Homeward for a Spell
Chapter 1 Sage
Sage
By the time Sage Wilderstone and her party stumble across the threshold of the Mare’s Milk, she’s dead on her feet.
Their journey from the Upper Islands—an archipelago in the Serpentine Sea off Harrow’s east coast—to the western port city of Kingfisher had been more perilous than expected.
Not that she’s complaining. Sage wouldn’t be worth her wages if one cave full of giant fire beetles or a few dozen coastal raiders were enough to take her down.
Still. Running out of funds, arrows, and dry underclothes along the road had been taxing, if she’s honest with herself.
For that, she blames Gaffa. They’d planned to be back in Kingfisher a month ago, before autumn properly set in.
Then their adventuring party leader had impulsively signed them up for a side expedition, and that’s where their trouble really began.
Gods, she needs a drink.
But first, she needs her share of the pay.
The party claims a table in the farthest corner of the tavern to wait for the Agent.
Sage sits braced against the rough stone wall with her eyes on every exit—a habit after months on the road.
The window glass is filmed with salt borne on the ocean breeze, but with her sharp vision, she can see through to the street outside well enough.
Surrounding the tavern is a maze of varnished warehouses with sailors coming and going, hauling cargo up from the wharf; one such building holds the spoils of their own journey, locked safely away until their payment is secured.
Above the flat steel roofs, the fort overlooking the harbor is just visible in the near distance, its cannons pointed out to sea.
There are the customs houses as well, ready to inspect the ships’ goods upon docking and, more important, to tax them—some for the city, and some for the queens.
Beyond that, the masts of the tallest ships vanish into clouds.
No better place than a port town for Sage to say goodbye before vanishing as well.
“Feels as if we haven’t sat on chairs in ages,” Raisa complains loudly, reminding Sage that she hasn’t parted ways with her traveling companions just yet.
“Only logs and boulders,” Reece agrees. “My ass cheeks are hard as stone by now.”
Jamile chuckles as they raise one iron finger above their head to summon the barkeep.
Gaffa grabs their wrist, pulling it down to the tabletop. “Got a way to settle that bill, Jam?” she asks. “Shall we pay with the rocks in our boots, since that’s all we own between us?”
“Won’t need to, once the Agent shows up with our money,” Jamile says, smiling dreamily at the thought. “I’m going to order the good stew—the kind with real meat in it instead of leather.”
“Hey, our gran was famous for her leather stew,” Reece objects.
Raisa nods. “Aye, Gran was a brilliant woman. Shrewd too. Used to rent out our bathtub on Saturday nights for a copper a person. Only tub in our neighborhood, it was. Soon as the Agent pays us, I’m heading to the nearest bathhouse, and I don’t plan on leaving it till I’m boiled down to leather myself. ”
“What about you, Sage?” Jamile turns to her. “What’s the first thing you’ll do? Stop in at the Bear’s Embrace? I’m sure that’s where Gaffa’s bound.” They wink, dodging when Gaffa swipes at them from across the table.
The Bear’s Embrace is a cathouse in the harbor, raised up on stilts to withstand waves and storm surges—and so that their bawds will be the first to catch the eyes of docking sailors.
Had the party come in by sea instead of by land, Sage might’ve looked toward its windows and spotted Rosaria, her elbows resting on the sill to frame the perfect pair of breasts overflowing her bodice as she blew Sage a kiss.
Or Benyamin, with pansies and calibrachoa and flossflower woven into his dark braids.
Or Devyn, tattooed from knuckles to neck with the text from a classic erotic epic of Harrow’s past.
“Not me. I’ll find a room in the city and sleep for a week.
” She imagines resting her head on a pillow instead of a pack.
Maybe she’ll sleep for two weeks, or perhaps she’ll just hibernate for the winter.
Though a trip to the healing house first wouldn’t hurt; she twisted her right knee weeks back in their brawl with the raiders of the Upper Islands, exacerbated while dragging the carcass of a giant river rat back to their cooking fire after a hunt, and it’s been aching and locking up since.
Sage flexes her leg beneath the table to feel the joint’s protestation.
If only the healer who Gaffa had lined up hadn’t eloped before they set out.
Or if only Gaffa had spared a moment and a few coins to replace him.
Sage had been apoplectic when she found out they meant to depart without a healer.
