Something Wearing a Woman
Session: 2026-06-03
The road into Land Ho was the same as it always was. Salt in the air before you saw the water. Someone splitting wood. A bell somewhere. Children.
Smiles and nods when they came in. A few of the older women made a small gesture — warding signs, quick, almost apologetic. Vath had seen that before. He didn't take it personally. He probably warranted it.
Hannah spotted them from across the green and waved with her whole arm. He raised a hand back.
Mord Maxon was sitting outside the feast hall and got to his feet when he saw them. He crossed the yard, stopped when he reached Fabri, and looked down at the gnome's boots. The road had done something to them. Fabri was taking it as a personal insult.
Zephyr said diplomatically that the inn might suit him better than whatever came next. Fabri was still considering this when Pedro lifted him an inch off the ground. Fabri flicked a bit of mud off one boot, as though that resolved it.
Cain said something about the ground and where everything was headed, eventually. Vath wasn't sure it was meant to be comforting. It landed about as well as it usually did.
The child who threw the mudball was small and fast. Fabri didn't see where it came from.
Cain called out Svala's name across the village. All the children froze and looked at him, then pointed up the hill, unanimous. He pointed back at them. They stuck their tongues out.
She was already coming down, pipe in her mouth, moving like she'd been expecting this for a day or so. She went straight to Vath. Didn't greet the others. Said she had someone who needed to speak to him — urgent implied, not stated — and waved him along.
The hut smelled like twelve things burning at once. In the middle of it, a woman sat with a bandaged head and a cup of herbal tea. Solveig. The midwife. Doesn't speak the common tongue, Svala said. But she understands.
She'd been woken in the night — Aestrid had broken water. Solveig was crossing the main road with her things when a dark horse came through fast. She'd gone over. The horse stopped.
She'd looked back, thinking the rider might help. Almost saw a face. Then a sound from above her — a wail — and whatever it was had kept going south.
The horse's hooves hadn't sounded right. Too light. Like it wasn't carrying the weight it should have been.
Svala walked them outside afterward. She didn't build up to it. "Solveig doesn't speak the common tongue, but she understands. That was no rider. Something was wearing a woman." She said it the way she said most things. Then she added that the horse had come from the direction of Serenholme. That she'd marked Aestrid's baby with protective runes, just to be safe.
Vath walked back through the village with the others and thought about it. They'd been at sea. They'd been in Serenholme not long ago — had conversations there, left the impression they were heading somewhere. If something was looking for them and had been told where to find them, it had gone to the right place at the wrong time.
Ships in the night.
Cain showed her the jar.
Svala's trinkets came out of a leather sack. Small things, worn smooth with use. She held them toward the jar on the ground between them. They moved away from it — not dropped, pushed, as if something polite but firm was pressing back. She put the sack away. Said it was old and evil. Said she wouldn't be holding it for them. Said they needed to find a spellcaster with enough power to unmake it.
Victor picked the jar back up.
Zephyr said that normally this kind of substance just dissipated into the ground. Normally, he said.
Svala made a sound.
They'd told her about the sea — the fish-people, the crabs, Mirabelle. How the ichor had come from the creatures they'd encountered. Cain had mentioned Mirabelle's end. Victor had gone quiet for a moment. Vath had let it pass.
He brought out the journal next. Svala leafed through it, unhurried, until the later pages. Her hands stopped. She put the book down. Said she had no experience with what she was looking at, and that she didn't want it in her home. She knew of a divination priest in Seacrest — serious, well-regarded, the kind of person who might have something useful to say. Worth finding.
The elves: they'd traded with the area once, she said. Before her time. She didn't know the language. The trade had stopped and nobody remembered exactly when or why.
Vath listened and filed it away. He'd been meaning to ask her about the mushrooms from the mine, and the seeds. There was an order to things. He'd get there.
The afternoon found them at the beach because of an argument.
A younger fisherman and an older one — heavily scarred, faded red tattoos covering both arms, sleeveless even in the sea wind. The old man had the bearing of someone who'd done more than fish for most of his life and didn't particularly feel the need to explain himself. The younger one, Drewga, was at the end of a long rope.
The old man was Halid. He'd seen something off the point. Not a ship with sails — a shape, something like a shell or like what a turtle would look like if a turtle were the size of a vessel. Moving against the current. No sails. And the sound of it was wrong.
He'd been out by East Point — southeast — fishing for marlin. Yesterday. He'd seen it off the headland and watched it until it passed.
Pedro inserted himself into the argument with his usual method: mass and confidence. Drewga found himself a little smaller than before.
Victor asked about bubbles. Frothing. Halid had the look of a man who had been asked many questions about what he'd seen and found most of them beside the point. The ship, he said. Not all ships have sails.
They asked him to draw it. He drew it. Vath looked at it and thought about the stories that had come up before. Things starting to line up.
Then Pedro stopped and looked at Halid more carefully. The grip. The build. Something about the way he stood.
You're the grandfather, Pedro said. He put out his hand, gladiator-style.
Halid took it.
The feast hall that night: Halid at a long table with Brookdor and Aestrid. The baby between them, as babies tend to be — occupying more space than their size would suggest.
Mord gave a speech. He thanked the party for coming back, the way he always did, and then he said something that hadn't been said yet — that last time, they hadn't properly sent Beau off. That it was past time. He raised his glass.
The hall raised its glasses.
Vath raised his. He kept his count to two pints.
Brookdor came over later with an expression that was trying to be casual and not quite making it. He was holding the baby.
Meet Halad Pedro Brookdoreson.
Pedro's response came immediately, without a moment's deliberation: This child has a grand future in the ring.
The night went on. Ale moved through the room in quantity. Zephyr and Pedro did their part. The fish was good. The fire was warm. The hall filled with the sound of people who had lived through something together and were not yet ready to go back out into the cold.
Vath sat with his two pints and the quiet that comes when there's too much to think through to want noise on top of it. The ichor. The journal. The priest in Seacrest. The entity from Serenholme, heading south, looking for something. And East Point first — Halid's turtle, or whatever was wearing a turtle — and then Vogler, and Nathaniel, and the long conversation waiting at the end of that road.
One thing at a time. In order.
Remember to breathe, he told himself, and finished the second pint.