[Episode One: A Dark and Stormy Night]

[timebethine]

There isn't much of a road anymore between Riphollow and Spindlecairn, but Laertes has been on it all day, and the day has been streaked with lightning. By the time he fetches up like flotsam at the mouldering inn that overlooks Spindlecairn's main street, he's soaked to the skin and shivering. He has a hollow-eyed look about him--a lean, starveling-dog look that makes it hard to know if he'll cower or bare his fangs.

Then again, most strangers do. Those who don't know when to cringe or to bite don't usually make it all the way to Spindlecairn.

He settles on a barstool with an audible squelch, and rainwater sluices off of him in streams. "I hope you have something warm," he tells the barkeep, "because a cold beer might put me in my grave."

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[sagramore]

Sagramore narrowly avoids making a face at the amount of water the stranger has brought in with him. There's unquestionably a puddle growing under his stool, and Sagramore will be the one mopping it up at the end of the night -- not that it's beneath him, that kind of thing, but it's almost the full moon, and he wants to get out as quick as he can after work. There's a burned-out carriage house on the furthest edge of town, and he means to lock himself in there tomorrow and wait out the moon.

The stranger looks miserable, though, and Sagramore has to remind himself not to feel sorry for him. That thin, hungry look is one that hunters often have, because they chase fortune along the washed-out, grown-over roads between these small towns, hoping to have found a problem to solve in exchange for coins. This one might be wet and tired and pitiful, but if he knew what Sagramore is he'd be as quick to shoot as the rest of them.

"Sack posset, for three marks," Sagramore says. "If you have it."

[timebethine]

That If you have it is a dig, but Laertes can't let himself be needled by it. Barkeeps hear all the gossip. They know who's quarreled with their husband, whose sheep dropped a lamb with claws instead of hooves; they know who's gone missing and who misses them. "I know how much trouble a posset is--three marks and a noble, for the floor." He slides the coins over without letting himself think about how light his purse is.

[sagramore]

"Yes, sir." It's not his inn, nor his bar, and his own purse is always light. He puts the noble in his pocket as he heads back into the kitchen where the sack is kept warm on the stove.

He's back in a few moments with one of the spouted mugs for possets, brimming with curdled cream, and a spoon, and sets both down in front of the stranger before he goes back to polishing glasses.

He's a tall man in his late thirties, if Laertes takes the time to look at him while drinking the posset. His build is wiry, though obscured by his shirt and vest, and his hair has recently been cropped short, but looks as though it will grow out into waves or curls -- it doesn't lie flat. Around his bandaged eye, the side of his head is heavily scarred, as if he'd been bitten or clawed by something; his shirtsleeves are rolled up to show off equally scarred and tattooed forearms.

[timebethine]

As Laertes warms, he takes stock of the man across the bar. The tattoos speak to an interesting life, either a reckless and impulsive one or one worth memorializing. The scars say that he's a survivor, which means either he can handle himself in a fight or he has friends who can. (Something in the way he carries himself makes Laertes think it's the former.) The fact that he's tending bar says he's not a monster hunter, but perhaps he was, before he lost the eye. "What's your story?" Laertes asks as he drinks.

[sagramore]

He'd have to be an idiot not to have a story, and yet-- Sagramore shrugs, and tells the truth, as he always does.

"I was with my brother when the Mother lost her temper. We were attacked. I lived, he didn't." He sets a glass down with a little clink. "Nothing left at home, so I ended up here."

[timebethine]

The way he tells the tale is closed off; it's meant to be final, to prevent further questions. Laertes finds himself wanting to press. (He'll have to, if he wants any information at all.) "Are you this charming with all your customers? Or do strangers get special treatment?"

[sagramore]

Sagramore frowns at him.

It's not that nobody ever presses. Hunters like to press, although many of them just get to the point without trying for small talk first -- What have you seen, what have you heard, what's out there? -- and there have been clumsy flirtatious, too, that began with questions like these. It's just that there's something about this worn-down dog of a boy, wet as a drowned rat and no more appealing, that makes Sagramore want to answer. He wants to say yes, I know about the sheep, and the dead child too. I smell the thing that's out there. I can't stop smelling it. At night I hear it hunting. If you're here for it, I'll help you.

He shakes off the thought briskly and picks up the next glass. He doesn't need a hunter staying any longer than necessary, especially with the full moon tomorrow night. "If you want a fuck, you don't have to get to know me first."

[timebethine]

"This charming with everyone. Got it." Laertes leans back on his stool, surveying the room. A few huddles of people drinking, mostly in that somber, serious way that he recognizes from a dozen other nigh-identical villages. They're not here for a good time. They're here to get drunk, and there's safety in numbers. No trophies over the mantel, which says they don't have a local hero, and also that they likely don't put much stock in hunters.

No raised voices. No immediate alarm.

When the woman from Spindlecairn had caught his wrist in that Riphollow tavern and pleaded with him, Save our children, he'd imagined a town beset. He'd pictured her wild-eyed grief on half a dozen faces--but there's only rumbling gossip about the crown's latest levy and the going rate for dye.

