Company of Strangers, #1 Read online

  “I know it isn’t. Just…give her a chance.”

  Another gale tickled Sienne’s ears. “Let’s just get this over with.”

  Sienne backed away from the door and busied herself rearranging her pack, so when the door opened, she could look up with a credible expression of innocence.

  “Sorry about that,” Dianthe said. Alaric had disappeared. Sienne tried not to wince at how Dianthe’s voice echoed painfully in her ears. That spell couldn’t wear off soon enough. “Everything’s fine. I told you he didn’t like wizards, but he’ll get used to you.”

  “I understand.” Her own voice thrummed through her head like harp strings tuned to near breaking. “Do we eat here?”

  “They feed us in the kitchen. Part of the arrangement.” Dianthe kicked the door idly, making a dull booming sound. “Go ahead and finish putting away your things, then come downstairs. You can store anything you don’t want to take into the wilderness here—it’s part of the fee. Of course, the deal is, if we don’t come back, Master Tersus will sell whatever we leave behind, but it’s not like we’ll care, right?”

  Dianthe flashed a smile and headed toward the stairs. Sienne waited, teeth clenched, for the booms of her feet to fade, then swiftly changed into her new clothes and folded her old ones into the chest of drawers. Best she begin as she meant to go on.

  The kitchen was modern and open, with a large iron range filling one side of the brightly-lit room. The table, on the other hand, was as battered as if it had seen generations of diners. Alaric and Dianthe sat at one end, eating pieces of roast chicken with their hands. Sienne sat next to Dianthe and picked up a drumstick, tearing into it awkwardly. Five weeks in the big city as a nobody hadn’t been enough to cure her of the manners she’d learned back in her home dukedom of Beneddo, but she didn’t think she stood out quite as much as she once had.

  She cast covert glances at the big man sitting at the head of the table. Alaric showed no sign that he knew she was in the room. He ate steadily, with a tidy economy that made him look impatient with his food. So, some wizard had done ill by him? At least, that was the impression her eavesdropping had given her. Well, she’d just have to prove wizards weren’t all bad. She wasn’t sure why she cared about winning him over, except that it struck her as a challenge, and she liked challenges. Besides, she needed him to spread the word of her good reputation, if she wanted to turn this job into the start of a career.

  “Did you find anyone else?” Dianthe said between bites.

  “Kalanath Oushikdali,” Alaric said.

  Dianthe whistled. “I thought he was with the Giordas.”

  “They had a difference of opinion. Specifically, Alethea made advances and Kalanath turned her down cold. You can imagine how popular that didn’t make him.”

  “You think he’ll work well with us?”

  Alaric shrugged. “He’s a professional, for all he’s young. He’ll do. It’s just the one job, after all.”

  “What about a priest? Did Bernadetta—”

  “Not Bernadetta,” Alaric said with finality. “We’re going to talk to someone else this afternoon.”

  “We?” Dianthe said, casting a glance at Sienne. Sienne sat up and tried to look helpful and competent, but with chicken grease running down her chin, she didn’t think she was successful.

  Alaric assessed her with his eyes. Sienne couldn’t put her finger on what made them so unsettling. The color, maybe, so light a blue as to be almost gray. “All of us,” he finally said, in a neutral tone that unnerved Sienne more than outright dismissal would have.

  “Sienne, does that eyesight spell work to improve normal vision?” Dianthe said. It was so casual Sienne was certain she’d said it to point out to Alaric how useful Sienne’s wizardry could be.

  “It does,” she said, “but there are limits to what the human eye or ear can be shaped to do. The further you push those limits, the shorter the duration. Most people want it for seeing in the dark. If I tried to do that in daylight, it would just blind you.”

  “Sounds like quite the weapon,” Alaric rumbled.

  “It isn’t—” Sienne stopped mid-sentence. “I guess it could be. I’d never thought of it that way.”

  “You ought to know by now what wizardry is capable of.” Alaric washed down his chicken with a huge swig of whatever was in his cup. His tone of voice was dark, like someone predicting a great evil.

  “Good things, as far as I’m concerned,” Sienne said.

