Chương 67: Leaf's Squirt

The next day, as Squirt rounded the loop and returned to the road they had used to get to the village, she was met by Zakam, Jul, and a very nervous Leaf. Frowning, she slowed Mole to a stop, her eyes flickering between all three. Zakam inclined his head respectfully as Jul heaved out a tired sigh, shooting her a smile before saying gently to Leaf, "See? I told you. Nothing to worry about." Leaf let out a visible breath of relief. Squirt's expression flattened. He shrugged and gave her a sheepish smile.

Good to know they could still communicate without a word, even sixty years later. She dismounted and stalked close enough to mutter, "I will remind you that I saved your ass yesterday." He softened with a nostalgic smile.

"Yeah, but… you were always the planner."

"I still am," she huffed. Neither Zakam nor Jul seemed surprised that they knew each other. She suspected it was because Zakam had no thoughts beyond that she had returned and he was to now escort her back to the village. Jul was a toss up—either he had decided it was none of his business, or he had been told by Leaf himself. A question which he answered in the next second.

"Your friend here, uh, Leaf? He was really worried when you didn't show up last night." Squirt shrugged.

"I had to get samples of the plants, and I couldn't do that until the birds were asleep." Leaf blinked at her.

"Samples of the peppers?" She nodded. His brow furrowed, attempting to work out her angle.

"I assume it's not for hot sauce." She considered it with playful seriousness.

"Not a bad thought. But no."

"If you did, I would have told you that the elders usually have a few pepper plants they grow by their front doors. The birds won't nest if they're too close to the ground, and it does make for one hell of a kick in your eggs." Squirt shook her head, gesturing for Mole to follow as she said, "Come on, I'll tell you on the way." The village chief was a greasy, subservient kind of man towards Cirn in a way that almost made Squirt pity her.

It was clear that, moving forward, Cirn should probably let Jul do all the talking as she ranked highly enough compared to these small villages that the people here wouldn't actually talk to her. As they watched the scene from the shadows, Leaf leaned in and whispered in the greenling tongue, "Nice enough guy, but he's mostly just the one that talks the best to travelers and noble folk." Squirt answered in the same language, "Does he actually make the decisions?"

"Gods no."

"Who does?" He gave her a sidelong glance. She nodded. He turned back to the awkwardly stiff swordswoman leaning back a little from the orc doing a half bow, rubbing his hands together and looking at her like she hung the sun in the sky.

"… you think she'll keep him busy for a while?" Squirt smirked. Now that sounded like petty revenge she would happily take part in. No fucking boons or debts, just good old-fashioned payback.

"Yep."

"Give me fifteen?"

"You got it." As soon as he was gone, she turned to Jul, who noticed a tiny little smirk in one corner of her mouth. She said, "When you get the chance, tell Cirn to keep the chief here until I get back." He blinked down at her.

"What language was that? It sounded like Common, but I couldn't understand a word of it." Her expression flattened.

"Maybe you shouldn't listen in on private conversations." His brows furrowed in confusion, likely clocking her deflection, but since he remained quiet she still counted it as a win. A husky voice came from near her ear. Zhadin.

"He calls you Squirt?"

"Yeah. Just like I call him Leaf." Jul asked, "Why don't the hunters use your name? Tobias only said it was offensive." She rolled her eyes.

"It's a greenling name, dumbass. Real names are only shared with your fey."

"Your fey?"

"Bullshit propaganda, don't believe it," she muttered darkly.

"What's a greenling name?" Dryly, she responded, "A name for a greenling."

"No, I mean… it's not your real name, right?"

"And?"

"Is it just, like, a nickname?"

"Yes. Sure. A nickname."

"So, what makes it a greenling name and not just a nickname?" She sighed. The tension eased out of her as she leaned her shoulder against the wall, seemingly lost in thought. Finally, eyes unfocused, she said, "It's just a cultural thing." Leaf, having returned, slowed his steps as he glanced between Jul and Squirt. Then at the shadowfell's face before they slipped back into the shadow plane. He shivered, gave Jul a polite bow in greeting, and jerked his chin subtly at Squirt.

