The coolness of the sunset is replaced by the humidity of bodies
crammed into one place. Their emotions are raging, which adds to the
queasiness in my gut. I prefer the super senses underwater, thanks.
Between the smells of beer sloshing in puddles on the creaky
wooden floor, the sea salt and sweat that permeate these sailors’
skins, lily flower and bubbly sea mead, there’s something else. I
can’t single it out and I start doing what no self-respecting New
Yorker ever does-I stare.
I’m staring too long at the fishermen playing cards while drinking
amber liquid from dirty, chipped glasses. They could use a bath or a
shave or eyedrops because their eyes are so red. One with graying hair
and skinny scars around his eye, like the points of a compass, stares
back at me. He licks his ringed fingers, looks down to shuffle his
cards, looks back up at me.
Gwen pulls me closer to the bar. “Get over here.”
I pat my dagger for the familiarity of it.
Kurt walks the length of the room, searching for the same thing I
am-great, big, glaring mermen with their entourages. So far, there are
plenty of fishermen and wimpy young pirates trying to make out with
some fairy girls, but no champions. He takes a barstool beside me.
“They aren’t here.”
“Really?” I mutter. “I hadn’t noticed.”
A tiny part of me is glad. The knot tying my insides starts to
loosen. What would I have even said to someone like Dylan if I saw him
again? Hey, good to see you? Say, I know we’re both searching for the
same trident pieces, but let’s compare notes. Your family probably has
tons of resources, while I have a group of friends who might kill each
other before the night is over.
“There has to be another way down,” I say.
“You heard Felix,” Layla counters. “The oracle police closed
whatever entryway there was, and you blew up the other. Kurt, what do
you think? You’re the only one who’s ever seen her.”
Kurt contemplates this for a while. In our conspicuous cluster of
barstools, he pinches his chin thoughtfully. “I-I don’t know.”
And there it is.
Kurt, my greatest source of knowing , says he, in fact, doesn’t
know.
Before I have time to wallow in my premature defeat, Gwen
literally smacks me. “You’re all looking at this wrong.”
I rub the sting on my cheek. “Enlighten us, princess.”
“So other champions are gallivanting around this goddess-forsaken
cove of creatures that have nowhere to go? That doesn’t mean they’ve
found her. They don’t seem to be trying very hard if they’re seducing
locals and showing up in this shabby hole.”
“What are you suggesting we do?” Kurt’s seething through his
teeth. “ Sit here awhile and make friends with the locals some more?”
Her smile is stunning, bright as the sun yet somehow still cold.
“That’s precisely what I mean. Your problem is that you’ve got a giant
spear up your-”
“Gwen-”
“What I mean is, your approach to everything is to stab it.
Tristan doesn’t need that. His actions brought him to Felix, which
brought us here. All the creatures on this cove are linked, the way we
are on Toliss and at the Glass Castle. Let’s see, for a moment , if
there is anything worth finding out before we storm the city, shall
we?”
“She’s right,” Thalia says quietly, sitting on the side where
she’s turning an opal egg between her hands.
That smell is driving me crazy. I thought I sensed it in the
market, but I disregarded it as incense and smoke from the tents. I
smack my hands on the bar top. “You guys can’t tell me you don’t smell
that?”
“What’s wrong?” Layla asks, pulling on my pinky the way she did
when we were little. All, “Come on, Tristan, keep up.”
“There’s a certain scent-” I look to Kurt and Thalia. They should
smell it too.
“I think it’s the liquid freezing the kraken,” Thalia says.
I close my eyes. Concentrate on singling it out. There’s dew in
the wood arches of the ceiling. It must have rained just before we got
here. I find the smell of the chemicals in the beast above, but no,
that’s not it. There’s the sweet burn of molasses from the greedy
fishermen and lusting pirates. That’s not it either. Maybe I’m
imagining it.
“Never mind.” I open my eyes again, wishing they wouldn’t look at
me as if I were seconds away from getting committed.
The tavern vibrates as Reggie, the half-man, half-troll barkeep,
stomps from the far end of the bar to us. My head reaches his nipples,
which are barely covered by a thick leather vest. And here I thought
trolls were supposed to be little and hairy. I used to have tons, with
their pointy tufts of multicolored hair and tiny jewels in their
bellies. Actually, they were Layla’s. Yeah, Layla’s.
“You gonna order or sit there looking pretty for us?” says the
troll man.
“Order,” I say.
Reggie lines up glasses in front of us, doesn’t ask what we want
but starts pouring the familiar green bubbly. Except for Layla. He
gives her something that smells like roses. Kurt takes some coins out
of his pocket and lets them cluster on the table. Reggie scoops them
up like jacks and weighs them in his sausage-y palm. Satisfied, he
leaves us to our drinks.
“What the hell is this?” Layla asks. She sniffs the glass but
doesn’t take a sip. “Perfume?”
Thalia takes the flute glass from Layla’s fingers. “It won’t kill
you.”
“Milk of the rose,” Gwen says, pursing her lips at our ignorance.
“All the princesses like to drink it, of course. Better than the
disgusting burping you get from sea mead.” She arcs her back and snaps
her fingers at the trollish bartender.
“What are you doing?” Layla whispers.
All we need is for Reggie to snap at us and we’ll never get any
information.
Gwen smirks with her pretty pink mouth. Reggie takes her in for a
moment, and whatever he sees in her eyes, he seems to decide he
doesn’t want to argue with her. The movement, the command, the way he
switches her drink without ever asking why. It’s all impressive. It’s
so very Gwen.
I lean into her ear and whisper, “What did you do, bewitch him?”
She elbows me jokingly and says to us, “Sometimes you have to show
your claws a bit. Try it.”
“I don’t have any claws,” I say.
She glances back at the gambling fishermen, then back at me. “Grow
some.”
“Are you quite finished?” Kurt asks.
Gwen touches his nose with her fingertip. “You’re no fun,
Kurtomathetis.”
“You’re not helpful, Princess Gwenivere.”
“Oh, many pardons, Kurtomathetis,” she says, taking a dainty sip
from the flute. “Best make myself helpful.”
I don’t even want to ask what she’s doing. Gwen takes on a charm
she hasn’t shown any of us the past two days. Or ever.
“Reggie!” her voice is as delicate as crystal, rid of the dry edge
she uses on Kurt.
I don’t know anything about trolls, but now I know that when they
blush, they look like they’re farting. His face is scrunched up,
sinking into his shoulders. If he were a turtle, his neck would’ve
popped back into his shell. He comes back to our side of the bar.
“M-me?”
Layla rolls her eyes as Gwen reaches out a slender hand to lightly
graze Reggie’s hairy arm.
“Of course, you,” Gwen says. “We were just looking for our
friends. They might look like these strapping young men-” she nods to
Kurt and me “-probably lascivious and followed by many, many ,
beautiful girls.”