Best raised a disdainful eyebrow and looked at Koradan. “Not just a job to you, then?”
“Not just a job,” Koradan agreed, not showing the slightest hint of annoyance at the question.
Lynette had heard just about enough. “All right, before anyone can start an official pissing contest, I’m going to say yes, Koradan, please duck down to the village and get a bottle of liquor. If you go to Peter’s house, he’ll have some. You know where he is?”
“Third street on the right, fourth house. Brown door.”
“That’s right. Just explain to him what’s going on and he should have a bottle of gin you can borrow.”
Koradan nodded. “I’ll be right back.” He jogged away to find Ashd. A minute later, Lynette heard a whoosh as the vreki leapt off the cliff, then the harsh pulses of air as his enormous wings guided them away from the mountain. Gods above, how Koradan dealt with that each time was a mystery. She would have been terrified to have the great lizard simply leap off the edge of a cliff like that. So much open space below her, so many things that could go wrong. She felt a wave of dizziness just thinking about it.
“While he’s gone, let’s get everything else packed up and ready to go. The sooner we get back home, the better.”
◊ ◊ ◊
Koradan jogged from the cliff face where Ashd had landed back to the village. While he was gone, Ashd would be meandering towards the village entrance, where there was a wide field they could take off from.
He knew the way to Peter’s house from hearing Rigolard’s description of the place, and he found it easily. It was fairly standard for houses in the village, though perhaps a little larger than average. Lynette’s house had just three rooms – the kitchen and two bedrooms – plus a small washroom off the back of the house. But he could tell just from looking at the outside that this house probably had twice as much space. Then again, Peter lived here with his son and his daughter-in-law, and he supposed they would want room for some children at some point in the future as well.
Koradan knocked on the door, bracing himself for pointed questions about what he was doing here and what he wanted the bottle of liquor for.
But when Peter opened the door, Koradan was met with a look of surprise that quickly morphed into a wide smile. “Koradan! What a pleasant surprise. What can I do for you? How are things up at the mine?” If there was any resentment in Peter’s voice, Koradan couldn’t detect it.
“They got Markon out of the mine,” Koradan said, cutting to the chase… but then he realised he should probably backtrack a little. “They got all the men out, actually. Which is a big relief.”
“Praise the gods,” Peter said, his shoulders drooping as he let out a sigh. “And praise you lot as well, I might add. We couldn’t have done it without you. But that’s not what brings you to my door, is it?”
“No, it’s not,” Koradan said. “Markon’s in a bad way. His leg’s broken and Lynette doesn’t have the right herbs to dull the pain. So she sent me to ask you for a bottle of gin. Markon needs to be carried down the mountain, and it’s the only thing we’ve got that might make the trip a little more comfortable for him.”
Peter nodded. “Come in, then. I’ve got one in the pantry. Come on, you won’t be disturbing anyone. Raine and Rex went off to Vernon’s house. His wife’s got her hands full with an injured husband and the kids, so Raine said she’d go lend a hand.” Peter’s chatter was becoming both familiar and soothing. He was one of the few people in the village who had never second guessed his own decision to accept the salases, after that initial tense meeting. “Where did that bottle get to?” Peter muttered, opening the pantry door and rummaging around inside. “Rex is always moving things. Raine tells him off for it at least once a day. She’s forever looking for something he’s put back in the wrong place. But he keeps on doing it, nonetheless. Ah! There it is. Up on the top shelf. I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to get it down for me,” he said, stepping out of the way and beckoning Koradan over.
He went, easily retrieving the bottle from the shelf. “Thank you. I’m sure Markon will appreciate it.” But as he turned to head for the door, he paused a moment, curious about Peter’s attitude. Lynette had been accepting, but still apprehensive of the salases. Some of the miners had welcomed them with open arms, but they had the significant detail of having literally had their lives saved to spur them along. But Peter…
“Can I ask you a question?” Koradan said, knowing he needed to get back to the mine, but not willing to pass up the opportunity. They were alone, after all, and whatever Peter’s reasons for his generous welcome, he might not be willing to explain them in the company of others.
