Of Tails, Curses and Kings

1

 

Emony

 

The three entered the Garland quietly with pouches full of silver tied to their waists and Aylard up in front, talking to the villagers calmly to lessen the fear Tiphaine’s appearance inspired in the humans.

Out of the corner of his eye, Emony saw the children being ushered away towards a backdoor as they approached the bar. That was fine. It wasn’t them that they needed to talk to. Thankfully, a good number of villagers were still gathered around the tables and bar, likely afraid to leave, as according to Aylard’s words, doing so might anger Tiphaine.

Perhaps he was a somewhat useful human to keep around.

They made their way to the small wooden stools, paying the patron who was still deathly afraid of them handsomely and asking for ale.

“Come on, are you really going to make me drink from under the veil again?” Tiphaine complained like an idiot.

“We’ve only come to ask you some questions,” Emony said loudly to the humans, ignoring her and repeating Aylard’s words. “We will not hurt you in the slightest, and we will pay you well for anything you tell us. Nobody will be petrified.”

“We want to help you with the men of the lake,” Tiphaine continued after a moment. The men were still desperately avoiding looking at her, even though she was wearing her jeweled mask. “Don’t you want to be rid of them?”

“Very much!” shouted Aylard, of all people, to their audience. “Please, help us get rid of the undead scourge! What information could you possibly need?”

“We just need to know about the rebellion that happened here ten years ago.”

The villagers began looking over amongst themselves, casting nervous glances and whispering too quietly for Emony’s newly insensitive half-mermaid ears to hear.

“Right! The rebellion!” responded Aylard. “The time our esteemed bastard king Raynardt went and murdered the rightful one, and took his place! Hey, why don’t you help, old man? I’ve no doubt you’ve been here all your life. You must have seen it.”

“The insolence… to call him a bastard…”

“The rightful king…”

As people murmured amongst themselves, Emony and Tiphaine turned to look at the old human Aylard had pushed their way. He was shaking slightly, staring in any direction other than theirs. He sensed Tiphaine wanted to comfort him somehow. As if that would work.

“Well?” Emony asked. “Do you know anything? I’ll give you a silver if you tell me one thing I don’t.”

“Um… The coup… It was years ago, maybe ten… It wasn’t very big, it was quite peaceful, considering what it was… I took no part in it…”

“Really!?” said Emony loudly, annoyed, yet trying to hide it. “I didn’t know that! Here, take a silver! Do you know anything more?”

“Well… Sir Raynardt became king after that. He proclaimed that he’d been naturalized, that he was Ovesen’s true heir. And he’d just killed the last trueborn heir anyway, so…”

“That’s interesting. Anything else? No? Well, thank you. Anyone else? Who knows anything more about the old king? Does anyone know anything about his wife? It doesn’t matter how trivial the information; I’ve got plenty of silver.”

“It’s not cursed, the money,” Aylard added. “The knight commander gave it to these two only an hour ago, there’s nothing to fear. He trusts them, and you know what he’s like. You should, too.”

The villagers looked amongst themselves distrustfully. The old man stepped away from Emony in some haste.

“The last king, he came here while surveying the lands he was to rule,” said a woman’s voice from one of the tables. Emony and Tiphaine looked over towards her. She was a grubby human approaching old age, with the distinct smell that that entailed.

So, my nose does work, after all, Emony thought.

Tiphaine slithered over closer to the woman, stopping when she showed the first sign of discomfort.

“He came from Terrena, right?” she asked.

“Yes. From the capital. Though he probably went elsewhere before making it to Coldbarrow,” responded the woman. “Anyway, he… he was cruel. That was one of the reasons why people accepted the new king so quickly.”

“Cruel?”

“To us. To the lowborn.”

“Unlucky for us,” said a man sitting quietly behind the old woman. He dared to look at Tiphaine’s jeweled-covered eyes for a moment. “After King Aulduyen arrived, he spent all his days crossing swords with and making fools of the youth. Peasants, he called us. Never bothered with names.”

Emony put another two silvers on the table.

“So, not very kingly.”

“No. He was unrivaled with his sword, though.”

“How did the rebellion happen, then? How did it begin?”

“He… fell in love,” the old woman interjected.