Squirt slipped through the shadows to follow down the street to the other side of the village and a larger community house. This village was in nicer shape than her own. For one, it had a community house. For another, there were covered walkways connecting every residence and the community house, meaning that when they got snowed in during winter, they would still be able to visit each other and get together as a community. She scowled when she realized Zakam had followed her, but not Anvanil.

Damnit, she should have stopped and grabbed that man. They had a whole plan and everything, but Leaf being here had Squirt falling back on old habits like never relying on a higher ranked fey for anything she could do herself. Instead of turning around, she just hoped whoever it was would listen to a greenling. They entered the large building, headed through an entryway and, rather than heading to one of the side rooms, went to the large main room.

Leaf opened one of the doors for the double door entrance, ushering them inside. The community room was rather large, with tiered, comfortable, large benches wrapping around the room and a center area for dancing and performances. A massive fireplace centered the room, meaning even in winter they could gather here in relative comfort. Around the room, more than a few fey had gathered, and more came in every minute.

Standing by the pit in the floor that was the fireplace was an orc that Leaf greeted by fluttering over and giving her a kiss on her cheek. She shot him a loving glance in turn. Squirt lost her scowl in favor of a carefully blank expression. The orc was shorter than any orc Squirt had ever seen, and there was a greenish tinge to her otherwise rust colored skin. Orcs were typically built strong, sturdy, and teeming with muscle. She had muscle, that much was clear, but not the typical bulk.

Instead, she was somehow built more like a dancer rather than a wall. The difference made her appear more delicate than an average orc, and her curves more visible. In a word, she was pretty. She nodded towards Squirt. Even her tusks were dainty looking.

"My mate tells me you are the huntress who saved his life yesterday." Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. Murmurs were followed by a hush through the crowd. Squirt clenched her fists, glaring at them before saying, "Yes." Her entire face softened with a smile, and she bowed.

"Then let me just say, thank you, Huntress Squirt, for protecting him when I could not." Squirt gave the woman a hard stare, hating the glimmer of magic falling between them. Unbeknownst to her, Leaf was now studying Squirt intently. Instead of noticing, Squirt's eyes scanned the room, but to her surprise the audience was now looking at her with respect. In fact, not one of them looked at her with any ridicule. Thinking back now that she noticed it, there hadn't even been any before that announcement.

The orc put a hand over her chest.

"My name is Mara. How can I be of assistance?" Squirt shifted from foot to foot, eyeing the larger audience before turning her attention back to Mara. Scowling at the notion of having to do this in front of such a large crowd, a crowd that only continued to grow until damn near the entire village was in the house, she spoke clearly, enunciating each word even as her tone darkened them.

"You have set up the traps, correct?" Mara squinted in thought before saying, "The ones from the Capital? Yes, though they don't work well. We tried using lantern peppers instead of fireants, but the beasts just avoided them entirely." Squirt relaxed minutely and nodded.

"I made them for Everwinter—" she missed the flash of an epiphany in Leaf's eyes, "—and while traveling, we're documenting your beasts and plants to use instead. I think you should forgo the traps entirely. I have a plan that won't reduce the populations, but it will keep your town safer." Mara nodded, her eyes glinting eagerly as her hands landed on her hips. She nodded.

"What did you have in mind?" Less than an hour later, the woodworkers were already hard at work creating the needed posts, while the lumberjacks headed into the forest to start clearing some extra space. Squirt returned to the town square long enough to grab Anvanil by the elbow, gently tugging him into an alleyway to talk.

"You have earth magic, right?" she asked. He nodded, his burgundy eyes blinking slowly.

"Yes?"

"Can you make things grow?" He straightened, a dash of confidence in his shoulders.

"Easily."

"How much and how many times?" His brows furrowed, making his glasses slip a little farther down his nose.

