Bel ran her hands through her snakes for the tenth time, searching for any more grit stubbornly clinging to their scales. She realized that she missed Manipule – the doting gorgon would have scrubbed her snakes clean in an instant, even if the plague snake was trying to bite her.

  Manipule also has my nice clothes, she realized.

  Bel examined the ratty overcoat that Orseis had procured for her, looking drab and lifeless over her gleaming armor. It was completely unsuitable for her first meeting with the humans – and it was vital that she win them over. She grimaced. Her clothes were unsuitable, but they were what she had.

  She glanced at the leader of the scrattes. Orseis was dangling him over the edge of the pier while he happily dipping his hands into the salty ocean water. They were unsuitable for negotiations too, but they were her allies.

  She looked at Crecerelle, who wore a heavy frown. “Maybe we should send these two away?” the warrior gorgon asked.

  Bel shook her head. “No. The scrattes are here–”

  “Burying themselves.”

  “Yes, the scrattes are here, and they’re burying themselves in the flood plain, so they’re here to stay. The humans need to accept that. Orseis is an example of the people from the Golden Plains who want to meet the humans–”

  “And breed with them,” Cress interrupted again.

  “Yes, that. It’s easier to explain if one of them is here, I think.”

  Bel ran her hands through her snakes again and groaned. “I’m so bad at talking though!”

  Cress grabbed Bel’s hand and forced it away from her increasingly irritated snakes. “Well, let’s start by looking calm and collected. It seems that they’ve decided to bring a few of their ships ashore.”

  Bel clasped her arms behind her back to hide her fidgeting as she watched three of the ships smoothly glide into port. Their oars retracted at just the right moment to avoid scraping against the long pier, and sailors with long sticks guided the boats to a halt. More sailors jumped from the boats and began tying them down, but the ships had barely stopped when planks were lowered from each of the ships.

  She watched with trepidation as figures in cloaks and armor descended. She forgot her fear when she saw a pair of half-height figures following after the humans. When she recognized a familiar red tail and walking cane a smile bloomed on her face.

  “Flann! Jan!”

  Bel waved energetically and jogged to her friends. Flann waved his cane and hobbled to meet her partway. Jan took a few steps but then stopped to talk to the humans instead, letting Flann run ahead. She couldn’t resist sweeping the fox into a big, swinging hug.

  “Put me down ya young rascal! Spare my dignity!”

  Bel’s smile wobbled as she held back happy tears. “Dignity? What are you talking about? You’re all damp, and you smell like wet fox.”

  “Me? Smell bad? You smell like death, girl.”

  Bel put the fox down and looked at her overcoat. “Oh, yeah, I got this from a dead guy.”

  Seeing Flann’s expression, Bel rushed to add, “I do have good clothes, I just left them before fighting.”

  “I’ll believe it when I see it,” he said. He slapped his paws against her muscles and whistled. “By the stars, you feel solid as stone and you’ve got the face of a warrior. What happened to that bumbling girl I used to know?”

  He fixed her with a stern look. “We even heard stories that you turned into a beast that breathes fire. I hope you know that flames are my thing, young ’un.”

  Bel laughed. “Someone must be exaggerating what my snakes can do,” she replied, shyly tousling her tired magma snake.

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  “Hey fox,” Orseis greeted.

  The scratte shaman followed behind the cuttle-girl, showing off his teeth with a wide grin. He hissed – but in a non-threatening way.

  “You must be Bel,” a stranger said.

  Bel reddened and stood up straight.

  “That’s me,” she replied.

  She had completely forgotten about the humans – or, truthfully, she had decided to ignore them for a moment. She examined them, thankful that only their leaders and a few personal guards had stepped forward.

  The speaker was a tall man with silver in his hair and beard and a look that screamed, “I’m in charge.” A grumpy man stood just behind the silver one, glowering at her. Bel supposed that she had violated some rule of etiquette.

  Bel gestured to Cress, who was following just a step behind her. “This is Crecerelle. She’s the leader of a group of gorgons who’ve come to the surface.”

  Cress stepped forward and clasped the man’s arm in a forceful show of confidence. Bel tried to decipher the emotions that passed over the man’s face – interested? concerned? – but she had never been good at reading people. After a moment’s pause, he put on what Bel thought was a neutral smile.

