Page 25 of Fortune's Blade

The fey had been right; they fit my feet perfectly, without need for alteration, as if they had been made for me. But unlike the slippers, I could no longer feel the scattered stones under my soles or the cart ridges in the trampled down grass. I switched my weight from foot to foot, and then walked in a little circle, and they were easily the most comfortable boots I had ever worn.

“They look good,” Ray said mildly, and they did.

They matched the gray of the trousers he had bought me and the green of the poncho. And they had a faintly piratical air about them that made me smile. They were not practical, but they were pretty. And not as slouchy as I had thought, now that I had them on.

“We’re running low on cash, and what’s left we need for supplies,” he added. “You gotta choose one.”

“The gray,” I said, before I thought. And the next moment, we were walking away from the booth with the sensible black pair still hanging on the wall.

I looked at them over my shoulder in confusion. What was happening to me? I should go back, should say that I’d made a mistake.

I did not go back. And, suddenly, my feet felt good and so did I. I laughed, and Ray looked at me in slight shock.

“Do provisions include candy?” I asked, and grabbed his hand, towing him toward a cluster of booths devoted to rotting the teeth of all races.

I ate some more, until I was finally, completely full, something that was rare in my experience. Including taffy from a light fey seller whose family was enthusiastically pulling it using metal loops set into the wooden back of their booth. It changed colors as they stretched it, from yellow to pale pink to shocking scarlet, and tasted like it changed flavors in my mouth as I chewed.

I next had a bunch of heavily sauced, fried cheese on a stick, some fish jerky dusted with a spicy coating that crunched like potato chips under my teeth, and a highly spiced soup. I wasn’t sure whether the latter was supposed to be savory or sweet, as it had elements of both, but it burned on my tongue like fire. So, I also acquired a cool drink with many bubbles that floated up out of the glass and exploded in the air in front of me.

It made me giggle, and the bubbles seemed to giggle, too, as if echoing my sounds. It soon had the fringe on my poncho shimmering, by accident this time, as I wove erratically through the crowd. Until Ray took the rest of it away and belted it back.

And then cursed loudly. “What the hell was that?”

Many little bubbles echoed the question as they popped all around us, but I barely noticed. Because I had just noticed something else. Something that made me wonder exactly how strong the feys’ brew had been, since I must be seeing things.

But no. I ran unsteadily over to a cauldron that a bunch of small creatures with wings were stirring through the use of a spell, since none of their tiny hands could have made it all the way around the large-handled stick being used as a mixer. It was nonetheless moving inside of the brew, pushing aside a bunch of flowers that were bobbing about, more of which were laid out on the long wooden table alongside.

And all of which appeared to be trying to gut me.

They were thick like succulents, shockingly yellow, and had long, pointed petals that lunged at anyone that came near. They resembled nothing so much as some fell creature’s paw, opening and closing and suddenly attacking, with the hard pointed bits on the ends of the petals serving as the creature’s claws. That was reflected in the name—Dragon’s Claw—which I knew as I had seen these before.

“Oh, shit,” Ray said, coming up alongside me.

“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” the little bubbles echoed happily.

“What the devil are those doing here?” he demanded, but I had no answer for him.

Until I realized: they were being boiled down and the juice was being made into candy. Honey and spices had been added to the pot, judging by the smaller containers littered around the table, where more of the outraged, claw-like flowers were stabbing at everyone in sight. The ones in the cauldron were acting similarly, causing the whole brew to froth angrily, and a little of it to spill over the side and run gloopily down the pot until it dripped onto the road.

And onto a small, pale purple flower growing by the wayside.

It had somehow avoided the crush of boots and wheels of wagons, and even the heat from the fire under the cauldron hadn’t phased it. It bloomed on, small, inoffensive, and beautiful. Like the flowers the troll girl had woven into her braids.

Right up until the mixture from the pot fell onto it, that was.

The orange goop, which had been color changed due to the spices, must have been hot, as it had just been boiling and I could still see steam rising off of it. But the flower was not burned. It was, however, changed, and changed by a lot.

I grabbed Ray’s arm and jerked him back.

“What the—” He looked down in consternation as the small flower lunged at his boot. And when it failed to reach it, as he was well out of the way, it picked up its tiny, white roots like an old-fashioned woman gathering up her skirts, pulled them out of the soil, and—

“Don’t step on it,” I said, as Ray proceeded to do exactly that, whilst also dancing about and screeching.

I didn’t blame him. He reminded me of the giant on the cavalcade’s sign, vying with a much smaller opponent. One that had just gotten a thorn into him and yanked it back out, along with a gout of blood. Ray cursed and tried to stomp the little thing, but it was faster and, when he attempted to kick it instead, it latched onto one of his new boots with a thorny embrace and appeared to be trying to rip through it.

Judging by Ray’s squawking, it was succeeding.

The small creatures—pixies, at a guess—who were stirring the pot looked up in annoyance. And then noticed that Ray’s antics had begun drawing a crowd. At which point one of them decided to help the now vicious flower and sent a small stream of magic at it; I could taste it on the breeze as it passed by me but couldn’t stop it.

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