“Oh, of course. Umm—” Hope burned in Kestrel’s throat, making her speech come frantic and quick. “Well, he has a beard. It’s a little grey, but not fully yet. I keep telling him toshave it, but he says that he likes it like that, says that it shows how much he’s been through. Between you and me though, I think it just makes him look ancient.”
The cursed woman smiled. “Men and their beardsss.”
Kestrel smiled back, even though she knew nothing about the men of the Wilds and the beards they apparently loved to grow.
“He also has a scar over his eye—oh, but he usually wears these ridiculous leather goggles when he goes out into the Wilds, so you might not have seen the scar. Umm, he also?—”
“Doessshe walk with a limp?”
“Yes!”
They reached the cursed woman’s male friend and she nodded to him. “She issswith Thom.”
The man—who stood a good two heads taller than either of them and had a thick beard that fell down past his chest—looked stunned by the news. He gave Kestrel a quick up and down as he assessed her. “This little beansprout’s with the Broken Wanderer?”
“According to her,” replied the cursed woman.
He folded arms as thick as tree trunks over his chest. “What’s a girl like you doing with a guy like him?”
Kestrel opened her mouth to stutter out a poor response, when the cursed woman gave his bicep a thwack.
“Sayssshe’sssher father.” The two of them looked at each other in a way that told Kestrel they didn’t believe her at all. She started to worry about what that would mean for her, if they knew him but didn’t trust her story. Then the cursed woman returned her attention to Kestrel. “It isssyour lucky day.”
“It is?”
“Thom isssinside. He arrived maybe two or three daysssago.”
“Two or three days?” Something heavy plummeted insideKestrel. She knew how quickly he liked to move during his travels; it was safer that way, he always said. Staying somewhere for more than a day was almost unheard of. “Has he already gone then?”
The man shrugged. “Haven’t seen him leave.”
“You are more than welcome to see if he’sssstill around. A friend of Thom’sssis a friend of Mutiny Bay’sss.”
Together, they stepped aside to let Kestrel enter the place they were calling Mutiny Bay. From the name alone, it didn’t sound like a place she should willingly enter. But before her was something Kestrel had only ever dreamed of seeing: an actual, functioning town—or maybe it was a village? Whatever the correct verbiage was, Kestrel didn’t care. All she knew was that she was standing at the entrance of a community, with a stable and a market and any number of buildings thatweren’ther tower.
More exhilarating than anything though, was that this was a communityfullof people.
And Thom was somewhere inside.
As Kestrel thanked the two guards and headed through the gate, she ogled every person bustling about. There were throngs of them—each one vastly different from the last.
Kestrel hadn’t known people could vary so drastically. Her experience with faces extended to Thom and herself—and even her own reflection had been limited to sightings in pots of water or found in the steel of a polished knife. Before, Kestrel had always believed she and Thom to be quite different. They had different hair, age, weight, frame—his face was scarred and hairy, whereas hers was pale and freckled. His eyes shone like liquid night, whereas hers were a dull shade of green that she likened to algae.
But as Kestrel gazed beyond the front gate, she realized they were more alike than many of the people around her. Some ofthe people here had animal features—much like the snakelike guard—and they strode through the streets with their tails and furry ears held high as if they were completely unbothered by the curse—or maybe that wasn’t the curse at all. There were others with skin so radiant and burning that they looked like they had been made from sunlight, melted it down, and forged into human shapes.
Others were like her, or at least had all the same features she and Thom did, but they wore different clothes. Some adorned their heads with wolf skulls, or armor that looked like it was made from dragon scales, or gauzy robes that left almost every inch of their bodies on display.
The people of Mutiny Bay came in every size, shape, and color she could think of, and they flooded the streets. It left Kestrel dizzy trying to take note of everyone, to drink them all in the way she might gorge herself on the next watering hole she came across.
When she was only a mere few steps past the gates, Kestrel stopped.
This place was sprawling. And she knew nothing about it.
It could take her days to explore every nook and cranny, and she still might never find Thom.
She called back over her shoulder. “Do you have any idea where he might be? Any suggestions on where I should go first?”
The cursed woman was already in conversation with her male counterpart, but she stopped mid-sentence to meet Kestrel where she stood. She pointed down a narrow, sand-strewn street that looked nearly identical to all the others.