"Um… I'm not actually sure." She nodded.

"Wanna find out?" The answer, as it turned out, was twenty full sized lantern pepper plants large enough to grow over a tall cross. A fortified wall of pepper trees placed at equidistant locations now surrounded the outer edge of the village's fields. Some of the woodcarvers ended up getting quite competitive to carve the best "tree" shape, making the whole affair take two days to finish. And not a moment too soon. That night, a surge woke Squirt from her sleep.

Rolling out of the bunk bed straight onto the floor, she called, "Surge!" to wake the others, dashing out without waiting for them wearing only a loincloth, her belt with accompanying bags, and breastband. Pakos yipped as he followed at a run to the village walls. Instead of running halfway around the village to the staircase, Squirt simply scaled the log walls using her climber tools, pausing at the top of the posts to scan over the treeline.

Standing on the very top of the wall instead of down on the rampart, balanced between two pointed tips of the logs, she pulled out the long recurve from Feldan, stringing it while her eyes scanned the horizon. Pakos stood at her side, now almost to her shoulders in height, growling and glowing under the light of the moon. His fur writhed, absorbing ambient power to give himself a boost. Squirt stared at him then muttered, "Great, even the damn dog is more powerful than I am." Naturally, he thought back.

She paused, bow ready by her side, realizing yes that really had just happened. Scowling at him for the sass, she pointed and snapped, "Go and guard like a good dog."

"As you wish, pricklebear," came a teasing whisper passed her other side. Qzi had scaled the wall after her, his lips threatening her cheek with a kiss as he darted over the wall to kill the few stragglers who made it through the gaps. A tendril brushed her other cheek, and she knew that Zhadin had followed him. She scowled at both of them, realizing she was now extraneous. With a pout and a sigh, she dropped down to the boardwalk and pulled out some clothes.

It seemed that for most of the feybeast population, those peppers were a strong deterrent. Good, she wanted gone from this damn place, most of all from—"Squirt?" Leaf. She dropped her head and sighed.

"What?" In greenling, he asked, "You're the great Athereon, aren't you?" Tucking her shirt into her pants, she raised an eyebrow at him.

"What do you mean great? That is just the name Lord Everwinter gave me since he apparently doesn't like the name Squirt."

"… I thought we didn't keep secrets." Finished adjusting the clothing, she pulled on her boots, trying to work out what he had figured out. He couldn't know about that—this had to be something else. Right? Instead, she studied him. Then, more seriously, she repeated, "What do you mean great?" He hesitated, studying her.

"The one who invented the traps?" Lord Everwinter had patented those for her, hadn't he? Lord Prince Ranin had said something about his name to her being too well known to be used, which was why Anvanil still called her Mystva, and the others just called her huntress. Studying her further, his eyes widened.

"You don't know." She clenched her teeth and bit out, "Start. Talking." He gave her a pitying look.

"I don't know much, being nowhere near the Capital, but the Guard who brought us the traps told us about the Great Athereon who had made them, the greatest mystery of the modern age. They were trading guesses, betting money on it." He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"Squirt, I know that name. Doesn't that tell you anything?" His eyes lifted to hers and he froze at the pale terror on her face. A knowing look passed through his eyes as he asked in a rhetorical whisper, "What happened to you?" She answered, anyway.

"I died." In greenling, the simple statement had a different contextual meaning—metaphorical death. Wherein one's identity had been purged, and a new one had been taken, instead. In this way, greenlings could disappear amongst each other in the city if one ran into trouble. Few people looked twice at greenlings, so most never noticed, simply accepted the previous one had died.

She scaled the wall to look over it, standing with her feet angled against the slope of the pointed tips when he said softly, "Something's happened to your wings." She sighed.

"… face it, Leaf. Sixty years is too long. We're practically strangers at this point." His next words came out in a broken whisper, "What have I ever done for you to lose your trust in me?"

