That's what you get for trying to sting me, he told it with his eyes.
"Um, good sir?"
The insect's last legs came off, and it fell to the table in a half-living exoskeletal heap. Derek stared at it a little longer, watching it twitch, and then looked up at the inquiring mercenary seated across from him. The world outside of that infernal little creature came back into focus. The inside of the trading post, the small company of manhunters across from him, the free-length hair of the four company members. There was the smell of cheap pipe tobacco in the air, the kind that didn't grow next to the Fade. Derek had grown tobacco once; knowing the difference had been the line between praise and a tanning more than once.
"Are … " the man frowned. "Are you going to kill it?"
"It'll be dead in a minute. You were saying?"
Derek spotted another beetle on the ground near the bench. He reached down and gripped it between two fingers at its sides so it couldn't bite him. He placed it on the table in front of him, holding it so it couldn't see the other beetle's corpse. He held it very still while the conversation continued, not hurting it but not letting it go anywhere either.
The mercenary cleared his throat. "We were discussing money, sir."
"We already talked about money. I agreed to your gouge of a price. And don't call me 'sir', either. I work for a living."
The mercenary, whose name escaped Derek, seemed distracted by the person he was dealing with. He didn't seem so much afraid of Derek as fascinated. Derek didn't want to be feared, and he certainly didn't want to fascinate a fighting man. He just wanted respect, and if he didn't get it soon, they were going to learn as many lessons his father taught him as they could before they expired.
"I see," the mercenary said. "Is 'mister' alright?"
"'s fine," grumbled Derek. "Now can we go? She's gained miles on us while you've been yabbering."
Hadley – that was his name – made a placating gesture that annoyed Derek more than it helped.
"Remember, mister, there's a lot of money on the line with a – " he lowered his voice – "moon-witch, in the picture."
"I know that better than you," Derek snapped. "Believe me."
And he did. Selling a farm was difficult business for a fogcrawler, but his nadderfruit acres and wealth of chickens had been enough to raise money for a band of slave catchers. Even still, it took that slimeball Kebbik's connections to acquire a slave catcher band with the right tools for the job. Phoebe was no ordinary slave.
Not for the first time, Derek cursed himself for this whole fiasco. He shouldn't have hidden that silvery nightmare she turned into that night from Kebbik. If he just told the mage what happened, instead of having her tattoo patched and trying to figure it out for himself, this could have been avoided. The damn runewright had known anyway, from the first incident, but he'd done nothing because he knew Derek would have much more frequent maintenance costs.
Derek knew nothing about lunomancers until it was too late. He'd thought Phoebe was some kind of advanced runewright, one that didn't even need a moon-shard to write spells and was somehow very vulnerable to others' runes. Nothing Derek tried made the rune stay on any better. At least she never surprised him with another lapse and nearly killed him again. She slept in chains ever since that night. The danger was always after dark, when she was asleep and the rune's grip weakened.
caskerwol came again, and it happened while they were out in the yard, after she came in from the fields with a beetle bite on her heel. He treated it for her on the porch with the last of his ointment. When he went to punish her for wasting his money, it struck.
Phoebe didn't hurt him this time. Derek knew she didn't hate him. He could tell when someone hated him. Derek's parents taught him everything they knew, but their two most important lessons had been:
- How to tell that someone hates you.
- How to hit back.
Derek's parents knew that personal example was the best teaching method. They stuck to that method to the end of their lives.
No, Phoebe didn't hate him. She was just confused. She didn't understand that Derek was just waiting for the right time to take her rune off and set her free. She was too impatient. So when her tattoo fractured again, and she remembered that she was from Aleb, and that silvery magic was flashing all around her, she ran away.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
The beetle in Derek's hand started squirming again. He ignored it.
"Of course, of course," Hadley was saying, "but listen: I know you hate that Kebbik guy, the type what hooked you up with us. We hate 'im too."
Now Derek was listening. An opportunity to gang up on a runewright was not to be missed. Hadley gestured to one of his men, and the man took a seat beside him. He motioned for the others to go off and entertain themselves, which really meant distract as many other people in the trading post as possible.
"So, a lunomancer," Hadley said in a low voice, "is worth a lot of money out west in Ecliptica. Hear me out, I know you want that girl back. But listen: it's been two hundred years since that business in Deckodon and the Fade. Almost all those moon-witches are gone by now. Many people don't even know what they could do anymore. Your little Phoebe is rarer than any gemstone dug out of the rocks in the Crown Mountains, and there's a few smart people with a lot of amethyst out west."
