Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Just a Job
Backlit by the fiery sky, his lanky silhouette etched in amber, Griff looked like something out of Mal’s wildest dreams. He watched for a few self-indulgent moments as Griff swung his maul into the wood on the chopping block.
Followed the drip of a bead of sweat from Griff’s neck all the way down past his navel, pale skin gilded by the sunset.
Touched his tongue to the corner of his mouth, thinking of all the times he had seen Griff do this when they were growing up, three best friends under one roof, every other night a party that called for a bonfire.
After Rhun’s disappearance, Wynnie was always out, always covered in someone else’s blood when she turned up again, but Mal never had to worry about being warm or where his next meal was coming from because Griff took care of the woodpile.
He took care of things. Birthday presents. Scrapes. Mending clothes. Even though Griff was only two years older, he thought of the little things while Mal’s sights were forever on the horizon.
The dull, rhythmic thud of the maul in tandem with Griff’s laboring breaths would always be a familiar tune, one from a time when Griff still knew how to stay.
Mal could never forget it. He’d tried.
Unaware that he was making any sound at all, a groan rose from the back of his throat as he watched Griff work that rather resembled the sound the family’s old dog, Whiskey, made when someone scratched behind his ears.
The hound was more gray than brown now, with fur like velvet and sagging jowls, a sagging stomach to match, and failing eyes that—much like Mal’s did—glimpsed certain darting shadows and wispy figures that others simply couldn’t.
Poor old dog must be cursed too, though Mal couldn’t imagine what he had done to piss off the gods. All dogs were good dogs, after all.
He took a deep breath in through his nostrils, steeling himself. Quickly sipped from his flask, that constant silver companion flashing in and out of the breast pocket of his jerkin in a span of seconds. And then, as fortified as he was going to get, he approached.
The clip of his boots against the cobbles didn’t quite grab Griff’s attention the way Mal had expected it would. Nor did his shadow falling across the current object of Griff’s focus, or the dry clearing of his throat.
So between strikes of the maul, Mal let a few words fall from his lips: “Preparing for tomorrow when everyone else has already gone home? Whoever hired you should really raise your pay.”
At that, Griff left the heavy tool embedded in the chopping block and pushed some dark hair out of his face with a scarred hand, blinking sweat from his eyes at the intrusion.
Mal rarely glanced in a mirror, but he still had some idea from Griff’s startled expression of how he must look: like some kind of gray ghost with his woolen cloak around his shoulders.
Still wearing the same style of patched and torn hunter-green jerkin over an equally mended shirt and brown cloth pants worn thin at the knee, because he had never taken great care of his things; cool gray eyes always running some calculation; the set of a jaw that was always braced for impact; crooked nose reset too many times to count; tawny skin already deepened by the start of summer, more like Wynnie’s than Griff’s eternally pale complexion; shaggy golden hair tied back in some semblance of a bun by a leather strap, full of so many knots that at this point he would have to cut most of it off just to run a comb through it.
He looked like death warmed over, and he felt like it too, having to stand here facing the man he’d almost put in an untimely grave. It was all he could do not to roll up his sleeve and rake his nails over the raven’s feathers on his forearm until he bled.
Griff was silent for so long that Mal was about to ask if he needed some kind of help. When he finally spoke, he said dryly, tentatively, into the air between them, “Can I get that in writing? Addressed to my employer?”
Just before the light shifted, a hint of a grin slipped across Mal’s face, echoing back across the years to a time when things were so much simpler.
When it was the three of them, just them and Alys, invincible in their bond and existing in their own narrow world where they were certain that one day, they would be even greater heroes than their parents had been, writing their own legacy together.
Yet that had been nothing more than a dream, an empty promise. Mal could count on two hands the number of times he and Griff had spoken in nearly ten years.
“What are you doing here?” Griff asked bluntly, clearly unsettled by this breach in their unspoken agreement to stay the hell away from each other. “Is something wrong with Wynnie? Or Vic?” A brief pause followed in which he looked stricken, and then, “Is it … Alys?”
