“It’s a shame you’re so pressed for time.” Tiamax reached up to scratch beneath a leather eye patch. “The War Fair is hardly a month away. Every band in Grandual will be there. Plenty of young mercs as well, eager to make a name for themselves. Maybe an army’s worth.”
“Bah, the War Fair ain’t what it was,” grumbled Ashe. “Used to be only real fighters showed their faces in Kaladar. Nowadays every snot-nosed whelp with a hair on his chin and a sword in his hand thinks he’s got what it takes to be a merc. All they care about is getting paid and getting laid.”
“Hear, hear!” said Tiamax, raising four glasses at once.
Clay hadn’t found much to like about mercenary life, but he had to admit the War Fair was—or had been, anyway—a hell of a good time. He’d been to Kaladar three times. It was, essentially, a three-day orgy of booze, drugs, and rampant violence, with a few actual orgies thrown in for good measure. There was even a popular saying: What happens in Kaladar …
“I’m serious,” said Ashe, pressing her point. “The world used to be a scary place, remember? We were trying to make it better. Well, most of us, anyway.”
“We did make it better,” said Moog, who’d been uncharacteristically silent until now.
Matrick drained his cup. “Damn right we did.”
From his couch, with his eyes closed and his hands tucked behind his head, Ganelon said, “Seems just the same to me.”
They were quiet for a bit after that. The sun set at last, and it wasn’t the wisest idea to stay airborne at night, but Edwick insisted he was good to fly for a while yet. Piglet finished his donuts and ambled over to the bar for a beer. Ashe volunteered her spot, moving to sit beside Gabriel. He flinched when she put a hand on his shoulder, but she spoke to him in gentle tones, like a groom attempting to placate a skittish horse.
“Piglet,” said Moog, “forgive me, but can I ask about your father?”
The boy slurped at his mug. “Like how he died, you mean?”
“Yes, please. If you don’t mind …”
Piglet shrugged. “It was the rot.”
The wizard closed his eyes, nodding as if he’d already guessed the answer. “Damn,” he said.
“He actually lasted longer than we figured he would,” Piglet elaborated. “He was a big man—well, you know that. But he was strong, too. Really strong. Until, well … It started in his toes, and his fingers, so he couldn’t get around very well. We had to feed him after that. And when they cracked and broke off we thought maybe …” He said nothing for a moment, turning and turning his mug on the spot. “But it started up again on his arm, then his face. His nose and ears just sort of … dried up, you know? By then he was tired all the time. He didn’t speak much, and didn’t make much sense when he did. And he was so scared. He—”
“I know!” Moog snapped, and it was obvious straightaway he’d spoken more harshly than he’d meant to. “I’m sorry,” he said, reaching out to pat the boy’s arm. “I … that is … I know what it’s like to lose someone that way. To watch them waste away before your eyes, wishing there was some way to make them better, or to make them suffer less. Except you can’t make them better. And they do suffer …” The wizard’s voice quavered and broke off. He looked out over the rail, pretending to scratch his head while swiping at one eye with the sleeve of his robe. “They suffer …”
“But not alone,” said Clay.
Moog glanced his way, and Clay saw, for perhaps the first time in all the years they had known each other, a naked, bottomless fear in the wizard’s face.
“You’re not alone,” he repeated, and then watched, without knowing what more he could say, as pure terror writhed behind the wizard’s eyes. Until finally Moog closed them, biting his bottom lip as a pair of perfidious tears streamed over his cheeks.
The silence around the ship changed perceptibly. Tiamax froze in the midst of shaking Matrick’s next drink. Barret sat up on his sofa, sharing a concerned glance with Ashe. Even Ganelon craned his neck to look over, dark eyes gleaming in the swaying lamplight.
“I don’t …” Matrick glanced around, visibly perplexed. “What? What does that mean, ‘You’re not alone’? Who’s not alone?”
Slowly, Piglet reached out and placed a pudgy hand on the wizard’s knee. “Where is it?” he asked, almost a whisper.
And because Clay was looking for it, he saw Matty’s face go granite hard. The king and Moog were close—as close as he and Gabe, perhaps, though they hadn’t known each other for quite so long. The two of them shared a deep kinship, a bond of unflagging (and sometimes ill-advised) cheer under even the most dire circumstance. As distraught as Clay and Gabriel had been to hear of Moog’s infection, Matty would be utterly devastated, which was probably why the wizard had put off telling him.
“Where is what?” asked Matrick in a voice gone cold and sluggish as a river in winter.
He knows, thought Clay. Of course he knows. He just doesn’t want to believe it.
Moog blew out a long breath before opening his eyes. He tried on a smile that vanished the moment he opened his mouth to explain. “My foot,” he said quietly. “It’s on my foot.”
Another silence followed, but this time it was loaded, the ominous hush of an axed tree falling earthward.
Matrick exploded from his chair, charged the wizard, grasped the collar of his robe in one hand and pinned him, squirming, against the side of the ship. “It’s on your fucking foot? The rot, you mean? The Heathen’s fucking Touch, right? It’s on your godsdamned foot!?”
“Urk,” said Moog.
“When were you planning on telling me, huh? When?”
“Grgh,” the wizard replied.
“Why are you even here right now?” The king’s voice skirled higher with every word, strained near to breaking by rage and grief and disbelief. “You should be locked in that shitty little tower of yours day and night—day and fucking night—until you find a cure.”
“There is …” Moog managed to gurgle “ … no cure.”
“THERE’S A FUCKING CURE!” Matty screamed. “Do you hear me, you shit-brained sorcerer? There is. A fucking. Cure.”
All at once the fight went out of him, and Matrick sagged to his knees, dragging Moog down with him as he went. The wizard hesitated just a moment before gently wreathing his arms around Matrick’s head and holding the crumpled king while wave after wave of soul-racking sorrow rose and broke, rose and broke, rose and broke within him.
They landed shortly after outside a dimly lit hamlet that Barret claimed was Downeston but Matrick, who’d doubled his efforts to get shit-faced drunk since Moog broke the news, insisted was Tagglemoor.
“I was the fucking king here,” he slurred from his seat at the bar. “I know this land like the hand of my back. Er, the hand of … hey, Doc, my glass is empty.”
“Help yourself,” said Tiamax, who had since retired to a couch of his own.
Matrick reached over the bar, and Clay shook his head at the arachnian. “You’ve doomed us all,” he said.
Piglet snorted at that. He’d found an apple somewhere and was crunching happily away. “Let’s play a game,” he suggested. “We each take a turn and say the first thing we ever killed. I’ll go first, okay? Mine was a trash imp who attacked me in Fivecourt.”
Clay slunk into his seat and sipped his beer. He wasn’t a fan of this game.
“A trash imp?” Ashe scoffed. “They usually run from anything bigger than a rat. Never heard of one attacking a human.”
Piglet looked abashed. “Yeah, well, someone threw out a whole box of oranges …”
Ashe was still cackling at that when Moog chimed in. “I was eleven when my dog died. I tried to resurrect him—”
“Oh, wow,” said Barret.
“I know—it was stupid. Anyhow, I lit the candles, scribbled the runes … I did everything by the book, or so I thought. But whatever came back … well, it wasn’t Sir Fluffy, I’ll tell you that.”
“I don’t know what disturbs me more,” said Edwick, who was curled up in the pilot’s chair. “That you dabbled in necromancy or that you named your dog Sir Fluffy.”
Tiamax chittered gleefully. “Mine was … I don’t even know what it’s called. It was sort of this giant lizard-frog thing covered in spikes, and its tongue was made of fire.”