Power Trio

“Packland Cross!” Thekla’s smoky voice booms across the field. I told them this was the right spot, Anise thinks. If you want to do an outdoor venue in the winter, you gotta play for the packs. “I hear old world orcs like to make some fucking noise. Is that true?”

A roar of approval meets the question, half rock and roll audience and half battlecry. Good attendance. Thank God.

“Well, shit.” A grinding chord explodes from the sound system. Levels sound okay. Pauli better keep an ear on that clipping. “We are Legendary and we do, too. Kell, baby, let’s show ‘em. Ranva Hoc!”

Anise is close enough backstage that she can hear Kell’s unamplified roar of “ONE TWO THREE FOUR!” Legendary slam into one of their new ones, a three-minute aggro mastercraft called Wendi Richter Scale.

Anise is an anxious person with a stressful job. One of her daughter’s friends just graduated and got a spot at an ad tech company making twice what she does, and he’s always posting vacation pics in the Seychelles. As far as she can tell, his job is mostly vacations. Sometimes, when she’s sucking down the third coffee of the day and gazing dismally at a P&L spreadsheet trying to see where all the craft service expenses are going, she asks herself why she does this.

Then Legendary opens the throttle, and she hears that sound and lets it liquidate her forebrain. And for an hour at a time, everything is all right. She loves Evan, Thekla, and Kell, and she thinks they love her. Not the way they love each other, obviously. But from the first Legendary song she heard, she knew: this is what the future of rock sounds like.

Trust is difficult for Anise. Too many beautiful plans that never panned out, too many people who have put out their smokes on her heart and left burn marks on her happiness. But she trusted Legendary. And they’ve paid her back by working until their fingers bled and becoming everything she hoped they would be.

For Legendary, Anise will be the shitwork pencil-pusher who loses sleep and fills out endless paperwork and tracks payrolls. She’ll be the bitchy nag who hassles flaky promoters and haggles with venues. She will be whatever she needs to be.

Some people are special. You look at them and you can just tell they’re going to leave their thumbprints in the clay of history. Anise is not that person. She came to terms with it a long time ago. Evan, Thekla, and Kell are. And she is going to make sure this whole fucking dimension knows it.

The Voraag pack is milling around backstage, those who haven’t looked for a place out on the parade ground Legendary’s playing at. Anise has never been surrounded by this many orcs in her life. Packland Cross, as she understands it, is the biggest concentration of nomadic packs in the world. There are no permanent residents, just an ocean of yurts and tents and RVs and other temporary structures, self-organizing according to some arcane tradition that Dee didn’t even try to explain. A campground like this on Earth would be a muddy, trashy mess. But the Packland orcs keep it pristine, somehow.

She wants to trust the Voraags, too. Dee’s pack came highly recommended and the woman herself seems frightfully competent to Anise. The packmistress can intimidate through sheer good cheer and optimism, like she knows her people won’t disappoint her with such a gravitational force that they break their backs to prove her right. Since the first stop on the tour, she’s begun anticipating what Anise needs before the elf even knows she needs it.

But there was the Trakor pack incident. Dee’s at a meeting with a few other packmasters today about that whole storm in a teacup. And Taff’s words are nagging her. Dee’s alluded to not being the first Voraag packmistress, to there being a complicated past she led them out of. But this is the first Anise is hearing about a sister. And now there’s the Nicholas thing. It’s the first decision she’s seen Dee make she doesn’t understand.

She casts their stowaway a glance. He’s sitting at the lip of the backstage scaffold, by the stairs up to the curtain, stormcloud brows gathered as he plays his ratty guitar along to the chords that Thekla’s laying out. He sees her see him, and waves a brief salute with his picking hand. She hastily returns it. He didn’t spill anything off his rhino, at least, she thinks. Whatever method Dee’s found to motivate his learning, it’s working.

Legendary blitz through their set, whipping the crowd into further heights of appreciative uproar. “We love you, Packland!” Thekla cries. “Heiak Lek’ai!”

Anise should probably try to learn orcish. Packtongue, whatever. These guys love it when Thekla speaks it. That’s because she’s a pint-sized green sex kitten, and you’re a twiggy battle-ax who’s started having to do morning yoga so her hip doesn’t ache all day.

Legendary carom offstage, Kell whooping and spinning Thekla through the air. Evan pauses next to Anise and extracts a fistbump and a hug from her. “The venue and the crowd fucking killed.” He pats her on the back before releasing her. “You’re a genius, Anise.”

“You are the geniuses,” Anise says, but inside she’s purring like a cat. Evan the human has a way of being nice that doesn’t make you think oh, he’s just being nice. She thinks of telling him so, but his big purple wife is pulling him away for Legendary’s customary post-show PDA. A Voraag orc who’s coiling cables wolf-whistles at them and Kell cheerfully flips him off.

Anise tries to get Kell’s attention as the orc finally extracts her tongue from Evan’s throat. She does a little inquisitive wave and then imitates a paradiddle in mid-air. Kell beams back and gives her an okay sign with the hand that isn’t full of her wife’s ass. Go for it, girl, she mouths.

Anise does a private little shimmy of triumph and steps off the stage. “Hey,” she says to the cable-coiling Voraag orc, Parag, she thinks his name is. “Do me a favor with the breakdown?”

“Sure, boss.”

“When you strike the drums, could you pack up one kick and set the rest back up in my yurt?”

He’s bemused. This has become a regular request. “You got it, boss.” He whistles up the steps. “Newbie Nick. Raniova K’ei.”

Nicholas sets his guitar aside and jogs down to join his senior packmate. Anise suddenly decides she has other places to be.

