The nearby column leading to the ceiling was more of a post beam, she supposed, stout milled lumber supporting the roof but not slick or lacquered. Stained, perhaps, to seal it, but there was plenty of texture to allow her nails to dig in and climb. She paused and sniffed the air more carefully. Mathilde was above her on the table, swearing in her squeaky voice that she was going to turn Staph into a newt and use her eyes in a potion recipe once she was human again. The marmoset was having a bit of trouble with the human-sized wand, though, which she’d dropped onto the table in her transformation. Still in shock and trembling with rage, Mathilde found it difficult to pick it up with her tiny hands and get it pointed in the right direction. Why Mathilde didn’t simply craft a marmoset-sized wand was beyond Grinda; if one was going to get oneself turned into a small monkey with such frequency, one should at least have a plan B.
Grinda smelled the lingering scents of Poltro, Argabella, and Gustave but knew they were already gone. Only she and Fia and Mathilde remained of their party.
Moving fast, wand wrapped up in her tail, Grinda scampered behind the post and began to shimmy up the side of it that would be hidden from the far side of the room.
“Where’d she go?” Staph demanded, obviously searching for her. “Oh, no you don’t!”
Grinda felt a spike of fear and adrenaline course through her, certain she’d been spotted in a moment of vulnerability, but Staph had been talking to Mathilde. An outraged squeak alerted her, and she looked down, seeing the blurred shapes of the pixie and the marmoset locked in physical combat over Mathilde’s wand. She took the opportunity to scrabble to the top of the pillar, circle around to the opposite side, and leap up through the hole Staph had blasted in the roof, sinking her nails into the thatch and then carefully drawing her wand and ring up through the hole after her. A furtive thatch-tortoise glared at her, unamused by her arrival and obviously blaming her for the new hole in the roof, since she had crawled through it.
Things were better, up high. The sounds of men dying under the thirsty sword of Fia and a despairing squeak from Mathilde reached her ears, from which she could infer that Staph had jerked the wand free of the marmoset’s grip and flown away with it.
She waited a few moments for some of the clamor to die down before risking a peek down into the inn. Mathilde was still there on the table, looking forlorn and heartbroken but adorable. Staph was nowhere to be seen. Grinda risked a soft call to Mathilde, though her high-pitched possum vocals garbled it somewhat. She’d have to work on that.
“Mathilde. Mathilde!” The marmoset cocked her head, trying to focus on the sound, then turned her face up to Grinda. “It’s Grinda! Come up here!”
Her old friend didn’t need to be told twice. She leapt directly off the table to the post beam and climbed up to the roof far faster than Grinda had. Marmosets had mad skills.
“I’m back where I started,” Mathilde whimpered, her wee black eyes watery in the starlight. “She brought all those soldiers with her, and a bunch of people died just to get my wand. I really hate that pixie.”
“Why did she want it so badly?”
“To keep me stuck like this. It’s what Løcher wants. It’s that sadism I was talking about. That pig isn’t happy unless I’m playing second fiddle in the magic department.”
“Then we’ll get her, my pretty,” Grinda said. “And that fiddle hog, too.”
Mathilde glanced down through the hole in the roof. The Braided Beard was mostly cleared out now. All that remained were the dwarvelish proprietors, a few of the staff who hadn’t run off screaming, and the bodies of the slain. But more soldiers were coming in and even more were surrounding the building.
“Why are they staying?” Grinda asked. “They got what they wanted, didn’t they?”
“Cleanup, to begin with,” Mathilde explained, “but they’re going to occupy the space for a while just to deny it to us. It’s the only safe place around here. And once the bodies are out and the floors mopped, those soldiers are going to want a drink. Way they figure, they’ve earned it.”
“Are they the City Watch?”
“No, this is Løcher’s private force. Did you see the blue circles on their shoulders?”
“I didn’t, but I’m sure you’re right. He keeps his own private army these days?”
“Yes. It’s not huge, but it’s muscle at his command separate from the king.”
“That’s new. The king is okay with it?”
“Not really. They’re not allowed in the palace for any reason.”
Grinda snorted. “At least Benedick has that much caution. Good.”
Mathilde shook her head. “Less and less these days, though.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s drinking even more than he used to.”
Grinda tooted a note of marsupial dismay. “He already drank spirits like water when I left.”
“He’s almost constantly pickled now. He’s developed a taste for red wines. From Corraden, of course, but more and more from Kolon.”
“Oh, no!” Grinda winced and put a paw up to her eye, peeking at Mathilde through her possum pinkies. “Don’t tell me he’s turned into one of those guys who says he needs a Kolonic every day.”
“He has. He loves his Kolonics.”
“And still no heir, I presume?”
“The lack of one may have driven him to drink more. Which of course reduces the chances of there ever being an heir to almost nil.”
A silence fell about them, cold and damp like a used bath towel, bereft of joy or fluffiness or contentment or anything good. It was the grim silence of the self-aware adult, contemplating mortality and the mathematical certainty that things would get worse before they would get better, if at all, and even if they did get better in the short term, there was still the dismal prospect of arthritis and incontinence ahead. Few people can bear such silences for long, but Grinda and Mathilde had iron constitutions, and they bore it until the dead had been cleared away and the soldiers occupied the tables below, talking of past battles and current scars and trading their mothers’ recipes for the best yak casserole they’d ever had, as men were wont to do.
The paid fighters eventually began to compare what they were currently drinking with almost anything else they weren’t drinking.
“This ale is pretty good,” Grinda heard one soldier announce, “but it’s no halfling peach elixir.”
“It’s no Kolonic, either,” a companion agreed. “Speaking of which, I hear our illustrious leader has acquired a full cask of the good stuff, the latest vintage of the master, Amon Tiyado.”
Cries of disbelief greeted this news.
“No way!” the first man said. “A cask of Amon Tiyado? Why’d he go to the trouble?”
“He wants to have the king over, so, you know, only the best for Benedick.”
As conversation swirled in the wake of this revelation, Mathilde’s high-pitched whisper broke their silence.
“That’s probably your best way in, Grinda,” Mathilde said.
“Eh? What’s that?”
“Once you’re past Løcher’s outer defenses, tunnel underneath his estate with that earth magic of yours and come up in his wine cellar. You’ll avoid all the guards that way. Easier to fight your way out than in.”
“You know where it is?”
“Sure. The wine cellar is beneath the kitchen, which is on the west side. You’ll see the chimneys of the cooking fires. They have three of them—very fancy.”
“That’s good to know. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. I hope you get him. And Staph, too, somehow. I’m going to go back to Songlen, try to figure out where she’s hiding my wand this time.”
“Would you like me to try to change you back?”
The marmoset sighed squeakily. “No, it won’t work. I’ve had others try, and the transf
ormation rebounds coming from any other wand but mine.”
“Rebounds how?”
“The casters all turned into what I look like as a human, but with a marmoset’s face.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.” Mathilde huffed and rubbed at her eyes. “Well. Good luck, Grinda. And thanks to everyone for giving me at least a little while to be human again.”
“You’ll have a long while soon! We’ll get them, Mathilde. Now be safe, dear.”
Mathilde hugged Grinda awkwardly—there was no graceful way for a marmoset to hug a possum—but Grinda cherished it nonetheless. Sand witches had few real friends, after all, and who knew if her traveling party would ever reconnect, considering that everyone had scattered to the winds.
Mathilde bounded away and disappeared in an acrobatic dive off the roof, and Grinda felt countably sad, as opposed to unaccountably. She wished for a world in which she and Mathilde could be girlfriends as they used to be. The impossibility of that tender simplicity was one of the great sorrows of her life, a life of many such great sorrows for all that she pretended now that she had none. And she knew that if she truly wanted such a world to happen, she’d have to work for it. Mathilde was doing her part for it by finding her wand and restoring her old self. And Grinda would have to work for it by defeating Staph and Løcher. She’d been fighting them—or the ideals they represented—all her life.
Growing up poor in Cape Gannet, the southernmost city of Burdell, she’d learned that the earls and the king not only didn’t care about her family’s personal struggles, but they were not even aware of what struggle really meant. The higher classes were completely unaware of the peasants’ daily bewilderment at how to afford sharply increasing rent or where to find the next meal. Sharks did not concern themselves with the worries of chum. And Grinda saw, when her father died on the spear of a city guard bent on quashing a protest of the earl’s policies, that those with power never gave it up willingly. According to those in power, there was no acceptable way to resist their rules. Peacefully, violently, with words or actions—the peasantry were supposed to know their place. The ruling classes expected everyone to play by their rules, which were designed to keep them in power and benefit no one else except by accident—and those who tried to break those rules ended up run through with a pike. That was what propelled a younger Grinda into libraries and then into the Seven Toes in search of ways around the system. That was what made her seek a power outside the control of the government. She apprenticed to a sand witch and eventually built a shipping company and rose to the level of an adviser in the capital…at least until tensions with Løcher forced her out.
With a thought, she brought her diamond crab ring up to her face, balanced on the tip of her possum tail. It was time to remember why she’d fought and scrabbled to get where she was. It was time once again to be uncomfortable, to be challenged. Because although she’d improved things for many people while she’d had influence at the court and was almost solely responsible for the recent prosperity of Malefic Beach, Løcher was doing all he could to erase whatever progress she’d made. She couldn’t let him win.
Those crabs on her beach—people thought she simply used them for protection, a warning and a threat. That was fine. But it was not that simple. That was not why she wore a ring of remembrance in their image. Those crabs lived an extraordinarily difficult life and had to fight for their very existence in a world that didn’t care whether they lived or died, unless they died and were served en croquette with tartar sauce. Yet they were all beautiful individuals. Like her family. And yes, that included her sister and her nephew. That also included these ludicrous people traveling in company with the Chosen One.
Perhaps, Grinda mused, she had spent a bit too long enjoying the luxuries she’d earned, basking in the comforts of wealth, and shrugging off the sting of exile from the capital. She’d played the chessmaster for a while, but now it was time to get back on the board herself. The goat’s arrival was a clear sign that it was time to work again on behalf of everyone who was playing a game rigged against them. Grinda backed away from the hole and climbed to the very top along the beam, stretching herself out but making sure her wand and ring were tightly curled against her and safe. She glared at the thatch tortoises in warning: she was not to be disturbed. Might as well catch some sleep and recover what strength she could. The soldiers were probably going to stay until dawn at least, so there was little chance the others would return until then.
