Chapter Eleven

THE QUINTESSENTIAL TAVERN

Dreams. So difficult to describe, and yet everybody insists on telling you theirs. And don’t get me started on those who interpret dreams as messages from the Watcher. Dreams are your mind getting to enjoy itself while it puts your fragile self back together again while you slumber, ready for you to barrage it all again the next day. A famous person said that. I forget the name — and it might have been me.

As such, I won’t harass you with a lengthy, floaty dream sequence that has some deep meaning as some are wont to ascribe. I will, however, tell you that my dreams were full of snakes. They fell out of every pocket I owned. They swam through my hair. I waved my hands through a grassland of them.

Why? Well, most likely because I was currently splayed on the back of a gigantic snake.

I was rudely awoken to wet feet, and then wet shins, creeping to knees.

‘Gah!’ I yelled, realising far too late that the snake had grown bored of being my ride and was submerging itself. The water was creeping up to my thighs now, and with a mad leap, I made it onto firm mud. After watching the snake shuffle beneath the marsh water with narrowed eyes, I turned my attention to where and when I was. Very important when you’ve accidentally trusted several hours of your journey to the mind of a humongous bog-snake. For all I knew, I could be back where I first left the road.

The good thing about an ever-present god filling a huge chunk of the sky, even a moron could tell where north was. If you’re curious, for the Ashlands, north was just left of the Great Watcher’s head.

Hoping it wasn’t purely the evening mist, I took being barely able to see Canarva as a good sign. Its lights were bright and blight-powered, and though they smudged the smoke-laden sky amber, they were a distant haze. The lights I could see to the south flickered and hovered with all the laziness of lofty clouds. I chewed my lip as I pondered.

The Holy Realms, despite their nepotism, megalomania, the steel-fisted approach to law, and the necrosis festering in their gutters, did have some benefits. I can’t lie. A currency, common tongue… these were obvious. The benefit I trusted in that night was the constant presence of prosecutors across the land. It made life a little tougher for a criminal, but not impossible, thanks to good old-fashioned corruption and apathy. You may think it mad for a fugitive to hope for prosecutors, but I was more worried about bandits and cutthroats than being recognised at this particular moment. Godgear aside, a young wretch like me was worth shells even if I didn’t carry any. Plenty of gutter rats went missing each week in Canarva, forced to work fields for half the wage, or worse: sold to others with more than shells in mind. Both would put a spike in my big plans.

I held my cleaver close to my chest and picked my way through the stretches of mudflat, heading for the lights. My ears were filled with the evening chorus of frogs and insects. Flycatchers and swifts trilled as they swooped over my head. Through the mist and swarms of various creatures, I could spy tall hillocks shaped like the sharper end of an acorn. Some looked ridged or spiked, and call me mad, but I swore they moved. I was fascinated, as I often was by the new and odd. Feet skidding in the mud, I moved further west to investigate.

It wasn’t the sight of them that sated my curiosity but the sound of them. Yes, the hillocks were moving. And yes, they were alive. They were not hills or rocks but tortoises with tall shells stretching at least forty feet high. They snuffled noisily as they waded through the marsh on giant tree-trunk legs, smeared in mud and graffitied with stripes of paint. Rings of scaffolding sat upon the shells of some, and people sat upon the rings. They swung grapples and fishing rods in their hands, as if they either hunted treasure or food. Several wished me some kind of evening, and I did my best to return the favour to avoid suspicion. Others stared down in silence at the mud-caked girl with the cleaver wandering through the marshes alone, and I stared right back at them.

Amidst the giant tortoises – who didn’t seem to have a clear route or mission – hatted figures on stilts picked through the marshes. I was immediately jealous. I watched them closely as they stabbed at fish or frogs and imprisoned them in reed baskets.

‘Is there somewhere to rest nearby?’ I called to one who wore a hat so tall and conical she looked like she was in training to be one of the tortoises.

‘Mullog,’ said the woman, in a voice so thick with phlegm I wasn’t sure if it was a word or a cough.

‘Say again?’

‘Mullog! Down that way.’ The woman pointed her stilt, swinging it far too close to my face before it pointed to a cluster of lights. ‘You shouldn’t be out here on foot, you know. Better to stick to the paths. Half the bogs are cursed with witches.

‘If that’s all I need to fear then I’ll be fine.’

‘Jumped-up city folk,’ the woman muttered as she plodded on. ‘Hope you get eaten.’

Hopping from knoll to knoll, it took me almost an hour to find the paths the woman spoke of. They were rickety wooden constructions made of bundled wood and rotten planks, but I appreciated them more than their makers likely planned. The biting bugs grew thicker once more as I pressed on to the lights, but my second skin of mud proved too thick for them.

A willow tree stood alone in the marshland, strung with jars filled with insects that shone green as if they were blighted. The combined noise of their rattling was a ghoulish whispering, and it put the hair of my arms on end. Around the willow’s fronds, more glowing bugs floated. Larger creatures floated around the tree’s crown. They were like upturned bowls trailing threadlike tentacles. They held a blue blight, shining brighter than the bugs. I watched them in case they were dangerous, but they were as sedate as drifting flakes of ash. A crow snatched one from the sky and was proceeding to pick it apart in the mouldy grass by the willow’s roots. By the way the crow hacked and squawked, the creatures didn’t look particularly tasty to me.

The village of Mullog was not much to write about, even if I was generous with the detail. It squatted above the marsh on moss-clad stilts and mounds. Most of its buildings were borrowed from empty tortoise shells. Those that weren’t were cobbled out of mud and straw and thatch. Stove smoke mixed with the peat and sulphur-stink to provide a delightful cocktail that stung my nose. Shadows moved against the sallow lights. Figures in long and trailing cloaks wandered back and forth between the buildings. Some sang drunkenly. Others tore at frogs roasted on sticks.

I had only walked fifty miles or less, and already Canarva felt another world behind me. Not too far, mind you: I still spied shrines to the Great Watcher, and signs of the Blight in those that slumped on the edge of the marshlands or beneath the stilts. Industry had its grip around Mullog, too. It wasn’t just frogs and fish that the tortoises and stilted hunted for, but lucrative blightpowder, crystallised in pools from the smog of Canarva and clouds of the Great Watcher. I saw pools tinged yellow where masked workers scraped sludge, or baked a sickly paste over coals to harvest the powder. Fattened figures wandered between the pools, poking at workers with long, forked sticks. I knew that people had to live, no matter what it cost them to do so, but perhaps I hadn’t wandered as far as I had hoped.

Ignoring the masters and workers, I wandered the buildings. There was no piping or alleyways or forgotten rooftops to linger on in Mullog. Unless I sprouted claws, there was no way of climbing the tortoise shells.

Mullog wasn’t without life and order. I saw a cantina filled with more steam than half the Witchfell and sullen individuals munching on fried and roasted treats. One shell held a miniature Venerance temple and outpost, which I was encouraged to see but still gave the widest berth. A dozen prosecutors gathered around it, arguing about something.

A lone merchant sat next to a leather worker, a cobbler, and a butcher, all of which were enclosed in the same building. There was even a chandlery and carpenter. But most important of all, right in the centre where the temple should have been, was a tavern. No settlement was complete without one, apparently.

Why in the nether every adventure had to involve a tavern, I don’t know. Think of one tale right this instant that doesn’t include a mention of a tavern and I reckon I could count to ten before you come up with three. I’ve pondered this at length, my good reader, and I believe it comes down to three things, and a delicate balance of both:

One, shelter. You could never be short of it on the road, and most roads led to a tavern. I wasn’t spending the night in a shitty bog, Watcher as my witness.

Two, food and drink. Everybody knew the tribulations of an empty stomach and a parched tongue. I endured both.

And three, the gossip. Ale and rum loosen a tongue better than most Venerance torturers, and I wanted to hear what they were saying of Canarva.

I sighed as I stared at this tavern’s sign, one that read Big Toad’s Tipples & Vittles, and shook my head. What an inauspicious place for my adventures to begin, but I told myself this was a rite of passage and marched up the mouldy steps to its entrance.

Nobody blocked my way as I’d expected. Children weren’t usually welcome in Canarva taverns. Aberan had spent a night or two in a few rum-holes. The first time he’d come back drunk enough to fill his own cot with puke. The second, he’d come back with a black eye and never ventured out again.

Powered by curiosity, I pushed the door inwards into a murky room filled with peat and pipe-smoke. Rounded tables of hide and leather gathered around a central fireplace that kicked out more smoke than it did heat. Stilts propped up rooms and balconies high in the reaches of the tortoise shell. The bar was a thick wedge of mud brick with an enormous toad skull mounted above it. A bard with a fiddle kept a lively feel to the place.

I hadn’t expected so many people for a tiny village. Half the tables were occupied by marsh-walkers and workers. Thankfully, Mullog appeared to be the sort of place that was used to people passing through. A handful of drinkers looked up from their clay tankards or their banter to stare at me. Nobody seemed to find a mud-caked wretch interesting. Half of them were more covered in filth than I was.

I made a path to the bar. Two lone prosecutors sat in the middle of the tavern, and I avoided them as best I could just in case my new muddy look wasn’t as good a disguise as I thought. Their white masks sat on the tables beside their glasses of rum. It was suspicious how nobody else had glasses.

I approached an empty stretch of the bar and hopped upon a vacant stool, hoping that was the normal thing to do in a tavern. The heavy-bellied chap behind the bar ambled up to me. This must have been Big Toad. He certainly played the part well in his moss green overalls and pimple-scarred shoulders.

‘Tipples or vittles, youngun?’ he asked of me with a smile on his face.

‘Water. Clean, if that’s possible.’

Big Toad’s grin shrank a little. ‘Most here order ale or Mullog’s famous bog-rum, but if you don’t have the shells, then water it is,’ he said, fetching me a clay mug of water that didn’t look that clean at all, as if it came straight from the marshes.

I sucked it down, ignoring its sulphur smell and focusing only on quenching my mighty thirst.

‘You from Mullog? You one of Garbigan’s brats?’ Big Toad asked. Several faces turned in my direction. ‘Don’t recognise you.’

‘Don’t know any Garbigan,’ I replied quietly. ‘I’m headed south, is who I am.’

‘Passing through. I see. And on foot, by the looks of it,’ Big Toad beat a laugh out of his chest. ‘You want to watch yourself, youngun. There’s plenty beyond flies and snakes out in the Witchfell lookin’ to nibble a morsel like you. Water-witches infest these marshes. One foot in their pools and, well… you don’t want to know the rest.’

I held back my smirk. It was probably good the mud covered up the mark of the witch’s grasp on my arm. Where the witch had touched me, a red burn remained in the shape of a narrow hand. ‘I’m sure I don’t,’ I replied.

A scrawny woman in a sauce-stained apron appeared from a doorway behind the bar. The cook in me judged the plates she dumped on the bar. I took a guess that it was some sort of stew. The meat looked suspiciously undercooked. Half the plates swam in grease. The bread was black. And the smell was… curious, to say the least. My rumbling stomach quickly fell quiet.

Big Toad sighed at the woman and took the plates to the two prosecutors. They didn’t blink at the quality of the food.

‘That your cook?’ I asked of the barkeep on his return.

‘That would be Missus Toad,’ he chuckled, and I shuffled in my seat, keeping my opinions to myself. The cook in me wanted to save these people from the disgusting fare, but from the glimpses I got through the doorway of the woman hacking up a loin of lizard meat with a lumber axe, it was best to stay quiet. Besides, I didn’t want to linger here any longer than I needed to.

Necessity is what keeps characters like me moving on. We all need something, reader, whether it’s water, a bowl of stew to sate your hunger, or a nap, necessity is the force that pulls us along the paths of life. What was most necessary to me at that very moment – besides a bath – was to keep moving south. That meant a ride. Water-witches and boggarts aside, I would be damned if I was going to walk my way out of the Witchfell.

I looked around the tavern, judging faces in my search for somebody that looked remotely reputable. It was tough work, and when I caught the eye of two old women huddled by the fire, I gave up. They both looked far too well-fed for a place on the fringes like Mullog. They were both staring back at me, whispering behind their tattooed hands. I saw long forked sticks resting against the brick of the fireplace; the same sticks I saw the sorry workers being prodded with. When I kept staring, they showed me their ugly smiles. I could see the beginnings of Blight in the darkness of their teeth and cracked lips. I made a note to stay a healthy distance away from them.

Toad came to refill my water. ‘You must have come from Canarva if you’re headed south,’ he said.

I racked my mind to think of any towns I knew of near to Canarva and north enough of Mullog.

‘Came from Darydd,’ I lied, not quickly enough to sate the Toad’s curiosity. I knew barkeeps didn’t just trade in their tipples and vittles but the aforementioned gossip.

‘Alone?’ he asked.

‘Same as always.’

‘Then you must have seen the fire, eh?’

I shook my head, playing innocent. ‘I’ve been walking the marshes for three days. I saw smoke but thought it was the factories or a firefountain.’

‘Firefountain? Psh. Moron,’ scoffed another nearby drinker. He was an Esfer chap with a heavy brow, and his eyes were like two dull emeralds hiding under a cupboard. Eyes that were half-crossed with ale, I might add. The feathers along his jaw and ridges of his head were tawny, speckled with white. His beak nose and pursed lips gave me the impression he was a man who liked to spit often and complain even more. His nostrils whistled as he breathed hard and heavy. I kept one hand on the hidden cleaver in my pocket. My other was on the blightpowder vials that had stayed with me since Canarva.

‘Pay no heed. Biggith is just angry ’cause he lost his wares. The Venerance is out for blood, if you haven’t heard. Keeping everyone in Canarva and everybody waiting on the road outside the city.’

‘The bloody prosecutors keep me waiting on the road for a whole day in the sun,’ Biggith muttered. Then they decided I was hiding something in my cart and tipped it all over the road. A hundred scarlet melons all the way from Garrad; all good for nothing now but manure.’

‘Why?’ I asked. plain

Biggith clearly wanted somewhere to unload his drunken anger, and it was apparently me. ‘Because I can’t sell rotten and broken melons, is why!’

Toad sighed. ‘Think she means why the Venerance is doing what they’re doing, you grumpy old coot. And as for your melons, you’re stinking up my stables. You got to throw them in the marsh or something if you’re wantin’ to stay.’ Toad put a worn brass key on the bar and slid it to Biggith, who snatched it up and stowed it in his coat pocket.

‘I’ll be on my way soon enough. Can’t stand the north anymore,’ Biggith hunched his shoulders and spoke his curses into his tankard.

Toad shook his head. ‘Somebody set a fire in the rich part of Canarva. Burned down ten of the barons’ houses. It’ll bring trouble. Even to Mullog,’ he explained.

‘Twenty, I heard,’ called another beyond Biggith.

I sat there, looking shocked while I sorted through my emotions. I felt more pride than I did worry and shame.

‘Fifty, more like,’ a haughty voice informed us. One of the prosecutors was on his feet, holding an empty plate. His belly strained against the silver buttons of his white uniform. ‘Two-score dead, too, so said the messenger crow from the city. That’s why we bloody prosecutors are searching every inch of the road for the culprit,’ he said, turning to Biggith. The merchant kept his cup to his face, swivelling on his stool. I did the same, keeping my head down and eyes behind my hair.

‘Didn’t mean no disrespect,’ muttered Biggith.

‘The Great Watcher hopes not.’

After the empty plate was refilled with more slop, Biggith got a firm shove from the prosecutor but was otherwise left alone.

I watched the merchant hide in his tankard. Big Toad rolled his eyes and put another cup in front of me. This one he filled to the brim with a painted bottle of rum from under the counter. ‘On the house, kid. Take the chill out of your bones. Now, if you’ll excuse me…’

Big Toad sauntered into the back room, closing the door over while he shared some harsh words with his wife that I couldn’t hear.

