Firkin narrowed his eyes at Will. “I don’t like you and your bunk,” he said with surprising clarity.
“I am saving you from poor taste in friends,” Balur said, not relaxing his grip on the hammer.
Firkin assessed the massive lizard man, stuck out his lower lip, and squinted with one eye. “You’s a biggun,” he said. “I like the bigguns. Carry more of the ale for me. Down to the merry lands, and we all drown happy like.” He smacked his lips twice.
“We can’t kill him, Balur,” said Lette from behind Will and Firkin, sounding slightly exasperated. Will felt a wave of gratitude flood through him.
“We can be,” said Balur matter-of-factly, causing the wave to break. “Be being simple. I be bringing down this hammer with speed of a certain amount. His head is going crump, and we are having a dead man there.”
“Well, I know literally you can kill him …”
“Thank you,” said Balur, readying himself once more.
“No!” Will shouted again. “He’s my friend. He helped raise me.”
Balur gave Will a skeptical look. “Maybe I should be killing him to be saving you from your poor taste in friends, then I should be killing you to be saving Lette from her poor taste in men. Everybody be being happier then.”
“No!” Will said, starting to feel repetitive, but not sure what other words might save him from a homicidal lizard man at this point in the proceedings.
“If we’re saving me from my taste in friends,” said Lette to Balur, “maybe I should be killing you then.”
The hammer blow continued to fail to fall.
“Look,” said Will, reaching out to Balur, imploring, “he’s just an old drunk, who the goblins found and tied up. Who knows how long he’s been captive? He needs some kindness, not death threats.” That, at least, seemed obvious to him. A little piece of the world he could have make sense.
“Was all part of my plan,” said Firkin, tapping the side of his nose. “Right where I wanted them.”
“You’re not being where I want you,” Balur groused, but he finally put down the hammer. The head rung as it struck the stone ground, a sonorous bass note. Will had no idea how he’d been able to hold the weight of it for so long.
“Let Firkin just stay for the night,” Will said, turning to Lette, now that yet another threat had been averted. “He’ll catch his death out in the rain, and you only just saved his life from the goblins.”
Lette nodded. “Be a shame to put good work to waste. He sleeps downwind of me and there’ll be no complaints.”
Balur grunted. Possibly in agreement.
“Hey,” Lette said as if struck by a sudden thought, putting a hand on Firkin’s shoulder. “Don’t happen to have seen a purse, have you?”
“I seen the world,” said Firkin, eyes fixing on some far-off point. “I seen the plans. I seen the writing on a turtle’s back. I seen the insides of a cow.” He nodded, self-satisfied. “It was warm in there,” he added.
“Right,” said Lette. “I’ll just look over here then.”
As the search continued, Firkin drifted away toward the cave entrance. Will was worried he might wander into the rain, but he stayed standing there, half-sketched in moonlight, staring out into the night, muttering obscenities to himself.
Behind him, Lette and Balur seemed to be losing what little good temper they’d had.
“Where in the name of Cois’s cursed cock is it?” Lette spat. “Where did that little fucker put it?”
“Maybe you were tracking him wrong. Maybe this is being the wrong cave.”
“Oh, it’s insulting my professional skill set is it now? That’s how you’re going to fix this situation? By pissing me off so much that I gut and skin you and sell your hide. Except, oh wait.” She struck the side of her head with the heel of her palm. “It’s fucking worthless. If I just hung a ball sack from a stick and carried it about with me it would be very little different from having you around.”
Balur shrugged. “Be being a better conversation starter too.”
Joining the conversation, Will realized, would be a little bit like holding his hand in a flame to see how it felt. Lette captivated him, but the piles of corpses around the room were a useful reminder that she could back up her threats if she wanted to. And then, despite all this sensible thinking, he found his jaw starting to move
“Could he be right?” he said, pointing to Balur. “Could there be another cave?”
Lette rolled her eyes and set her jaw. “Look around you,” she said. “There are sixty-four corpses here. We left eighteen others back up at the mountain pass. That means they need to scavenge enough wildlife to support eighty-two souls. That means a range of twenty or more miles in any direction from here. That means that if any other tribe came within that distance they’d fight until the others were dead and their eyes boiled down to surprisingly tasty after-dinner snacks. Which means that unless I’m a complete fucking idiot who couldn’t track her own grandmother from the bedroom to the privy, then this is the only fucking place the goblin that stole my purse could have gone. And yet that fucking purse is not fucking here.”
Another dagger appeared as if by magic in her hand, and she flung it at one of the piles of corpses. It buried itself up to the hilt in a dead goblin’s back. She spat after it.
There was, Will thought, something very sexy about Lette’s competence. The area of expertise was utterly terrifying, but, on the other hand, it was significantly more exciting than butter churning, or animal husbandry, or any of the other interests the Village girls usually pursued.
“Could the thief have dropped it?” he said somewhat against his better judgment. He was trying to keep in mind that the moth tended to come out of confrontations with the flame rather the worse for wear, but it wasn’t helping much.
Lette closed her eyes.
Balur grunted again. “Running pretty hard, it was,” he said. “And it was being focused on not dying more than it was on being rich.”
Lette groaned.
“It was being easy enough for us to miss,” Balur continued. “We were being focused on the beast instead.”
Lette clawed her hands down her face.
“Might be a drop even,” Balur went on. “Someplace special hidden like. Be dumping the stuff there and be returning for it later when the coast has been cleared. Be throwing it up in a tree even. Makeshift drop.”
“Shut up,” said Lette. “Just shut up.” She sank to her knees. “Gods’ hex on it all.”
Will almost reached out to her, to put a hand on her shoulder, but he saw Balur shaking his head.
“I had a coin once,” Firkin commented from the front of the room. “But she left me. Cantankerous bitch.”
It happened so fast, Will almost missed it. A roar of rage from Lette. The blur of her limbs. And then she was across the room, knife in hand, holding Firkin’s collar by the other, pressing him up against the wall.
“You fucking—” she started to snarl.
“Excuse me?”
A new voice—the tone deep but feminine—brought Lette to an abrupt halt.
They all stared at the newcomer standing in the entrance of the cave. She wore a gray traveling robe, hood pulled up to obscure her features. Dark-skinned, long-fingered hands were clasped in front of her. Looking at them, Will found himself thinking of small blackbirds.
For a moment everything was very still.
“By Barph’s ball sack,” Lette said, not letting go of the squirming Firkin. “How many people are going to wander into this cursed cave tonight? Is there some gods-hexed sign I missed?”
“Like you were missing a goblin tossing all our gold,” Balur murmured.
Lette whirled, pointed the dagger. “Don’t you even fucking start.”
“You know,” said the figure, “I think this is the wrong cave after all.” There was a tone of refinement to her voice that made Will straighten up a little, and run his hands down his shirt to smooth it. The action mostly served to spread the bloodstains out.