“Whatever you need to know,” Peter said with a smile.
“Why are you so accepting of us? Some people are brazenly opposed to us, while others are cautiously optimistic, but you haven’t so much as blinked since that first night. You even said you’d be willing to ride on a vreki, if your legs were strong enough. Why? Why don’t we scare you at all? How are you so willing to believe that we’re not evil?”
Peter’s mouth tightened, and he nodded slowly. Then he hobbled over to the dining table and pulled out a chair. “You’ll excuse me if I sit down. My strength isn’t what it used to be. It’s a very simple story, but one that most of the people here would find entirely scandalous. It starts in an obvious place. I have three sons, as everyone knows, and the older two have long since left Varismont. The widely accepted reason is that life in a mining village was too boring for them. Young Rex was happy to settle for the simpler things in life, and Raine moved here from Redvale – that’s two villages over – when she and Rex fell in love. But this isn’t about Rex. It’s about Leon. He’s the oldest of my boys. Some twenty years ago, he met a woman. Nataya. Sweetest girl I’ve ever met. She arrived in the village one night, in the middle of a wild storm, and he took her in. She gave him some story about an abusive father forcing her to leave her home, which was ostensibly way out east near the coast. The details of the story don’t matter, and I know for a fact that most of it wasn’t true. But she was a darling girl, always eager to lend a hand, always thinking the best of everyone. And they fell in love, as youth are prone to do, and he asked her to marry him.
“Looking back, it’s easy to try and say I thought there was something odd about her, but the truth is I found her entirely unremarkable at the time. The only thing I really noticed was that she wore a large obsidian gem around her neck.” Koradan’s eyes suddenly grew wider and he stood up straighter.
“You know what that was, don’t you?” Peter asked, and Koradan nodded. “She said it was an heirloom her mother had given her,” Peter went on. “Refused to take it off, even to swim or bathe. And but for an odd twist of fate, she might have continued on that way, her secret forever kept, and my son none the wiser.
“But as chance would have it, she was cooking one day and a spark leapt out of the fire and onto her blouse. It caught alight, just for a moment, and she panicked. Tore the front out of the blouse to get it away from her, and in doing so, she accidentally broke the cord of her necklace.
“I was the only one home at the time. My wife had taken the boys out fishing, and Nataya wanted to prepare dinner as a nice surprise for them.
“She shocked the living daylights out of me, when she turned into… whatever she was. She had green skin. Black claws. A long, black tail.” Peter looked up suddenly, snapping out of the memory. “I don’t suppose… You wouldn’t happen to know what she was, would you? She never said, and I’ve always been a little curious.”
“Green skin and a black tail? She was a hadathmet,” Koradan said. “They’re a mostly peaceful but strong willed species. Their king negotiated with the Stone King to be allowed to continue ruling his own country, even after the Stone King united the five lands in a peaceful treaty. He was the only one of the other kings who ever managed it. But… what happened to Nataya? After you saw what she was?”
Peter pressed his lips together and Koradan saw them tremble. “She cowered on the floor in front of me. Begged me for her life. I didn’t know what to say. In the end, I told her that I had no quarrel with her or her people, but that I needed to tell my son. Leon had a right to know what she was.
“I don’t know what I expected him to do when I told him. I wondered, later, whether I should have told him at all. Not because I didn’t want him to know, but because it was that that caused him to leave the village. He loved her, you see. And even knowing what she was, he wanted to be with her. But he considered me to be too great a risk to her safety. He was concerned that I’d eventually tell somebody, or let it slip at an inopportune moment. It’s one thing for the village to negotiate with five strapping warriors, you see,” he said, looking Koradan up and down. “But faced with one lone woman, there are those here who would have murdered her without a second thought.
“So Leon left, taking Nataya with him. To this day, I don’t know where he went, except that it was somewhere to the south. He wanted a fresh start for himself and Nataya, in a place where no one knew what she was.