* * *

There’s much to love about a world where cell phones don’t work. Anise particularly appreciates the resurgence of flyers. As she walks the grassy thoroughfares of PC, she sees them up all over, leather-tanning offered and tusk-sharpenings requested and events advertised. Legendary’s show flyer is everywhere, the melting goblin logo leering from sheet metal prefabs and colorfully flagged stalls.

But it’s tough to get used to no map in your pocket. And when you’re going out places, you need to tell other people where you’re going and/or make a plan for meeting back up. Anise is old enough to remember having to do this on Earth, too, but she’s lost the knack.

So it is that, after picking up a fragrantly spiced skewered rabbit and a studded leather cuff, Anise finds herself badly turned around. She tries to orient herself around the tall speaker stacks sticking up from the parade grounds, but her crew are too damn efficient in the teardown and she loses her place.

She doesn’t panic; she’s not a kid. She knows just enough orc to ask for directions with a 50% success rate, she’ll be fine. But goodness, this is annoying. Okay, maybe she’s panicking a little. Cut her some slack, she’s had four coffees.

A big green hand on her shoulder. She spins around, self-defense Groupon class instincts widening her stance.

“Boss! Hey!” The Voraag packmistress raises her arms in an I’m unarmed type gesture. “Nice bracer. You need a hand getting back?”

“Dee.” Anise deflates. “Hi. Yes, thank you. How’d you find me?”

“Walked around asking ‘did a little lady who looks like a banana come by?’ They pointed me your way.” Dee grins. “Anna Banana. You weren’t my boss that would be your nickname.”

“Thank god I’m your boss, then.” But Anise giggles a little as she says it. Not a laugh—that’s definitely a giggle. Record execs do not giggle. She’s more out of sorts than she wants to admit.

Dee escorts her back to their camp. Partway through the walk, a breeze cuts across a thoroughfare and makes her shiver. Dee’s fur cloak lands across her shoulders.

“Oh, that’s okay,” she says to the packmistress. “Really. It’s dragging on the ground now.”

“Ain’t nothing, boss.” Dee leads them around a corner Anise must have passed four or five times. “If anything, the snow’s just gonna make it cleaner.”

They split once they reach the edge of camp, Dee to her people and Anise to her yurt, where she’s gratified to see Kell’s gleaming drum kit set up across the carpets. She turns her heater up, strips off her gloves, and takes a seat at the drum throne. She reaches into her messenger bag and pulls out a pair of sticks.

Anise isn’t a drummer. Not really. But she has a lot of nerves to burn off, and this is one of her favorite ways. She winds a pair of buds into her ears and queues up a Terror Twins single. She shuts her eyes, shakes her shoulders, nods along to the opening synth. And then she lets loose.

Snare roll on the intro. Woozy flam in the verse, into a Swiss army triplet. The comforting burn in her forearms, the shake and shout of the membranes. So much of what she does is so complicated. So many of her actions have no visible reaction, or only unfold weeks down the road, parking their heavy weight in her gut until then. Not here. Not on the skins.

The singer in her ears unleashes a low rattling death growl. She opens her jaw and gives a forceful exhale along with it. Nine stroke roll. Tricky, tricky. She falters as the song hits its gallop, tsks to herself. She pauses the music, opens her eyes, and Nicholas the stowaway applauds in the entrance to her yurt. “Fucking shit.” Anise just about leaps out of her golden skin. “Uh, Nicholas. Hi. Please don’t enter unannounced, okay?”

“Sorry,” he says. “I tried shouting, but I guess you didn’t hear. I woulda knocked, but…” He wiggles the tent flap. “A real lack of doors around here.”

“What do you want?”

“Just to say that’s some killer drumming.” He nods his approbation. “Terror Twins, right? Blood Ascendancy?”

“Uh. Yes.” She pulls her earbuds out. “How could you tell?”

“Those triplets into the takka-takka-ta-takkata thing,” he says. “I don’t really speak drum, sorry. But it was tight.” He raises the strap on his own shoulder, which connects to his thin, cheap gig bag. He carries that thing everywhere. “You wanna jam?”

Anise has never played with another person. A part of her leaps at the idea while the rest of her shrinks back. “Maybe sometime later. I was just finishing up here.” Which is a lie, but now it’s one she’s going to have to follow through on because otherwise he’ll hear it, which pisses her off, but she shouldn’t be pissed off at him about it because it’s her lie. Actually, fuck this: “On second thought, sure. I could go longer.”

“Sweet.” Nicholas unslings his bag. “I don’t know if we can really thrash when I’ve got an acoustic, so Terror Twins isn’t on the table. But I’ve got a progression I’ve been fucking around with if you’d like to do some improvising.”

“Okay.” Anise taps out a few flams.

He pulls his heavy fur tunic off. He’s dressed himself in scavenged tour merch underneath: a white tee with the cover of the sophomore album, its sleeves torn raggedly off.

He has an intricate tattoo of a star chart along his right bicep. His arms aren’t the sculpted muscle of the pack orcs, but they are big, she notices. And very pink. She’s always thought it odd that pinkskin was a name for humans. Evan Kamiyon is not really pink. He’s bread-colored, kind of. Nicholas is pink, like rhododendron pink.

“You want to start?” he prompts.

“What should I play?”

He settles onto the floor, rests the guitar in his lap. “Whatever makes you feel good. I’ll adapt.”

Whatever makes you feel good, huh? Okay. Anise is used to throwing on a background track or a drumless mix. It’s rare that she just… plays.

She starts safe, with a four-on-the-floor kick. Nicholas’ head bobs along to it. She adds the snare on the upbeat, claps her hi-hat shut and puts some disco sixteenth notes in. She doesn’t normally play this dance-y.

Nick bounces his eyebrow, gives her a sly grin. “All right. I feel that.” He digs into his pocket and comes out with a pick. