Chapter Three
Serpents and Pigs
News travels fast in a village like Stormsby.
After checking the Kingsmen into their rooms, Sorcha and I took a brief inventory and immediately determined we did not have nearly enough food to feed a more than a dozen men, half of them barely older than Sorcha herself.
“My friend Fia had to be married off last year because they couldn’t afford to feed her anymore,” Sorcha had whispered urgently. “Her brothers were eating that much.”
We had stood in the kitchen staring at the leg of lamb and the pile of vegetables intended for a week’s worth of stew, and she’d given me a grave look before adding; “I don’t know where they put it, but men that age never stop eating.”
As much as it pained me to make the slippery, snowy trip into the village, I knew I could do with the distance.
I needed to think; to have that space under the grey skies to look within and understand what had happened to my magic.
I needed time to process that wild moment when it felt like my Flame had tried to leap free from my soul.
So, leaving Sorcha at the bar with Roy, I scooped out the meagre offering of coins in our coffer and set out for the market to buy as much food as I could carry.
Tanner had disappeared the moment we led the soldiers through to their rooms. By the time I made it to the market, it was clear he had ambled into Stormsby ahead of me.
“Is it true they broke down the door?” asked Ciara McAlpine, a potato farmer and one of the few women in town anywhere close to my own age.
“Dagda save me.” I dragged a weary hand down my face. “Tanner has some mouth on him.”
Ciara nodded, lips pursed, then leaned over her cartful of potatoes and lowered her voice.
“He said they stormed in with their swords drawn and demanded you hand over the keys.”
I laughed, more out of shock than actual amusement. “They did not, good gods. He’s going to put me out of business.”
Ciara shrugged delicately, avoiding my eyes as she stuffed potatoes into the little net bag I’d handed her.
“Folks around here aren’t fond of Kingsmen as it is, Roz. I don’t know that they’d need much more incentive to keep clear.”
I truly hoped she was wrong.
But when I returned to the tavern, Tanner was still nowhere to be seen.
Roy sat at the bar all afternoon, glancing at the door like a faithful hound.
He sipped pints of ale until dinnertime, when Sorcha set down his usual bowl of stew and buttered bread.
The soldiers slowly closed in from either side of the bar, calling in their own orders of pints and stew before fanning out around the small tables scattered through the tavern.
Roy’s shoulders tightened by the minute, and when Tanner didn’t come back, and none of our regulars turned up to keep him company, he eventually rose to shaky feet and bid us a quiet goodnight.
“It’s temporary,” Sorcha said quietly, brows drawn tight over her round eyes as we watched Roy shuffle swiftly through the front door. “They’ll be gone soon, won’t they? That’s what they said.”
My heart clenched at the subtle tremor in her throat.
Perhaps I’d underestimated how seriously she took Tanner’s fearmongering.
Not that I was faring much better, as it turned out.
My lungs still ached with the unexpected lash of my Flame, and something foreign had settled in its place, seeping cold into that warm crevice in my chest where the embers of my magic flickered dimly. Something that felt a lot like fear.
I made myself smile at Sorcha, and gave her hand a quick squeeze.
“Of course. They’ll be gone in no time.”
???
The hunt began the very next morning.
The men rose earlier than I would have expected, considering the late hour most of them had eventually stumbled off to bed.
They drifted into the breakfast hall in two’s and three’s and seated themselves around the long table, heaping porridge into the bowls we’d laid out while we made our way around the room with a pot of tea and a basket of bread.
“The thing about serpents,” one of the soldiers was saying, in a loud gravelly voice that demanded attention, “is that they’re slippery as the name suggests.”
I recognised him as the man who had snapped at me in the tavern yesterday. He had sharp, sour features and lips that pulled back from his teeth in a natural sneer; Fischer, I think he was called.
“Fisch, maybe we should wait for the Captain’s briefing,” said Brennan.
Fischer ignored him and went on, speaking thickly around a mouthful of porridge.
“But they’re not very bright, y’see.” He tapped his skull with his spoon to demonstrate, depositing gloopy oats into his shaggy brown mop. “I’ve skinned more of those slimy fuckers than I can count, and you know what always gives them away?”
He splayed a hand on the table, lowered his voice conspiratorially. “They choose the wrong mark. We all know they can’t change their eyes, and that’s simple enough to get around. They’d just choose a mark with the same eye colour. But d’you know what else they hold onto? Their tongues.”
Fischer dropped the spoon and slammed his fist into his open palm.
“And there you bloody have it – the moment they steal some foreign fucker’s skin, we’ve got them. Can’t speak a language they never learned, can they? They can shed their skin no problem, but they can’t shed their fuckin’ tongues.”
“Fischer,” Brennan said again, sharper than I’d heard him thus far. His gaze flicked to Sorcha, and back to Fischer, colour rising in his cheeks. “This is hardly appropriate breakfast talk.”
Fischer only laughed, an awful hacking sound that just went on and on, sticky porridge spraying from his open maw.
Some of the men around him gave half-hearted huffs that might have passed for laughter, and Fischer’s large chest swelled with his own importance.
He leaned back in his chair, spreading his arms wide for his scattered audience.
“If it were up to me, we’d take their tongues and ears at birth. If they never learn to speak at all, they’re fooling no one, are they?”
He tapped the spoon against his head again, this time demonstrating his own great wit as he worked his breakfast into his scalp.
“We need to be one step ahead, gents, it’s the only way.”
Across from me, Sorcha was circling closer and closer to Fischer; she had gone white as a sheet, the colour entirely drained from her sweet round face.
I gripped the handle of my teapot tighter, and kept my eyes on her as we moved in tandem round the table.
The basket was trembling in her hands when she eventually arrived at Fischer’s side and quietly offered him a breadroll.
He glanced up from his foul pontificating, and did a double take at Sorcha’s beautiful, fear-struck face – then slowly down the length of her body.
I set down my teapot between two soldiers, limbs coiling tight in anticipation of whatever awful thing was about to happen.
Fischer’s lips curled back even further, the sneer growing to a predatory snarl.
“None for me, sweetheart.” He dropped his voice, though not low enough. “See some other rolls I’d like to get my hands on though.”
Though he didn’t make a move toward her, Sorcha stepped quickly out of his reach, smart girl that she was. Brennan shot to his feet, eyes burning, jaw working with whatever words he was poised to spit – but my own words came faster.
“Speak to her like that again,” I said, each syllable smouldering with barely contained fury, “and I swear to the Dagda I’ll make you regret it.”
Fischer froze in his seat. His beady eyes swivelled to mine and he took me in for a moment, perhaps assessing what damage I, an unarmed tavern wench in a corset and apron, might exact on the likes of him.
Deep in the distant confines of my chest, my Flame crackled at the challenge.
But he just offered up an oily chuckle; this time, not a single soldier echoed him, awkwardly or otherwise.
“Just being friendly,” he said, raising his hands in mock defense.
I returned his sneer with one of my own.
“You were being vile. If I hear it again,” I said sweetly, tilting my head, “perhaps I’ll try cutting out your tongue. Since you seem to believe it’s so effective.”
This time, someone did laugh.
I whipped around, heart in my throat and my Flame choosing that exact moment to rear its head from the dark depths. The Captain leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed over his broad body and a smile still lingering on his lips.
“Well, that’s one way to greet your guests in the morning.”
I struggled with my writhing Flame for a moment longer before the Captain winked at me and I realised I’d been vacantly staring at him. I blinked, straightened at once and turned on my heel, snatching up the teapot and filling the next soldier’s cup before he could tell me if he even wanted tea.
Sorcha tentatively moved around Fischer’s chair and offered her basket to the next man, round blue eyes darting to Fischer, to me, to the Captain behind me. Oblivious, the Captain strolled to the head of the table and dropped into his seat with a long-suffering sigh.
He steepled his hands on the table and drawled; “Do I want to know what you’ve done to offend our charming host, Fisch?”
Fischer stuffed his mouth full of porridge, and snarled something incoherent into his bowl.
The Captain’s mouth curled, beard bristling. “Right then.”
He leaned back and let his stern gaze sweep over the table as a whole.
“Let’s begin today’s briefing, shall we? I suppose we’ll start with the obvious. Our shapeshifter could be anyone, anywhere, at any time.”