13.09
The two satyrs looked just a little too smug, as I reunited with the splinter group. It wasn’t a nice smug or funny smug. It was the kind of smug that people enjoyed when they’d pulled something on you and they knew there was nothing you could do about it.
Green Eyes was breathing hard. Her hair was mussed up to a point that even ‘swimming’ through the snow wasn’t pushing it all straight back away from her face, she had nasty looking bite marks on her collarbone and shoulder, and a claw scratch on her arm that looked oddly frayed, as the scales there had broken away and pointed in odd directions.
“Where’s chicken nugget?” Green Eyes asked.
I pointed at my torso.
Her eyes went wide, and her mouth dropped.
“You bastard,” she said.
“What?”
“You ate him!?” she cried out.
I realized I’d been pointing more at the middle of my body than my upper chest. I was about to respond, when my thoughts ran aground wondering if she was upset because I’d beaten her to eating Evan or if she was upset because she liked him now.
“He didn’t eat me!” Evan’s voice was muffled, emitting from within my ribcage, sparing me from having to find a way to gracefully word my next statement.
Green Eyes gave me a suspicious look.
Evan wormed his way forward until he managed to stick his head through a gap in some more knotted branches and ribs. “See?”
She gave him a look that was just as suspicious.
“We need to move, at some point,” I said. “Get where we need to be.”
“With Jerry?” one of the satyrs asked.
“No,” I replied. “He’s doing… whatever he needs to do. Each person we take out is one more clue the enchantresses need to pull it all together. I’ve brought down six out of seven of them. There’s one left. If they’re going to figure it out, they’ll figure it out now.”
“They’re good at this,” one of the satyrs murmured.
I nodded. “The last one is alone, independent from the main group. He’s not well liked. The spellbinder.”
I looked pointedly at the satyrs.
“Who?” the first satyr asked, brow furrowed.
“The one who went off alone,” the second said. “Quiet. Smelled like shea butter, sandalwood, and tobacco?”
“Shay what?” Evan asked, head still sticking out.
“Shea butter,” the satyr said.
“Why would someone butter themselves up?” Green Eyes asked.
“I think he used it for shaving, going by the nuances of the smell. But it’s good for the skin, helps with healing, and it carries other scents well,” the satyr said, the words adopting a faint roughness as he spoke, almost as if he were purring. He extended an arm. He was definitely purring as he said, “Smell. Tobacco, sandalwood, and shea butter.”
Green Eyes sniffed his wrist, then broke into a smile.
“Enough of that,” I said.
The satyr shot me a sly smile.
“You’re wearing the same stuff as that guy?” Evan asked.
I poked the bird’s head with one finger, pushing him back inside.
“No. It’s useful to be able to decide how you want to smell,” the satyr said, arm still extended. “Cinnamon and myrrh, for when you want to cozy up.”
“I like that,” Green Eyes said. “It’s been so long since I smelled nice smells.”
“I thought you’d like it.”
More annoyed, I said, “You’re wasting time.”
The satyr didn’t quite manage to look apologetic.
“It’s useful. Now I know what the guy smells like,” Green Eyes said. I was about to concede that it was useful, when she added, “We should keep one of these guys around.”
I ignored the statement. “Do you know where the spellbinder is?”
“No,” the satyr said. “He left to hit some key areas where local monsters gather. Goblin shack, goblins under the bridge that serves as a gate to the Sorcerer’s domain, the woods where the hag lives, and some others I’m not remembering.”
“The faerie hangout,” the other satyr said, stepping away from Green Eyes to stand beside his fellow.
“He could be anywhere in the city,” the first satyr told me.
“I figured as much,” I said. “You can’t find him by sniffing him out?”
“Not unless we want to backtrack alllll the way back to the lakeside and then follow the same path he took,” the satyr said. He adopted that same smug grin from before. “Moving slower than he’s moving, if we want to be accurate and not get sidetracked. We might never catch up to him.”
He was putting emphasis on words, rubbing it in in a way that made it hard to call him out on. Practically telling me that if I tried to rely on him, he’d sabotage me. Sabotage Jerry, in a roundabout way. It was doubly irritating because I wouldn’t have called him out on it if he’d said it outright, I’d have shrugged and accepted that his loyalties fell at least partially with Sandra, and that the satyrs had reason to resent me for killing some of their own.
But by implication and by denying me the chance, he made it doubly infuriating.
The maenads were the High Priest’s warriors. The satyrs were… more versatile, I imagined. Quick, with sharp senses, capable of defending themselves, and readily weaponized in a social conflict.
Making them hard to deal with here.
I didn’t rise to the bait, even as the tolling of the bell in the background was like a push on the shoulder. Familiar enough at this point that it was almost like a friend goading me to take a dare. Just do it, and it’ll be satisfying.
“I’m not surprised,” I said. “That leaves plan A and plan B.”
“You mean plans B and C.”
“Relying on the satyrs was never plan A,” I said, as I made eye contact with the satyr who’d just been trying to provoke me. “Plan A is… no, let’s call it Plan B.”
“Plan B is supposed to be the plan that works,” Evan said.
“Well, if there’s any symbolic power in that, we could use it. It’s a long shot. We call someone back at the house. See if they can’t use magical means to find the guy. Except we don’t have phones, unless the satyrs have one and are willing to share.”
“Dead battery, was listening to music,” the first satyr said.
The second shrugged, patting his pockets.