“And what did Firaga say when you told him?” asked Sabbatha.
“The Exarch?” Kit lifted grey-green fingers to the gash at his throat, concealed by his red silk scarf. “He killed me, naturally.”
Chapter Thirty-seven
The Claw-broker
The old druin road led, unsurprisingly, to an old druin fort. The place was in shambles, though you wouldn’t know it to hear Gregor describe the setting to Dane.
“Soaring battlements!” he said of walls that were little more than knee-high rubble. “A pristine tower so tall its heights are lost in cloud” was how he rendered a two-storey ruin cloaked in a mantle of hoary brown lichen. The remains of a statue stood at the centre of a dry fountain. Its head was missing, both arms were broken off, and no detail remained but pitted stone. “You should see it, Dane! The fountain is teeming with schools of little goldfish. They look like coins until they start zipping all over the place. And the statue is magnificent! Smooth white moonstone, with a face so stern and noble I think it must have been an Exarch of the Dominion.”
“Or a great warrior!” Dane suggested.
Gregor laughed. “Oh, you’re exactly right! There’s a sword there on his hip.”
“Can I touch it, Gregor?”
“And soil the clean water with our dusty feet? Come, brother, let’s explore a bit, shall we?” Dane agreed heartily, and the ettin stalked off beneath a shattered arch.
Moog was shaking his head as he watched them go. “Those two …” he muttered.
The band spread out around the decrepit courtyard. Matrick settled himself on the ground and pulled off his boots, each of which spewed a torrent of bog water and muddy stones when upended. Ganelon leaned against a wall and closed his eyes. Moog and Kit began an animated discussion on druin architecture, while Sabbatha excused herself, stepped through a gap in the wall, and disappeared into the forest. Gabriel watched her go, distrust plain on his face.
Clay shrugged Blackheart off his back, kneading the bunched muscles in his shoulder. His back hurt terribly, and there was a knifing pain in his left hip that was worming its way down his leg with every step. His boots were soaked through, and he’d been unconsciously curling his toes as he walked, so they pained him as well.
You’re getting old, Cooper, he thought to himself. And if you think wet boots and a cracked old road are the worst of your problems, just wait till you reach those mountains …
Gabriel was looking at him with concern. “Your back hurt?” he asked.
Clay realized he’d been grimacing and did his best to convert it into a smile. “My everything hurts,” he said.
Gabe chuckled. “I sure do miss beds,” he mused.
Clay made the awful mistake of imagining himself in bed, the warm press of Ginny snug against him. He could almost feel the curve of her hip beneath his hand, the tickle of her hair as it grazed his nose. He remembered how that used to bother him, but he’d give anything now to feel that tickling hair, to breathe her in and breathe out pure contentment. He remembered the shape of her back, a harp upon which his fingers had traced a music meant for her alone.
“I miss my tower,” said Moog, glancing upward. “And my spiders. And having a roof.”
Matrick sighed. “I miss my kids,” he said, sounding mildly surprised. “I didn’t think I would. I mean, I love them and everything, and I certainly had my hand in raising them, but they weren’t really …”
“Yours?” Moog said.
“Yes, exactly.” Matrick laid his boots aside to dry and yanked off his socks, wringing brown water out of each. “But it’s not like they know their mother was, well …”
“A whore?” said the wizard.
Matrick actually looked affronted. “Trying to kill me. And she’s still my wife, remember. Besides, Lilith isn’t a …” He swallowed and smoothed back his thinning hair. “She was just … unsatisfied. She thought I was this big-time hero, right? Daring and dashing and all that. But instead I just got …”
“Fat?” Moog supplied.
“Drunk?” said Ganelon.
Matrick glared at them both until the wizard guessed again.
“Old! It’s old, isn’t it?”
“May the Heathen rot your balls,” Matrick said politely. “And yes, I got old. And fat. And I was drunk almost every day of our marriage. Is it any wonder she resents me?”
Gabriel snorted at that. “She tried to kill you, Matty. She’s still trying, remember?” He glanced in the direction Sabbatha had gone.
“Yes, well, it’s all a bit extreme, sure,” Matrick admitted. “But still. I should have done better. I should have drunk less, eaten less, screwed around less. I was a half-assed king, a shit husband, and now …” His eyes flitted around his circle of friends and then back to his bare feet, as though he were surrounded by mirrors of self-recrimination. “What will my children think of me?” he asked quietly.
Before anyone could offer consolation they heard a scream, then another. The first was Sabbatha, crying out in surprise. The second belonged to a man who stumbled into the courtyard, desperate to escape the daeva’s evidently violent response to being caught off guard.
He was wearing a hooded robe that seemed to shift from green to grey as he entered the fort. His torso was crisscrossed with packs and sacks and satchels, and there was a whitewood staff slung across his shoulders and tied with brass pots and glazed decanters that clanged and clattered as he fled from Sabbatha, who came soaring through the gap in the outer wall. Her broken wing wasn’t fully extended, but worked well enough to achieve a menacing glide. Her face was livid. She was holding a scrap of her leg armour in one hand, and Clay wondered what she’d been doing when the poor man had interrupted her.
The newcomer retreated from her as fast as he could. He tripped over Matrick’s boots but recovered in time to slip deftly between Moog and Kit. He might have dodged Ganelon, too, except the warrior threw out an arm and the man ran directly into it. He landed on his back in a disastrous heap, cracking his head against the moss-carpeted stone.
“Solusutholon! Usutholosulo!” cried the man on the ground.
Clay froze with his hand on the haft of his weapon. That language …
Gabriel stepped between the hooded man and Sabbatha. The daeva reigned herself in with a snarl. Her taloned gauntlets curled as she glared at Gabriel, and for a moment Clay wondered if surprise and sudden anger had somehow brought back the memories she’d lost to the storm, but then a black feather floated between them, drawing her gaze, and the fury in her eyes went out.
“He startled me,” she said sheepishly. “I thought he was …” She paused, taking a closer look. “Wait, what is he?”
Gabriel turned his back to her. “He’s a druin.”
“Not that druin?” asked Ganelon, glancing down.
“No,” Gabe said.
The druin looked between them curiously.
Clay stepped forward to offer him a hand. The druin shrugged the whitewood staff from his shoulders before reaching to take it. His grip was strong, but the bones of his hand seemed delicate, like the skeleton of an animal Clay feared he might crush.
“Dosulon, friend.”
Clay nodded. “Noluso,” he answered, which he was pretty sure translated to “You’re welcome” but might also have meant “cheesy bread.” Druic was a tricky language, and it had been decades since he’d had occasion to use it.