She’d never have joined a party without one, and would have quit on the spot if she hadn’t already signed her contract.
Her purse could’ve withstood the loss of the job, but her reputation as a young adventurer?
Less likely. And now they’re all looking worse for wear.
Reece and Raisa, a pair of blond, burly twins with a talent for both starting and ending fights, no longer look entirely identical; Reece’s nose took a direct hit from a raider’s club, and Raisa had shorn her hair with Sage’s boot knife after a blast from a fire beetle singed half of it off anyhow.
Their warlock, Jamile, is sporting two iron fingers where once they had a full flesh and bone set, though they’ve taken the loss with good cheer.
As for Sage, while her appearance is the least of her worries, she could do with a visit to a bathhouse.
And to a barber. She’s let her habitual haircut—the blond hair at the nape of her neck shaved close with her pocket blade, and the longer top just brushing her temples—grow out for a bit of extra warmth.
The back has become shaggy, while the front hangs down to her cheekbones, threatening her peripheral vision.
And though she’s always been on the lean side, now she weighs at least a sack of onions less than she did at the start of summer.
This, despite hunting and foraging as much food as a craggy and uninhabited island could provide in fall.
Often a handful of small, sour apples and nuts near tasteless from the cold nights, roasted over a low campfire alongside a stringy jackalope or a half-poisonous fish.
They simply hadn’t been prepared for such a long or late-season journey. If Sage were running the party—
“There he is,” Gaffa says under her breath.
Nobody but Gaffa has met with the Agent before, and even Gaffa never met the Client—the unnamed sponsor of their mission.
But that’s often how adventuring works. Very wealthy noblemen or institutions have the means to reach out to famed adventurers directly.
But your average wizard-scholars or unlanded folk don’t have the contacts to hire a more cost-efficient party, pieced together from lone adventurers in taverns and port cities.
Adventurers like Sage. Such clients contract with agents, professional middlemen.
It isn’t always an anonymous process, but if, for instance, the Client is a wizard-scholar, as Sage suspects from the spell components they were hired to collect in the hostile sea caves of Harrow’s eastern shore, and they wanted to keep the details of their experiments from being leaked to rival wizards, they might choose to remain unnamed.
So the Agent hired Gaffa, who in turn assembled the party.
Sage had expected the Agent to look like…
well, an agent. Some company man with a fine suit and a neat mustache.
But the man who pushes through the doorway in a cold swirl of wind and brown leaf litter is altogether more rugged in appearance.
His short boxed beard is scruffy from travel and salted with gray, lighter now than his rich umber skin.
With a navy knit cap and a spray-crusted peacoat buttoned up to his shaggy jawline, he could be any roguishly handsome, middle-aged dockworker or sailor stopping in at the tavern before bringing home what’s left of his commission.
Sage narrows her eyes, analyzing his every movement. His easy grin when Gaffa stands to catch his attention and his silk-smooth voice as he cheers, “The intrepid heroes return!” across the tavern.
Crossing the sawdust-strewn floor to meet them, the Agent claims a seat on the rough wood bench beside the twins and drops a leather purse onto the table with a clink.
Reece and Raisa exchange a look, identical eyebrows raised.
Honestly, Sage couldn’t care less what he looks like, so long as he pays them in spendable denaris and not transfigured potatoes.
“Sir’ram, a round for the table!” the Agent commands the barkeep, trusting the grizzled ex-mariner behind the counter to snap to attention.
Begrudgingly, the barkeep does. “A round of what?”
“Bring us…hmm.” The Agent turns to the table beside theirs, where a pair of sailors sit hunched over steaming bowls and frosty tankards. “What’s good here?” he asks.
“Fuck off,” one of the pair mutters around a soupspoon.
“Very well, then,” the Agent says cheerfully, turning back around.
Sage wouldn’t have trusted their answer, anyway. The Mare’s Milk is filled with folks coming in from months at sea; anything that isn’t brined meat, dirty water, and tough ship biscuits is bound to seem delicious.
“Bring us the house special,” the Agent calls, “and your signature dish as well.”
The barkeep shakes their bristled head. “A boil it is,” they say, lining up six tankards to fill.
Meanwhile, Gaffa hasn’t taken her eyes off the purse in the center of the table. “Hope this round’s on you. That bag looks light,” she mutters, appraising its shape.
Perhaps she’s better suited for accounting than adventuring.