“Hm. That’s right. He fell in love with a girl here. I remember all the girls were gossiping about it. It was the strangest thing – for days, he’d been calling us peasants, lowborn scum and the like – and then, all of a sudden, he fell madly in love with the very lowest among us. This strange girl that used to live on the shore by the lake with her sister. The two kept to themselves, we never really saw them, but their parents were gone, so we used to give them soup. I think… My memories are somewhat muddled when it comes to them.”

Emony placed another silver on the table. The man’s eyes flitted over to it. Things were progressing well. Emony smiled – perhaps he wouldn’t have to turn into a female.

“Do you remember their names?” he asked.

“They were strange ones, I recall.”

“One of them was Imarah,” said a voice from another table. “And her sister was Verena. Come to think of it, my memories are all fuzzy, too… They used to splash water on me from the lake when we were little, though. They were playful, but… shy.”

Probably because they were a different species, and you humans would hunt them down and kill them if they gave you the chance, Emony thought, a dark memory surfacing for a moment.

“Yes, they were. I liked them. It’s a shame,” said another voice.

“What is?” asked Tiphaine.

“What happened to them. The king back then, Aulduyen, fell in love with the younger one. Nobody knows how or why. She had nothing to her name – not even the roof of the little shack, which was falling apart over her head. Yet the king suddenly became obsessed with her, and afterward, he… well, first, he started making an effort.”

“He became a better person?”

“I don’t think so,” the man replied. “Not in his heart. But in his actions, yes. He tried to remember our names and to be good to us. He was polite, even to the women. And this one time, he went fishing with the other men, instead of thrashing them around in a sparring match. He had materials imported from Terrena to repair our boats, bought us new nets… It was unnerving.”

“It must have been true love,” said Tiphaine.

“Strange, to tell you the truth. It happened so suddenly. One day he was… well…”

“An elitist snob?” asked Emony.

“Yes, that. And the next, he was a lovesick fool. We certainly welcomed the change, though.”

“For as long as it lasted,” the old woman sighed.

Emony glanced over at them and added more silver to the pile. He spied Aylard looking at it with envy. He finished his drink, grimacing, as he could only use one hand for everything, given that his other was broken.

“He’d stayed here for quite a while, even though he was supposed to have left to tour the rest of the kingdom. The lords accompanying him kept urging him to leave, to do his duty. He refused. And then someone spied him standing in the shallows of the lake one day, with Imarah. They said they saw him give her a ring.”

“They married.”

“Yes,” the man grunted. “Just like that. And that must have been the last straw. She was a commoner! He hadn’t even introduced her to any of the lords he called fools and churls. I heard they were enraged by his insolence. He’d already been betrothed to a princess of a neighboring country.”

“Anyway, I remember the one time I met him in person. It was later on that I brought him water as he trained with his sword. That thing, it was as long as he was, and he was clearly ghastly good at using it. He told me they were trying to part him from his love, make him marry a cur. That he wasn’t going to let that happen. To me, he seemed insane.”

“I see. Then this story doesn’t have a happy ending,” said Emony.

“No, it doesn’t. The lords started conspiring amongst themselves. The king was often nowhere to be seen, who knows where he went off to for whole days at a time. They planned to put his bastard half-brother – Raynardt – on the throne instead of him, saying Aulduyen was too much trouble. They said the kingdom needed stability. And, well, they succeeded. I heard the king was coming out of the lake one day after a swim with his new wife when they captured them both – forced them onto a boat and went out to the middle of the lake. And I suppose they killed them there. They killed all of his personal guards, too.”

“It was strange, actually – the man that told me, he said they needed a fishing net to catch the girl, Imarah. I can’t imagine why.”

“I heard she had a tail,” murmured the woman. “That she was a monster.”

“I think I heard that too, though I think it was just that they wanted another excuse to kill them both. They later said that she had bewitched the king, rid him of his senses. I don’t know.”

“Do you think she might have been a mermaid?” Aylard asked.

“Well… she certainly knew how to sing a tune. But no, of course not! There was nothing all that special about her. She seemed like a good person.”

Emony suddenly noticed the man scratch his head, uncertain of something. That same motion continued among many of the patrons of the tavern.

“Yes, she was normal enough.”

“She was our friend.”

