Ginny scoffed at that, too, and he might have asked why had she not set a steaming bowl of stew in front of him. The wafting scent drew a ravenous growl from his stomach, even if there were mushrooms in it.
His wife took her cloak off the peg by the door. “I’ll go and be sure Tally’s all right,” she said. “Might be she needs help carrying those frogs.” She came over and kissed Clay on the top of his head, smoothing his hair down afterward. “You boys have fun catching up.”
She got as far as opening the door before hesitating, looking back. First at Gabriel, already scooping at his bowl as if it were the first meal he’d had in a long while, and then at Clay, and it wasn’t until a few days after (a hard choice and too many miles away already) that he understood what he’d seen in her eyes just then. A kind of sorrow, thoughtful and resigned, as though she already knew—his loving, beautiful, remarkably astute wife—what was coming, inevitable as winter, or a river’s winding course to the sea.
A chill wind blew in from outside. Ginny shivered despite her cloak, then she left.
“It’s Rose.”
They had finished eating, set their bowls aside. He should have put them in the basin, Clay knew, got them soaking so they wouldn’t be such a chore to clean later, but it suddenly seemed like he couldn’t leave the table just now. Gabriel had come in the night, from a long way off, to say something. Best to let him say it and be done.
“Your daughter?” Clay prompted.
Gabe nodded slowly. His hands were both flat on the table. His eyes were fixed, unfocused, somewhere between them. “She is …willful,” he said finally. “Impetuous. I wish I could say she gets it from her mother, but …” That smile again, just barely. “You remember I was teaching her to use a sword?”
“I remember telling you that was a bad idea,” said Clay.
A shrug from Gabriel. “I just wanted her to be able to protect herself. You know, stick ’em with the pointy end and all that. But she wanted more. She wanted to be …” he paused, searching for the word, “ … great.”
“Like her father?”
Gabriel’s expression turned sour. “Just so. She heard too many stories, I think. Got her head filled with all this nonsense about being a hero, fighting in a band.”
And from whom could she have heard all that? Clay wondered.
“I know,” said Gabriel, perceiving his thoughts. “Partly my fault, I won’t deny it. But it wasn’t just me. Kids these days … they’re obsessed with these mercenaries, Clay. They worship them. It’s unhealthy. And most of these mercs aren’t even in real bands! They just hire a bunch of nameless goons to do their fighting while they paint their faces and parade around with shiny swords and fancy armour. There’s even one guy—I shit you not—who rides a manticore into battle!”
“A manticore?” asked Clay, incredulous.
Gabe laughed bitterly. “I know, right? Who the fuck rides a manticore? Those things are dangerous! Well, I don’t need to tell you.”
He didn’t, of course. Clay had a nasty-looking puncture scar on his right thigh, testament to the hazards of tangling with such monsters. A manticore was nobody’s pet, and it certainly wasn’t fit to ride. As if slapping wings and a poison-barbed tail on a lion made it somehow a fine idea to climb on its back!
“They worshipped us, too,” Clay pointed out. “Well you, anyway. And Ganelon. They tell the stories, even still. They sing the songs.”
The stories were exaggerated, naturally. The songs, for the most part, were wildly inaccurate. But they persisted. Had lasted long after the men themselves had outlived who (or what) they’d been.
We were giants once.
“It’s not the same,” Gabriel persisted. “You should see the crowds gather when these bands come to town, Clay. People screaming, women crying in the streets.”
“That sounds horrible,” said Clay, meaning it.
Gabriel ignored him, pressing on. “Anyhow, Rose wanted to learn the sword, so I indulged her. I figured she’d get bored of it sooner or later, and that if she was going to learn, it might as well be from me. And also it made her mother mad as hell.”
It would have, Clay knew. Her mother, Valery, despised violence and weapons of any kind, along with those who used either toward any end whatsoever. It was partly because of Valery that Saga had dissolved all those years ago.
“Problem was,” said Gabriel, “she was good. Really good, and that’s not just a father’s boasts. She started out sparring against kids her age, but when they gave up getting their asses whooped she went out looking for street fights, or wormed her way into sponsored matches.”
“The daughter of Golden Gabe himself,” Clay mused. “Must’ve been quite the draw.”
“I guess so,” his friend agreed. “But then one day Val saw the bruises. Lost her mind. Blamed me, of course, for everything. She put her foot down—you know how she gets—and for a while Rose stopped fighting, but …” He trailed off, and Clay saw his jaw clamp down on something bitter. “After her mother left, Rosie and I … didn’t get along so well, either. She started going out again. Sometimes she wouldn’t come home for days. There were more bruises, and a few nastier scrapes besides. She chopped her hair off—thank the Holy Tetrea her mother was gone by then, or mine would’ve been next. And then came the cyclops.”
“Cyclops?”
Gabriel looked at him askance. “Big bastards, one huge eye right here on their head?”
Clay leveled a glare of his own. “I know what a cyclops is, asshole.”
“Then why did you ask?”
“I didn’t …” Clay faltered. “Never mind. What about the cyclops?”
Gabriel sighed. “Well, one settled down in that old fort north of Ottersbrook. Stole some cattle, some goats, a dog, and then killed the folks that went looking for ’em. The courtsmen had their hands full, so they were looking for someone to clear the beast out for them. Only there weren’t any mercs around at the time—or none with the chops to take on a cyclops, anyway. Somehow my name got tossed into the pot. They even sent someone round to ask if I would, but I told them no. Hell, I don’t even own a sword anymore!”
Clay cut in again, aghast. “What? What about Vellichor?”
Gabriel’s eyes were downcast. “I … uh … sold it.”
“I’m sorry?” Clay asked, but before his friend could repeat himself he put his own hands flat on the table, for fear they would ball into fists, or snatch one of the bowls nearby and smash it over Gabriel’s head. He said, as calmly as he could manage, “For a second there I thought you said that you sold Vellichor. As in the sword entrusted to you by the Archon himself as he lay dying? The sword he used to carve a fucking doorway from his world to ours. That sword? You sold that sword?”
Gabriel, who had slumped deeper into his chair with every word, nodded. “I had debts to pay, and Valery wanted it out of the house after she found out I taught Rose to fight,” he said meekly. “She said it was dangerous.”
“She—” Clay stopped himself. He leaned back in his chair, kneading his eyes with the palms of his hands. He groaned, and Griff, sensing his frustration, groaned himself from his mat in the corner. “Finish your story,” he said at last.
Gabriel continued. “Well, needless to say, I refused to go after the cyclops, and for the next few weeks it caused a fair bit of havoc. And then suddenly word got around that someone had gone out and killed it.” He smiled, wistful and sad. “All by herself.”
“Rose,” Clay said. Didn’t make it a question. Didn’t need to.
Gabriel’s nod confirmed it. “She was a celebrity overnight. Bloody Rose, they called her. A pretty good name, actually.”