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A short time later she caught the rank smell of cookfires dying in the rain.

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Pithy and Brevity sat on a rolled-up, half-buried log at what used to be the high-water mark, their bare feet in the lukewarm water of the sea’s edge. The story went that this precious, magical mix of fresh rain and salty surf was a cure for all manner of foot ailments, including bad choices that sent one walking in entirely the wrong direction. Of course, life being what it is, you can’t cure what you ain’t done yet, though it never hurts to try.

‘Besides,’ said Brevity, her short dark hair flattened on to her round cheeks, ‘if we didn’t swing the vote, you and me, why, we’d be swimming to the nearest tavern right about now.’

‘Praying that there’s still some beer on tap,’ Pithy added.

‘It was the ice melt, dearie, that done in the island, and sure, maybe it would’ve subsided some, maybe even enough, but who wanted to hold their breaths waiting for that?’ She pulled a sodden rustleaf stick from some fold in her cloak and jammed it in the corner of her mouth. ‘Anyway, we got us a Queen now and a government-’

‘A divided government, Brevity. Shake on one side, Forters on the other, and the Queen hogtied and stretched in between-I can hear her creaking day and night. What we’re looking at here is an impasse and it won’t hold that way for much longer.’

‘Well, with only two witches left, it’s not like the Shake can do nothing but wave a bony fist our way.’ Pithy kicked her feet, making desultory splashes quickly beaten down by the rain. ‘We need to make our move soon. We need to swing the Queen over to our side. You and me, Brev, we should be leading the contingent to King Tehol, with a tidy resettlement scheme that includes at least three chests heaped with coins.’

‘One for you, one for me, and one for Twilight’s treasury.’

‘Precisely.’

‘Think she’ll go for it?’

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‘Why not? We can’t stay here on this rotten coast much longer, can we?’

‘Good point. She saved us from drowning on the island, didn’t she? No point in then having us drown here in the Errant’s endless piss. Fent’s Toes, what a miserable place this is.’

‘You know,’ said Pithy after a time, ‘you and me, we could just abandon ’em all. Make our way to Letheras. How long do you think it’d take us to get reestablished?’

Brevity shook her head. ‘We’d get recognized, dearie. Worse, our scheme ain’t going to work a second time-people will see the signs and know it for what it is.’

‘Bah, every five years by my count you can find another crop of fools with too much money. Happy to hand it over.’

‘Maybe, but it’s not the marks I was thinking about-it’s the authorities. I ain’t in no mood to get arrested all over again. Twice offending means the Drownings for sure.’

Pithy shivered. ‘Got a point there. All right, then we go the honest politician route, we climb the ladder of, uh, secular power. We soak and scam legitimately.’

Brevity sucked on the stick and then nodded. ‘We can do that. Popularity contest. We divide up our rivals in the Putative Assembly. You bed one half, I bed the other, we set ourselves up as bitter rivals and make up two camps. Get voted as the Assembly’s official representatives to the court of the Queen.’

‘And then we become the choke-point.’

‘Information and wealth, up and down, down and up. Neither side knowing anything but what we decide to tell ’em.’

‘Precisely. No real difference from being the lying, cheating brokers we once were.’

‘Right, only even more crooked.’

‘But with a smile.’

‘With a smile, always, dearie.’

Yan Tovis rode down into the camp. The place stank. Figures stumbled in the mud and rain. The entire shallow bay offshore was brown with churned-up runoff. They were short of food. All the boats anchored in the bay sat low, wallowing in the rolling waves.

The mortal path. Twilight shook her head.

Unmindful of the countless eyes finding her as she rode into the makeshift town, she continued on until she reached the Witch’s Tent. Dismounting, she stepped over the drainage trench and ducked inside.

‘We’s in turble,’ croaked Skwish from the far end. ‘People getting sick now-we’s running outa herbs and was’not.’ She fixed baleful eyes on Twilight.

At her side, Pully smacked her gums for a moment, and then asked, ‘What you going t’do, Queenie? Nafore everone dies?’ pqdm.com