3. Saige
Saige
“You came!” Raven sings out as I enter Yevna’s treasured tavern, the Copper Kettle. My friend’s cheeks are already flushed and she’s wearing her lopsided grin proudly.
I give her a wave as I start through the crowd.
The sun has only just hit the horizon outside, and the tavern is already brimming with local patrons ready to celebrate the Reclaiming.
The scent of ale and sawdust is thick in the air, along with the sound of raucous laughter and the rattle of dice in wooden cups—the people of Hanniel are letting loose tonight, toasting to the end of the war, to the sacrifice of the Black Flame, to the fall of Malevron.
A roaring fire crackles in the hearth, casting a warm glow across the bar in the center, and leaving the corners dark for whispered asides and the occasional tryst.
“About time!” Yevna exclaims, her silver-white hair is wild and wiry, framing her wrinkled face as she presses a foaming tankard into my hand before I can say so much as hello.
Decidedly not the maternal type, Yevna’s still the closest thing Raven or I have ever had to a mother, and while she’s Raven’s aunt by blood, she’s never treated us any differently.
She is deceptively frail-looking, but as soon as she opens her mouth the jig is up—she’s as hard as they come, the only softness in her saved for the enormous gray wolfhound at her side, Grim.
“Thanks Yev.” I accept the drink with a smile and shuffle into our usual booth that she’s roped off for us, setting my satchel down beside me. “You don’t have to man the taps tonight?”
“Not tonight. Tonight is for watching you two make fools of yourselves.”
“Well, if it gives you joy, who are we to deny you?” I laugh. “Gotta steal it while you can.”
“And who taught you that?” Smirking, Yevna juts her chin across the table. “I see Raven has already spotted her new flavor of the month…”
I glance across at my friend, who is indeed sharing sly looks with a handsome man at the bar.
Yevna turns back to me with a toothy grin. “Isn’t it about time you got some action, too, Saige?”
I snort. “You always told us we don’t need men—”
“Need? Gods no. Want? Perhaps on occasion. Desire is desire, girls.”
Raven chooses that moment to return to the conversation and she grimaces. “Can we not hear about your desires again, Yev?”
I take full advantage of the situation and divert the attention away from me. “No, let’s hear about them, Yev. When’s the last time—”
“This morning,” she says without hesitation. “The butcher. The man may not know how to string a sentence together, but he can handle his meat, I’ll say that.”
I burst out laughing, while Raven hits her forehead on the table with a groan. “Dear gods, woman. I can’t unhear that.”
“Like you didn’t fool around with his apprentice in the cool room last year,” I quip.
“Traitor,” Raven mutters with a glare. “What about that waste of space you saw when we were living in—”
Yevna’s eyes go back and forth between us, an amused smirk on her lips.
The eras of mine and Raven’s lifelong friendship are marked by the terrible places we lived together over the years…
and the terrible men we’ve associated with.
The stuffy basement beneath the bakery where every surface always had a fine layer of flour covering it, which coincided with the moustache man who insisted on being called Storm when his real name was Todd.
There was the boarding house with the leaky pipes which coincided with the poet who thought his cock had feelings.
And then there was the flat by the docks, which coincided with the fish monger’s son, who was too afraid of Yevna to come back.
As dire and ridiculous as each of them seemed, it was all a great game to Raven and I because it was us against the world.
So often now, it feels like the world against me.
Pain. Debts. Grief. I live in the shadow of it all, and I don’t want to drag my friends down into the vortex with me.
So I smile until my cheeks ache, until I almost believe the forced cheerfulness I show the world.
Raven elbows me now, determined to throw me to the wolves. “Come on, Saige. Who was the last man who rumpled your sheets?”
I give her a playful shove. “No one important. No one recently. You know I don’t have time for all that.” I really don’t. I have a full enough life as it is without having to shoehorn in the needs of someone else. “I like my own company, Rave. I like not having to manage a man.”
“I’ll drink to that.” Yevna bumps her tankard against mine. “Raven said you’re not staying long tonight?”
“I’ve got business at the Underhill Exchange,” I reply, sipping my drink.
“What have I told you about that place?” Yevna snaps.
“The Queen’s on the warpath of late, cracking down on illegal trade.
So many wares in that damn market are stolen from the Azkari, whether it’s soil from the House of Reveries, information bought in the House of Whispers, or gold pigment from the House of Desires.
It’s all asking for trouble and she’s trying to appease them.
Not to mention, the place is rife with dangerous men. ”
“They’re all dangerous men, Yev.” The only man I’ve known in my thirty-five years who wasn’t a cruel bastard was Leo, and he’s gone now. “Besides, don’t think we don’t know it’s where you sell your homemade gin.”
“Pffft.” She dismisses me with a wave. “If you’re going, we’re going with you. I can wrangle up some more boys to cover the bar. I don’t love dealing with the Reclaiming’s drunken revelers anyway.”
“And I can scout for more members for the Consortium!” Raven digs around in her bag for something before thrusting a small box at me. “I had another deck of these made!”
I groan as I look down at the pack of what could pass for playing cards in my hands.
But they’re not for games and gambling. The design is the same on all of them—a woman holding all manner of trade tools in her hands: a book, a cobbler’s hammer, a butcher’s knife, and even a gin.
Above her is a banner that reads, The Consortium of…
I rotate the card to read the rest, Difficult Women.
Raven likes to peruse the stalls of the Underhill Exchange for women traders who might like to join our unofficial organization. She’s determined to open another chapter by the end of the quarter, and the faux queen of hearts in my hands is her calling card—
“Saige!” someone calls my name, and I crane my neck to spot them.
“It’s Indigo Jack,” Raven murmurs with a laugh, pointing towards the color merchant holding two full tankards while also trying to wave at me enthusiastically.
A messy mop of brown hair frames his freckled face, until he pushes it back off his brow, enough to reveal the birthmark he’s had since childhood—a gentle sweep of color running from his right cheekbone to the dimple at his chin.
“Hello Jack!” My voice does that thing it does—brighter, easier.
I didn’t decide to. I reach for him as he approaches our table, giving him a quick squeeze.
Leo was the one to introduce us. He’d often come to Jack for help with older restoration projects, where we needed to match a particular hue to the original, or for special gold foil for gilded edges.
“How are you? How’s the stall? Tell me everything. ”
For a moment, I feel far away as the questions leave my lips, but I must seem fine, I usually do.
“Good, good! It’s great to see you, Saige! I’ve missed that smile,” he replies warmly. “Stall’s doing well. I put aside a few dyes for you. Leo ordered them before he passed. Figured you’d still want them?”
“Definitely, thank you so much. I’ll be heading over to the Exchange in a bit,” I tell him, though Triad knows where I’ll find the extra coin.
He salutes me clumsily and wanders off to find his drinking buddies.
Raven chuckles beside me. “He’s so in love with you.”
“He’s just friendly,” I reply.
“No one’s that friendly,” Yevna chimes in.
“Even more reason to visit the market then. So shut up and drink your ale,” Raven quips with a grin, suddenly eager now Yev is on board. “Besides, it’s been ages since we’ve gone. Might find a bargain or two…”
The last thing I want is to involve them in my mission to pay back Thorne, but for now, I’m here. My friends have helped me smile again. And I’ll be damned if I don’t make them smile too. I down what’s left in my tankard. “What will it be next, ladies? This round’s on me.”
“Excellent.” Raven claps me on the shoulder. “Well, if you insist, I’ll have the Kettle’s best metheglin—”
“What in the realms is that?”
Yevna rolls her eyes. “It’s a spiced mead made from fermented honey and water, and it’ll have Raven here on her ass within the hour.”
“Another ale it is then.” Taking the empty tankards with me, I head to the bar.
“Make that two!” Yevna calls after me.
I wave to signal I’ve heard her as I approach the wooden counter, littered with water rings and knife-carved initials.
Though it’s my instinct to rest my elbows there, experience has taught me I’ll have to peel myself off the sticky surface afterwards, so instead I push the empties aside and sit myself on one of the mismatched stools.
I don’t know the barkeep’s name this time, but he’s friendly enough as he pushes shots of amber liquor towards another patron and turns to me.
“What’ll it be? Yev’s usual? Botanist’s Folly? ”
I shake my head with a grimace. “No gin tonight, thanks. Just three of the house ale please.”
“You got it.” He’s already fetching fresh tankards and moving towards the barrel.
The hair on my nape stands on end and I stiffen as the faint, but familiar scent of tobacco and vanilla invades my senses, leaving me slightly queasy. Someone slides onto the stool beside me, dragging it far too close for my liking.
“Hello there, little thing,” says an unwelcome voice.