, the tired ache in her bones, the girlish intrigue in Will and what he could do with those heavy callused hands. For a moment she was nothing but steel. A blade.
Firkin was at the cave entrance. He was slow, but unpredictable. He should be the first to go. The knife in her hand loosed at his neck. Will was the next threat, young and strong as he was. But Balur would move before Will did. The farmer would be stuck staring at the blood fountaining from Firkin’s neck, aghast. Balur would turn him into a stain on the ground before he figured out what he wanted to do. That left the woman. Also unpredictable, but off-balance now. Lette could close the distance, sweep a knife blade across her eyes, slow her down, then she and Balur could deal with whatever she threw at them. It would all be over in seconds. And then…
No.
Lette stepped back into herself. Away from the cold analysis of murder. That was not who she was going to be here. There was, she was beginning to realize, a point when paranoia stopped being a helpful survival tool, and became more of a social impediment.
“Yes,” she said to Will, forcibly ungritting her teeth. “A fire. That sounds lovely.”
Balur looked at her perplexed. She tried to look at him with the daggers she was restraining herself from throwing.
Several of the goblins’ torches were still burning. She started to pick them up, pile them together in the center of the room. Will, though, stepped toward the woman.
“I’m Will,” he said. “Pleased to meet you.”
Lette hesitated, watched the woman’s hand snake out to meet Will’s. She could throw the torch, strike the woman in the face…
The woman’s grip looked frail in Will’s big hand. “My name is Quirkelle Bal Tehrin,” she said. She had a slight accent. Southern, and unless Lette missed her mark, Western as well. “People in this part of the world tend to call me Quirk. Very nice to meet you.”
They shook hands. Lette watched their palms. But Will didn’t convulse. Didn’t pull his hand away with a cry. Didn’t start to choke on his tongue or grab his arm in sudden agony.
Lette gently set down the torch she was gripping.
“I’m a farmer,” Will continued. “That’s Lette”—he pointed toward her—“and that’s Balur. They’re…” He hesitated. “Very nice but violent strangers.” He shrugged nervously. Lette found she could live with the description. “And that’s Firkin,” he said, and hesitated, “he’s… erm…”
“I am the moonlight’s breath,” said Firkin. “The shadow and the blade. The voice of the one to come charging out of the night cloaked in red, and fire, and death! I am the sound that cannot be unheard! I am—”
He interrupted his own diatribe with a resounding belch, then stared off into space.
“Yes,” said Will, “he’s that.”
The woman, Quirk, nodded, taking it all in. She was still wearing her soaking-wet cloak. Still shivering.
“So who are you?” Lette asked, gathering up another pair of torches. She was aware of Balur standing between them and the cave exit, appearing to be at rest, and actually being very far from it.
“She just said,” said Will. Lette briefly wondered how he’d managed to make it this far through life without dying. Perhaps she wasn’t the first kindly stranger to stumble into his life and save him from impaling himself on his own guilelessness?
“I’m a thaumatobiologist,” said Quirk, who was apparently quicker off the mark, “if that’s what you mean. I’m based out of the Tamathian University.”
Tamathia. South and West. Lette kept her smile from her lips, but it was there all the same.
“You gonna talk,” Firkin spat from where he sat at the cave’s mouth, “use them real words.”
Balur grunted. “May all the Pantheon be helping me, I am agreeing with the crazy man.”
Firkin stopped staring at the night, turned back to them. “Get out of my brains, monster man,” he growled. “Leave them be.”
Balur cocked his head. He was not, Lette knew, used to people taking that tone with him. Still, she was less interested in Firkin’s ability to shorten his life expectancy than she was in Quirk’s brief autobiography.
“Tamathia?” she said. “That’s a few hundred leagues from here.” She was reassessing the woman yet again. No one came a few hundred leagues without a few tricks to keep them safe.
“Three hundred and sixty-nine as near as I can estimate,” Quirk said in agreement. “But the Kondorra valley is the only place with dragons on the continent, so it was the place I had to come.”
Will actually stepped away from her. There was a look on his face… Lette tried to evaluate. Was it disgust? It seemed out of place on his simple face.
“The dragons?” he said. And there was definitely an edge to his voice now. “You wanted… You came from far away to see… The gods-hexed dragons?”
No, Lette thought, it wasn’t disgust. It was hatred—a sword hidden in this haystack of a man. And maybe Quirk wasn’t the one she should be reassessing.
What did she know about Kondorra? That a loose association of merchant dragons ruled over it. That they ran some of the most successful trade routes on the continent. That you only attacked their caravans when you were desperate or very sure they couldn’t track you down and use your intestines to string you up from the nearest hanging tree.
