Page 9

Chapter Eight

Guinevere

She hadn’t planned on sleeping in Oskar’s bed. She’d waited until he stilled, his breath evening out, and then she’d tried to wriggle out from under him.

But he’d grabbed her at the last minute, with an insensate rumble of protest. He’d pulled her back against him, her spine tucked into the curve of his strong body, his arms clasped firmly around her waist.

It had been so very comfortable. She couldn’t have moved if she’d tried. So she’d drifted off…

Guinevere woke first. The once roaring fire had subsided to faint embers, and the house’s dingy interior was streaked with waxen rays of daylight that served to bring its shabbiness into sharper relief. The mattress was thin and scratchy, its springs digging into her hip and elbow.

Yet she’d never slept so well, or felt so drowsily content. It had to do with the man in the bed with her, her battle-hardened savior with a heart of gold, a man who had loved his mother. How could she have ever considered him terrifying?

The impropriety of their current position was not lost on Guinevere. But somehow she was in no hurry to extricate herself from it. She felt protective. She felt protected.

She reveled in it.

However, there was quite a lot to do today.

At some point during the night, Guinevere had resolved to be a useful and capable person who wouldn’t inconvenience Oskar any more than she already had.

To her mind, this involved preparing for her great journey while he slept in, so that they could part ways on the most amicable of terms. She would take his advice and barter and set off for Nicodranas in suitable condition, and he could continue on to Boroftkrah with a clear conscience.

It was a fine plan, yet she was loath to leave the circle of his arms in that snug little bed.

Her parents hadn’t hugged her much while she was growing up, afraid of the wildfire she couldn’t control, but it was so nice to be held—especially by someone handsome and warm and strong and kind—and she shamefully wanted it to last as long as possible.

Eventually, though, she managed to scrounge up the will to clamber out of bed.

Oskar didn’t stop her this time, so deep asleep was he.

Guinevere pulled on yesterday’s borrowed cloak over the tunic he’d lent her after her bath, then allowed herself a moment to cringe as she stepped into her dirt-encrusted satin slippers.

Finding a good pair of walking boots was definitely on the agenda today.

Guinevere beat the breadcrumbs off the tablecloth and the napkins, then rinsed the leftover wine out of the silver cups.

She carefully packed everything back into the satchel and slung it over her shoulder, sparing one last glance at Oskar’s slumbering form before she left the house.

He hadn’t moved at all, still curled up on his side, unruly locks of dark hair tumbling across his brow.

His chiseled features were much softer in his repose.

He looked almost boyish. The sight caught at Guinevere’s heart, but she very determinedly turned and left before she could linger on it.

The Dustbellows were far grimier in the bright morning sun than the previous evening’s shadows had led Guinevere to believe.

But what was it that Oskar had said about the folks here?

Their bark is worse than their bite. So she held her head high as she marched away from the tenements at a briskly resolute pace…

one that faltered a few seconds later when she realized that she had absolutely no idea where she was going.

But a little thing like that wouldn’t stop someone who was useful and capable. A red-haired elf darted out of the alley Guinevere was passing by, and, drawing on her newfound sense of resourcefulness, she reached out and tugged at his patched green sleeve.

“Excuse me, please?”

The elf stopped in his tracks, gawking first at her hand on his arm and then at her face.

He looked rather like a pirate, with a brass skull and crossbones dangling from his pointy right ear.

His features were gaunt and pale beneath a mass of scar tissue.

And he was holding, Guinevere belatedly noticed, a knife.

It was dripping with blood.

You are not going to faint, Guinevere told herself firmly. “Kind sir,” she said, gingerly letting go of his sleeve, “might you be able to point me to the shops? For I have recently arrived in Druvenlode, you see, and I don’t quite know my way around just yet.”

“The…shops?” The elf’s brow wrinkled, but he quickly appeared to arrive at some sort of conclusion after perusing her bedraggled appearance and the satchel slung over her shoulder. “There’s not a fence alive operating these hours, girl.”

Guinevere frantically racked her brain for a memory of Oskar mentioning a fence for her list of supplies. Even if he had, she certainly wasn’t going to carry one all the way to Nicodranas. “I do not believe that I require any fences. Just rope, rations…”

As she rattled off what she needed, the elf looked more and more lost. A second, even more piratical figure staggered out of the alley—a stocky human with a hook where his left hand should have been. There was a jagged red gash in his side.

“Jimmybutcher, you decaying ratbag!” he roared through crooked yellow teeth, the stench of liquor on his breath nearly knocking Guinevere over. “I’ll kill you for this! I’ll make you regret you were ever born, you perfidious sack of shit!”

“Oh, you’re a butcher. ” Guinevere exhaled in relief at the elf. “That explains the knife.”

The hook-handed man’s beady gaze swiveled to her. “What?”

“What?” the elf asked her at the same time.

“I apologize for believing you to be a dangerous criminal at first, Mr. Jimmybutcher,” Guinevere said sincerely.