I stared at the golden rum, leaving it alone. This was a night to keep my wits about me. I took the faintest sniff of the spirit, finding it sharp and sour and left it at that. I took another look around the tavern, eyeing up the drinkers as my plan formed in my head. A group gathered around a big table, testing each other’s skills in arm-wrestling. Coins switched hands between bouts of grunting. The prosecutors were still stuffing their faces between watching Biggith. A woman was in the midst of a hushed argument with a man whose eyes strayed to an amber-bearded man every chance he got. Nearby, several hatted merchants tried to conduct some business. A huge hulk of a man lurked in shadow far from the fireplace, near the door for the stables. And all the while, the two old women kept up their vigil on me.

Chaos was what I needed, and chaos was what I’d get. I wasn’t about to let my first tavern experience go by without a good old-fashioned brawl, was I? That was as quintessential as the tavern itself, right?

I approached Biggith, who was jumpy after his brush with the prosecutors. I stood close to him to keep our conversation quiet but also so I – between you and I – could put a hand in his coat pocket and relieve him of his brass key.

‘I was wondering, my good sir,’ I whispered, playing formal while I grasped the key. ‘If you would take a passenger south with you.’

‘Don’t take passengers.’

‘How many shells to change your mind?’

‘Twen—thirty shells,’ he told me. ‘But you don’t look like you’ve got even one shell to offer me, so stop wasting my time and bugger off, peasant. I just want to finish my ale in peace and get out of this bloody place.’

‘Fair enough,’ I replied, turning swiftly away from him. I could tell he stared after me, but I let him watch as I slowly wandered the edges of the tavern as if looking for somebody. I went to the hulk of a man next. Ten empty tankards and cups sat in front of him, but Toad had brought him no more. I sensed he was as poor as I was, yet his thirst was far from slaked.

‘A gift,’ I said, holding up my cup of rum but keeping it out of his reach. ‘In return for a favour.’

‘What kind of favour, whelp?’

‘See those old women by the fire? They keep looking at me, and I don’t like the way they’re staring. Think they might be fixing to snatch me, and I need somebody to keep them away from me.’

The man rumbled deep in his chest. It looked like I had touched an old, unknown nerve. Lucky me. He took the rum in his giant hand and waved me away. His frowning stare lifted from his tabletop to the women and stuck there.

Next, I spent a while at the crowded table of men trying to prove their worth by deciding who had the stronger arm. With each slam of a fist on the poor table and amidst the loud cheers, I watched the shells switching hands. Purses grew skinny one moment, fat the next. I watched for any sign of cheating and thievery: an unwatched purse or shell swiped, or a sleight of hand. Not so I could do the same, but so I could rat. Cowardly, yes, but just you wait.

It took me time, but at last, I spied none other than the amber-bearded man, who was entrusted with the pot of shells between each bout. He would slyly slip a shell under the table’s edge with his thumb every chance he got. The gamblers were all far too invested in the straining and grunting to notice.

‘I think that man’s stealing shells,’ I whispered, nudging a particularly drunken fellow and pointing to the bearded man. ‘Wait and watch.’

I didn’t stay to appreciate my handiwork, instead heading straight to the arguing couple. They paused their muttered bickering just long enough for me to point at the man and say, ‘Bella says not to bother her again. She says leave her alone.’

‘What’s that?’ spat the woman, immediately slapping the man on the arm.

‘Bella? I’ve never heard of any Bella!’ he complained.

‘Yet another lie!’ the woman screeched in reply, raining smacks all over his shoulders and head.

Behind me, I heard the yell of, ‘Fuckin’ cheater!’ erupt from the gamblers. I had little time left, but I ducked under around the tables and passed by the prosecutors.

‘That Esfer merchant hasn’t stopped talking shit about you and the Venerance,’ I said, already receding with a bow. ‘Great Watcher be praised.’

Chair legs squeaked as the two got to their feet immediately, moving to seize Biggith by the arms and haul him from his stool.

‘What in the nether?!’ he yelled.

