‘Could be someone trying to snatch the find out from under our noses,’ he replied. ‘Shall we have a look?’
Still moving silently, they slid themselves up between the stalks and looked down onto a stretch of black soil punctuated here and there with short, fat mushroom caps dotted and spattered with lurid colours, each big enough to sit on. After years of patrolling the vine forest, Vintage was reasonably good at moving quietly through foliage, but she felt their efforts were wasted on the young woman pacing in the clearing below them. She had her arms crossed tightly over her chest, and her short black hair stuck up at all angles. Her head was down, her narrow eyes glaring at the ground as though it had personally insulted her, and she wore thin grey leggings and a ragged long-sleeved top, more akin to nightwear than travel clothes. As Vintage watched, the woman raised her hands to her face and rubbed them across her cheeks, dislodging the remains of what looked like a pale powder. With a jolt, Vintage’s eyes skipped to the woman’s forehead – yes! There was the sigil of a bat’s wing, tattooed onto her smooth olive skin and half hidden by her unruly hair. A fell-witch! What, by the bones of Sarn, was a fell-witch doing in the middle of a parasite-haunted stretch of Wild?
‘What do we have here?’
Before she could snatch him back, Tor was stepping down onto the mud, skirting the thicker toadstools and sliding his sword away. The effect on the young woman was immediate. She scrambled backwards, reaching out for the twisted fungus behind her. Vintage opened her mouth to shout a proper greeting, thinking that the woman was trying to flee, when, abruptly, the space between her and the girl was filled with an enormous emerald fireball.
Vintage flew backwards, rolling awkwardly down a short incline of mud and coming to an abrupt halt at the foot of one of the giant toadstools. She lay there for a few moments, stunned and blinking away the bright after-image the light had left on her vision, while the quiet was shattered by Tormalin and this strange woman shouting at each other. She could smell singed hair. Gingerly, Vintage patted her head. Her hat was missing, but her own thicket of curly hair seemed intact. Groaning slightly, she climbed to her feet and brushed clods of wet mud from her trousers.
‘Give me one reason why I shouldn’t cut your throat!’
‘Who are you? Why were you sneaking up on me?’
‘Hold on, hold on,’ Vintage hurried back to the clearing, holding her hands out in front of her. The young woman had her fist raised, a halo of bright green winnowfire dancing around it. The toadstool directly behind her had withered drastically, the pale column of its stalk now so twisted and dark that the fleshy cap had turned to one side as though avoiding a blow. Vintage tore her eyes away from that wonder to see that Tor had his sword out again. ‘Calm down now, my dears. Come along.’
The young woman dragged her eyes from Tor to stare at Vintage instead. She looked like one of the plains folk – Vintage had travelled back and forth over that region in the last few years – but, of course, all sense of identity was supposedly removed at the Winnowry. Vintage forced a bright smile onto her face. ‘There’s no need for fire here, fell-witch. We’re just strangers stumbled onto the same path, isn’t that right?’ She paused to pull an errant twig from her hair. ‘Let’s exchange a few words before anyone kills anyone else.’
‘You are with the Eboran?’ The fell-witch lowered her burning hand a touch, although Vintage suspected it was from confusion rather than trust.
‘Well, he is my employee, yes. Tormalin, my dearest, please put the sword away.’
Tor glared at her. ‘This mad woman tried to blow you up!’
‘I tried to blow both of you up.’
‘Just a misunderstanding, I’m sure. Tor, please fetch our packs. This young woman looks like she could do with a glass of wine.’
‘A . . . glass of wine?’ The girl looked faintly stunned.
‘Of course, darling. Meeting new people is always improved with a glass of wine, in my experience. Tor!’
Pausing to shoot one more poisonous look at the fell-witch, Tormalin moved back through the stalks to retrieve their packs. Vintage bustled over to the embers of the woman’s fire, and made a cursory examination. No blankets to sleep on, a single bag of supplies, and now that she looked closer she could see that the young woman was wearing what appeared to be slippers, wet and stained with mud. Stranger and stranger.
‘Now then. I am Lady Vincenza de Grazon, but you can call me Vintage. Tormalin the Oathless there, is, for want of a better phrase, my hired muscle.’ She stopped and looked at the girl, smiling in what she hoped was an encouraging manner. Behind her she could hear Tormalin dragging their packs down to the small camp fire, clearly making more of a hash of it than was necessary. The fell-witch cleared her throat.
‘I am Fell-Noon, an agent of the Winnowry.’ The green flames had winked out of existence, but from the woman’s stance it was clear they could come back at any moment. Vintage sensed that hinged on whether she was prepared to believe such an obviously gigantic lie. ‘I am on a . . . confidential mission.’
‘In the middle of the stinking Wild?’ Tor was now standing by their bags with his arms crossed over his chest. ‘What possible mission could you have out here? Whatever it is, you are woefully underprepared for it.’
‘I could ask what a bloodsucking Eboran is doing outside of your cursed city.’ The girl lifted her chin, on the defensive again, and Vintage silently cursed Tor for it. ‘I didn’t expect to see your kind of monster in this place.’
Tor bared his teeth, clearly preparing to spit another insult, so Vintage stepped neatly in front of him. ‘I do believe I promised you wine, yes? Here we are, look. Not my best, but not the worst we’ve produced either. Come on, I have some tin cups in here somewhere, I know it’s not the same as proper crystal but I think we can make do. My dear Fell-Noon, would you mind perhaps building up the fire a touch? It’s such a lovely trick and, well, you do look like you could do with some warming up.’
She bustled them into sitting around the fire, passing out cups and eventually a bottle of red, along with a broken piece of bread each and some cheese that had been squashed at the bottom of the pack. Fell-Noon still wore a guarded expression, although her obvious hunger had pushed that concern aside for one moment. Tormalin, as ever, looked as outraged as an insulted cat.
‘How long have you been out here, my dear?’
Fell-Noon looked up from her piece of bread, which she was holding firmly in both hands. She had been nibbling the edges of it, as though savouring the texture.
‘A day and a night.’
‘Well. What a place to spend the night! I’m sure I don’t know what the Winnowry’s business could be out here, but there are aspects of Sarn’s history that affect us all, no doubt.’