Wren slipped next to Garin as he shrugged out of his page's uniform, which fit tightly and loosely in all the wrong places. "He's a bouquet of lemons, isn't he?" she noted.
"Still because of Jonn?"
"That, and Ox is still out there searching for him — he'd have made a far more believable traitor than Mikael. But our performance of Kingmakers and Queenslayers isn't making things any better."
Wren slipped off her costume as a young nobleman, unveiling her underclothes with as little shame as the rest of the troupe. Garin quickly looked away, trying to move his thoughts back to safer waters, but they kept straying back to the brief glimpses he'd stolen of her bared skin.
"Why put on a show anyway?" she continued, oblivious to his observations, her voice muffled as she shrugged on a tunic. "Avendor will carry on skirmishing with Sendesh come spring. Why bother with the pretense?"
Garin shrugged. "For the spectacle, maybe. Or maybe King Aldric wants to make use of the troupe he pays for."
She snorted lightly. "Kings and their expectations. Take a coin from a king, and he owns you — that's what Father says, anyway. Funny how he ended up doing it, though."
"Maybe being bound for life isn't so bad."
Wren turned her gold-green eyes on him. "Bound to serve someone else until the end of your days? Is that really the life you want?"
Garin didn't know what he wanted. At the moment, not returning to a certain moonlit courtyard in his dreams every night, forgetting the ghouls spraying their innards across the castle corridor, would have been enough for him.
"No, I guess not."
"Don't sound too sure," she said mockingly. "I know I don't. When I'm seventeen and my own woman, I'm going to travel the span of the Westreach."
Hadn't he wanted the same thing, to travel and see the World, just months before? Now, he wondered if he'd seen too much.
Aloud, he said, "That's only two years away."
"Only? It can't come soon enough." Dressed again, she turned and faced him, a hand on her hip. "But you only just got here. You probably still think it's wondrous and all that nonsense."
If only she knew how little I believed that. He tried on a smile. "Something like that. But I guess this castle is as small to you as Hunt's Hollow felt to me. We want something other than what we're used to, I suppose."
She cocked her head. "Is that why you came, then? With Tal?"
"Why else? I felt closed up in my town. Though I thought I'd seen a lot when I first left because I'd visited all the towns in the East Marsh."
Wren laughed — a loud, raucous sound that he found he wanted to hear more of.
"Just wait," she said. "Someday, we'll see far more than that."
His heart tripped over its next beat. We? Did she mean by that word what he thought, what he hoped?
She was watching him, lips still curved in a smile. "Who does Tal think the traitor is?"
That was a turn he had hoped they wouldn't take. When he'd woken the day after they'd drunk from the tun, his stomach sour and his head feeling as if it had been stuffed inside too small a skull, he'd hoped he'd imagined his revelation to Wren. But he'd always known it had been a fanciful hope.
Still, the truth was that he didn't know any more than she did. Since the courtyard incident, Garin had wanted nothing more than to stay away from Tal's hunt for the traitor, and not just because he feared running into more ghouls. He had done and seen things, unnatural things. And he had no desire to repeat them.
"I don't know," he muttered.
Wren didn't bother hiding her disbelief. She leaned in closer, and despite himself, he breathed in her scent, earthy and sweet and floral at once.
"Tell you what," she said in a low voice. "You tell me what Tal has learned from his probing about the castle, and in exchange, I'll tell you what makes him the Magebutcher. Agreed?"
Garin only hesitated a moment. It was trading a penny for air, as the saying went. But though he was tricking her, he knew he didn't have to feel bad. After all, it didn't take him long to figure out why she'd questioned him about Tal after filling him up with Jakadi wine.
He shrugged, trying to hide his eagerness. "Fine."
A grin split her face, wide and bright, and under that smile, he found it hard to breathe.
"Then let's go," she said, turning. "Father can orate it far better than I ever could, and telling a Tal story might put him in a better mood."
Following her from the corner, Garin felt a pit forming in his gut, and not for tricking Wren. For some reason, he felt guilty seeking out this story, as if it were a betrayal to Tal. No more of a betrayal than revealing what I promised him I wouldn't, he thought wryly.
But the way everyone said that name, Magebutcher… He had to know.
"Father!" Wren had the note of command as she strode up to her father, springy hair bouncing with every step. "Garin hasn't heard the tale of why Tal is called the Magebutcher."
Falcon Sunstring, who had been staring morosely from the set and nursing a goblet of wine, looked up. "Has he not indeed? Come around, then, sit. It's a tale you ought to know, though I can understand why Tal wouldn't want to tell you."
Unable to think of a response, Garin sat on the floor and looked up expectantly, feeling like a child sitting around a fire before an elder's story. Overhearing, other actors began to drift closer, waiting for the story to unfold.
The bard gazed around at his audience for a long, silent moment. Then, without preamble, he began.
"Tal had only just begun to earn a name for himself when he came to the Warlocks' Circle. Only twenty-one autumns old, tales were already circulating about him. How he'd slain Heyl, the demon who had set fire to half of Elendol. How the Queen of Gladelyl had beseeched his aid in tracking down the Silver Vines, a branch of the Cult of Yuldor that had spread throughout the elvish realm. How he had succeeded in infiltrating the syndicate and even killed one of the Extinguished themselves.
"These rumors, however, hadn't reached the Circle by the time he arrived there. And so when Tal Harrenfel laid accusations of a warlock's murder, a warlock he claimed had been his secret mentor two years before, at the feet of the Cult of Yuldor, and that the Cult had a hold inside the Circle itself, the warlocks were torn between laughing him out and smiting him where he stood.
"The loudest to scoff was Magister Kaleras. Later, Kaleras would break ties with the Circle and rise to become the Warlock of Canturith to hold the Fringes against the East, but at that time he was equal with the rest. He bade that the Circle lock up the young fool until he'd learned to hold his tongue among his betters. But not all agreed with Kaleras, and to Tal's gain, the Elder Magister wished no harm on him. So it was that the old warlock drew him aside, listened to his pleas, and heeded him. Long had he grown uneasy by the growing sympathies of the Circle with the East, and so Tal's accusations struck close.
"The Elder Magister was a cautious man with more than a century to his life, but he knew he could delay no longer. So he told Tal that if he wished to gain justice for his mentor's murder, he must retrieve an artifact that would protect him even from the workings of warlocks: he must steal the Ring of Thalkuun from the Queen of the Hoarseer goblins.