  “I am High Speaker Cove,” he introduced himself. “The gloomy man with me is Commander Blake, once and future Governor of North Point. At the urging of your friends from the Golden Plains, we committed ourselves to a battle here.”

  He gestured to the town. “Imagine our surprise when we arrived to find it already liberated.”

  Bel shrugged helplessly. “Yeah, uh, my mom likes surprises.”

  Bel nervously inspected the groups that had descended from the other ships, worried that they would also have complaints. One group was lead by a pale man whose muscular body was covered in scars and tattoos. Bel was slightly jealous that he still had both eyes, despite all of his other injuries. Bel glanced at the pair of people following after him, wondering if they were just a battle-hardened. Before she got a good look, her eyes were drawn to the leader of the third group: an old, frail woman with a burned face.

  Bel was so captivated by the bright, determined look in the old woman’s eyes that she almost didn’t notice her clothing.

  “Oh, are you a priest of Lempo?” Bel asked, completely forgetting about the silver-haired man. His second in command growled at her disrespect, but the noise was drowned out by the scratte’s screeching.

  Bel gestured to her short, green companion. “This guy is a priest of Lempo too.”

  She glanced at the scratte to see that he was lifting up another one of his flammable effigies. “No drugs,” she scolded him. She wagged her finger at the enthusiastic shaman until he lowered his potent potpourri.

  “Is that so?” the old woman responded in a dry, raspy voice. “I am Warrenier, the head priest of Lempo’s followers here in Satrap. We are honored to meet you, beloved daughter of Lempo.”

  She pulled a necklace from under her robe, revealing an expertly carved cameo of Lempo’s smiling face. The scratte waved his nightmarish effigy through the air in response.

  “The goddess of change appears in many places and forms,” Warrenier stated with a smile. She bowed slightly to the scratte, and the shaman grinned, showing off his pointy teeth.

  “Even to scrattes?” the scarred leader of the second group asked. “I don’t know if our people will be okay with that.”

  “Why not?” Bel countered defensively. “They just want a nice place to live.”

  As his brow went up in surprise, Bel realized that the scared man’s eyebrows had been burned off. “Nice place? They want to live in town?”

  “Not exactly,” she replied. “They’re burying themselves out in the flood plane.”

  Bel’s mouth went dry as everyone’s eyes turned to her. “They’re plants,” she explained, pointing to the scratte’s fearsome effigy. “Lempo appears as a big tree to them. They’re just looking for a place to put down roots.”

  Bel smiled at her joke. She was disappointed that the humans didn’t return her mirth. “Anyway, what’s your plan here? It’s a big place, so I don’t think the gorgons will mind sharing as long as we can all get along.”

  “How many gorgons are there?” the first guy – High Speaker Cove – asked.

  “Nine.” Then Bel looked down at herself. “Oh, ten.”

  The scarred man held up his hand. “Wait, ten of you and some scrattes liberated the city? What happened to Technis’ soldiers?” He glanced at the silver-haired High Speaker. “We were told that there were more than a thousand trained soldiers here.”

  Bel rubbed her head. “I killed a bunch, but I wasn’t really counting.”

  She turned to Cress. “How many soldiers did the rest of you kill?”

  Cress flicked her wings in a wide shrug. “Your little spirit had already reduced them by a third when we arrived. I think we encountered several hundred, but they were disorganized and weak, no stronger than the typical scratte, and they foolishly looked us in the eyes as we advanced. The survivors quickly fled.”

  Bel summarized Cress’ words back into Mycenaean for the others. “Cress says I took care of a few hundred, and the rest of the gorgons did the same before the remaining humans fled. They were pretty weak, apparently.”

  Bel almost took offense when the scarred man looked her up and down, but she realized that he was appraising her as a warrior rather than checking out her body. He abruptly thrust his arm forward.

  “The name’s Rock,” he said, belatedly introducing himself. “Me and the rest of the delvers won’t mind sharing a city with warriors like yourselves.”

  Bel could feel him squeezing as their hands met. She returned the gesture and he grinned.

  “Fancy a spar?” he said.

  Flann burst out laughing, but Jan quickly stepped on his toes. Then the meerkat semi-human cleared his throat at an impressive volume for his small body. “How about we talk logistics first?”

  “Besides,” he continued, casting a look towards Orseis, “I reckon that some of us are hungry.”