The campfire cast jumping shadows of the four of them as they huddled around, seeking the shelter of burning light from a suddenly hostile Knifewood.
Within the fire, Larya knew, burned the daemon seed that had been inside her—as well as all the seeds Talla and Carrow had been able to find in the ranger's hut. The silvery beads burned neither especially well nor especially poorly, though they did have to be contained in a pot so they wouldn't melt down and leak to safety.
"So," Larya said, "how long have you guys known that—"
"Three years." Talla leaned forward, nudging a bit of silvery daemon essence back into the pot with her torch. The azure-haired Spirit Ranger looked up at Larya, her dark eyes reflecting the lights of the fire, casting Larya's mind into dizzy reenactments of Alma's beautiful silver gaze, her hypnoti— "We've known Alma was dead for three years."
"Hm." Snatch fidgeted. His midriff was heavily bandaged, and he was clearly trying hard not to irritate his injuries. His seeds had been applied . . . differently from Larya's, and the extraction had not been pleasant for anyone. "And you never sent anyone to . . . check?"
Talla's eyes flashed. The brass clasp at her chest, depicting a raging bonfire, did as well, reflecting the light as she straightened. "The Spirit Rangers aren't a corporation, 'Snatch'." The way she said his name clearly indicated her little faith that it was genuine. "And we aren't paladins or priests, either."
Larya winced at this. So did Snatch and Carrow. The paladins and priests had been powerful agents of the gods, and their influence had faded not long after the fall of the Gods' Kingdom. Though nobody really liked to say it, everyone knew the four ranger orders were pale imitators at best. But they were all the common folk had.
"We check up on occasion," Talla went on. "You should've guessed something was up if you had an up-to-date map. We've known for three years that this lodge was unmanned." She gestured back to the hut. "It was only recently, though, that we started to suspect just how badly Alma had been . . . out of her league."
Larya stared at the fire. It ate away at the silver with equal relish to the wood. She watched it burn away. "It doesn't seem fair," she heard herself say. "She just wants to live. She isn't undead."
"Daemons are tough," Talla said. "And not just in the fighting sense." Her voice was strained. "Look . . . Alma's dead. What you met was some stray unused soulstuff, plucked from the birthplace of life. Cancerous tissue, like. It found Alma's body, found her soul, and tried to imitate what it found. But it wasn't Alma. It may as well be the thing that killed her."
Larya nodded, but she didn't say anything. She didn't think Talla's assurances had anything to do with what she had just said. It still wasn't fair.
"So you're gonna pack up this hut, track down the daemons, and finish the job?" Snatch asked.
"Oh, yes." Like Snatch, Talla sounded a bit more comfortable talking about logistics. "We'll take the real treasures, but you can take most of whatever you like from that lodge. Carrow and I will find Alma. That's what we came here for, even if it takes us all week."
"The mister's gonna tan my hide," Carrow said, chuckling. "But some things you can't help, right?"
"Are you a ranger?" Larya asked him. The large dark-skinned man who had accompanied Talla wore no badge or cloak, just common laborer's clothes. He looked more like a butcher than a professional guardian of the wilderness. Carrow had shown a bit more care in comforting her earlier than the all-business Talla, and she instinctively found herself liking him.
"Ha! Nah. Never had the urge to travel much." Carrow grinned. "Just a cooper who tries to keep his town safe. Talla needed someone to carry her equipment. I volunteered. Anything to help the Rangers."
"That's nice." Larya smiled back. "You have family in town?" As she spoke, she saw Snatch get up and walk over to the hut.
Oh, gods, he's not going to start looting now just to get a head start on the people who rescued us, is he?
She heard a banging from inside, and cringed.
Of course he is.
"No, no relatives. Just my husband." Carrow frowned. "Oh, and Misty, but we adopted her when she was sixteen, and she's apprenticed to an adventurer now at eighteen, so . . . we don't see much of her."
"And you live in the . . . elf town?" For the life of her, Larya could not remember the town's actual name."
"Elf town?" Carrow blinked. "No, no. Merikeet. Little trading village to the south. The elf town . . . oh, you're heading to Celestia!" He paused. "Huh. That's a, uh . . . bit dangerous for you two, don't you think?"
"What's that supposed to mean?"
Carrow let out a nervous laugh as he got up and walked around the fire. His eyes were hooded by the fire's shadows now."Well, the Celestial Family can be tricky to handle. Sorta . . ." He trailed off, then rallied. "Well, they're best-known for their brothels, and—I guess you'd call it aggressive advertisement."
"They're seducers," Talla said flatly. "And criminals. Where I'm from, we call them gangsters. That village is trouble."
Larya's cheeks burned. She knew now that they were thinking about how easily Snatch and Larya had been dispatched by the daemons. "We can handle ourselves," she said, with more conviction than she really felt.
"If you say so." Talla shrugged. "All the same, be careful. They aren't as dangerous as daemons or anything, but the Celestial family . . . They have a reputation. Everything they do is legal, that we can prove." She threw her arms in the air, scowling. "They
always
show proof of consent afterwards in everything they do, so the Toxin Rangers, our brothers and sisters who guard against druggers and hypnotists, have to leave them alone. But they are a wily lot."