“I see now that you are merely carrying around the tool of your profession.” She diplomatically omitted mention of the fact that he’d clearly stabbed his acquaintance with it.

It had most likely been an accident, if they were both in their cups.

The hook-handed man’s mouth had dropped open, but now it was working again. He spoke, quivering with indignation. “We call him that because he’s a lowlife murd—”

Jimmybutcher elbowed him in his wound. “The lady wants to know where the shops are, Warwick,” he said loudly, over the other man’s yelps of pain.

Guinevere watched, aghast, as more blood trickled down Warwick’s tunic. “Oh, you really shouldn’t have done that!”

“Shouldn’t I have?” Jimmybutcher countered mildly. “Let’s escort the lady to the shops, Warwick. She’s new to the Dustbellows.”

“And she’s alone ?” Warwick’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head even as he pressed his remaining hand over his side to staunch the bleeding.

“My thoughts exactly,” said Jimmybutcher. “Come along, miss.”

“Shouldn’t Mr. Warwick consult a healer first—”

“What for?” Warwick demanded. “Think I’m soft, do you?”

Guinevere wordlessly shook her head.

The two men positioned themselves on either side of her, with Jimmybutcher walking slightly ahead.

Guinevere was happy to follow along; despite their hardened appearances, they were very nice people, indeed, to take the time out of their drunken carousing to help her.

She kept a watchful eye on Warwick at first, anxious that he would keel over from his injury at any moment, but he seemed none the worse for wear, and after a while she turned her attention to their surroundings.

“It must be a busy day,” she remarked to her companions. “Everyone seems to be in quite the rush.”

“That they are,” Jimmybutcher agreed as the residents of the Dustbellows scurried past them, giving the trio a wide berth.

“Some are running back the way they came,” Guinevere mused. “I wonder why.”

“They probably forgot something at home,” said Warwick. He looked askance at a man pulling a cart, and the latter burst into tears and fled, leaving the cart behind.

How very strange, Guinevere thought.

The shops they took her to were a vast cluster of stalls in the middle of a bustling public square bordered by huge warehouses on all sides. “Much cheaper goods here than any you’ll find on Silverstreet,” Jimmybutcher boasted. “Comparable quality, too.”

Guinevere approached a stall selling boots with something like trepidation. The peddler eyed her skeptically, but she squared her shoulders and…

And it was as though an age-old instinct kicked in. She’d never gone to market before, but her early years on the traveling caravans, the years thereafter listening to her parents’ discussions when they were home—it was to her great surprise that she found she’d stored some of that away.

Guinevere fished a plain gold ring out of her satchel and held it up for the peddler’s perusal. “I believe this more than entitles me to a pair of your finest boots,” she said. “Genuine leather, of course. And I’ll take five sets of extra laces, too.”

Guinevere haggled seamlessly from one stall to the next.

She assigned Jimmybutcher to carry her bags while the satchel grew lighter and lighter, although not alarmingly so.

It helped that her parents dealt in luxury merchandise that might never pass through the likes of the Dustbellows again.

Unlike the innkeeper, the peddlers weren’t ignorant of their value, and she managed to wrangle concession after concession from them.

Soon she had a whole new wardrobe, the much-fabled length of rope, a bedroll, a waterskin, a map of Wildemount, some grooming supplies, and a medicine bag.

This last one was bartered off a peddler who threw in bandages and salve for the bleeding Warwick, who accepted Guinevere’s gifts and patched himself up, then insisted on helping with her bags as well.

At the southwestern edge of the square was a stall selling potions.

Guinevere lingered here, inspecting the cunningly shaped glass vials filled with liquids in all manner of colors and consistencies.

Nestled in their midst was an elderly infernal with curling gray horns and spectacles, her muscular arms folded over the wooden countertop while she waited for Guinevere to make her selections.

Behind her was a cauldron filled with a simmering yellow liquid, which she absentmindedly stirred with her maroon tail.

The motions released fume after fume of an overwhelming icy fragrance into the air, underpinned with the sugared melon scent of buttercups.

The infernal, sensing a potential sale on the horizon, spoke in silvery tones. “A draft to disguise the self, dearie. Fool your friends, walk wherever you please.”

“It smells very refreshing,” Guinevere said politely.

“I add a touch more peppermint than most alchemists,” the infernal confided. “Helps mask the taste of adder tongue. Shall I prepare a vial for you?”

Guinevere couldn’t think of a single situation where she or Oskar would need to drink chopped-up adder tongues. Also, it didn’t seem very sanitary to mix a potion with one’s tail. Right as she was about to move on, however, the infernal suddenly leaned forward.

Bespectacled eyes locked on to Guinevere’s, slightly misty with the beginnings of cataracts but still piercing, still all-knowing.

Flames danced in their depths, like candles in the fog.

Infernals were children of the hellfire, and a slow wash of dread crept over Guinevere as Teinidh began to stir inside her in response.

Like called to like, after all. She had the uneasy sensation that the infernal could make out her totem, hidden though it was by the cloak.

Then the old peddler looked away. “Stay safe out there, my duck” was all she said.