Hadley leaned closer. "Your farm's gone. An honest man like you needs a new start, and to be truthful with you, we need to retire. Slave catchin' just isn't enough money anymore, especially not when you're tryin' to pay a professional like this," he added, patting the shoulder of the man beside him, "without enough witches to catch."
Derek examined the other mercenary, the one who hadn't spoken yet. The Witchbinder.
The Witchbinder had piercing green eyes that couldn't help but stick to things. They were like hands covered in glue. Derek was used to people in Halfway not meeting his gaze, but this man met it like … an equal. There was no better word for it. The Witchbinder had hair the length of a common workman like Derek. He had dark Barridian skin, also like Derek's. There was a scar across his face that didn't look like an animal put it there. More like a tool of some kind. His gloved hands held eerily still. This, Derek felt confident, was no ordinary runewright. This was a working man, someone who earned his money and had gone into magic to earn it even harder. Not avoid earning it.
Derek remembered his name was Larry. A Barridian name that didn't do its owner justice. Derek hoped it was short for something.
"So," Derek said, turning back to Hadley, "what's your idea?"
"Way I see it," Hadley said, "there are five different angles on this whole situation. The first one is your scummy runewright Kebbik's. He's a runewright; he wants Phoebe out of the picture. Runewrights hate lunomancers. They're unwelcome competition, and easy to vilify. He was greedy enough to let you keep paying for the rune her magic was eating at, but something tells me he thinks you and your slave are both loose ends he can't abide."
"Yeah?" Derek said. "Then why'd he let me leave instead of just having you go get her and come back? He knows I'm never coming back to Halfway."
The smell of cheap tobacco was starting to get on Derek's nerves. His nose refused to adjust to it.
"Because he knew he wasn't stoppin' you," Hadley said, "and because he paid us a little more to bring you back with her."
Derek seethed, but controlled himself. This was a bargaining situation. No time to let a little poor smoke and a typical runewright get under his skin. He glanced down at the beetles on the table. The dismembered one had stopped moving. That was good, at least. He had kept himself from squeezing the other to death so far.
"And you're offering to double-cross him with me," Derek guessed. "What do you want from me?"
"Let's talk about those other angles I mentioned. Yours is simple. You want your slave girl back, and you want to start fresh somewhere else along the Fade. Am I right?"
"Right enough."
Larry's stare was starting to bother Derek, so he returned it. That made things better, he found. Like walking downstream instead of up. Derek had the stare to match. The beetle had given up, sitting still in Derek's pincer grip.
"Then there's those loaded folks over in Ecliptica I mentioned," Hadley continued. "They want lunomancers. Alive and in good condition."
"Alive?" Derek said, not taking his eyes off Larry. "Why?"
"You've got your reasons for the same thing," Hadley said simply. "And you're broke as a twig. I'm sure people with as much money as them do too. Anyway, that's all the angles we're working with."
"What about the fifth one?"
"Oh, that's just the gods. I'll worry about them. I don't want to forget their desires. Rest assured, they want what you and I want. That's the nice thing about Amethra and Peri, you see."
Ah, so Hadley was a Halorist. That could come in handy. Derek knew his way around Halorists. Real ones, not whatever muck Kebbik pretended to be. His father had been a Halorist. Once.
"So I think," Hadley said, "that you and I should grab Phoebe, which shouldn't be hard, and then haul you over to Ecliptica and turn her in for the bounty money. Then, with our help, she busts out and you two can start a new life on the Fade border in the Gri'zin desert. How does that sound?"
Derek considered. He had to look away from Larry again to focus.
"What's the catch?" Derek said. "What do I have to do to get your help getting her out of prison?"
Hadley turned to Larry. This unnerved Derek more than he anticipated. The bastard was still staring at him. Derek no longer felt like an equal under that gaze.
He felt like a beetle.
Hadley patted Larry's shoulder again. "I'll let my friend here explain that bit. He doesn't talk, 's very persuasive. He'll need some room to demonstrate, though, so let's start headin' after your slave."
Derek had never taken an opportunity to pause a conversation so readily. He crushed the second beetle between his fingers, scraped both off the table, and left with his new company of scum who preferred the term "businessmen".