“Normal enough.”

“Agreed. Even if she was a little weird, she was kind. And one time, she brought me the biggest fish I’d ever seen.”

Emony leaned over to Tiphaine. “You see it too, right?”

“Well, she was a siren,” she whispered back, nodding. “She obviously used that.”

“Maybe she was as bad as the king,” he murmured. “We’ll have to ask Verena about it. Why must you make friends with the worst of people, Tiphaine?”

“You’re lucky I do.”

“Mhm,” Emony said, “and don’t I know it.”

“So, this completely normal girl that never left the lake and seduced a horrible king in no more than a minute… What do you really think happened to her? I don’t think she died that day.”

The old man closest to them scratched his chin again, lost in memories. “I don’t know. I never saw her again after she had been taken onto the boat. Her sister Verena must still be here somewhere, though. I saw her swimming a few months ago. The usurpers were looking for her all over, back then, but they couldn’t find her. You should ask her. Oh, well, actually, I suppose she might be gone now. The men of the lake…”

Emony put a few more pieces of silver onto the table and lifted his pouch, shaking it so the remaining coins could be heard, before putting it back down and discreetly slipping most of them into his pocket.

“The rest goes to whoever tells me what really happened to Imarah.”

All around the tavern, the humans’ eyes lit up in surprise, then dulled as they raced madly through their thoughts.

“They killed her!” exclaimed one man quickly. “I saw them take both her and the king onto the boat! She was tied to the mast!”

“No, she was trapped in a net!”

“Where is her body?” he asked.

“At the bottom of the lake, must be,” the same man said. “His, too!”

Emony shook his head, tapping Tiphaine’s shoulder. “My friend here assures me that’s not true. She’s a seer, I tell you, and she says the woman managed to get off that boat.”

“That can’t be!” the man protested, angry, staring at the pouch of silver.

“The traitor knights took a good deal of our fishing boats, but the bodies of the king’s personal guards were piled up on the deck of the largest boat,” said an old man smelling of fish that hadn’t spoken before.

The men murmured in consensus.

“Many of us worked on the boat they killed the old king on. It was full of supplies – they stole them afterward, the bastards.”

“I remember that, too! They took my sail!”

“Where did they go?” Emony asked. “Back to Terrena? South?”

The men looked amongst themselves nervously. They would probably only be guessing at this point. After some talking in hushed tones, the oldest of them spoke up.

“Maybe… We don’t know for sure where they went, or if they took her alive, but we might know someone who does. If we tell you of them—”

Emony threw him the mostly empty pouch of silver.

“Tell me.”

“Garrick,” the man said hoarsely, looking astonished after catching it. “Garrick, the merchant. He would know. They took the bodies of the king’s personal guards off the boat, to cart them around the kingdom and send a message. They used him and his carriage, and had him drive it after them on their way. He returned to us a while later but without it. The thieves must have kept it, though he refused to say. Still, he might know where they went.”

“I want to talk to – huh? What the—”

 

2

 

Emony felt a cold liquid trickle down his back. He whirled around in an instant, ready to attack – but he saw it was just Aylard behind him, stepping back in shock at seeing his reaction and spilling more of the ale he was holding.

“Sorry,” he remarked upon seeing Emony’s murderous expression. “I was just… getting us a refill.”

More of the liquid fell on Emony’s tunic. Panic rising, he quickly turned to Tiphaine. She shook her head. Turning everyone in the tavern into stone… bad idea. But his skin was already vibrating where the ale had made contact with it. He had to get away.

As fast as his legs could carry them, he sprinted out of the tavern.

The sun blinded him momentarily upon reaching the outside, but he ignored that and ran in the direction of the lake. A few humans walking along the road stared at him, confused, and quickly stepped out of his way.

“Stay here!” he heard Tiphaine shout, probably at Aylard and the rest. He was already far away. The wind was whipping his face as he ran.

He got lucky. Just as he leaped toward the water, while he was soaring through the air, his legs combined into that long, golden tail, ripping apart his newest pair of pants, and the top half of his body contorted into a smaller, feminine frame.

At the same moment, magic wrapped itself tightly around Emony’s mind, poisoning her thoughts again. The top part of her tunic was quickly stretched by her expanding chest, but by a rare stroke of good fortune, it held. Maybe, just maybe, the king wouldn’t kill her for making him lust after her.