"How so? Oh!" Larya leaned back reflexively as Carrow returned, now holding out a tin cup of something brown and smoking. She took it. It looked like some sort of stew. "Thanks, Carrow."
She saw Talla's tongue go into her cheek. The ranger's arms slowly lowered. "The last ranger who crossed the Celestial family was given a pair of . . . honey shoes."
"Honey whats?"
"Wow, you really are from the Sagebrush, aren't you?" Carrow laughed. He raised his own cup and messily slurped at his helping of stew, his beard becoming messy with broth. "Don't have to worry about Thriae much over there, I guess. Just Chosen."
"And dire tumbleweeds," Larya said gravely.
She enjoyed the looks Carrw and Talla immediately exchanged. Nobody
ever
believed them about the tumbleweeds.
"Honey shoes," Talla said, her words as delicately chosen as the notes of a novice violinist, "are a euphemism. A Spirit Ranger by the name of Mesquire the Unlucky got in a fistfight with Cellesixe's second cousin. Apparently, the man was using ghouls to dispose of inconvenient corpses. The murders were fine by Mesquire, I'm sure, but he came from a family of druids and he hated the undead."
Larya shuddered. She didn't know why, but something about undead had always unnerved her in a way spiders and snakes never had.
"When Cellesixe got wind of the scandal," Talla continued, her voice sounding not so much sad as rueful, "she had both her second cousin and Mesquire rounded up. Encased their legs in irons, took them up to a Thriae Honey Dome, and . . ." She mimed a toss.
"Wow. That's . . . that's twisted." Larya had only heard foul stories about the Thriae: Terrifying bee creatures that turned their victims into warped addicts. "They can get that close to the Thriae? Aren't they worried the Thriae will, you know, take
them
?"
Talla laughed. "The Thria and the Celestials have an arrangement. In fact, as I understand it, Cellesixe has an on-again-off-again relationship with one of the queens."
Larya blinked. "Really? But I thought they were . . . bees." She didn't like to think of herself as narrow-minded, but attraction to insects was a little beyond the pale for her.
"Bee women," Carrow clarified. "Fey. Wasp-waisted troublemakers who always love taking in new toys." He finished off his stew with one last, long slurp. "Mesquire the Unlucky probably started feeling pretty damn lucky after the third dunk in the honey. They break your mind with that stuff."
"...oh." Larya felt her face growing hot. She'd never heard
those
stories.
An image popped into her head: Herself, gripped in the arms of beautiful women, being made to drink that brainwashing mead until it trickled out of her every orifice. She'd always thought honey sprites were just set loose to prowl the deserts after the fact—when they weren't just eaten by the bees. But perhaps they were destined for more pleasant things . . .
She snapped herself out of it. Why couldn't she stop thinking about sex? "Good night," she said, answering Talla's brief farewell as the ranger got up and started picking up her supplies. "So you two are heading out, then?"
"We'll keep this camp as a base," Carrow said. "You're welcome to sleep here. But tonight's gonna be busy, right, Talla?"
"Oh, yeah." Talla was already walking off. That torch of hers had not left her side since the ranger had arrived, Larya realized. Did it ever burn down? "Best of luck, Larya. And remember—if they suggest you need to stop going around barefoot, make sure
you
choose the cobbler." She let out an odd, coyote-like laugh.
Larya caught herself ogling the two travelers' rears as they made their way to the cabin. Despite his slight potbelly, Carrow was clearly very much in shape where it counted. Yalla's form was more obscured by the armor, but she was obviously a slim specimen. Pity she wasn't as friendly as Alma, she thought ruefully.
She watched as the pair entered the hut. Almost simultaneously, a window in the side opened, and Snatch came sliding out like a snake. He landed ungracefully in the grass and scurried back towards th fire, obviously laden with ill-gotten gains. "I left the book," he hissed, as though that fully justified the rest of his behavior. "Seemed a bit irreverent to steal a book of the gods."
"What
did
you take?" Larya couldn't help feeling a bit curious.
A pair of panties to remember her by?
a voice in her head half-joked.
Snatch grinned. It was a disturbing look on him, and Larya hoped she never saw him smile again. He raised up an old burlap satchel. The image of a grasping skeletal hand was embroidered on the flap. "I guess you could call it Carrow's job security."
~~~~
As it turned out—Snatch was annoyingly cagey about it—the satchel was effectively bottomless. Larya had tried sticking her head into it, but it of course had been too dark inside to see anything. She hadn't really wanted to try climbing inside. They could put whatever they wanted into the satchel, and nothing would bounce together, or break, or even weigh anything.
Larya had dubbed it a 'handy haversack'. Snatch had thought that name was stupid and called it a 'really good satchel'.
The two of them had awoken the next morning to find that Carrow and Talla were gone. Carrow had left a skillet from the lodge, though, which Snatch had happily appropriated. "What?" he'd said, to Larya's glare. "There's other skillets in the lodge for when they get back."
The skillet had been full of a delightful cornmeal-egg concoction. Some local recipe. Snatch had hated it, then eaten three servings of it, then hated it again. He'd woken up in a good mood, evidently.
Neither of them had spoken about the events of the previous night. Snatch seemed mostly embarrassed about falling victim to the daemon right in front of Larya. And Larya . . . couldn't stop thinking about Alma.
