Clay froze with his mouth full. He glanced over at Gabriel, hoping to catch his friend’s eye, but Saga’s frontman was staring determinedly into his empty skillet.
Jain chuckled and waved her fork dismissively. “No need to piss your britches, Slowhand. I ain’t no bounty hunter. There’s a long shot between the occasional robbery and trading a man’s life for a few lousy courtmarks. Heck, I’d bet the Maiden’s Virtue there’s a fair price on my head to boot.” She snorted a laugh. “I’d be insulted otherwise.”
“Do you think it was Lilith?” asked Matrick, before Clay could tell him to keep his stupid, stupid mouth shut.
Jain’s brow furrowed. “You mean the Ice Queen of Agria? Why would …” She cocked her head at Matrick. The king’s face was still mangled from his fall. The welt beneath his left eye had swollen to the size of a plum, sealing his eye shut. Clay held his breath, praying the brigand wouldn’t identify the battered old rogue, but the light of awareness crept across her face, certain as a new day dawning. “Well fuck me with a Phantran’s salty dick, you’re Matty Skulldrummer!”
The king grinned sheepishly. “I used to be,” he said.
Jain laughed and slapped her knee. “My daddy always said you were the fastest son’bitch with a knife there ever was. Said you could carve up a turkey ’fore the thing even knew it was dead!”
“And eat it, too,” said Matrick, patting his prodigious gut.
Jain got another laugh at that. She wolfed down another sausage and licked grease from her bare fingers. When she’d finished she asked Clay, “So what’s all this about, eh? Last we met I figured you and not-so-Golden Gabe here for a couple of old coots bound to get your rocks off in Conthas—and yet here you are: halfway to Fivecourt, with Magic Moog and Matty Skulldrummer in tow. Now your wizard’s clearly a few arrows short of a full quiver”—as if to prove her point Moog was now jumping in circles and quacking like a duck—“but why would a summer-kissed king shirk his crown to slum it in the woods with you three? Unless …” She paused to swallow, and a wry grin tugged at the corner of her mouth. “Don’t tell me you’re getting the band back together?”
“We’re getting the band back together,” Clay admitted. Gods, but it sounded dumb when he said it out loud.
The brigand’s next question was obvious. “What the hell for?”
Clay blew out a sigh. He shared a questing look with Gabriel, who offered a scant nod in response, and then he explained why they were trying to re-form Saga, and what they intended to do once they had.
By the time he’d finished the rest of Jain’s girls had all stopped to listen. Jain herself simply stared at him for a bit, chewing salt pork like a cow working down a mouthful of cud. “Y’all are fucking crazy,” she said finally.
When breakfast was done and the dishes rinsed clean in the river, Lady Jain and the Silk Arrows finished robbing them. Matrick was permitted to keep his knives, and Clay his shield, but the sword he’d managed to plunder from the palace armoury was confiscated. Moog’s enchanted bag appeared empty, so they left him that. Everyone but Clay and Gabe had a good laugh when Gabriel dumped the same collection of dull rocks from his pack. They were permitted to keep the rations they’d brought from Agria, thankfully, but one of the girls took a shining to Matrick’s good leather boots, which left the man who had ruled a kingdom just three days ago wearing naught but a pair of wool socks on his feet. The Silk Arrows left him those, at least; they had no need of socks, after all.
“Listen,” said Clay, sidling as close as he dared to Jain and lowering his voice, “we went to some trouble faking Matty’s death. If Lilith found out he were still alive—”
“No worries, Slowhand,” Jain assured him. “We won’t go spilling your secret. Me and mine have no love for the Ice Queen of Agria, I’ll you tell that. Far as we’re concerned, Old King Matrick is dead and gone.” She threw a wink in Matty’s direction. “Long live the king.”
Matrick offered a stiff bow in return.
As her girls dissolved into the forest Jain turned to take them all in. “Keep well,” she said, leaning on her unstrung bow. “With any luck we’ll meet again before you fools hit the Heartwyld, but if not …” She squinted at Gabriel, and her eyes went hard above her bandit smile. “I hope you find your little girl. I truly do. She’s lucky to have a da’ what looks out for her.” Jain looked as though she would say something further, but instead she stepped away, waving a silk-gloved hand in farewell before strolling off into the woods.
“What a nice bunch of girls,” declared Matrick, watching her go.
“They certainly were,” Gabe agreed.
“I mean, they made us breakfast and everything,” said Moog, and the other two nodded.
Which left Clay to state the obvious. “Y’all are fucking crazy,” he said.
Around noon the next day Gabriel asked to see Moog’s crystal ball. Clay had actually been wondering why his friend hadn’t done so already, which didn’t make it any less distressing now that it finally happened. Moog, at least, did an admirable job of dissembling the matter.
“What? Oh, that old thing? Whatever for?”
“You know what for,” said Gabriel.
They’d stopped for a brief rest, each of them scarfing a handful of berries and mushrooms the wizard had pointed out as they walked. Matrick, sensing the awkwardness at hand, wandered off to relieve himself in the woods.
“It probably won’t even work, you know. Damn thing’s been dropped a dozen times or more. It’s as unreliable as a barbarian librarian!” Moog laughed at that, but when no one else did he looked genuinely shocked. “Really? Because barbarians … well, never mind.”
Gabriel favoured the wizard with that broken smile of his. “Even still.”
“All right. Okay. Once we get to Fivecourt I’ll have a look for it. Sound good? Or maybe we can find a proper diviner who—”
“Now. Please.”
Moog tugged nervously at his beard. He looked to Clay for help, and Clay took a good hard look at a really quite fascinating knot in the tree he was standing next to. At last the wizard relented. With a sigh he rummaged in his bottomless bag until he found what Gabriel had asked for.
“She is very, very far away,” Moog warned as he handed it over. “You might not be able to see that far, or very clearly, even if it does work.”
Gabriel sat cross-legged on the loamy earth, nestling the crystal ball in his lap. Moog plunked himself down across from him. Clay remained where he was, unsure he wanted to see whatever the glassy orb revealed.
“So what do I do?” asked Gabe. “Say her name? Call out to her somehow?”
“You don’t have to say anything, no. She can’t hear you at all. You just sort of … summon her to mind. Form a picture of her in your head, and then hold on to it for as long as it takes.”
Gabriel did as he was told, squinting into his lap and biting anxiously at his bottom lip. The whirl of violet mist inside the ball was so sudden all three of them started.
“Concentrate,” said Moog. “Once you have her in mind, try to make every detail as vivid as possible.”
The smoke within the orb continued to roil, now and then coalescing long enough for Clay to pick out a small detail—the curve of an ear, the arch of an eyebrow—before it was lost to the swirl and eddy of purple vapours. At last the smoke began to clear, and they saw a vast black ocean heaving beneath a grey sky.
Not an ocean, Clay realized. It’s the black forest. The Heartwyld.