Mal glanced quickly toward the smoke curling from the nearest chimney just over Griff’s shoulder, which was easier than looking at Griff himself, and shook his head. “Everyone’s fine.”
“Dove saw Alys in the jeweler’s recently. The expensive one who makes the rings,” the foreman offered curiously. “Any idea what that might have been about?”
Mal shrugged. “No more than I know why she’s started hanging out with you again.
But I doubt any man could win her over with a bit of jewelry or a stupid title.
The last guy certainly couldn’t, and they had three kids.
That stuff is all just someone’s moneymaking scheme, anyway, and calling each other special names is for the chronically insecure. ”
Griff hooked his fingers into the back of his waistband, glancing sideways at Mal like he feared one small misstep might provoke his temper, and simply nodded. Maybe he had lost his appetite for bloodshed since the attack.
Mal, meanwhile, tried not to stare too hard at Griff’s still-bare chest, sweat glistening where it had dried on his cooling skin.
Tried not to let his gaze wander lower, to the waistband of Griff’s pants, unwilling to look upon evidence of the stabbing he had plotted even though he probably deserved to have to see it.
“Anyway,” he continued, his voice heavy with the effort of what he knew he had to say next. He might as well get this over with before things could sour like they always did. Still, the words had to be dragged out of his throat from some unfathomable depth. “I’m actually here on business.”
Maybe he should have chosen his words more carefully, given the way Griff blanched like he’d just chugged a bottle of the moonshine one of the barkeeps at the Maiden’s Arms sold under the table to regulars.
He was so delicate, so easy to rile. He must have folded immediately when they stabbed him. A perfect, pretty victim.
Mal’s stomach churned. He almost regretted hitting the flask.
“Business?” Griff’s shoulders were rigid with tension.
Thanks to the foreman’s lack of a shirt, it took little effort to notice, and Mal definitely wasn’t trying to study the lines of muscle there for any other reason.
“You’ve got funny ideas of what exactly business is, Mal.
I’m pretty sure your version includes scams and intimidation and outright extortion. ”
Mal didn’t bother correcting him. Griff was mostly right, to be fair. But it still stung, the way he always thought he was so smart, thought he could read Mal like one of his books, one where he had every chapter memorized. Arrogant bastard.
When Griff tilted his head a little at the lack of a scathing rebuttal, Mal huffed a breath and began like he had practiced in his head on the way here: “I have a lead on an exciting new prospect, a chance to strike it rich and get some answers about the past. And I’d like for you to come along …
with Alys and me. To Rotrose Mire. As our official healer. ”
“You want to go to the Mire? On purpose?” Griff paced a few steps around the chopping block. “Of course you do. Even knowing the stories. Even after Rhun …”
Rotrose Mire lay to the east past the Wyrmwood, across the Plains of Plenty—so named because they were seemingly endless fields of tall grass, some ancient explorer’s idea of humor—out where the friendliest faces they could hope to encounter were businessmen like Mal, roaming bandits, or even wargs, huge hairy dog-beasts of the Shadow Queen’s with jaws like a steel trap.
And then there was the Mire itself, full of orcs and trolls who worshiped the dark queen like some kind of deity, most destined to join the ranks of the undead under her command; carnivorous plants; poisonous berries that looked temptingly like common fruits; and sinister beings like revenants, walking corpses with souls inside created by the Shadow Queen to bolster her army.
Her control over the dead was precisely what made some believe she had once been a human necromancer rather than, as others argued, an elf gone mad.
“That’s far from here. A long journey, especially on foot. And dangerous as hell, besides,” Griff pointed out after pacing a few more rounds.
“Which is why we’ll need a healer,” Mal said again, trying for patience. “In case the roads aren’t as friendly as in a fairy tale.”
“I’m hardly that,” Griff protested, though Mal had it on good authority from Alys that he had learned something of the art from the elves.