And she had nearly resorted to violence earlier when she’d caught Tiphaine trying to sneak Verena’s bra into her/his pockets.

Emony’s unfamiliar new face was the first thing to touch the water, and the clear, cold liquid flooded straight into her smaller-than-normal mouth and nose. This time, she didn’t resist it, instead letting it fill her lungs, as panic-inducing as that was.

She slipped underwater and lithely turned herself around, so she was not upside-down but opted to stay under the surface. After a couple of seconds, her madly beating heart calmed down and her breathing slowed. She grew accustomed to the water in her throat and lungs. Her broken arm suddenly registered pain, as it had fallen out of its sling.

Breathing out the agony, she secured it against her chest again, grabbed her slowly sinking ripped pants and fished the bra out of them before swimming further away from the shore, trying to spy anything that might be happening there through the light bent by the water’s surface while she put it on.

“So, what now?” she sighed finally, not being able to make out anything outside and instead looking around the water.

The lake was a beautifully vivid blue, teeming with fish and rocky grounds that steadily grew deeper as the shore grew further away. It was beautiful. If only she hadn’t just been turned into a female fish, she would have definitely wanted to stay there for a while.

In the distance, she spotted something large floating in the water.

As she got closer, she first thought it was a human, and her instinct was to back away, but then she realized that one of those could not survive, unmoving under the water as it was. She thought it must have been a corpse, then, and she was sort of right – but the cadaver turned its head to look at her.

It was a man of the lake.

Gulping fresh water along with her spit, she swam over to it, assuring herself that it was her friend.

She stopped a respectful distance away, hoping she’d put the bra on right. By the divines, if she’d have to ask Tiphaine to teach her…

Actually, she smiled thinking on it further, maybe if I pretend to be thoroughly incompetent, I could get a demonstration…

She pulled herself away from such thoughts.

“Um… My king, can you hear me through this man?” she asked the man of the lake. Seeing the flesh rotting off his face, she noticed the slight tremble in her unfamiliarly cute voice.

The corpse remained quiet but nodded its head in response. Perhaps it no longer had vocal cords. Strange that its ears and eyes still seemed to work, then, even after they had all rotten away.

“My king, I’ve come to report back to you – I was forced into the water by some humans that I need to remain ignorant of my nature. I will go back soon – but first, I thought I would relay to you some information – we have discovered that your queen really may have been taken somewhere from here, after you died on that boat ten years ago.”

The man of the lake stood completely still, unmoved by the waves that rhythmically swayed her.

“The men that may have taken her had a local named Derreck – no, Garrick, that was the name – cart around the corpses of your personal guards for them when they left the village after the coup was done. We hope to find this man soon, to ask him if your queen was among them – though she would have been alive, of course.”

Upon hearing the last of her words, the floating cadaver slowly moved an arm towards its front and abruptly punched itself in the face. Suddenly, it started pounding its head forward into its knees, shattering its own bones, before continuing to punch itself again. Its head was fracturing with every impact it laid on itself. Emony could only look on with her mouth open, thoroughly unnerved.

The tantrum lasted for minutes.

Then, when it finally calmed down, it stood unmoving in the water again, as if nothing had happened. Emony couldn’t tell what to do or say next.

She heard a woman’s voice pierce the wall of bubbles behind her.

“Garrick can’t help us,” said Verena, who appeared a moment later.

“Verena – my lady. It’s good to see you. That’s… a shame. We were hoping to spend the day interrogating him. May I ask why we can’t?”

The mermaid swam over closer to her and sadly gazed at the man of the lake. “The dead cannot remember. Their minds are gone. That’s Garrick, right in front of you.”

Emony turned to look at the corpse. He did look a little… fresh?

“He joined the ranks only a week ago. It was an accident,” Verena said.

“I suppose the villagers don’t know yet, since they say he was a merchant…” she responded, nodding. “They must think he’s gone to sell something in another village or town.”

Verena swam even closer to her, stopping near her face as she floated awkwardly in the light current, trying to balance herself with her one good arm. Garrick the merchant followed.

“I hope that wasn’t your only lead?” Verena asked hopefully.

