Page 3 of Badmouths & Bards

Did you have to wear your hair like that today?

I wish you would try to be more social with the other girls.

You don’t have to play with the boys everyday, Taldesa.

Don’t you want to look pretty for the festival?

You can’t keep avoiding the problem.

Disciple Taldesa Valay… due to unfortunate circumstances, we have come to the decision—

Tala shook her head, leaning back against the tree trunk hard enough to feel the bark press through her clothes. When she opened her eyes again, the light had started to diminish, leaving Tala in shadow. The kitchens never really closed, but any of the warm meals she had been looking forward to were most likely gone.

The anger that drove her to violence had quieted and only then did Tala pull the charm from her belt. The opal was beautiful, a parting gift from the Moon Maidens that had meant to keep her connected to them. Unfortunately for the High Priestess, the matching opal disappeared when Tala left. The matching one had stayed in Tala’s coin purse until six years ago.

Bringing the charm toward her mouth, Tala swiped her fingers across the back of the opal. A carved pattern met her calloused finger tips, the stone glowing to life.

“Hey… did you make it to Parandor Stronghold? Haven’t heard from you in a while, getting worried. The monks fucking suck. Wish you were here.”

The enchantment on the stone pulled Tala’s words from the air, drawing them toward the stone, and sending them off to the matching opal. As the light dimmed from the stone, Tala hoped Avie was safe…

But something in her gut twisted at not knowing where her best friend was.

Chapter 2

Ameriden

Dumpling was barking.

The poor guy tended to bark whenever Ameriden Perzar had to transfer him to his traveling case, but today he appeared to be particularly fussy. His complaints constant as Ameriden laid a damp cloth over Dumpling’s grumpy body.

“I know, I know, you hate traveling,” Ameriden said, running his fingers over his wet, leathery back in a comforting matter.

Dumpling’s eyes were obscured by the cloth, but Ameriden could feel the stare of the small stingray. It reeked of judgment and disapproval, but he was willing to endure it if it meant traveling safely with his pet. Carefully, Ameriden reached for Dumpling’s traveling case—a large glass bowl encased with gold for the base and top. Once the lid came free, Ameriden plucked the small stingray from the water jug and delicately deposited him into his case. He pulled the cloth away, securing the lid, even as Dumpling continued to stare at him.

“I’m not leaving you on the Firesong Isles with people we don’t know,” Ameriden argued, tossing the cloth back into the water jug at his feet. “Last time we did that, your tank was filthy and you hadn’t been taken to the ocean the entire time.”

I’m arguing with my pet, Ameriden thought with a soft laugh.

It wasn’t the weirdest thing Ameriden had ever done. The weirdest thing award went to the time he performed on top of an active volcano. As a water hanfen, the experience had been particularly dicey. Ameriden felt the water in his heart nearly dry up from the heat, had sweat so much as he strummed his lute and swayed his hips to the music. By the time the crowd screamed for an encore, the event organizers had to stall for half an hour while they recovered their water resources.

“My boys are never doing that again,” Seira swore, then again in dwarven. “That was a liability and you know it. We will be taking an extra twenty percent for reckless endangerment, thank you very much.”

The sharp tongue of Seira Redborn was what made her the best manager a bard could ask for. Sadly, just because a bard could sing, dance, and tell stories didn’t mean having people in your corner. Ameriden heard the horror stories back in college. How some bard managers only cared about the fame and connections they could make to enhance their own careers.

Seira hadn’t been like that. She spoke plainly when they had approached her years ago, two newly graduated bards with nothing to their name but a lute, a handful of songs, and a dream. The dwarf woman took one look at them, explained the facts of the business plainly—including all the pitfalls—and when she hadn’t scared them away, Seira signed both of them.

“You made it impossible not to,” she said once over dinner and ale. “You both got the look for this business.”

Ameriden wasn’t ignorant to the fact that he was attractive. A good chunk of his career relied on how good he looked without a shirt on. Medium-dark cyan skin stretched over rock solid muscles that Ameriden gained without any of the scars warriors wore. He kept his blue-green hair cropped short, giving the crowd a clear view of his dark blue eyes. A sharp grin was almost always plastered across his face, eyebrows arched whenever he caught the eye of a fan and held it. Dressed in tight fitted pants that Seira sometimes had to sew him into and a lute across his naked chest, Ameriden could tell from the screaming crowd he wasn’t just attractive.

He was grossly hot.

More power to Seira for recognizing it because honestly? Getting me topless was probably the best move we could have made, Ameriden thought as he slung his lute over his back.

Ameriden was dressed a lot more conservatively for traveling. More layers meant there was less of a chance of fans recognizing him. Glamour charms also helped, but anyone carrying an instrument and who could hum was usually recognized as being potentially famous.

Humming a quick tune under his breath, Ameriden felt the magic expel from his breath and release around him. The glamour of the spell concealed his hanfen ancestry and replaced it with an elfish one with long blond hair and green eyes. Just as the spell was completed, the front door to the villa jerked open.