“Gus first,” he growled.
“Gus first,” Oliver echoed, but his attempt at sounding menacing came out musical.
Marcus directed Celeste to a tiny, secluded cottage, where climbing roses coated the whitewashed siding, and pink and white blooms cascaded from the shingle roof to the diamond-pane windows. It even had a white picket fence wrapping the flower-filled front yard. I’d pictured Gus living in a rotting lean-to, most likely next to a stream that served as his drinking water, lavatory, and once-a-month bathwater. Or better yet, in a cave, where he slept piled atop his cerberi.
“Are you sure this is it?” I asked.
As if in response to my question, a chorus of howls emanated from behind the cottage, the harmony of three throats unmistakably a cerberus’s. More howls joined the first only to be cut off abruptly at a sharp whistle.
“This is the place,” Marcus said. He jumped down, and the tightening of his jaw was the only indication he gave that the movement hurt his back.
I wasn’t half as graceful or prideful. My body had stiffened at every joint, and I groaned my way to the ground, clutching the side of the sled as I worked blood back into my feet and convinced my thighs they needed to support me. Beneath my shirt, dried greenthread and lamb’s ear leaves crunched, and brown and green dust sifted from my cuffs and untucked hem. I ran a hand through my hair, futilely attempting to comb out the snarls, and settled for tucking dirt-coated strawberry-blond chunks behind my ears. I started to pat the dust off my pants but froze when I heard Gus’s voice.
“Damn idiot woman had that FPD fella twisted around her pinkie finger. Not that I blame him; she was a looker, but no piece of tail is worth risking your hide on Reaper’s Ridge.” His voice floated around the side of the house, and I straightened, expecting to see him saunter into sight. His next words were inaudible, but his cackle set my teeth on edge. When a few other men joined him, I realized Gus must be entertaining out back.
“I disagree,” Marcus whispered. “You’re exactly the kind of piece of tail that’s worth risking Reaper’s Ridge for.”
I snorted and rolled my eyes.
Oliver hopped from the seat, using his wings to glide to a silent landing. Even full grown, he wouldn’t reach half Celeste’s height, but his short stature didn’t preclude him from looking fierce when he bristled his orange ruff and stiffened every spike along his spine. Gus’s house should have gone up in flames from the heat of his glare alone.
Celeste’s indignation had nothing to do with Gus’s insulting conversation and everything to do with having been witnessed in her debasing role as a pack animal by half the town. The moment we stopped, she yanked free of the rope and stalked away from the sled, tail lashing. I followed her on hobbling steps.
“Thank you, Celeste. It would have taken us days to reach here without your help,” I said.
She trained her hard amethyst eyes on me, nodding fractionally. Twelve hours of almost nonstop running against the loose rope had chafed a raw line into the onyx and amethyst feathers across her chest, and I healed the wounds with her consent. Despite her stiff posture, exhaustion weighted her body. After I assured her we would be fine without her assistance, she flapped heavily toward the FPD base, her black and purple body disappearing against the darkening sky.
We left the sled and circled the house, guided by the ambient light of the rising moon and the flicker of flames around the corner. Oliver loped at my side, wings tight to his body but his expression baleful enough to remind me of the apparitional gargoyles inside the baetyl.
“So here’s this city twit with a fool notion of taming the ridge with a bunch of dud gargoyles,” Gus continued, oblivious to our approach. “All of them were frozen stiff, and you couldn’t lift a pitcher of water with the boost they gave off, but that wasn’t going to stop her.”
“No one ever accused anyone out of Terra Haven of having two thoughts to rub together to keep warm,” a different male voice chimed in.
“They ain’t got any money sense, either, praise the gods,” Gus said with a chuckle. “Between delivering them to the ridge and what I’ll earn when I pick up their corpses, I’ll be building a new kennel before winter. Bless those poor, dead idiots.”
The rumble of masculine laughter swelled. I almost felt like joining in when we rounded the corner and Gus caught sight of us. He choked on an inhalation and clutched his chest through a wracking coughing fit, never taking his round eyes off us. Or rather, never taking his eyes off me.
Oliver glowed in the firelight like liquid flame reshaped into an enraged dragon, and he hissed at Gus with undisguised animosity. On my other side, Marcus loomed, looking every inch the FPD warrior and equally as irate as Oliver. Without taking another step, he filled the empty space of the tiny patio and seemed to crowd the three men sitting around a small terra-cotta fire pit. Next to him, I should have been invisible, but Gus stared at me with the fixated disbelief of a man seeing a ghost.
The two other men jerked straight in their chairs. Both rivaled Gus in age, though the years had been kinder to them. Unlike Gus, they sized up my companions first, and the larger fellow’s hand fell away from the heavy dagger at his waist when he met Marcus’s hard eyes.
“Friends of yours, Gus?” the skinnier man asked. He clamped a cigar between his teeth and leaned back in contrived nonchalance, his eyes flicking back and forth between Oliver and Marcus.
“We’re just three corpses come back to collect our due,” Marcus said. He spoke softly, which only tightened the tension in the other men.
Gus finally looked at Marcus, and his breathing calmed to a wheeze. Shaking his head, he grabbed a glass bottle near his foot and took a swig of its amber contents. “You’ve got nothing to collect here.”