We had stood in the kitchen staring at the leg of lamb and the pile of vegetables intended for a week’s worth of stew, and she’d given me a grave look before adding; “I don’t know where they put it, but men that age never stop eating.”
As much as it pained me to make the slippery, snowy trip into the village, I knew I could do with the distance. I needed to think; to have that space under the grey skies to look within and understand what had happened to my magic. I needed time to process that wild moment when it felt like my Flame had triedto leap free from my soul. So, leaving Sorcha at the bar with Roy, I scooped out the meagre offering of coins in our coffer and set out for the market to buy as much food as I could carry.
Tanner had disappeared the moment we led the soldiers through to their rooms. By the time I made it to the market, it was clear he had ambled into Stormsby ahead of me.
“Is it true they broke down the door?” asked Ciara McAlpine, a potato farmer and one of the few women in town anywhere close to my own age.
“Dagda save me.” I dragged a weary hand down my face. “Tanner has some mouth on him.”
Ciara nodded, lips pursed, then leaned over her cartful of potatoes and lowered her voice.
“He said they stormed in with their swords drawn and demanded you hand over the keys.”
I laughed, more out of shock than actual amusement. “They didnot, good gods. He’s going to put me out of business.”
Ciara shrugged delicately, avoiding my eyes as she stuffed potatoes into the little net bag I’d handed her.
“Folks around here aren’t fond of Kingsmen as it is, Roz. I don’t know that they’d need much more incentive to keep clear.”
I truly hoped she was wrong.
But when I returned to the tavern, Tanner was still nowhere to be seen. Roy sat at the bar all afternoon, glancing at the door like a faithful hound. He sipped pints of ale until dinnertime, when Sorcha set down his usual bowl of stew and buttered bread. The soldiers slowly closed in from either side of the bar, calling in their own orders of pints and stew before fanning out around the small tables scattered through the tavern. Roy’s shoulders tightened by the minute, and when Tanner didn’t come back, and none of our regulars turned up to keep him company, he eventually rose to shaky feet and bid us a quiet goodnight.
“It’s temporary,” Sorcha said quietly, brows drawn tight over her round eyes as we watched Roy shuffle swiftly through the front door. “They’ll be gone soon, won’t they? That’s what they said.”
My heart clenched at the subtle tremor in her throat. Perhaps I’d underestimated how seriously she took Tanner’s fearmongering. Not that I was faring much better, as it turned out. My lungs still ached with the unexpected lash of my Flame, and something foreign had settled in its place, seeping cold into that warm crevice in my chest where the embers of my magic flickered dimly. Something that felt a lot like fear.
I made myself smile at Sorcha, and gave her hand a quick squeeze.
“Of course. They’ll be gone in no time.”
???
The hunt began the very next morning.
The men rose earlier than I would have expected, considering the late hour most of them had eventually stumbled off to bed. They drifted into the breakfast hall in two’s and three’s and seated themselves around the long table, heaping porridge into the bowls we’d laid out while we made our way around the room with a pot of tea and a basket of bread.
“The thing about serpents,” one of the soldiers was saying, in a loud gravelly voice that demanded attention, “is that they’re slippery as the name suggests.”
I recognised him as the man who had snapped at me in the tavern yesterday. He had sharp, sour features and lips that pulled back from his teeth in a natural sneer; Fischer, I think he was called.
“Fisch, maybe we should wait for the Captain’s briefing,” said Brennan.
Fischer ignored him and went on, speaking thickly around a mouthful of porridge.
“But they’re not very bright, y’see.” He tapped his skull with his spoon to demonstrate, depositing gloopy oats into his shaggy brown mop. “I’ve skinned more of those slimy fuckers than I can count, and you know whatalwaysgives them away?”
He splayed a hand on the table, lowered his voiceconspiratorially. “They choose the wrong mark. We all know they can’t change their eyes, and that’s simple enough to get around. They’d just choose a mark with the same eye colour. But d’you know what else they hold onto? Their tongues.”
Fischer dropped the spoon and slammed his fist into his open palm.
“And there you bloody have it – the moment they steal some foreign fucker’s skin, we’ve got them. Can’t speak a language they never learned, can they? They can shed their skin no problem, but they can’t shed their fuckin’ tongues.”
“Fischer,” Brennan said again, sharper than I’d heard him thus far. His gaze flicked to Sorcha, and back to Fischer, colour rising in his cheeks. “This is hardly appropriate breakfast talk.”
Fischer only laughed, an awful hacking sound that just went on and on, sticky porridge spraying from his open maw. Some of the men around him gave half-hearted huffs that might have passed for laughter, and Fischer’s large chest swelled with his own importance. He leaned back in his chair, spreading his arms wide for his scattered audience.
“If it were up to me, we’d take their tongues and ears at birth. If they never learn to speak at all, they’re fooling no one, are they?”
