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“I—But—” She stammered uselessly for a moment before shaking her head and trying again. “Bert? From that store, right?” It felt like an eon ago that the rusted metal jack o’lantern had started talking to her from the shelf of the general store. Mordred had taken her to see one of the nearby cities. And Bert had instantly glommed onto her, insisting that she was their savior.
This was going to be trouble, wasn’t it?
“You got it.” He laughed and slapped his padded leather glove for a hand on his leg. “The gods must be with us, sending you here! Our savior, who shattered the?—”
“Sshh!” She waved at him to stop talking. “Don’t talk so loud.”
“Why not? Everyone should know you’re the one who—” Bert clearly didn’t get the memo.
His friend sitting next to him, who had one eye like a cyclops, smacked him upside the head, jostling the metal pumpkin on the wooden broom handle he had for a neck. “Shut it, tin can. Can’t you see she’s spying on the enemy?”
“Spying on the…” Gwen furrowed her brow. “What in the hell are you talking about? And what enemy?”
“You’re spying on the elementals, clearly.” The cyclops grinned. “Though why you’re doing it here, in a town with only us villagers, I don’t know. I won’t question your secret plan.”
Oh, right. Bert had blathered something about a revolution. Sighing, she ran a hand down over her face. “Sure. Whatever. Just—I don’t want anybody to freak out and try to murder me. I’m pretending to be normal right now. The last time I walked into a village as a”—she glanced around to make sure no one was listening—“elemental, someone tried to shoot me. And that was after someone else successfully did.”
“Well, we aren’t going to look a gift-savior in the mouth,” a woman sitting across from Bert chimed in. She smiled, and her teeth were all extremely pointy. “Especially when there’s so much work to be done. We’re on a mission.”
“Right. Whatever. What do you want to eat?” Gwen wished she had a little notepad like waitresses tended to carry, but honestly the choices on the menu were so limited, it didn’t really matter.
“You…don’t want to hear about our mission?” The woman frowned. “I thought you were our sav?—”
“Stop.” Gwen shut her eyes. “Just stop. I’m not your savior. I’m not anybody. I didn’t even break the Crystal, Mordred did.”
“But because you got him to do it,” Bert added. “I heard the story from one of the guards.”
“Whatever.” She sighed. “I’ve got my own nonsense to deal with, I’m sorry. I’m trying to keep him and Grinn from murdering each other and the whole island while they’re at it.”
The woman grinned again, flashing those pointy teeth. “Funny you should say that—that’s our mission too.”
Gwen stammered again uselessly for a second before forcing herself to stop and take a breath. “Fine. But can we talk about this later? I have a job to do.”
“You want to stop talking about saving the world so you can wait tables?” Bert tilted his metal head to the side slightly.
“Walter’s being nice to me. The owner. So, yes. I said I was going to do a thing, so I’m going to do the thing.” She smiled. Honestly, she didn’t want the only moment of simplicity she’d had in weeks to end so quickly. “What do you want to eat?”
Bert’s two companions ordered their food and drink. Bert didn’t order anything, on account of being a magical metal pumpkin on a prop body stuffed with hay. She walked back to the bar, shaking her head, to get the two beers Bert’s people had ordered.
“Friends of yours?” Walter asked, arching a thick eyebrow.
“Acquaintances.” She shrugged. “They were surprised to see me here.” That was the truth. Just not the whole of it. That was slowly getting easier over time, she supposed. “And vice versa.”
“Well, steer clear of them if you can.” Walter huffed and shook his head as he poured the beer for Bert’s table. “They’re troublemakers, that lot—rabble-rousers.”
“That sounds accurate, from what little I know of them.” She chuckled and took the two mugs. “I’ll be careful.” She headed back to the table in question and put them down in front of Bert’s two able-to-drink-liquid friends.
“Tomorrow morning, on the edge of town,” Bert whispered to her loudly, like he was some sort of secret agent. A really bad one. “We’ll talk.”
“Fine, sure.” She wouldn’t turn down the opportunity to get a little help in finding Grinn and stopping his war. But she knew the pack at the table likely meant trouble, and she had plenty of her own to go around.
The hour passed quietly, and for a little while Gwen honestly believed she might get through the night unscathed. Unfortunately, she wasn’t so lucky. It was about half an hour before closing that the trouble began while she was bussing a table.
“Hey, cute thing—come sit on my lap, will you?” A drunken man with the horns of a young deer grinned at her lopsidedly over the rim of his mug of beer. He was seated at a table with four other men, who all laughed at their friend’s antics and joined in leering at her. “There’s a pretty silver coin in it for you.”
Sighing, she ignored the man, going about her business of stacking plates and mugs.
“C’mon now. I’m not askin’ for much. Just sit on my lap. Join us. We’d love to talk to you.” He pulled a silver coin out of his pocket and held it up between his fingers. “All yours. Jus’ for a little company.”
