Chapter Fourteen
TWO NIGHTS PASSED WITH US ON THE EVER-CHANGING TUNDRA.
I felt less and less like a scout and tracker the longer we traveled.
Being told where to go and who to look for at a certain town required no skills of any kind.
Aggravation over my new role as a shadow trainee instead of doing what I did best began to gnaw on me.
At night, I would lie in my bedroll, yearning for Asdren’s arms around me, dreaming of my face buried in a beard that held the aroma of tobacco.
The days under the sun were long, the nights cold.
Curling up with a dragonling was no match for cuddling close to a stout, hairy man who whispered sweet things into your pointed ear.
I missed Asdren terribly. Sadness crept into my heart on those long nights on the plains.
I knew that I cared for him deeply, loved him, and even though I had nothing to compare the strong emotions to, I knew them to be love.
The goddess discussed love in her teachings to her children.
She spoke of love being a living thing, cyclical, like the seasons, and rooted in balance.
Asdren and I had that balance. Kenton had read to us from the books of the wilds and shared her joyous psalms, explaining how love followed the seasons.
There were springs of discovering tenderness, summers of heated passion, autumns of warm gratitude, and winters of deep rest. She spoke of not cursing love when it sleeps, for all seeds need darkness to rise again in the spring.
Love reached beyond people, Danubia explained.
Love was expressed in how you tread on the moss, how you thanked the trees that gave you wood for fires and bows, how you left a glen as you found it after you passed through.
She offered prayers and songs for us. Curled into a ball with the stars blinking overhead, I whispered one that I had found most lovely during a lesson from Beirich.
“By moonlit leaf and whispered air, let our hearts entwine like roots, growing wild, gentle, true. This evocation I send on the winds to my own true heart. So may it be.”
The endless breezes picked up my words. Would they travel to Asdren?
Did he love me? Did it matter? I made my choice.
I had left him asleep in a bed to serve my king.
Perhaps he hated me for my defection. Perhaps he never loved me at all.
Mayhap he merely found me pretty to look at, to touch, to fuck.
Your mind is loud. Find peace, lest I nip your arse.
I closed my eyes at the chide from the dragon nestled inside the bedroll with me.
Sleep did not come easily that night. Or the next.
I rode to the gates of Quinn’s Quay exhausted, sad at heart, and with a wyrmling tucked into my clothing.
I had no doubt that pirates—much like the bandits my father cavorted with—would stab me in the throat to get their hands on a dragon kit.
Hell, they would stab me in the throat for a wilted carrot.
The town was a large warren of homes, shops, and pubs atop a huge plateau that looked down on the Stormhold Sea.
Overhead, gulls cried and kited on the winds.
Below, far below, the chaotic Stormhold lashed the rocks along its wild shores.
I sat on my horse, mesmerized by the difference between the Silvura Sea and this harridan of an ocean.
Even now, with the warm months upon us, the Stormhold embodied raw power.
There were songs aplenty about the shifting currents, the frigid temperatures that settled in over the short winter months.
The bards loved to sing of the ship that had sunk, the hundreds of lives lost, and the unforgiving pirates that roamed the waves.
I could see ships bobbing on the waves, moored at some docks.
How the sailors got down to the ships, as the city sat so far above, was a mystery. Very long stairs, I had to guess.
Giving my horse a nudge to get him moving from the clump of sweet summer grass that had sprung up between two gray stones, I studied the entrance ahead.
Sturdy, made of rock and wood, they stood guarded by four people in makeshift armor.
Mismatched bits, helms too large, and boots of differing metals.
Their weaponry was plainly visible and not shoddy at all.
How I was to find this half-elf possible prince among so many, I had no clue, but I had a job to do, and do it I would. Goddess knows it had cost me dearly.
Remember to stay still and quiet, I reminded the sleepy dragon in my shirt. His claws were digging uncomfortably into my belly. Perhaps I should have tried to roll him into a tight ball and shove him into my saddlebags. He yawned in reply.
“Hold,” one of the guards, a tall elven woman—older with a wooden left leg sporting a sequined dance slipper—called as I neared. “State your business,” she said, hand coming to rest on a bright silver sword.
“I seek a job.”
She eyed me up and down.