  “That attitude won’t take you far as a scrapper.” Alaric set his cup down and turned his gaze on Sienne again. “You need clever thinking and a willingness to look at things sideways.”

  “You don’t know anything about me,” Sienne said, stung into a sharp retort. “I may be new to this, but I’m good at what I do.”

  “Alaric,” Dianthe said, her voice a warning.

  Alaric shrugged. “Maybe so. But it doesn’t matter. We’re bringing you along for the shrinking spell, nothing more. You can leave the fighting to us.”

  Sienne’s face warmed with indignation, but she said nothing. This arrogant bastard thought so little of her, did he? But he wasn’t wrong, either—she knew almost no offensive spells and had no practical experience in the field. Even so, his dismissive attitude rankled.

  “Let’s not quarrel before we’ve even left the city,” Dianthe said. “Who are we meeting?”

  “His name is Perrin Delucco, and he’s new to the priesthood,” Alaric said.

  “New is bad, where we’re going,” Dianthe said.

  Alaric scowled and was silent.

  “You couldn’t get anyone else, could you,” Dianthe said. It was not a question. “Alaric—”

  “It wasn’t my fault. All the scrapper priests are either affiliated or…not interested in this job.”

  “Because there’s no chance of salvage, you mean.” Dianthe sighed. “All right, that’s not your fault.”

  Sienne almost said What, your winning personality didn’t charm them? but decided that was too rude for such a new acquaintance. Instead, she said, “Is salvage more important than a flat fee up front?”

  “Up front?” Alaric said. “All up front?”

  “Yes, all up front,” Dianthe said, glaring at him. “Most scrappers like the gamble of finding salvage that will make their fortunes. The place we’re going, well, I told you it was thoroughly explored already. So not a lot of scrappers will see the appeal.”

  “But if there’s a secret area—”

  “You told her about the secret entrance?” Alaric demanded.

  “I had to, to explain why we needed that spell,” Dianthe said, unruffled by his outburst. “As you can see, we’re not telling people about the secret entrance, for fear they’ll go off and try to discover it themselves. So we can’t offer it as an enticement.”

  “I understand.” Sienne wiped her mouth and chin and looked around for a napkin. She wasn’t about to wipe her greasy fingers on her new trousers. A pile of folded cloths near the sink looked perfect. Without thinking, she used her invisible fingers to lift the top one and whisk it across the room to her hand. She cleaned off her hands and gave her chin one final swipe. Then she saw her companions’ expressions. Alaric looked like she’d just wiped her hands on his shirt. Dianthe’s eyes were fractionally wider than they had been. Sienne dropped the cloth on her plate and willed herself not to blush. Magic was perfectly ordinary, and she wasn’t going to pretend to be other than she was just because the big ox was afraid of it.

  Dianthe cleared her throat. “Shall we go?”

  4

  Sienne trailed slightly behind Alaric and Dianthe as they set out for their mysterious rendezvous. It was like following in the wake of a battleship. Crowds parted for Alaric, who behaved as if he didn’t notice. Maybe it was his size, maybe it was his white-blond hair, so different from the darker Rafellish, but whatever it was, he was always going to excite notice. What would it be like to draw the eye that way? Sienne knew she was pretty enough, but sh
e’d never been the kind of beautiful that caught people’s attention. She was average in height and build, her coloring was typical of the Rafellish, and she didn’t dress outrageously. If she’d lived a different life, she might have been a sneak thief rather than a wizard. She might even have been happier.

  They crossed the Vochus again, this time by a different bridge, and Alaric led them past the palace and through the high-class parts of the city into what might as well have been a different world. Sienne had never been to the slums of Fioretti, and she drew closer to Alaric, grateful now for his forbidding presence. Streets dark even at midafternoon wound crooked paths between buildings of crumbling brown brick, their upper stories jutting out over the streets not by design, but from age and neglect. Where the sunnier streets of Fioretti were thronged with passersby, men and women walking or riding purposefully from one place to another, these streets were stagnant with loiterers. Hard-eyed men watched them pass, calculation evident in their eyes as they looked at Alaric and assessed their chances at him. The constant murmur of the city took on a menacing tone that made Sienne wish she’d stayed behind.

  “It’s here somewhere,” Alaric said. “Not a lot of sign markers in this place.”

