1. A Dubious Boon
All Blessing had told the locals was that she needed to travel through the mire.
They had accommodated her so kindly, so eagerly. Every danger was highlighted. Stick to the path, they said. Never follow the insects dancing pretty patterns in the distance. Leave strange frogs and fish to their own devices. Kill no herons. Above all else, never step into the soggy reeds leading into the water, never approach the lone plinth to the west.
Her poleaxe, they said, would be good protection despite the broken pike at the cap. Iron would keep the Baroness at a wary distance.
Blessing bought milk and honey before leaving.
The ride over was sweaty and insect-ridden. For most of her travels, Blessing wore a plain tunic or bliaut over her chainmail. Today, she had shrugged on her official tabard, with Saint Lucía’s sword embroidered below the hips. (The central ridge was crooked, but it was decent handiwork considering that she’d been handed a needlework pattern that exacting when she was nine.) Silver blood still lightened spots on the fabric.
Might as well let her potential benefactor know who they were dealing with and what she was capable of surviving.
Haste, her chestnut gelding, nickered uneasily as she secured him to a tree. “If I’m not back by sunset, then I’m likely abducted or dead. I trust you to chew through the reins again at your leisure,” she wryly told the horse before ditching the path entirely.
She set her wooden travel bowl on the plinth. Sweetened milk sloshed in the hollow.
Then, all there was to do was wait.
And wait.
And . . .
As the sun crept steadily overhead, heat-haze settled over the water. Blessing squinted. Damselflies and dragonflies mingled excitably, forgetting their afternoon hunt.
Below them, a pair of eyes peered up from the duckweed. Pupil-slits narrowed sideways at her, mischievously amphibian. They were set under a waterweedy fall of hair. Frogspawn glistened in the lockes like glass beads, silver-green, occasionally twitching in their sleep. The fay’s pointed ears twitched just as patiently.
Blessing thought of abbey kittens, fixated unerringly on the locusts that plagued the gardens.
“Are you the Baroness?” she breathed.
She nearly expected the fayrie to croak in reply, but her voice was fluid, like the shining rim of a bubble. “That is what the villagers call me. A rank shared by a human who claims ‘ownership’ of this land; a reminder that they must tread as carefully around me as around him.”
“Would you rather I call you something else?”
The fayrie blinked, as if taken aback. “Think yourself above fear, do you?”
“Not above it. Hurt beyond it. If you thought to turn me into a tadpole, I’d suffer for it less than I am suffering now.” She sighed, cradling her heart on the soggy shoreline. “I might as well call you my last hope, at this point.”
The fay sat up, sodden hair falling over her chest, bringing with her a waft of algal green. “Then you shall call me Last. May I have your name?”
How funny, that her training had prepared her for this.
“My abbey calls me a Blessing.”
Last’s laughter rung over the humming waters. “A young nun of the Blade’s promise, masked in moniker, slinking through my reeds to seek a boon,” the fay mused. “What a strange thing this is.”
“I know when I’m beat.”
“Perhaps they should have called you Wise.”
Blessing tried not to take the compliment to heart. Even if the fay had taken a true liking to her, assuming friendship would be dangerous.
Duckweed parted when Last rose on heronish, stilt-like feet. Scales took the place of feathers, rivuletting water while she circled the plinth. A mucky hand trailed through milk and honey. Miraculously, the offering remained pristine. The way that the fay supped of it made it look like pure nectar. “You offer well,” Last continued as she licked her damp fingers. “But this offering shall not cover the cost of your request.”
“I knew that it wouldn’t.”
“And you have prepared another payment?”
“I am prepared to negotiate.”
Last stared at her with narrowed eyes before she shrugged and crouched to lap the rest of her offering. “Then barter, Sister-Dame Blessing.”
Blessing steeled herself as she stood. At her tallest, she would be barely waist-height with the fay, but Last’s sup let her tower at a slightly greater height. Her request was blood-hot in her mouth. “I need the means to kill a full-grown hydra.”
Last considered this as if she’d been asked to set a table. Hungrily, but candidly.
“A great opponent indeed.”
“I need the means to do it by myself. Is that possible?”
“Quite.”
Her heart quickened. The answer had come so easily to the fay. Could it really be true? “Can you give me those means? The cost is— I’d accept it if it killed me. Just so long as I can be done with it.”
This statement made Last freeze with the last drops of sweetened milk beaded on her lips.
“Think carefully before you speak.”
As if she hadn’t. In truth, Blessing had been thinking hard about what she should say for the entire, agonizing trip back. She was supposed to tell the convent of her failure. She was supposed to let them decide how to kill the beast. She was supposed to let them decide what to do with her now, inadequate and a little deranged about it. She was not supposed to consort with accursed creatures behind the church’s back.
But the only thing she wanted now was . . .
“I speak only truth,” Blessing said, relieved to give herself over to the consequences of her words.
Last tilted her head in astonishment — she, the stranger of the two here — and crept forward until she was breathless inches away from Blessing. It had to be her, but she imagined a trace of sorrow in the curl of the fay’s offering-dewed mouth.
“Then I will test your claim. It will be easiest this way, I suppose.”
Blessing braced herself for something terrible, but all Last did was caress her cheek and tap the air next to her hip, a gentle beckoning to the broken poleaxe laid behind her.
“You want that?” Blessing asked.
“I require it.”
“May I ask what you are to do with it?” She was more than a little fond of the poleaxe.
“You may ask, but whether you understand the answer is another matter. I intend to mold you into the weapon you seek. In order to do this, you will give me the weapon that failed you. What I will get out of this has yet to be seen. It may be entertainment. It may be more. Be cautious; if you consider yourself forfeit, then you may end sooner than you think, and I may come to collect at my own leisure regardless of when you end. Will you pay this ambiguity unto me?”
“Yes,” Blessing breathed. She relinquished her poleaxe as cautiously as possible, not wanting to wound Last with the iron’s touch.
Last took it with the same care and dove back into the water.
For a while, all was still in the mire. Too still. The birds and insects fell silent; Blessing watched with bated breath as the mosquitoes and flies all settled down on reeds, humming wings ceasing to beat. Moments passed. After an antsy while, she drew to the shore’s edge, peering into her darkened reflection.
And then the lilypads rippled. Last burst from the water with the grace of a lunging snake, straight from Blessing’s own visage.
Blessing instinctively fell back in a combat roll and sprung up. It was good that she was unarmed, given that drawing a weapon on her new benefactor would have been disastrous. Last sailed gracefully overhead and landed behind her, chuckling as they bumped into each other.
“Your boon,” the fay lilted.
The poleaxe was returned to her, whole, with the head hidden in algal-silked cloth.
Blessing almost whispered a gratitude, then stopped short as Last pressed one wet finger to her lips, shushing her.
“Remember, I decide when and what your payment will be. Draw the weapon only when you feel ready to face the hydra again, and not a moment sooner, my raw heart,” Last instructed her. “The spell may tear you asunder.”
“I’ll remember.”