PROLOGUE
“Fuck!” cried Fern, ducking back inside the carriage a whisker before a clawed and scaled hand sailed past. A noxious ribbon of blood trailed in its wake, the owner no longer properly attached.
Fishy gurgles and bubbling roars arose on all sides, and the carriage rocked from another impact as the rattkin tipped back onto the bench, leather satchel clutched to her chest. No sooner had she bruised her own tail than she lunged forward again, flinging the bag aside to wrap furry arms around the gryphet scrabbling at the inside of the door.
Her pet’s bedraggled feathers fluffed around his head, his graying hair bristling along his back. He hooted and huffed hoarsely at the commotion outside, and Fern hugged him against her belly. “Hush, Potroast,” she soothed in a fierce whisper. “Somebody out there is on our side. I know you’re brave, but you’refartoo old for this.”
His wing tufts fanned her face indignantly.
When a fishy face and a needle-packed mouth appeared at the window—croaking and hissing and oozing all over the sill—concerns over Potroast’s advancing age were blown clear out of her head.
The door rattled in its frame as the pescadine clawed furiously at the wood, jamming its head into the opening and spraying spittle in all directions. White, staring eyes gleamed like peeled eggs above an overcrowded maw.
The top hinge snapped and bounced off the opposite wall with a cheerful metallicping.
Fern’s deep well of profanity temporarily ran dry.
In the next moment, the nightmare at the door vanished with a sound like a melon in a mangle.
Through the slimed and splintered window frame, Fern caught moonlit flashes of silver as shrieks rose and were hacked off one by one, each more distant than the last, until eerie silence prevailed. Even Potroast’s wheezing pants subsided.
A strangled moment passed. Then two. Then five.
The chirr of swamp frogs stirred into a relieved chorus.
She caught the wide eyes of the carriage driver taking refuge across from her, his long hands clapped over his mouth as though he couldn’t trust himself not to utter a sound. His knees were drawn up to his chin as he cowered on the opposite bench.
Both their gazes snapped to the door again at the sound of muddy hoof clops approaching.
A sonorous voice echoed from the gloom outside.
A fussy voice. A pompous voice.
The sort of voice that could stultify the unlucky at a thousand paces.
“Ah, the common pescadine. Maltheus famously wrote of them inThe Eighty Verses,where he likened them to his in-laws at winter solstice festival. Droll, indeed. My lady, did you know that they havefourstomachs? Ha! Yes, and only two are reserved for food and digestion. It’s quite fascinating, really, as unlike their upcountry brethren, the third and fourth are filled with small stones, which they—”
A deep sigh then, and the hiss of a blade finding its sheath.
“Hello?” ventured Fern.
The terrified coachman moaned behind one hand and used the other to frantically beg for her silence.
The sloppy hoofbeats drew nearer.
Gloved fingers wrapped over the windowsill and tugged, wrenching the door half out of its frame on a final, protesting hinge.
“You want to unlatch that?”
A different voice. Un-fussy.Notpompous.
Fern reached across Potroast’s body to flip up the latch, whereupon the coachman squeaked, and the door fell out of its jamb entirely.
Framed there, amidst bearded moss and fireflies, a figure out of legend.
Silver hair cropped short and wild as though with a dull knife.
Eyes the blue of northern ghostlights, deep as glacial pools.
