The tavern had been busy by Velora’s standards when I went up hours before, but the numbers had swelled to at least twice as many patrons in the interim. More than had been in the tavern in Canmar, more than I’d seen in any of the taverns I’d frequented in the months since my ouster from my coven.
I could not recall the last time I’d seen so many humans gathered together in one place.
Garrick paused as well, even with me behind him. Was it the Lifebind that made him so attuned to my movements, or something else?
“This is the road that leads to the Sea of Forgetting and eventually to the Southern Fate,” he said.
I knew that. I’d traveled this road to reach Kyna and Kyrelle’s cottage a dozen times over the fifty years. Or rather, I’d avoided this road. But that was essentially the same thing in this instance. I’d surely seen this tavern at one point or another, if only from the outside.
“But why is it so busy?”
Garrick sighed, and I recognized the grimness in the sound. “They recognize the death throes of Velora the same way you do.”
Desperation and stupidity. That was how I’d come to characterize humanity over the last several hundred years. But what I saw in that tavern… yes, both of those things. There was something else, too. It looked suspiciously like hope. These people truly believed they’d be able to escape Velora’s curse. The drinks in their hands probably helped with that.
“Care to peddle your spells for coin?” Garrick smirked.
My hand flew to the coven mark between my brows.
Garrick caught my wrist, his hand encircling mine so fully his fingers overlapped by two full joints. “Do not hide who you are, Koryn. Not a single part of yourself. No one will touch you tonight.”
At the Mercy Gate, I’d used my teeth to rip the points from my nails, to hide the markers of my resurrection. They’d grown out in the intervening weeks, but I had not filed them to points. I promised myself that once we returned to our room, I would do exactly that. No more hiding.
I took the final step down into the tavern’s common room.
Garrick parted the crowd, leading us to a table positioned along the wall with quick access to the rear exit and an easy view of the rest of the room. The lone occupant deserted their seat without us asking. Whether it was my coven mark or Garrick’s stature… more likely the weapons he’d insisted on strapping back on before we came down.
Garrick waited until I was seated with Isanara at my side. She was too large for a chair, though I half expected her to climb up into my lap.
“I would be better placed to protect you if I did,”she sassed, listening in on my thoughts.
“You are conspicuous enough as it is.”That might be the real reason the crowd had parted. Dragons were creatures of legend and lore. None of the beings in this tavern were long-lived enough to remember when they roamed Velora freely. Hell, neither was I.
Garrick’s eyes flicked between me and Isanara. I wondered if we shared some sort of strange, telltale expression when we spoke mind to mind. If we did, Garrick would certainly be the one to figure it out.
“I will order us food,” he said before tracing a path back to where the busy barkeep held court.
Sitting on her hind legs, Isanara’s head was almost even with mine. I was not sure I enjoyed the experience of having her that close as I methodically scanned the tavern’s occupants. I did not plan on selling any spells, but I applied the same skills of observation that I’d honed in the months before entering the Mercy Gate.
There were several prostitutes, probably in residence in the rooms on the second floor of the tavern. All were rail thin. Despite the popularity of this stop on the way to the Southern Fate, the proprietor was not feeding them well. My stomach twisted at the injustice, but I ignored it. The only human left that I cared about was Kyrelle, I reminded myself.
“Maybe I chose incorrectly,”Isanara snapped.
“Excuse me?”
“I ought to have chosen a witch less given to delusions.”
Before I could argue back, she flicked her deadly tail across the scarred tabletop. I followed the direction of that point, acrossseveral occupied tables, a man kissing a prostitute’s bosom, until I found Garrick.
I could not even argue back, not with a being who could hear the thoughts in my head.
Instead, I ignored her and continued to examine the tavern’s occupants. There were no children, though that was not surprising. They were too precious to be out in public like this. There were families, though. A woman in her twenties sat beside what could only be a brother, while across from them an older couple sipped from a shared glass of wine. Perhaps the old woman’s fruitfulness, bearing not one child but two, had convinced them to linger longer in Velora, believing they would escape the ravages of the curse. But here they were, on the road to a desperate salvation just like the rest.
I counted heads, trying to judge their potential paths. This far south, anyone seeking reliable passage out of Velora would travel around the southeast curve of the mountains until they found a port with ships leaving across the Southern Fate. But there were other, cheaper ways off of Velora. For those who could not muster enough coin, the Sea of Forgetting beckoned. The passage required a stop on the Dead Isle, the birthplace of the witches. Not even I had been there, nor any member of my coven.Tirybaswas a name whispered in our darkest rituals, in the spells that called for offerings of blood.
To try and negotiate the Sea of Forgetting without stopping to pay homage to the witches was to court death. To set foot upon the Dead Isle meant facing whatever horrors remained after thousands of years.
I continued scanning the room. The faces with hope would seek the Southern Fate. Those with only desperation were bound to an even more dangerous fate. And none of it was a concern of mine. If I made it through the Seven Gates, everyone in Velora would be better off.
