a thick, warm quilt on a cold night.
His eyes grew wet when he sang “A Cloak, a Dagger, a Journey,” about a mother who gave her only child to the Drakes to break a Pig Witch curse. Some of the native Vorse in the room flinched at Madoc’s tears, but they said nothing. Madoc was Elsh.
I felt my heart stir, my blood grow warm, as I watched the Bard perform his art. Singing made Madoc even more beautiful. His skin glowed in the firelight, and his eyes were large and luminous.
The Bard took a seat beside me. It was Ink’s turn. She walked to the center of the tavern.
The storyteller did not tell one of her quiet, savalikk tales—we were all too drunk for this—but one that featured a foolish hedge-fighter with a wooden sword. He wandered the pastoral Elshland countryside, seeking dragons, only to end up battling apple-cheeked milkmaids and spindly scarecrows instead. Like Madoc’s first song, it required the listeners to participate, this time shouting out phrases at key moments, and we were all laughing helplessly by the end. Even the five Boneless Mercies chuckled from their shadowed corner.
The Sea Witches bought our table another round of ale, and then we bought a third, and on and on it went. The Pinket Trills kept the amber brew coming, and we kept pace with the Sea Witches.
By midnight we’d closed down the tavern—everyone else had gone, either to their rooms at the back of the inn or to their camps somewhere on the forest floor. The six of us stumbled over to the dying fire and fell into a heap. Gyda squeezed between the two Sea Witches, and I curled up between Madoc and Ink, my nose buried in the storyteller’s curls, my back pressed against the singer’s chest.
A night breeze swirled down from the sky above, rustling the ceiling of leaves—it was a soft, drowsy sound.
One of the Pinket Trills drew near, her arms loaded with furs. She leaned over and tucked me, Ink, and Madoc under two thick sheepskins.
“Do you know of Heart Seed and Fisher Ives?” I asked sleepily. “The signpost to Tintagle points to these other towns, though no roads lead in their direction.”
Her thick blond hair tickled my cheek as she pulled the pelt down my body. She straightened, met my gaze, and nodded. “There are dark rumors about that side of the forest. Storytellers stay in our inn often, and one who frequents us regularly is quite old—ninety if she is a day—but still as sharp as a tack. She tells a tale about Fisher Ives.”
The Pinket Trill sister paused. Ink, Gyda, and the witches were asleep, but Madoc was awake—I felt his body shift next to mine, waiting to hear more.
“What is your name?” I asked her before she could speak again.
“There are five of us Pinket Trills,” she answered. “All sisters. My birth name is Sunset, and my sisters are Evening, Noon, Dawn, and Midnight.”
“Lovely,” I said. “You’re all lovely.”
She smiled wide, ear to ear. “This old storyteller claims that Fisher Ives is the name of an abandoned tree town. A young Jade Fell outcast came to these woods two hundred years ago. The Jade Fell built herself a tower of black river stone in the middle of the village—each stone plucked from the banks of the Messina River, which flows through the center of the Brocee Leon. From her tower, the Jade Fell wove great spells, and her sorcery rippled through the forest and caused great harm. Thiss Brambles grew over the road to Fisher Ives until the path was entirely lost to the woods. People left the tree town, and it went to ruin. The witch was finally slain by a young female Quick—the brave archer shot an arrow through her black Jade Fell heart, and the witch fell from her tower. The storyteller went on to say that the trees then took their revenge on the witch. Their roots covered her corpse and broke all her bones in their tight knots and gnarls.” She paused. “Though this might have been her own embellishment.”
“I’ll have to tell this story to Ink tomorrow,” I replied softly. “She will be interested.”
Sunset began to rub one of her tight blond curls between two fingers. “It’s funny you should ask about Fisher Ives. We had a band of Quicks through here the other night, and their young leader claimed she had found the Fisher Ives tower. She and her companions were fetching supplies