Quirk, it seemed, was also having trouble reevaluating Will after this abrupt emotional turn. “Yes,” she said, a touch of defensiveness in her cultured voice. “Well, I think I said I was a thaumatobiologist.”
Will stared at her blankly.
“I think,” Lette said, voice held steady as a dueling blade, “that perhaps that word needs a little more explanation.”
Quirk looked at them, for all the world like a kicked puppy. “Thaumatobiology?” she said. Then with a note of pleading. “You don’t…? Not one of you has ever heard of the field?”
“I know what a field is,” said Firkin, a touch indignantly. “Took a shit in one just the other day, so I did.”
“You work for the dragons?” Lette saw her own slow-growing suspicion writ large on Will’s features.
Quirk shook her head violently. “For…?” she managed. She still seemed bewildered by this line of questioning. “I study dragons.”
Again the room seemed to stop, everyone trying to process. The fire crackled in the middle of the room now, heat starting to rise.
“Study?” Will still seemed uncertain as to whether he should exchange his hatred for incredulity.
“Yes.” Quirk was earnest. “Thaumatobiology. The study of magical flora and fauna.” She looked around at them, seemed to resign herself. “Plants and animals,” she said, a little sadly.
“You have been studying plants?” Balur seemed outraged by the idea.
“Well, yes.” Quirk nodded. “Very useful area, actually. I mean, if you just talked to Will here, I’m sure he would be full of all sorts of valuable information about crop rotation, and what fields are best for which sort of planting. That sort of information is invaluable. Not to mention the healers who use plants in their poultices. And the dye makers who need to collect the right types of berry. All of them are expert biologists in their own fields. My field just happens to be magical plants. Though really my main interest is thamatofauna… well megathaumatofauna.”
It was very quiet, but Lette could just make out Balur’s growling. He did not do well with polysyllables. It made him feel like people were trying to get one past him on the grounds that he was foreign.
“So… really big magical creatures,” Lette hazarded.
“Yes,” Quirk said. Lette couldn’t help but feel the woman’s smile was a little patronizing.
Magical. Lette thought of those 369 leagues the woman had crossed.
“So,” said Lette, allowing the dagger to once more slip from its sheath into her palm. “You’re a magician.”
It made sense now. Quirk wasn’t balanced because she didn’t need to be balanced. She wasn’t quick because she didn’t need to be quick. Her weapon moved as quick as thought, as swift as a whispered word. She could flay them all with her mind.
Lette’s only hope was a dagger thrown fast enough, unexpected enough.
“Oh.” Quirk almost seemed to stumble without actually going anywhere. “No. No not at all. Not in any way, shape, or form. Well, I mean… not anymore anyway. Not now. No.”
Lette did not allow her arm to slacken for an instant. “Being a magician,” she said, “is not exactly something one can give up.” It would be like giving up being someone who breathed air, or who ate food with their mouth. Magicians just were. Sometimes some member of the Pantheon, be it Lawl, or Cois, or Klink, or Toil, or any other of the fickle bunch would reach down their divine finger and plant it in a mother’s swollen belly. And the child was touched, and would be forever. That was not a palm print that simply washed away.
“I am,” Quirk spoke awkwardly, “reformed. I have stepped away from practicing the magical arts, and now simply study the phenomena in other creatures.”
Balur hefted his hammer up onto his shoulder. “You are saying that you can be doing magic, but that you are choosing to not be doing it?” To describe his tone as dubious would be like describing the Cois—hermaphroditic god(dess) of love, fertility, and loose morality in general—as being a little bit forward with the ladies.
Quirk straightened, pushed her shoulders back, held her chin high. Lette thought she was probably trying to appear defiant. Unfortunately all she was really achieving was to remind people of how haughty magicians were said to be.
“That,” said Quirk in an austere tone, “is exactly what I chose. I chose to be in control of who I am and what I do.”
Three hundred and sixty-nine leagues. On her own. Without a single spell? Lette wasn’t sure she quite believed that. But she did believe that Quirk wanted it to be true. The question was how in control the woman was. And how much warning would there be before she slipped?
Balur was shaking his head. “That is like owning a hammer and trying to put in nails with your hand.”
Quirk didn’t let go of her rigid pose for a second. “The problem arises,” she said, “if every time you use the hammer you accidentally bludgeon three or four people along with the nail.”
And suddenly, without warning, she won Lette over. A chord ringing out that was too much in tune with the one thrumming in her own breast. That desire to be better. That struggle.
“Come on,” Lette said, stepping toward Quirk, the weight of the blade strapped to her wrist suddenly forgotten. “I thought the whole point of this fire was to make sure you didn’t freeze. Get that cloak off and come closer.”