“Merely the first,” she responded quickly, eyeing the pair of grimy eye sockets watching her. “I’m sure we will have another soon. On that note, I should probably get back to land to go and find it.”

“Yes, that would be great. Come back when you find something new, or if you need any sort of help. We’ll be glad to provide it. Hey, Emony, Garrick’s house was that way. It’s on a little hill. I know, because he would often… we used to be friends, of a sort.”

“I see. I’m… sorry, then. I’ll be back soon.”

Verena shifted around the water nervously. “One more thing. Since you’ve already talked to the villagers – did any of them mention a settlement called Palehome? It’s north of here, the opposite direction from Terrena. A few days march, according to Aulduyen.”

“No, none of them mentioned it.”

“Make certain it’s not important, that we don’t need any information anyone there might have. And tell us soon if there might be. We can give you…. I’m sorry, perhaps three days, at the most.”

“Three days. Okay. I’ll ask around again, and if anyone mentions it’s connected at all to the rebellion, I’ll let you know.”

“Or anything else that might be related,” added Verena. “Anything at all.”

“Of course. I’ll be back soon with my next report.”

The dead form of Garrick nodded and swam back to where it had floated from before she arrived. Before Emony could turn to leave as well, Verena spoke to her again.

“Just one more thing, Emony. You understand why I’m asking… right?”

“Yes,” she nodded, for a moment looking past Verena towards the man of the lake, who was shifting away. “Yes, I think I do.”

 

3

 

Tiphaine

 

“He doesn’t like being wet,” she was explaining to their assistant, Aylard, at around the same time. “It’s because when he was young, only a toddler, his mom dropped him into a puddle and left him there… That’s how he became an orphan, you know.”

“What kind of a stupid story is that? Try harder, lady Tiphaine, by the divines.”

“That’s what he told me, though. I’m serious. About how he ended up alone.”

“Is he going to tell you that ale is poisonous to him, too? Don’t believe him. I saw him drinking it when we accosted you in the tavern when you arrived.”

They were on their way to find Garrick’s house on the far end of the village.

“Oh, were you one of the soldiers? I don’t remember seeing you there.”

“I was. I was behind Sir Meheyn, I was wearing a helmet. But really, he runs fast with a broken arm… Well, I suppose it’s not his leg. Anyway, have you known each other very long? Perhaps since right after you… hatched?”

“I’m part viper, so I didn’t come out of an egg, and no, not that long,” she waved him off. “I think I’d been through… I don’t know, ten winters before I first met him? So… it was about nine cycles ago. He’s three cycles older, so he must have been thirteen. Haha, his chin was completely hairless back then.”

She noticed a human about that same age hiding in the bushes along her path, trying to sneak a peek at her without being noticed. The people were so afraid of lamias here. It was completely different from Aeliah. But then, she’d played a large part in making it so, so she couldn’t complain.

“How old are you?” she asked Aylard, changing the subject.

“Twenty-three years,” he replied. “That’s what we call “cycles” here.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“I’m surprised you’ve managed to stay friends for nearly a decade. He seems like a loner.”

Tiphaine smiled. “He is. Most of Aeliah is afraid of him when he’s not with me. He’s really paranoid and reclusive, especially around the humans. My friend Lenah and I are probably the only ones he talks to on a regular basis. Whenever we leave him alone, he just goes hunting in the woods.”

“He likes killing things, then.”

“Yeah… It’s his nature. But he’s a softy, trust me. I asked him to stop hunting rabbits one time, I said they were too cute, and he really did for a couple of weeks. And he’s changed my bandages three times today, and that’s hard to do with one hand.”

The human snorted. “I wouldn’t have thought it. I hope you’re not in pain, by the way, those seem pretty tight. I’m curious, has he ever seen your face? Since, you know, he can’t do so without turning to stone, being a human and all, like he said.”

“Of course he has. He can see me any time he wants so long as my eyes are closed. Oh, but every now and then, when we find… the stuff, the cure for petrification, he’ll get curious, and I’ll show him my eyes, too. He turns to stone, of course, but he can still see, so I twirl around for him a bit and revive him again. Apparently, I’m really pretty – a real heartstopper. You want to see?”