"… nothing. But you're looking for a girl who died a long time ago and surprised she's not there. Face it—I'm not the same person you knew. I'm angry, bitter, and resentful, and gods damnit, my scars are none of anyone's damn business. I earned them. I paid the price in blood and tears and flesh to earn them, so stop looking at me like the sight of them saddens you. And if you can't fucking do that, then go the fuck away and let me do my gods damned job."

Standing there, glaring down at him in the moonlight with eyes full of rage, her forehead glowing with the mark of the Hunt, he visibly faltered. A gasp escaped his lips. Turning back towards the fields, her lips curled in a frustrated snarl before her eyes brightened with divine energy. She pulled out a slicer arrow and fired it over the wall. It hit the jugular of an earth drake that had made it past the peppers and been about to obliterate one of the fields.

His brows rose as he fluttered up just in time to see the beast drop into a massive feystone.

"Gods, what's that, like two hundred paces?" Pakos collected the feystone, scaling the wall like gravity did not exist to land by her feet on the wall, yipping in excitement. Her expression flattened.

"Less fetching, more protecting." Pakos groaned in dislike before reluctantly dropping the stone, only to excitedly jump back into the fray. She kept scanning the battlefield, though the threats were few and far between when Leaf asked, "What…?" She knew what he was asking from the expressions on his face. Keeping her tone flat with barely contained annoyance, she said in greenling, "I made a bargain with the Hunt, intending to serve her for the rest of my life.

What I didn't expect was that she would notice, much less care about me." He paled.

"Riverlands… that's true?" Squirt scowled.

"Who knows? I was whipped and almost died and woke up with Her mark on my head." His eyes were wide while he studied her in dumbfounded awe before breathing out, "That's Her mark? Not just a tattoo?"

"Why the fuck would I tattoo my forehead?" He shrugged with a wry smile.

"A lot can change in sixty years." She grumbled before firing off another shot. She missed this time, but it did its job by drawing Qzi's attention to the shadow whale-wolf pack trying to sneak up on him.

"… I saw Her."

"You. You saw Her."

"Yep." He burst out, "But greenlings can't commune with the gods!" She muttered more darkly, "Yeah, well, turns out the elders said a lot of shit that isn't true."

"Like what?" She paused before responding. She should tell him. No secrets. He deserved to know. The image of his mate's loving expression on her face flashed before Squirt's eyes, and envy burned in her heart. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fucking fair that the first non-greenling to look his way genuinely loved him. He'd always had all the luck, but this was just— Instead, she muttered, "That there's no use to studying runes for a greenling. I'm living proof that's wrong." He snorted.

"They also said the Outskirts should be a greenling's last resort, but here I am, sixty years later, happy as a clam." Bitterly, she muttered, "Lucky." He gave her a sidelong glance as he crossed his arms.

"… you have been blessed by a goddess directly, have a magical divine beast, and have powerful fey friends willing to fight for you. I'd say you're pretty lucky." Glaring at him, she turned her eyes back on the fields and didn't otherwise respond. There was too much fury to sort through in her at his pointed words. Maybe the redcap was rubbing off on her, because she definitely fantasized about stabbing Leaf. She couldn't wait to leave this fucking village.

Decoded by Lord Everwinter using the Dex'at cipher: Dear Lord Everwinter, This is troubling news, indeed, about this ship that Lady Archmagis Telos has spotted north of your mountains. I have alerted all the other northern territories to this incident, but without more information, there is little to go off. My concern is for our planned summer camp—we had chosen Norland as their destination, and it is too late to stop the students from going. Their teachers have been informed.

If there is any further description Telos can give or if she can track the ship to know if it ever crossed the mountains, I ask that you have her do so. My advisors have already laughed at the possibility of targeting children, but both of us know the realities of our adversaries. I cannot shake the feeling that something terrible will happen in Norland. Otherwise, like much of war, it seems like we are to be left waiting for an ambush that might never come. Never have I understood my grandfather's illness more.

Be well, Queen Annabelle