If they returned at all.
With some surprise, Grinda realized that…she hoped they would.
Being part rabbit was terribly useful when one had to leap through a window and run away in a zigzaggy fashion. Argabella’s brain went from normal anxious human thoughts to a sort of hyperactive whirl of instincts driving her to safety while also reminding her that she should eat more carrots. The end result was that instead of being cut in half like a grapefruit, her bits all pink and juicy and leaking out, she went right into rabbit mode and returned to conscious thought sometime later, her instincts having delivered her alive and well to a boggy sort of place quickly turning into a Stenchful swamp.
At least she hadn’t gone full Gustave and dropped a load of pellets as she bolted. Or had that been Gustave that rammed into a soldier outside the inn and gave her room enough to zoom past? She couldn’t rightly remember.
“Well, where are we now?” she muttered, hands on her hips as she looked around.
Behind her, in the direction of the Braided Beard, she could still hear the thunk of metal and the slick swish of swords meeting flesh. Quite Bloodful back there. But before her it was super Bogful. Mud and algae and potential bacterial infections all vied for her attention. A little stream wobbled out into the darkness, moonlight gleaming wanly on its surface. On the left side, boulders rolled up comfortably against a rock wall that was unclimbable for anyone of rabbitesque physique.
“Too cold for alligators and crocodiles,” she murmured to herself. “Never too cold for snapping turtles. Rather a lot of frogs, but as Fia’s not around, that shouldn’t be an issue.”
At the thought of Fia, Argabella spun suddenly to look back at the melee she’d left behind. Fia had sent her on, certain that they would be reunited. Grinda had promised they would meet again later, and later probably meant when soldiers stopped killing people willy-nilly. Later was certainly not now. Even if Argabella had wanted to return to the Braided Beard, her nervous system wouldn’t allow it. Because wow, was her system ever nervous just now. Her ears twitched back and forth, searching for noises that might indicate friend or foe, but mostly she just heard the soft swirl of water nearby and the pleasant plop as slimy things flopped around in said water. Every now and then, the scrape and clank of metal suggested that the soldiers might be fanning out in her direction, hunting for yet more potential victims.
“Better forward than backward, I suppose.”
As she stepped gingerly into the quaggy mud, Argabella decided to keep close to the boulders on the left. That way, should something Toothful decide it could use a little appetizer of bunny hocks, she could attempt to scramble upward and perhaps pelt it with rocks from above. The swamp felt a bit too endless and flat in the other direction, and she was certain she’d soon be lost. Rabbits were not swamp things. Rocks firmly on the left, she spread the cattails with her hands and bravely squelched forward.
Since becoming a rabbit, Argabella had given some thought to the new instincts and thoughts that overlay her old consciousness like a soft blanket. She still liked most of the same things, except meat and cats, but she was also more easily frightened. And yet Fia didn’t frighten her at all—not in the fear way. More in the if you don’t look at me, I’ll die way. Fia, who could cleave a halfling in half like cutting butter. Fia, who sent Argabella out the window and remained inside to fight without a second thought. Fia of the too-small bikini and mighty thews and soft lips and…
br /> Well, it was time for Argabella to acknowledge that perhaps she now shared some of that famed lapine passion.
She had to get back, which meant she had to stay safe. But she didn’t actually have to keep going, did she? It wasn’t as if her only choices were plow through swamp or sit down and wait for death. She could just clamber up behind some of these boulders and hide for a while. The soldiers most likely wouldn’t wade into the water and poke about. Of course, she didn’t need to gambol dangerously around the rocks the way Gustave the goat would, either.
“Silly rabbit. Such acrobatic tricks are for kids,” she thought, finding a foothold among the rocks, scrambling up, and carefully hefting herself over a large boulder.
Argabella expected her foot to land on rock on the other side, possibly of the wet and slimy sort. She’d given some thought to the fact that she might encounter dirt, mud, water, or a rogue axolotl. But what she did not expect to feel under her furry toes was something soft and clammy and firm.
A person.
She immediately backed off, perching on the boulder in case this person, too, possessed a sword.
“Oh, gosh. Sorry!”
The person—for surely it was a person, she knew that much—did not respond.
“Hello?”
Still nothing.
Her nose wiggled, but she could only smell swamp. Her ears twitched, but there was no sound other than the wind rushing through cattails. Definitely no sounds of a person shouting at her or threatening her. Although, far off, she detected the splash of a boot landing in mud. Still, that wasn’t nearly as important as the person in front of her, who’d found the hiding place first and was definitely winning in the realm of silence and stillness. They had to be a champion at hide-and-go-seek.
“Didn’t mean to intrude,” she said, but she was now becoming aware that bodies generally objected to being trod upon by rabbit people. They most certainly didn’t just lie there, stiller than still, being strangely clammy, even when playing hide-and-go-seek.