Power Trio

It’s about goddamn time.

Kellax Falrak sticks her head out of the van window, lets the rush of air blow her mane out like a big goofy dog. She looks back the way they came and watches the last gleaming sliver of New Laytham skyline vanish beyond the tree line.

Her dumbass promise to herself is fulfilled. She has exited the city of New Laytham on her own tour bus. Van. Whatever, that still counts, she and Ev agreed on that. It’s a total rustbucket, as planned; a series of foreboding little lights shows blink on at the dashboard as they’re leaving New Laytham, and the ride is about as smooth as a wooden rollercoaster. But it’s theirs.

The Vermont forest rolls outward from the ribbon of highway. The sky is massive and blue, with not a single building to pen it in. Kell’s a proud city mouse, but she can feel the blood of her steppe-riding ancestors singing through all this open air. Finally, she’s got enough space to hear herself think.

Her little boyfriend is driving, tapping out the rhythm of the Valorbounder song they’re listening to. Her even littler girlfriend has her feet up on the dash, and is carefully applying a coat of red polish to her toes. Sion is plucking away at one of the beat-up acoustic guitars that Conna stashed with them, paging through this tatty notebook he’s started carrying around.

They’ve got an extra hanger-on in here with them: Tarik, one of the security guys. He’s a big dun orc, with shovel sized hands and strangely gentle eyes. It’s not like they’ve got a secret service—the security team is just two guys—but it still came as a surprise. “A simple precaution,” Anise told them. “There’s not going to be trouble. Just the usual shitheads yelling things out their windows sometimes between cities. Tarik and Carlos are full-time Warcry guys. We send them all over. They’re here to let you focus on the music.”

“Rest stop coming up.” Evan turns the music down momentarily. “Tarik, you wanna get the word to the bus?”

“Arright.” Tarik pulls out a phone in a chunky protective case and taps out a text on it.

Kell sticks her head into the next row, between the seats. “I wanna check that bus out at the stop. I bet she has a TV in there and shit.”

“You’re not jealous, are you?” Evan reaches with a non-driving hand and scritches behind Kell’s ear.

“No way,” Kell says. “We got it all in here. In-flight entertainment, hunky chauffeur, road snacks. I mean, they got caviar and strippers over at Conna’s, but…”

“Pass the hunky chauffeur a gummy worm, please,” Evan says.

Thekla’s finished her toenails. Now she’s just gazing at the guardrail as it rushes past them.

“Honestly.” Kell rummages around, comes back with a brightly colored bag of snacks. “It’s all going according to plan.”

She gives her goblin a squeeze, tries to project the confidence she knows Thekla lacks. Her girlfriend has been in a mood ever since the magic thing happened. Somber and jumpy.

Even after getting Kell back on her feet, even after they got together and assumed a very different power dynamic in the bedroom, even though she’s twice the damn girl’s height, Thek has always been protective of her. She doesn’t even want to think about what her life would have been like if she’d never gotten that impulse tattoo, never wandered into Labyrinth that evening. It’s painful to see Thekla like this and not know how to help.

They hop out at the rest stop, a strip mall attached to a gas station. Sion excuses himself to take some kind of phone call; Thekla heads off in the opposite direction, murmuring about needing to pee. Kell thinks maybe she just wants to be alone.

The orc distracts herself with the view. God, this view. Everything in Vermont is so pretty it’s unfair. Even this rinky-dink spot overlooks a magnificent range of forest, the emerald hills rising from the misty earth like the folds of a god-scale blanket. Kell’s lived in the shadows of the tallest buildings ever built by mankind, in one of the proudest, most populous cities on the planet, and it still pales compared to this one random valley vista that a bunch of truck-stop donut store employees are taking a smoke break in front of.

Kell understands why that day in Sion’s skyscraper rattled Thekla so much. But the orc has already felt these secret miracles when she’s locked in with the band, or when she takes in a view like this, or when she falls apart in the hands of her lovers. And as she pursues the life that she’s dreamt of, the plan that hangs in front of her like a golden thread, she feels a will beyond her own guiding her steps.

You add magic into the mix and, well. It’s not exactly what Kell suspected. But it makes a kind of sense to her. Mostly, she’s glad that it involves banging the fuck out of her drums. That’s an underpinning cosmic order she can get behind.

As she often does when she’s got this kind of disquiet, she seeks out Ev. Maybe it’s because she knows that he’s really been through the shit, or maybe it’s just because of how zen he always is, but her human has a way of grounding her.