“I think I’ll pass, if you don’t mind. He trusts you to bring him back though? You know – I recall the villagers saying something about you putting something in their mouths to bring them – oh – divines! Sorry, I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that!”

Tiphaine glanced over at Aylard, confused by his sudden reaction. “Hm? Oh, don’t mind them. They have minds of their own, but they’re not actually dangerous, the hair-vipers.”

“You just said they were vipers,” he said, anxiously eyeing the top of her head. The snakes were hissing at him, ready to strike. “Vipers are venomous.”

“But only a little bit,” she cringed, turning to him, lifting her veil a bit to show him her mouth and extending her fangs. “I am much, much more.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he replied, with a hint of fear in his voice that hadn’t been there before.

She set down the veil again and continued slithering down the road. She wondered when Emony would join them again. He was probably down in the lake somewhere, cursing his cute face. Or staring at him… herself?

Hopefully just staring. No matter what Lenah says, I’m sure he’s still a man in there, she thought.

Then she began wondering which of the two of them might be prettier. It was hard to tell.

“But you’re right, you know,” she spoke aloud to distract herself. “We did put something in their mouths to unpetrify them. It’s pretty easy to free people if they haven’t been statues for long. It just becomes harder or impossible if they remain that way for more than a week or so.”

“Pretty easy, like how your vipers are a liiittle poisonous, I’m sure.”

“Haha. Maybe. Actually, I can’t say, Emony would get angry with me. Oh, right, we didn’t talk about this, okay? If he finds out we did, he’ll… Well, he won’t kill you, probably, but you won’t have a good time. And he’ll call me stupid again.”

Aylard, whilst nodding in her direction, waved at and made some strange gestures to some passerby who were keeping their distance from them.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said. “We’re almost there. Sorry, do you mind waiting here for a moment? I’d like to go ask those people there about Garrick, but they might not talk if you’re with me. I think they might be his neighbors.”

“Awww, I want to go too. But fine. Go.”

With a nod, the human ran off towards the others, who were still casting nervous glances her way. She slithered a little distance in the opposite direction towards a spot the sunlight managed to touch next to the lake. Her hair-vipers appreciated it, hissing contentedly above her forehead. Stroking a few of them gently, she closed her eyes and stretched out over the grass, taking in the meagre warmth. She wouldn’t mind if Aylard took a while…

“Tiphaine!”

The sun really felt so good… She wished she could stay there forever. Maybe with a fire close by, too?

“Tiphaine!” That voice again…

“What do you want?” she yawned, too tired to open her eyes. It was time to sleep. “Are you already back, Aylard? Is it time to go? Let’s wait for another minute or two…”

Hm? That’s not Aylard’s voice…

She struggled for a moment to open her sleepy eyes. Once she did, what she saw in the blurry light was the strangest thing.

A breathtakingly cute girl with a scaly tail and fin the color of the sun was struggling to pull herself out of the water with a single delicate arm.

“Who are you?” she gasped, stupefied.

The small features on the girl’s face contorted into the most endearing sort of angry expression Tiphaine had ever seen.

“Are you still asleep?! Help me!” the little mermaid hissed.

She couldn’t possibly refuse, she thought, shaking her head and quickly getting up.

Actually, she could have, she realized a moment later, when she came back to her senses. Emony hadn’t forced his… her…? Yeah, her definitely fit better right now. Her will upon Tiphaine with magic this time. Nevertheless, she decided to help pull her out of the water.

“You’re back,” she whispered, at the same time trying to calm her hair-vipers, which were angry that they’d been woken up.

“I’m back,” Emony repeated back to her with a ridiculously girly voice. She really couldn’t picture the werewolf she knew was in there.

“And I’ve spoken to the king,” Emony continued. “Sort of. Are you alone?”

Tiphaine shook her head to clear her thoughts again and looked up over the slight incline that hid the pebble shore from the road. Aylard was still talking to the humans a little ways away.

“No,” she said, “but I think we have a minute or two.”

“Good. I don’t suppose you have a towel?”

“Actually, I do. Here – Aylard bought it for me ten minutes ago. I thought you might need it.”

“Good thinking. Help dry me off, would you – ouch! Not so rough with the end of the tail!”

“Divines, you’re cute. Nice bra,” Tiphaine said.

