Chapter 18: 18: Drinks

Twenty minutes later, the three of them sitting around a small table in the kitchenette part of the stockroom with cups of tea that were long past being appropriately hot, Wren finished telling Myrinna and Juniper (whose continued presence hadn’t been discussed or questioned, but Wren was glad to have someone else there) the story of Dachran Mason’s final moments.

She recounted the tale much as he’d told it, even allowing him the dignity of telling them that he had in fact been pierced by a great antler and not a medium stick.

“Then his body still lies on the hills,” Myrinna murmured.

“That’s what he asked for,” said Wren. “He wanted to… um, for the plants and animals to benefit.”

“And this was two nights ago?”

Wren nodded. “Yes.”

Myrinna wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and sniffled. “A son shouldn’t die before his mother.”

“No,” said Wren. “No, he shouldn’t.”

The old woman reached out a hand and put it on top of Wren’s. “You owed him nothing,” she said. “But you were with him, and you did what he asked. For that, I’m grateful.”

How has this ended up with her comforting me? Wren briefly wondered, but she squeezed Myrinna’s hand and allowed herself to appreciate the gesture.

They sat there for a few minutes in silence, Myrinna and Wren’s hands joined, until Myrinna gave one firm squeeze and stood. “I… have some things to…” She swallowed. “I don’t know what I have to do, but I think I need to work them out alone for a while now.”

“Of course.”

“Listen,” she said to Wren. “I do not blame you. You had no part in what happened to my son. And if it had been me, I don’t know whether I could have been strong enough to tell the truth, not without a lot of pressure.” She sniffled. “If you want to stay, I think there’s still a place for you here.”

“I think I do,” Wren said quietly.

“Very well, then.” Myrinna looked at the two of them, gave them a solemn nod, and wandered off. Wren heard her climbing the stairs to her room and shutting the door.

Juniper took a sip from her mug, then stuck her tongue out. “Oh, that’s stone cold.” She pushed her chair out and stood up, stretching. “I need to eat, and if I’m honest, I don’t know that I feel super comfortable being here while Myrinna’s in the very first stage of grieving her son.”

Wren just nodded.

“Come back with me,” Juniper said, beckoning. “We always have enough food at home. And plenty of alcohol.”

So Wren followed Juniper out of the Hilarious Misunderstanding, picking up the empty hand truck as they left. Just as they were about to close the door behind them, Wren thought she heard a muffled sob from upstairs; she hesitated for a moment, then pulled the door shut. It would do neither of them any good for her to hang around while Myrinna processed what was doubtless one of the worst days of her life.

“That was… heavy,” said Juniper.

“Yeah,” Wren agreed.

“Do you want to get slightly drunk?”

