At my side, Kalos snorts. I shift my weight and step on his foot.
The fisherman just eyes us. “No. You got coin?”
“I’ve got gold jewelry,” I blurt out, and wonder if that was stupid. Why not just say “please rob me”? Being in the swamp for so many days has pickled my brain.
But the fisherman just waves us forward. He drops his nets at the end of the dock and turns back toward the ramshackle house nearby. “Come on, then. You can show me what you have inside. Hope you like fish stew.”
My mouth waters. “Fish stewsounds amazing.”
We follow him inside. The cabin interior is just as bad as I expected it to be. It’s cramped, has a bed and fishing equipment, and a tiny hearth. It smells like old fish. My stomach turns, but when he heads for the hearth and pulls a kettle off a hook, I get hungry all over again. “Leftovers,” he says. “You can have it in exchange for gold.”
It takes everything I have not to snatch the cookpot out of his hands. “You’re too kind.”
He pulls out a stool, indicating I should sit on it. Eyeing Kalos and his equally drippy robes, he turns over a large wooden bucket and gestures that this ‘seat’ is for the god. To my surprise, Kalos doesn’t comment on the terribleness of this seat. He just hunches over and sits, frowning when the uneven lip of the bucket makes him tilt to one side. Dingle moves to Kalos’s side and playfully head-butts him, and the god puts a hand on the smelly goat’s muddy back and gives him a gentle nudge away.
The fisherman makes a “gimme” sign with his hand. “Gold?”
I open my pack - now much lighter than before since I’ve eaten all the supplies. There’s a bundle from Jemet that I haven’t looked inside, but I offer it to him to look through. “Food please?”
He hands me a wooden bowl and thumps the kettle down on the rickety table. There’s a dirty wooden spoon laying atop a rag on the far end of the table, and since I’m not being offered dining ware, I grab it and clean it with the rag, then use the spoon to shovel stew into my bowl. I’m probably going to get cooties from all the germs, but I don’t care. I pile the bowl high with brownish-gray sludge and look over at Kalos.
The god waves a hand at me. “You know I don’t do that.”
Right. I’m the only one starving. I shove a jiggly, congealed bite into my mouth. It tastes like fish soup all right, and it’scold. It’s also delicious, because I’m ravenous. I down the whole bowl as fast as I can while the fisherman eyes the jewelry left for me and bites on a golden medallion.
I fill a second bowl and demolish it, and as the edge is taken off, I eye the fisherman. Maybe this is a good time to get some information about the situation. “Tell us what you know of the Anticipation. Like I said before, our farm is very isolated. We don’t get much information from the cities.”
The fisherman grunts and runs his fingernail over the medallion, then sets it aside. He glances at me. “We don’t get much news here either, but I’m surprised you haven’t heard anything. Aron of the Cleaver has already returned to the skies.”
I have no idea who that is, but it sounds like it might be a good thing to not run into him. “So soon?”
“Aye. He wasted no time in going to war. Went through all his Aspects quickly.”
“And Rhagos?” Kalos speaks up, voice mild and quiet. “What of him?”
The fisherman’s demeanor changes. He tosses invisible salt over his shoulder, a scowl on his face. “The dark brothers still walk the world, or so I have heard.”
Dark…brothers? I eye Kalos, wondering if he’s the other brother, given that he’s disease and all. Why didn’t he tell me he had a brother? Do we need to meet up with him? Do we even want to team up with a “dark brother”? Can I handle more than one bad guy? At least the fisherman hasn’t noticed that Kalos isn’t exactly “blending” in. My companion is covered in just as much mud as me, though, his long hair wet and disheveled and dark with swamp muck. Maybe we can get away with this for a while. I blink innocently at our host. “Gosh. Sounds terrible. I hope they go home quickly.”
“Or they never go home at all,” the old man says sourly. “We could do without either of ’em if you ask me.”
Before Kalos can comment on anything, I take the reins of the conversation again. “Anything else you can tell us about? Any other gods? You seem to know a lot.”
The man grunts. “Got a friend that takes a trip to Sunswallow every week. He hears things.” He shakes out my jewelry bag, as if what’s in there isn’t enough, and when nothing else comes out, he picks through the trinkets again. “Lady Tadekha’s citadel is destroyed. Heard that one.”
Kalos makes a noise of surprise.
“I know,” continues the fisherman. “Thought it was a lie, but I’ve seen people selling the crystals in the markets for good luck. I aim to get one myself.” He shrugs. “They say Lord Vor is somewhere on the coast, but I haven’t noticed the fishing is any different, so I can’t say. You heard that Magra is in Yshrem? Riekki is hiding in the forest cities, and I heard Belara makes her way across the Adassian plains.”
Mentally I go through the names of the deities Jemet tried to pound into my head. Vor is a god of the sea. Kassam is the Wild. I don’t remember Riekki but I’ve heard the name before. The other is a mystery though. “Who’s Belara?”
The man narrows his eyes at me.
“Belara,” Kalos says, speaking up. “Goddess of beauty.”
I realize I’ve messed up. Someone from here would absolutely know the name of every god. “Oh,thatBelara.” I pretend to clean out my ear with a finger. “I must have misheard you.”
“Mm. Well, the goddess is one to avoid,” the fisherman says.