Delightedly watching Emony blush, she let her make her empty threats while she helped her out. It took a couple of minutes, but she managed to get her quite dry. The hair took the most work, since it was the human kind. Then Emony closed her eyes and made an expression of extreme concentration. Soon after, her face and body changed, and her golden tail lost its color as it slowly separated into two human legs.

It seemed he had gotten better at controlling his form, she noted, looking away. He wasn’t completely dry yet, but he’d already managed to change back. And earlier, back at the tavern, he’d managed to resist the transformation for about half a minute, even though it had taken him by surprise.

“Thank you, Tiphaine,” he said. “You’ve no idea the relief I feel every time I manage to turn back.”

“But it’s really a shame, Emony, you were so much cuter a few seconds ago,” she murmured in reply.

“Do you want to die?”

“Haha. Hey, here are those clothes I brought along in case you wet yourself. Those are the last pants, so be careful – and give me your wet tunic, I’ll put it in my bag. Oh, no, you can keep the bra.”

“Tiphaine…”

“What? You might need it again! What if the king starts lusting after you? Haha, fine… Anyway, um, you’re not going to make me look up forever, are you?”

“Give me a second, it’s hard to do this with one hand. Do you have another sling, too?”

“Yeah, I’ll get it ready for you. Right. Well, um, we are on our way to Garrick’s house. The people at the tavern told us where it is and we’re almost there. With a little luck, we’ll find him and the queen shacked up in it.”

“It’d take a lot of luck. I just saw Garrick. He’s dead. He’s become a man of the lake. Okay, I’m done, you can look.”

“Are you sure it’s him that you saw?” she asked, lowering her gaze from the cloudy horizon above him.

Emony nodded, mirroring the uneasy expression she hid underneath her veil. “Verena told me. Anyway, it might still be a good idea to go there. We might find some clues, even if the human is gone. Also, have you heard any mention of a town called Palehome while I was down in the lake? Anything at all?”

She shook her head. “No… I don’t think so.”

“Absolutely nothing?”

“No, why? What is that place?” she asked, slithering over to him and gently placing his broken arm into a dry piece of cloth.

“Not important, apparently,” he shrugged, looking up at her whilst pulling on his new pair of boots. “I’ll tell you later. But come to me right away if you do hear something about it.”

She agreed, noting that he was trying to hide something from her again, and turned to look back at the road. Aylard was returning, looking around to try to find her.

“It’s time to go,” she said.

 

4

 

Emony

 

He saw the first sign of the killing before he entered the house. The crimson red of the blood stood out against the white flowers it was staining in the garden. The second sign was the trail of dried droplets that led to the little wooden house, and the third, past the open front door, was the splintered wall lying on the floor beside the back door, which was ripped open and hanging on a single hinge.

The human, Aylard, who had been talking to him leisurely until then, apologizing for spilling his drink, abruptly shut up and unsheathed his sword, carefully stalking forward in front of them. What a hero, Emony thought. Unimpressed, he strode past him into the house and peered into the bedroom. The bed was unmade, with blankets lying all around, betraying that someone had jumped out of it in a hurry. Emony tasted the air out of instinct before remembering he was no longer a werewolf – but he didn’t really need to be one to smell that something had died there. The dried pool of blood next to the bed was starting to turn. Tiphaine was still slithering before the front door, pinching her nose under her mask, obviously uncomfortable. Shooting her a smile, Emony stepped fully into the small room and closed the door behind him.

Stepping gingerly past the pool of blood, he opened up the small nightstand that lay collapsed on the wooden floor next to the bed. How he missed having two functioning arms.

There was a small leather purse in the nightstand, which he grabbed and pocketed without hesitation. He looked over the other contents as well before tossing them onto the bed one by one: a bowl, a shaving knife, a key, a quill and even two letters written on parchment.

He turned them over and read, holding them still with his good hand. They were old and damp, but still legible. One was a note from the “Bank of Trouwts”, informing Garrick the merchant that he owed them a sum of twenty-seven silver pieces, to be paid back by spring of next year. He shook the pocket he’d put the man’s purse in. He didn’t have enough. The other was a letter to “Lenah of Gulls Landing.” It was a love letter he hadn’t sent. There was a silver ring tied to it with a string.