“Yes, I do.”

~~~

A few short hours later, Wren was sitting around the Clair family table with Juniper, Karrhael, and Juniper’s parents. Her father, Barley, bore an astounding resemblance to his daughter, with the same dark hair, slim frame, and gentle features. Her mother, Angelica, was taller and broader, with a naturally sterner face but big, soft green eyes that gave her an ethereal, elegant quality.

Wren wasn’t generally much of a drinker, but in her short time in the Clair home, she’d discovered that gin could in fact be bloody delicious. Barley, on hearing that she didn’t have much of a taste for spirits, had mixed her something with gin, a raspberry liqueur, and lemonade, which had tasted not at all like gin but like a wonderfully refreshing summer fizz; Wren had downed several of them before remembering that there was in fact alcohol in them and she ought not to throw them back like flavoured water.

Karrhael gave her something that was apparently infused with some herb or other with minor sobering properties, plus a little bit of blue witch magic to strengthen it, which had brought her back to a pleasantly tipsy state. Not to mention the food, which must have been doing an astounding job of soaking up the drink: there were marinated meats, grain salads, flatbreads, round breads, spiced breads, fresh greens from the garden, and thick slices of cheese.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“How?” Wren mumbled as she finished another plate. “How have I lived in Din, where it’s supposed to be all the best stuff, for… like, all my life, and then literally just today I’ve had two of the best meals I’ve ever had?”

Angelica gave a knowing chuckle. “Ah, but in your fancy restaurants they make dozens of the same thing every day for anyone who’ll come and pay. After a while, it gets known for being fancy, and then the point is to be fancy rather than the kind of food people really need. Here, we make it a little different each time, in our own homes, to sustain ourselves and the people we love.”

“Hear, hear,” said Karrhael, following it up with a hiccup.

“I need to point out, though,” said Wren, leaning forwards a little too far and just about catching herself before she whacked herself on the table, “that they are not my fancy restaurants. Pff.”

“You’re done with the Big Noise, then?” Juniper asked.

Wren nodded. “I didn’t know where I was going when I left. I was just gonna go to World’s Beginning and hope I magically worked out what my life was about, but… I think I’m staying here, at least for a while.” She nodded. “I’m not going back to Din, wherever else I might end up.”

“Well,” said Barley, “we’ll be glad to have you.”

The others around the table raised their glasses in agreement. Wren tried not to blush, although she suspected she was already red-cheeked enough from the really incredibly good gin she’d had.

“Tomorrow’s the first Saturday of the month,” Juniper noted. “Community café day. A good day to come and meet people, find out what’s here.”

“Is there…” A few snippets of previous conversations flipped through Wren’s mind. “Is there, like, stuff that’s gone on lately? ‘Cos I know about the Grafredun thing with the dungeon, but I swear other people have alluded to there being more, um, drama and stuff than normal.”

She might have been mildly (alright, moderately) inebriated, but she didn’t fail to spot the looks that passed between the others.

“We have had an odd time of it,” Angelica said carefully. “That’s true. Some of it within the realms of… normal strangeness, like a bit of a squarrel infestation in the woods over the river, or when Jacka and Forde wanted to make a road and the first council thought it was such a good idea that they kept adding things to the proposal until it never happened…”

“Sorry, ‘first’ council?”

“There’s two village councils here,” Karrhael explained. “One of ‘em’s the more official one, but gets tied up in doing things properly. The other one’s not so formal, but they actually get stuff done.”

“Hm. But… so, some of it was kind of normal, but the rest not so much?”

A longer pause elapsed this time before Barley responded. “Some of our people have certainly been through some unusual experiences,” he said, “but those things are their business, so I hope you won’t mind if I let them decide when and with whom to share them.”

“Of course,” Wren said. She was perfectly satisfied with that answer - she would do the same for a friend, keeping their private business private (even from someone she knew and trusted far better than any of Cotton Mossford’s residents had any reason to trust Wren herself) until they chose to reveal it on their own terms. But she couldn’t deny that it made her curious. This quiet place had things bubbling beneath the surface - every small village did, she supposed. Every single place where people lived was an entire, complex world unto itself, no matter how tiny or remote it might look compared to other places.

“You can stay here tonight if you like,” Juniper said, casting a glance at her parents. Both nodded. “Leave Myrinna in peace. Then, tomorrow, I’ll show you around properly.”

“That,” said Wren, taking one more mouthful of food and washing it down with one more gulp of her cocktail, “sounds -” Then she chewed for a moment and swallowed. “Sounds really great,” she finished.

“Oh, good,” said Juniper.

~~~

Deacon Gofenreck Adelman was a pious man.

There was in fact no longer any requirement for a deacon to be pious, not since a royal decree had separated church and state centuries before. The terminology and iconography of the deaconry as a religious order had remained in an attempt to make the whole system more palatable to the people, or perhaps more intimidating, but to be a deacon in Adelman’s time was officially to be a secular agent of the government.

Nevertheless, Adelman considered himself a true believer. Not in the tradition of Unity, the most popular religion in Gradia, but in an older god. One of balance, of justice. One who had created all things to exist in perfect equilibrium - except for humans, who had deviated from its plan and set things out of balance. To be holy, to fulfil his duty, was to correct those imbalances.

And the most egregious imbalance of all was a fateworker.

“What does the Crown wish of me?” he growled when his black mage had finished reading the message from Din.

“The High Deacon’s instructions are to investigate, sir, and to act on the findings of that investigation.”

“How specific.”

“I have a location of the fateworker’s activity.” The black mage extended her hand; the fabric of space swirled momentarily around her fingers before dropping a roll of paper into her palm, which she held out to Adelman.

“Send a Juror,” Adelman said without taking the paper. “And if anything is found, do nothing without telling me.”

Deacon Adelman was the eyes and ears of the Crown, and the executor of its will: a magistrate over, in his case, the two most south-western counties of the Kingdom. In those counties, very little ever happened that required much of his official attention, leaving him free to pursue worship of his god in a less formal capacity. Usually, that meant journeying quietly out into the nearby towns and cities and simply correcting any imbalances he witnessed (generally through the righteous application of his powerful fists, such that the hapless sinners of this god-fallen country would learn their lesson). But if he had a chance to redress the terrible asymmetry entailed by a fateworker’s very existence… well, that would both stand him in good stead with the Crown and serve as a wonderful offering to his god.

“In fact,” he said, “a Juror - with a Judge, of course - as an advance party, and then… I think I shall go myself.”

The black mage looked visibly confused before catching herself. “Of course, Deacon.”

“Yes.” He reached out and took the roll of paper, unfurling it and studying the map drawn there. He had never heard of the village named on the map, which was no real surprise: there were barely any towns big enough to be worth noticing in his part of the country, but so many villages with such utterly rural-sounding names that it was hardly worth trying to learn any of them. In fact, he had been to this very village on more than one occasion and simply forgotten about it. “I shall go to… Cotton Mossford.”