Right now he’s by the Clawmarks, waiting for his coffee to show up, chatting with Conna and her guitarist, a human named Sofia. “I think it comes down to an inability to keep up with the pace of the world,” he’s saying. “You get enough kudos for doing things your way and you get convinced there’s a fundamental correctness to it.”

“Exactly.” Conna nods rapidly, her piercings jangling. “And everything is cyclical, so the shit that you think is old and out-of-style comes back and suddenly everyone’s listening to nu-metal again.”

“They aren’t getting my ass,” Sofia says. “My big brother had the spiky hair and the wallet chain in middle school. Looked like a clown.”

“See?” Conna stabs a feathery finger at her in triumph. “This is exactly my point.”

Kell scoots in behind Evan. “It sounds like Sofia’s not down with the sickness.”

“No, I am the fuck not,” Sofia says.

“Hey girl.” Conna gives Kell a quick hug. “We’re talking about how we plan on getting old and stale.”

“We play rock,” Kell says. “We came out the gate stale. That’s what’s so liberating about it.”

“Thekla told me you play art-punk,” Conna says, as Evan heads for the pickup window. “And that you want to peep the bus. You can go for it, babe. Maybe you wanna ride with us for the next leg?”

“Nah,” Kell says. “I just want to take a peek. The van has amenities. A bona fide cassette deck, one of those bitchin’ fuzzy wheel covers, some road snacks. The list goes on.”

Conna grins. “A little birdy told me you were sampling a couple of those snacks. At the same time.”

“I will neither confirm nor deny.” Kell grins right back. “But tell that little birdy that human snacks can be surprisingly filling.”

“Bitch!” Conna’s gasp is equal parts scandalized and delighted.

Kell intercepts Evan as he comes back to the circle. “Can I steal this guy for a bit?”

“Sure!” Conna winks. “We’re just gonna be waiting here for Sofia’s crazy-ass oatmilk cinnamon roll cold cream nitro monstrosity.”

“I make no apologies for taste,” Sofia says.

Kell and Evan sit on a splintery picnic table, looking out across the forest. Kell reaches automatically for a cig, but she doesn’t carry them anymore ever since she found out about Evan’s mom and the lung cancer. He’d never begrudge it, she knows. He never begrudges anything. But she feels weird about smoking in front of him now.

“That rental of ours is kind of a piece of shit, Kell,” he says.

“It’s shit,” she says. “But it’s our shit. And the stereo’s not bad.”

“We have that.”

“How you feeling about Field Fire?” she asks. “You ready for the spotlight?”

“God, don’t remind me.” He puts on a rueful grin. “If I bomb, we can all blame Thekla.”

She rests her head on his shoulder. He puts his hand on hers. They watch the mist pool in the lowland trees like a liquid. She likes being quiet with Evan, almost as much as she likes making noise with him. She likes how he always seems to be admiring everything, especially her.

“I’m worried about her,” she says, when she’s had her fill.

“I am, too.”

“She’s fine when she’s busy. But all the driving is too much downtime. She gets in her head about the magic thing.”

“Thekla wants plans. Practicality.” Evan sips his coffee. “And magic is categorically not that. I’m hoping that if we figure it out more, find the rules for it, it’ll help. But in the meantime…”

“Yeah.” Kell sighs. “I wish there was more we could do.”

“I’ve been trying to seem like I have a lid on it,” Evan says. “She likes control. Not necessarily her in control, but the knowledge that someone is.”

“Guess that someone has to be us. Even if we don’t feel it.”

“I think of it the way you said it to me before our first show, in the Glorie’s green room. Remember?”

“Course I do.” And Kell puts her forehead to his, just like then. “Best fucking rhythm section in New Laytham.”

“And we’ve got her,” Evan says.

“Rock solid,” Kell says, and kisses him.

There’s something about the way Evan H receives a kiss, like there’s still that first-time surprise to it, that gets Kell’s orc blood heating and looking to conquer. She doesn’t mean to stick her tongue down the human’s throat every time, honest. It just kind of happens. Whatever; her man doesn’t seem to mind.

“Yo. Tongue wrestlers.” Thekla’s voice punctures the moment, and Kell sees the goblin walking back to their van, shoulders drawn. “We’re rolling in five. Conna says tour the tour bus while you still can.”

“Bird’s gotta hold her damn horses.” Kell scrambles off the park bench. “Not like Albany’s going anywhere.”

“I’ll stay with her,” Evan squeezes Kell’s hand. “If they do have caviar in there, you steal some, okay?”