Page 4 of Poison Nights & Twilight Alchemy

“Like the funeral Oscar attended in Moonglade this morning,” Mrs. Mason sniffed. “He wasn’t invited, but hedelivers horseshoes to one of the shops near the manor where the funeral was held. The shop’s owner is a cousin of the widower, and the dead bride was anheiress. Alexandra Josephine Bancroft. Her husband will inherit everything she owns.”

What a name, Reed thought, rolling his eyes.

“Oh, Reed!” Mrs. Mason exclaimed, noticing him. “She was around your age. I believe only nineteen.”

Plenty of women died in the Glen around nineteen and far younger every day, but he only nodded.

“Oscar mentioned the widower will be fine,” Leopald chimed in beside Mrs. Mason. “Apparently there are many a wagtail lass glad to see the swollen parcel of a husband of hers back on the market. Cornelius Hale is akin to a prince to the women in Moonglade.” He fell into a fit of coughing as his wife smacked the side of his head.

“Don’t forget Oscar also said the bride looked beautiful as the spring day when they buried her in her mother’s garden,” Mrs. Mason continued. “Wedding gown, jewels, and all. So very regal.”

Reed shook his head.Such a waste of jewels.

“She was called Dulce,” Leopald added proudly, as if he were close to the heiress himself. Reed tried not to roll his eyes again. If anyone from that house ever set foot in the Glen, he’d bet a year’s rent they wouldn’t last a day. The smell alone.

“That poor, poor man…” Miss Atkinson lamented.

Reed had heard enough. They were more worried about this rich heiress than the beloved librarian they were originally mourning.

He gave a final nod to Mrs. Mason before leaving. His last fight had saved her husband from the pestilence, andshe would not soon forget it. Reed could usually expect to receive some of whatever it was she cooked every Friday evening.

But it isn’t close to Friday now, he thought with a pang of hunger.

Past the tangle of huts, Reed walked in blessed silence along the river’s edge, the stench of its murky water pushing in the opposite direction by the morning’s northerly breeze. He kept an eye out for anything edible and found a batch of penny bun mushrooms concealed in the weeds, fungi he promptly gathered into his jacket’s deep pockets. Next he discovered, nearly hidden behind a box hedge, that the whortleberry bushes were at last full of fruit. Reed filled the small sack he carried in his other pocket, hoping as he did that he could make it back home before the berries were crushed.

With the Leper’s clay-brained toads, one never knew.

“Well, well, well,” Tobin called in his lazy drawl when Reed approached the Leper’s arena. “If it isn’t his fen-sucked majesty Mr. Reed himself. Come to grace us with his royal, pribbling pompous presence.”

“Tobin.” Reed nodded, ignoring the drivel that always spewed from the man in a generous stream.

An unremarkable building from the outside, the arena was made of worn dark oak with no signage and surrounded by the only trees and dry land left in the Glen. Inside, the building’s central feature was a fighting ring of stretched canvas and bloodstains, its railing of knotted branches and frayed ropes encircled by half-broken benches. Its secondary feature was the many tables to make bets on the fights. The Leper lived somewhere within the structure’s shadowy hallways, but few knewwhere.

The arena was the only place the Duke’s enforcers left alone when they scoured the land for treasure and bribes, all the while pretending to crack down on crime. A fact Reed found interesting.

“Or maybe,” Scott answered, standing slowly to lean on the porch’s worn railing and look down at Reed, his greasy hair falling over his shoulders, “our pretty ivory-headed pumpion has decided to come work for us. What do you say, eh? Are you through mewling about withrespectablepignuts who refuse to pay a decent wage?”

“Will I still have to wear one of those lumpish hedge-pig bonnets?”

The trio crossed their arms in unison, which maybe would have been intimidating but for the ridiculous hats the Leper made them wear. Red velvet Breton caps with gold ribbon. Most offensive hats to ever offend, especially on a pack of stuffed puttocks as these three.

“I need a fight,” Reed called before they could defend their boss’s mangled fashion sense. “Today, now.”

“No can do,” Tobin stated, scratching his chin. He actually appeared regretful—a sentiment Reed happened to know was beyond the man’s very limited emotional capacity. “The boss says no fights for a fortnight.”

Ford spit something green over the railing and said, “We’re all in mourning for Tansy, you see. It’s a shame I didn’t get to tumble her first.”

“She was betrothed,” Scott corrected, looking offended.

“Shut it,” Ford snapped. “No one cares.”

“How much do you need?” Tobin called, his eyes dancing with the only real thing Reed knew he felt. Greed. “You know we’re always here to help out a fellow Glenny, right? You can pay us back in a fortnight. After you win, that is.”

With interest. These plague sores would make sure Reed had no choice but to work for them. For the Leper.

The notion of that turned his stomach, and it wasn’t just the hats. He reached into the sack he held and ate a handful of whortleberries, pretending to be grateful for the offer.

Reed thought of Philip, slowly dying in their dilapidated hut unless he stopped it, along with his own fingers, his ears, and his nose, all things he very much wished to remain intact. There had to be another way.

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