It was at that moment a clay cup flew across the tavern, smashing against the frog skull above the bar with a shower of ale and shrapnel. A roar erupted almost simultaneously from the gamblers as punches started to fly. The man I had put in hot water with his wife dove into the fray to defend his friend.

‘Oi!’ yelled one of the prosecutors while he untangled a club from his belt. Big Toad had returned, and his voice rose above the rest as he called for calm but went thoroughly ignored. I saw the two old women on their feet, making their way towards me, using the commotion for their nefarious means just as I did.

It was a perfect time to make my exit. I moved towards the stable door and my huge friend, ready to give him the nod, but all I saw of him was a lump collapsed over his table. I ran to shake him, but he was snoring deeply. The cup of rum in his hand was empty, and I saw the smear of dark herbs at the bottom.

Big Toad had tried to drug me, and I saw now why.

I had one foot in the stable when the tavern’s door burst open. A mob of prosecutors waded inside, led by a skinny fellow with green eyes. His mask was in his hand, and there was a swipe of blue captain’s rank on his colour. It was none other than Prosecutor Litkas.

Greeted by the madness I had reduced the tavern to, Litkas took his blightpowder pistol from his belt and raised it to the ceiling. The deafening shot put a ring in every ear and the fear of the Great Watcher in every soul except mine.

‘Nobody move a muscle!’ Litkas yelled as he stepped over the frozen Biggith and pointed at the two Mullog prosecutors. ‘Where is she, barkeep? Where is the wretch you reported? The girl these two country layabouts failed to notice?’

‘Captain, I—’

Litkas levelled the pistol at the prosecutor who had dared to speak. Not a further word came from his mouth.

Toad was peering around his tavern. ‘She was here a moment ago, I swear it! Young girl, black hair, Ashland eyes, right?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘She was sat right at the bar, I tell you! Just as I said. She should be a heap on the floor by now!’

Litkas fired another shot as the fighting broke out anew.

‘You promised me nobody would be hurt, Captain,’ pleaded the duplicitous Toad.

‘And nobody will be, so long as we find that bloody girl. Spread out! Search the whole place!’ Litkas yelled.

I took that as my cue to dash into the stables. Kumi lizards and larger salamanders chattered at the noise in the tavern. Another horse creature whinnied like an ungreased door.

I needed one more distraction, and I turned to the blightpowder in my pockets. Troughs of water lay between the stalls and parked wagons. Riveno’s lessons raced through my mind, and I shook the blue dust sparingly into each trough. The crumbs fizzled immediately, releasing a blue-grey smoke that immediately began to fill the stables.

I kept moving, following the stink of rotten melons to a flat wagon and a grey, shaggy kumi lizard. Both were locked up to the stable’s walls with a chain and padlock. That explained the brass key, and I whipped it from my pocket to make good my escape.

‘Fire!’ somebody within the tavern shouted, causing more chaos than I had. I couldn’t see the doorway through the smoke, but I could imagine the panic within.

The padlock sprang free in my hand. I made sure to pat the kumi’s scaly back to keep him calm, but the lizard looked too old to be causing a fuss and accepted me as if he hadn’t noticed the difference in masters. The melon-reek was even more pungent atop the wagon. A crank sat at the centre of the seat, and as I pulled the reins to get the kumi moving for the stable door, I furiously wound the handle. It seemed to be tilting the bed of the wagon. I saw a discoloured melon slide out from under the tarpaulin and tumble with a squelch to the ground. I kept cranking until the entire load began to topple, leaving behind me a wall of rotten fruit as well as a smokescreen.

The kumi seemed pleased to have his load lightened. He thumped his way through the village while I kept a watch on the murk behind me. It made me chuckle to see two stick-waving crones come flying out of the smoke into the mud, covered in the rotten melon they had tripped upon. I heard the shouts of prosecutors telling them to halt, and my chuckle turned to a cackle.

The pistol-shots had brought all the remaining prosecutors running. Nobody paid me any attention as the wagon rattled out of Mullog. As we found a rickety path and a sign to the south, I even whistled a cheery tune to the night and its chirping insects.

Truth be told, I had quite enjoyed my first tavern visit.