  “Yes, because they don’t want to give the city guard even passive assistance,” Dianthe said. “What kind of man have you found us?”

  “He’s a priest of Averran,” Alaric said curtly. “I imagine one bar is as good as any other as far as he’s concerned.”

  “You want to take a drunk priest into the wilderness with us?” Dianthe exclaimed.

  “The priests of Averran aren’t drunks,” Sienne said. “They say drink is a different path to wisdom, and drinking to excess is just another way of approaching God.”

  “What do you know about it?” Alaric said.

  “I had—I know a little bit about religion.” She wasn’t going to tell them religious instruction had been part of her studies during her fosterage to Stravanus; that would certainly out her as noble.

  “Well, it’s true,” Alaric said, and to her surprise Sienne heard grudging approval in his voice. “Perrin Delucco was perfectly lucid when I spoke to him earlier. It’s why I agreed to meet him again—he said he wanted to meet the companions he’d be risking his life with.”

  “Sensible,” Dianthe said. “Can we get this over with? Those men are looking at me like they’re wondering what kind of price they could get for my dead body.”

  Alaric stopped and looked around. “That way,” he said. He ducked down a side alley and pushed open a wooden door that was scorched from some long-ago fire. Sienne sniffed as she followed him, and could still smell smoke, acrid and cold. Maybe not so long ago.

  The room beyond was dimly lit by lanterns, not magic lights, and to the acrid smell of old smoke was added the pungent aroma of cheese gone off and the stink of unwashed bodies. The tavern was packed full of men and women engaged in eating, silently and without paying attention to anyone else, not even the blond giant who’d appeared in the doorway. Morose drinkers occupied the bar stools, drinking as steadily as the diners were eating. It all made Sienne profoundly uncomfortable, like she’d interrupted a divine service. To Averran, naturally.

  The woman behind the bar caught Alaric’s eye. “What’ll you have?”

  “Beer,” Alaric said. “For all of us.” He pushed through the crowd to a table in the corner. Unlike the other tables, which were packed shoulder to unwashed shoulder, this one had only one occupant. The man was in his mid-thirties, or so Sienne guessed from what was visible of his face, curtained from the world by a fall of untidy brown hair. He sat sprawled in his chair with his back to the wall and saluted Alaric with his pint mug as the three of them approached. “Mountain of an Ansorjan,” he said, “you have found me.” His words slurred enough to tell Sienne he was fast on the way to serious inebriation.

  “I have,” Alaric said. “Can we sit?”

  “Can you?” the man said, and took a long drink from his mug. “I presume you have the capability.”

  Irritated, Sienne was about to say something rude when Alaric interrupted her with, “Thanks.” He pulled out a chair and sat across from the man. Dianthe and Sienne followed. Sienne wished she could put her back to the wall. Having the whole tavern behind her made her neck itch.

  “This is Dianthe and…” Alaric looked at Sienne without a trace of embarrassment at having forgotten her name.

  “Sienne,” Sienne said.

  The man gave them all a lazy wave of his hand. “Perrin,” he said. “Delucco as was.”

  “What does that mean?” Dianthe said.

  Perrin shrugged. “It means, fair lady,” he said, “my family has taken steps to dissociate themselves from my embarrassing presence.”

  Dianthe glanced at Alaric. “Embarrassing, how?” she asked.

  Perrin took another long drink and signaled the barmaid who was just then approaching their table with three pint mugs. The girl set the mugs on the table and took Perrin’s empty one without comment. “They took exception to my conversion and priesthood,” he said. “Gavant is an avatar any blue-blooded aristocrat might credibly worship. Averran is rather less so. But you aren’t interested in my sad story.”

  “I—” Sienne began, but fell silent when Perrin’s eye, sharp and not at all fogged with drink, fixed her in place. No prying, she reminded herself.

  “This is most of us. See everything you want?” Alaric said.

  “I asked to meet all of you.”

  “Kalanath Oushikdali will join us in the morning. No doubt you’ve heard of him.”

  “Ah.” Perrin nodded. “All right. It’s acceptable.”

  “So have you made a decision?”