“Never seen an elf with hair that color before,” she told the others, who all chortled.
“What kind of job are you looking for? A thin thing like you with them big green eyes and ginger root hair got to be here for pleasure reasons. If you fancy a shag behind the guardhouse, I’ll let you pass without paying the entrance fee. ”
“I would sooner pay to enter,” I tossed out loudly to be sure all of them heard.
That wiped the smirk off their faces. “Your loss,” she replied as she gave her right breast a squeeze.
“Nifty Violin,” the tallest of them mumbled.
“A musical shop?”
“No, pub, sits dead center of town.” A wiry elf with a tattooed face chimed up. “They’ll take you on if you know how to use your mouth well enough.”
“Given how he just upped Hyla, I wager he does,” a round human with no teeth tossed out. Hyla, the female, found no humor in that. “Go on through.”
They opened the gate with haste. I nodded before tugging my hood up over my flaming red hair.
Jaculi wiggled down in my undershirt as we entered the town proper.
It was a shambles. Hovels stacked above hovels, many built along the edge of a sheer cliff that fell into the sea.
The streets were packed with people of all shapes, colors, and sizes.
Elves, humans, dwarves, and a few drunken yeti.
Muddy roads coated with blood, vomit, and scrawny chickens branched off the main road.
After the encounter at the gate, I made a quick decision about my appearance.
Ducking into an alleyway, my horse followed at my heels, for I had a tight hold on his reins.
The alley was littered with stray cats, dozens of rats, and a drunken yeti passed out legs akimbo.
I knelt in the grime, removed my eating dagger from my belt, and began dragging it over my scalp.
My hair made me stand out, so it had to go.
Asdren would be…well, it mattered not as I would likely never feel his hands in my hair again.
When all my hair lay around me in the muck, I ran my fingers through the offal puddled in pits in the cobblestone and smeared it over my cheeks to hide the freckles.
When I was done, I could smell the stink of piss and horse shit wafting off me in waves.
Perfect. Now to find the Nifty Violin. Stepping over the yeti, I ventured back into the buccaneers, whoremasters, and bootleggers.
Music rolled out of several doorways, bards trying to make a coin.
Whores of both genders called down to those on the street from oddly shaped windows above the pubs.
Dogs darted out into the foot traffic, some chasing the chickens, others trying to nab food from makeshift carts parked at inconvenient angles.
Few horses could be seen, but the smell of stables was thick in the moist sea air.
Gulls cried out from pointed roofs. A baby cried in a home above a cobbler’s shop.
An elf missing an eye argued with a dwarf minus one ear outside a shipwright.
The ripe stench of dye from a sailmaker’s loft mingled with the foul smells from several fishmongers.
This town was a sewer. The sooner I could locate the missing prince, the sooner I could return to the woods.
Hasulett pranced about several times to avoid dogs or children who obviously had never been taught how to treat a horse.
I would not blame my gelding if one of the brats who pulled on his tail were kicked into the sea.
Click flew above us on silent wings, diving at the gulls who ventured too close.
Following the mucky road, I soon hit the center of town.
Seated in the very middle of a bustling gathering spot filled with men and women of dubious character was the Nifty Violin.
Sliding off my horse, I gaped upward. Four stories of ramshackle building towered over the heart of Quinn’s Quay.
Each floor was a different color due to different siding materials being slapped on.
Windows, each of a varying shape from the others, some with glass, many without, were filled with prostitutes or drunken pirates.
One had a dancing goat on the other side, while another had a porpoise—a man in a porpoise suit I prayed playing a concertina.
Mossy fingers dangled from the eaves. Smoke poured out of several chimneys, and a wooden carving of a squirrel with butterfly wings stood watch over the riotous sea. I turned to look at Hasulett.
“I am not sure if I dare to leave you tied to a post in this town,” I said aloud. A young child with huge blue eyes ran up to me, his face smeared with purple jam. He held out his grubby hands.
“I can watch your horse. Two copper. For three, I’ll wash his face. For four, I’ll stab anyone who comes near him.”
Ah, now this sounded familiar. I’d been raised to beg, borrow, and steal too. With a smile, I dropped to one knee, thumbed some hair from his cheek, and looked the skinny half-elf boy in the eye.