Gabe and Val first met at the War Fair, a triannual festival held among the ruins at Kaladar, the ancient seat of Dominion power. For three riotous days in late fall, every band, bard, and booker in each of the five courts gathered to fight, fuck, and drink themselves blind. Valery, however, had been attending in protest. She’d been part of a faction called the Getalongs, who held the idealistic—if unpopular—opinion that humans and monsters could peacefully coexist. As a roundabout means of getting their point across they decided to set fire to Saga’s argosy, the house on wheels the band used as a base of operations.
The Getalongs were driven off before any harm could be done, but Valery was taken captive by Gabriel, who insisted she attend the party he was hosting within. Clay remembered how absurd she’d looked sitting amidst so many rowdy, hard-bitten mercenaries: tall and wisp-thin, with ivory skin and hair like fine-spun gold. She’d been wearing a dress that was little more than a shift, and there’d been a wreath of flowers on her brow. Like a princess in the company of orcs, Clay had remarked at the time, though he was quite sure no one heard him say so.
At any rate, she and Gabriel had been at each other’s throats right from the beginning. Clay had heard it said that some couples were like fire and ice, but although Gabe and Val held opposing ideologies they were more like identical clashing swords. On fire. In an ice storm. What had begun as a playful interrogation by Gabriel for the amusement of his guests became an intense discussion, then a heated argument, then a violent shouting match, during which Valery made a second attempt at burning down Saga’s war wagon by hurling a lamp at Gabriel’s head.
By morning they were madly in love.
Val left the Getalongs, which proved a timely decision, since a week later they accepted an invitation to feast with a tribe of wild centaurs without realizing they were intended as the feast. She accompanied Saga on their following tour, often clashing with Kallorek when it came to determining which gig they would tackle next. More and more often Gabriel conferred with Valery on matters that concerned the entire band, which suited Moog and Clay just fine, but didn’t sit very well with Matrick, or Ganelon, who endured her condemnation of his violent nature the way a mountain endures a goat scampering up its backside—until, that is, the first flower showed up in Gabriel’s hair …
The sharp nudge of Gabe’s elbow in his ribs prompted Clay to realize he’d been asked a question. “Yes. No. What?” he asked, effectively covering all his bases.
“How old is your little girl now?” Kal repeated. “Talyn, was it?
“Tally. She turned nine this summer.”
“Tally? That short for something?”
“Talia,” Clay told him.
“Mmm.” Kallorek appeared less interested in Clay’s answer than in heaping beef gravy onto a slab of thickly buttered bread. “And how about yours, Gabe?”
Gabe, positioned opposite the booker, sat straight-backed with his hands in his lap, having barely touched his food at all. “My what?” he asked.
“Your daughter,” said Kallorek around a sloppy mouthful. “Her and that gang of rejects she calls a band came round, what, seven or eight months ago? Said they had a huge gig lined up—but didn’t need a booker, mind you—and were looking for handouts. Asked if I could spare some gear.”
“Rose was here?” Gabe asked.
Kallorek licked gravy from his fingers. “I told her I’d think on it, but I ain’t running a charity, you know. I’m a collector. A curator of rare and beautiful things.” Perhaps unconsciously—but perhaps not—he took Valery’s hand in his own. She blinked and smiled as though a butterfly had flitted past her nose, but said nothing. “Anyway, the little runt stole a few priceless relics and took off in the night. Haven’t heard a peep from her since.”
Gabriel looked over pleadingly, but Clay was in the midst of a long, lingering sip of wine that he planned on stretching out for as long as it took his friend to explain what had happened to Rose and what they planned to do about it.
As Gabe did so, Clay watched over the lip of his cup as Kallorek’s bushy brows climbed toward his greasy scalp. Valery listened in silence, her expression unreadable, occasionally rubbing at the cuts on her arm. At the mention of Castia her eyes widened, and for an instant there was something—a glimpse of grief, faint as the wail of a prisoner echoing up dungeon stairs—before her gaze drifted off into nowhere. When Gabriel had finished Kallorek sighed and tugged at his braided beard, while Valery fashioned a placid smile and murmured to no one in particular, “That’s nice.”
Poor Gabe looked as though he’d been stabbed. Clay half-expected that disbelief to boil over into anger, but Gabriel just shook his head and returned his attention to the untouched plate before him.
Kallorek called for a servant to take Valery to her room. The three of them ate dessert (a chocolate pie topped with chopped almonds and whipped cream) and sipped sweet red beer in mildly uncomfortable silence. Afterward, Kal offered to show them around his estate, which had originally been intended as a grand temple to the Autumn Son.
“They sunk a lot of coin into it,” he told them, “but were halfway finished when someone had the bright idea of putting one right down in the gutter.” The gutter was what those who lived on the slopes in Conthas called the valley bottom. “And there’s no sense walking up a hill to talk to a god when he can hear you at the bottom just fine, now is there?”
“Why build the temple at all?” Clay ventured. “Seems cheaper just to shout at the sky.”
Kallorek looked at him as though Clay had suggested putting out a fire by tossing a few logs on it. “Shout at the … What the fuck are you on about, Slowhand?”
“Nothing. Never mind.”
“At any rate,” Kal went on eventually, “the priests up here went bankrupt, so I swept in and bought the place for the price of the nails.”
They toured an open garden, following a stone path between apple trees heavy with fruit. There were guards patrolling the compound walls—a necessary deterrent, Kallorek explained, since the chapel now housed his increasingly valuable collection of rare memorabilia.
“You still handling mercenaries?” Clay wondered.
“Of course,” Kal assured him. “But it ain’t like the old days. The whole operation is too big to handle myself, so I assign an agent to each band. They book the smaller gigs—goblins and whatnot—while I give the big contracts to those I think can handle it. My cut is half, the agent takes ten, and the band splits whatever’s left over.”
Half? Clay would have choked had he still been eating. Things had changed drastically since he’d been touring. Back then, Kallorek had split a 15-percent share with Saga’s five other members. The remaining ten was supposed to have belonged to their bard, but since none of Saga’s bards lived long enough to collect their share, it was chiefly used for what Gabe had called “adventuring essentials”—which was to say booze, tobacco, and the company of indiscriminate women. Considering what mercenaries were paid nowadays, it was little wonder Kallorek could afford to live as he did now.
“So who do you book for?” Gabe asked as they neared a pair of tall bronze doors. “Anyone we’d know?”
Kallorek chortled at that. “Everyone you’d know. I’ve got agents all over Agria. There ain’t a band west of Fivecourt doesn’t owe me a slice. Well, except your old pals Vanguard, actually.”
“Vanguard’s still touring?” Clay asked.
“Most of ’em,” said Kal, without bothering to explain what that meant.
Vanguard. Now there was a name Clay hadn’t heard in a long while. Barret Snowjack and his eclectic bandmates—Ashe, Tiamax, and Hog—had been friendly rivals of Saga back in the day. To hear they were still on the road, still fighting after all these years … well, it made Clay’s back hurt just to think of it.
“If someone runs a gang of kobolds out of a sewer,” Kal was saying, “I make all my cupboard-handles silver. If they turn in the bounty on a basilisk broodmother, well, I add a new wing to the house.”
“Or put a pond in it,” said Clay.
“You mean a pool,” the booker was quick to correct.
“What did I say?”
“You said pond—”
“Where’s my sword?” Gabe interrupted.
Kallorek scowled. “What’s that now?”