Lenah of Gull’s Landing. If it was the same Lenah Emony knew… No, actually it wouldn’t be that surprising. She lived all over the place. Maybe it was her.

Poor guy.

He lifted the letter to the light of the window to get a better look at the ring. It was real silver, he saw. As a werewolf, he’d never been able to touch it, but he certainly knew how to make it out. Lenah would have hated the thing if she received it. Any witch would have.

After a moment of thought, he rejoined his companions in the main room, keeping both the ring and the two letters.

“Find anything?” he asked Aylard.

“By the look of things, he was attacked,” Aylard muttered, glancing in Emony’s direction for a moment.

“Obviously. He’s also dead. I meant, did you find anything that could help us find out how he was involved in moving the former queen.”

The human winced and went back to looking around, shaking his head.

“Tiphaine?” he inquired next.

“No, I didn’t find anything either,” she said, her hand over her mouth.

“Are you okay?”

She nodded quickly. She was obviously lying.

He resolved to find that new lead quickly. “Aylard, the man didn’t die in here. He was asleep when his attacker came in. He woke up as it entered the bedroom – got slashed across the chest and stomach, staggered away, made it outside, and died there. Don’t bother with that, help me find out who the man was.”

Aylard looked over at him in shock. He returned the gaze – he’d expected the human to be more familiar with death.

“I know, because I’m the one that did it,” he joked. It didn’t seem that it was appreciated.

Unfortunately, over the next twenty minutes, they found nothing. Emony had Tiphaine leave the house, convincing her, despite her protests, that there could be clues outside, before ransacking the place and finding nothing but more wooden bowls, mugs, some silverware and a small barrel of cider that smelled like it had turned.

Once again, he looked over the pieces of parchment he’d taken.

“What do you care about what happened to that girl, anyway?” asked Aylard. “The rebellion was ten years ago. It has nothing to do with the men of the lake.”

“So says the expert,” he murmured, trying to read. It was harder when someone was trying to talk to him.

“Look – I haven’t seen a woman trying to murder us any of the times we’ve been attacked. So please explain it to me. Why is finding this girl, Imarah, important? ... Shouldn’t we be researching ways to break curses? How to destroy the undead? Well?”

After a few wasted moments, Emony looked up from the letters, smiling maliciously. He hadn’t managed to read a thing.

“I’d rather not say. Just trust that it’s important and stop asking questions about why. Or, I might just trip, and accidentally slit your throat. Tiphaine might be cross with me, but you’ll be with the men of the lake. You’ll understand everything.”

Aylard stared at him in disbelief for a few seconds, then looked away, apparently unsure which expression he should wear on his face.

Suddenly, while he was staring at him, Emony was struck by a thought: That every word the human had spoken might have been consciously schemed. It seemed, somehow, like there was a methodical order to every question…

No, no, he was just being paranoid again. As Tiphaine said, humans always brought out the worst in him. It wasn’t his fault, after what they’d done to his parents, but…

“I don’t think we are going to find anything here,” Aylard said as he was thinking, not meeting his eyes. “We’ve looked through the whole place. Unless you found something in the bedroom?”

“Maybe I did,” he said, narrowing his eyes. That feeling was back. For a moment, he wondered if he should turn into a mermaid and ask him a few questions. Were he still a werewolf, he would have pulled the truth out of his throat… but becoming a mermaid was too unnerving. He decided against it.

“Come then. Let’s go.”

“Yeah.”

“Find anything, Tiphaine?” he asked, stepping out into the garden. His preferred companion was slithering around the grass in the garden, careful not to disturb the bloody scene of the murder.

She pointed over to the patch of flowers stained by blood. “I think he died here,” she said. “But it’s not where the trail ends. The smell is faint, but it goes that way.”

“To the lake,” Emony said. “Where he is now.”

For a moment, he wondered if she had accepted that Verena was likely complicit in the murder. Knowing her, she was probably trying to avoid thinking about it. There was no point in forcing it on her.

“Aylard, I trust you will report this to the knight commander? Judging by the color and the smell of the blood, I’d say the man died a week ago. Let’s get back to camp.”

Of course, he couldn’t really smell anything. But what was the harm? It’s not paranoia if you’re right.