She'd been alone, he realizes now. She'd come to Riphollow because people here thought she was the kind of woman whose loss couldn't be helped. Perhaps even the kind of woman who deserved to lose a child.

Is this justice? says a voice in his ear, licking like a tongue of flame. Is this righteous? You could burn through this place like a meteor, and nothing would be lost. Will anyone miss these people but the sheep?

Laertes shakes himself. He looks up at Sagramore with his most winning smile--and Sagramore may notice that, although Laertes came in here sodden, he's drying out surprisingly quickly. That puddle beneath the stool has almost evaporated. As he extends a gloved hand to shake, he says, "My name's Laertes. What's yours?"

[sagramore]

For a few moments he just stares at that outstretched hand. Then, grudgingly, he shakes it. It's warm -- he feels the warmth even through the stranger's glove -- and he wonders when he last felt warm all the way through. "Sagramore."

[timebethine]

His handshake is firm, sure. "Thank you for the posset, Sagramore. Are there rooms to rent here?"

[sagramore]

"Fifteen marks," gruffly, when he realizes he's left his hand in Laertes' for a second too long.

[timebethine]

That smile doesn't slip. "Are there abandoned buildings near here?"

[sagramore]

"If you don't mind risking a throat-cutting."

[timebethine]

"I can handle myself."

[sagramore]

His frown deepens. The carriage house is meant to be his, and he doesn't like the idea of transforming in his room if there's a hunter in town.

"How long are you staying?"

[timebethine]

"No longer than I have to, don't worry," says Laertes with a roll of his eyes. "Then you can go back to grumping at the regulars."

[sagramore]

"There's an estate on the west of town. It's burned, but the carriage house is still standing. You'll be sharing it with the rats, but the roof's still half-there."

[timebethine]

"Do you take everyone who doesn't bother to get to know you there?"

[sagramore]

"I'm not taking you. I told you where it is."

[timebethine]

Inwardly, Laertes winces; that was too familiar. He pushes back the spouted cup and rises from the stool, inclining his head and shoulders in an almost-bow. "You did. Good night, then. Stay safe."

As he steps back from the bar and out again into the night, the rain leaves dark spots on the shoulders of his bone-dry coat.

[sagramore]

All night Sagramore is restless. After the bar closes he goes up to his room in the inn, but all he does is pace.

He doesn't need a hunter in town -- the timing is terrible. It would be a stroke of luck if the thing he's been smelling rips Laertes' throat out before he sticks his nose into Sagramore's business.

But there's the child.

Sagramore doesn't know anyone in this Earth-forsaken place, and he doesn't care if a monster eats their sheep; he didn't know Sebile or her daughter, either, but he heard that thing outside when it killed the child, smelled the hot blood and the stench of rotten meat, as if the touch of its jaws brought about instant decay. He hears the talk in the inn, whether he wants to or not -- he knows Sebile brought it on herself by leaving her daughter alone in the house at night to turn tricks. He knows goodfolk have nothing to worry about (but their sheep aren't so lucky, it seems).

If Laertes gets what he's looking for sooner rather than later, well-- it's not that Sagramore has a particularly well-developed sense of justice, but he means to stay in Spindlecairn for at least another month, and he'd rather not keep smelling the filthy thing.

Around two or three in the morning he pulls on his boots and slips out of his room. The sheep-eater is lurking around a lambing barn north of the burned estate, and if he hurries he can get to the carriage house without it scenting him and fetch Laertes.

[timebethine]

The carriage house is at least seven times worse than Sagramore had led him to believe. The fact that the walls are still standing at all is more happenstance than architecture; there's an active rivulet pouring across the floor, and Laertes is half-convinced that it's already started eroding a channel into the floor tiles. He glances from the waterfall where the roof has warped and fallen in, down to the door (thankfully, secured with several iron latches), and he hopes that whatever's plagued this town, it doesn't have wings.

There was a time when he would've prayed, he thinks distantly. But he'd stopped praying on the day his sister drowned. Whatever the Mother thinks of monsters, she has no desire to save her people from them.

In the shelter of the chimney, where the carriage house holds together best, he starts reassembling his silver gun.

[sagramore]

By the time Sagramore gets to the carriage house, he knows the sheep-eater is following him. If it were a day later, he wouldn't care. Tomorrow night he'll have as many teeth as it does. But tonight he's just a man with one eye, relying on sound and smell to keep his guts from being torn out like the sheep's.

The carriage house has a door, which is something of a joke, given how permeable the walls and roof (what exists of it) are. Sagramore raps on it shortly. He can smell the sweat-and-musk scent of Laertes within; he knows he's in there.

[timebethine]

Laertes is no fool. He creeps around to the window to take a look at who's knocking--but the night and the sheeting rain down the windowpane means he doesn't catch much more than a wiry silhouette.

Still, he's gotten good at recognizing silhouettes. It's a survival skill, in his line of work.

"Sagramore," he says as he starts undoing latches. Mildly, "Changed your mind?"

[sagramore]

"The sooner you get what you want, the sooner you're out of town," shortly.