Great. For today’s therapy-session role play, I get to be a barmaid.
He was measuring his chances of staying the fuck on the roof when the skylight below him creaked open.
“Ecko. Good morning – surprised to see you still here.” Hair loose and bare shouldered, the Bard glanced at their surroundings and grinned. “Well, this could be a great deal worse. Enjoy the trip?”
“Yeah, like a laugh a minute.” Ecko’s cloak and skin had shifted with the colours of the dawn, but his eyes stayed black as pits. He indicated the riverside city. “Ain’t exactly Minas fucking Tirith is it?”
“This is Vanksraat. We’ve come south-west, Roviarath is directly downriver.” Lifting the skylight further, Roderick peered over the roof’s edge. “Good place for us, there’ll be gossip and trade. We’ll have a busy day, I think.”
“They’ve spotted us already.” Ecko returned to studying the town.
“They do that.” The Bard grinned, his ridiculous goth hair rising loose in the breeze. “We’re a breath of life. We don’t only bring ale – we bring tales of the Varchinde, news of the terhnwood crop, trade-goods and information. In some ways, we bring the world.”
Okay, not a barmaid, a mailman. Hell, maybe I get a hat.
“There are also some questions I need to ask you – and something... well, maybe something you can help me with.”
Ecko snorted. “You reckon I’m gonna stay?”
“I’ve already said that’s your choice – though if you’re going to jump wagon, there may be better places. You’d like Xenok, or Padesh...”
“Jump ship, you jump ship.”
“Why would anyone jump off a ship?” Roderick had thrown the trapdoor all the way open and was now sitting on the lip checking out the view. “Come down. Tundran-blooded I may be, but I’m getting cold.”
Ecko twitched his shoulders, discouraging the emptiness of the sky. Ignoring the Bard’s offered hand, he scrabbled down the roof. As he reached the skylight, though, something snatched his attention.
The Bard was stripped to the waist. He was lean, a wire-work of steel muscle. What stopped Ecko was the ugly mess of white scar that tore into Roderick’s chest under his outstretched arm. It was a messy, patchy wound – it looked like he’d been half munched by a shoal of piranha.
It was an ugly wound.
It was a mortal wound.
Suspicion paused him on the edge of jumping. He pointed.
“What the fuck did that?”
The scar was old, long healed – but its severity was as loud as a scream. Razor-wire teeth had shredded the Bard a new one the size of the fucking Grand Canyon. And it’d healed hollow – as though too little skin had been stretched to cover the damage. Busted ribs and half-eaten lungs were the least of its problems out here, where the fucking leech was the height of hot meditech –
How had he – ?
“Seeking lost lore, on a reconnaissance mission to Rammouthe.” Ruefully, Roderick looked north-east, ran his fingers over the scar. “I was running scout, and disturbed a knot of sleeping magharta. Not something I’d recommend.”
“You oughta be dead.” Ecko studied the Bard’s pretty-boy face for signs of rotting. “You’re not, are you? You’re not gonna pull some fetid zombie undead bullshit?”
“Fetid zombie undead bullshit?”
“Oh for chrissakes. I mean: why the fucking hell’re you still breathing?”
“I won’t get let off that easily?” Roderick grinned. “Once magharta start eating, they’re not easy things to stop.”
“Don’t gimme the smart-ass remarks – if you got monster issues, I’m your fucking exterminator. Tell me where they’re at and it’ll all be over by dinnertime.”
And I can get the hell outta here.
“Only monster in here is in the kitchen, cooking breakfast.” Leaving Ecko to catch the skylight, the Bard jumped down onto the landing. “C’mon, let’s go give Kale a hand.” He glanced back up, gave a brief chuckle. “He might even let you start the fire.”
* * *
Downstairs, the front doors of the taproom were propped open and the sounds of water and birds were carried in on sweet, clean air. Karine was already there, counting a stack of pottery bottles on the bar top and making marks on the papers that Ecko had seen the previous night. Beside her was a slender, wide-eyed waif who looked no older than sixteen.
Standing in the open doorway, arms folded and watching the river, stood a silent, self-possessed man who turned and nodded at them as they came in. His pale hair shone in the sunshine and, like Karine, he seemed far too young.
There was a long scar across one of his ears.
“Ecko.” His voice was clear and calm – it was the voice that Ecko had heard when he’d awoken. “Welcome to The Wanderer. I’m Sera – I didn’t see you last night as you had so much to take in. Though, this morning, I fear you may have rather more.” There was no trace of humour in his expression or voice. “The city is about to land on our doorstep.”
City?
Almost in spite of himself, Ecko craned to look past where the man stood, flicking his anti-daz against the sun’s shine on the river. There was a boat full of people already halfway across, figures at the bow pointing and talking.
He groaned. “Jesus, do you people sleep?”
Karine said, “Forty-one, forty-two, forty-three. We’re two short. Can we get a messenger to go back to the bazaar – I’ll need at least fifteen more of the spirits and all the ales they’ve got. And wine – we’re close enough to Padesh to make it the good stuff. Kale needs fresh veg, whatever the farms have brought in.”
Roderick caught Ecko’s black gaze, and winked.
But Karine was not slowing down.
“Silfe,” she called to the waif, “can you get me the loose terhnwood? And the scales? And Sera, can you sort the loading? I don’t want the chain through here, take them round the back and load directly. When they’re done, send them to me.”
“Ecko,” Sera said. “How d’you fancy joining me on a loading crew?”
“How d’you fancy a new asshole?”
The pale-haired man turned fully from the view of the water. Ecko watched him, daring him to start – what’d they said about him killing nine people? – but he said only, “It seems we already have one.”
That one caught Ecko clean under his guard. He spluttered, “You –”
“Whoah.” Roderick placed a hand on Ecko’s shoulder. “It’s far too early to be starting fights. If you wait until after breakfast, we’ll all come outside and watch.”
“Yeah, maybe you can make a wager.” Shaking off the contact, he looked for a corner, somewhere away from the door and the light and the banter and the incoming people. “I still dunno if I’m even staying... Jesus Christ enough already!”
Another door had banged open, startling him. This one loosed the scent of cooking flesh – blood-rich and suddenly, strongly reminiscent of his early childhood. Meat – real animal, raised and killed and carved and sold... The smell was powerful, enticing, slightly sickening. Echoes of his mother’s children’s home swamped him, too many people, too much noise, too much to take in...
For fucksake!
It was overpowering. He gripped the hard edges of Lugan’s lighter and backed to a table at the edge of the room.
Gave himself room to breathe.
The Bard ducked into the kitchen. Crouching on a corner seat and shrinking under his cowl, Ecko stared round at the taproom, at the sunlight, at the people, at the resin stuff – had they called it terhnwood? – hung on the walls.