  Perrin accepted a fresh mug from the barmaid and drained half of it in one gulp. “I have. I will join your merry crew on this journey into the hinterlands. I ask only that we leave as soon as possible. I find the air of Fioretti uncongenial.”

  “Tomorrow morning,” Alaric said.

  “Then—let me see.” Perrin sat up straighter, as straight as he was capable of; he still listed to one side. “You are clearly the muscle,” he told Alaric, who to Sienne’s surprise gave a tiny half-smile at this. “You…slim build, graceful walk, and so self-effacing you might as well be invisible,” he said to Dianthe. “I take it you are a picker-up of unconsidered trifles belonging to other people?”

  “I’m no thief,” Dianthe said. “That doesn’t mean I couldn’t be if I wanted.”

  “Point taken,” Perrin said. He turned his attention on Sienne. “And you are…what? Not a swordswoman, not with the way you walk. Not a priest, because then you would not have approached me. Hired help?”

  “I’m a wizard,” Sienne shot back, irritated.

  Perrin’s eyes widened. “Of course,” he said. “My apologies.”

  “Meet us at the western foot of the Storm Wind Bridge at eight a.m. tomorrow,” Alaric said. “If you’re not there, we leave without you.”

  “I’ll be there,” Perrin said, saluting him with his pint.

  Alaric took a drink from his mug, grimaced, and put it down. “How can you stand to drink that piss?”

  Perrin tilted his mug and stared into it as if reading the future. “Averran taught that many roads may lead to a single destination, and sometimes the journey is irrelevant. But Averran was a crotchety old drunk, so I wonder how much of what he said was inspired by dyspepsia.” He smiled. “And I happen to like the taste. A reminder of the good old days.”

  Alaric rose, followed by Dianthe and then belatedly by Sienne, who had been wondering if she could get away with not drinking the sour-smelling stuff. “See you in the morning,” he said, tossing some coins onto the table. Perrin smiled again and leaned back, rocking on the hind legs of his chair like an acrobat preparing for a complex trick.

  On the way back through town, Sienne said, “Why did we have to be there? We sat down, he said yes, and we left again.”

  “He told me he wouldn’t agr
ee to join us unless he saw the rest of us,” Alaric said. “No doubt it was some mystical thing or other. Priests have divination magic; maybe he wanted to search our souls for compatibility.”

  “You don’t really believe that,” Dianthe said.

  “No, I don’t. But it makes as much sense as anything.”

  “I don’t know,” Sienne said. “Priests of Averran aren’t supposed to get as drunk as that. Are you sure—”

  “He’s the only option available,” Alaric said. “You, ah, Cinna?”

  “It’s Sienne,” Sienne said irritably.

  “You have everything you need? You know we’ll be gone most of a week, what with traveling there and back again.”

  “I do,” Sienne said, though as she did so she was assailed by doubts that she’d forgotten some key item Alaric would no doubt mock her for not having. “Don’t worry about me.”

  Alaric hmphed. “No one’s going to carry your load for you. Don’t go looking for special treatment.”

  “Alaric,” Dianthe said, “turn around.”

  He glanced down at her, startled. “What?”

  “I need to pull the stick out of your ass.”

  Sienne laughed and swiftly covered her mouth. Alaric glowered at the two of them, but said nothing, just walked faster.

  “Holla! Ham-fist!”

  Alaric came to an abrupt stop in the middle of the street. Sienne took a few involuntary steps past him and half-turned to see what he’d stopped for. Dianthe had her hand on his arm. “Just keep walking,” she said in a low, urgent voice.

  “If it isn’t Ham-fist and…who’s the babe in arms?” A short, compact man came toward them, smiling in such a friendly way Sienne was confused at the discrepancy between his demeanor and the dismissive, obviously insulting words he flung at Alaric. Holla. It was a greeting, but it was also Sorjic for “fool.”

  The man was dressed much as they were, but over his scrapper’s ensemble he wore a cloak far too heavy for the true summer weather, something a wizard in a child’s story might wear. He came to a stop in front of Alaric, still smiling, unconcerned at forcing other pedestrians to step out of his way. “Hmm. Have you run through the list of scrappers in this city willing to work with you, that you’re robbing the cradle now?”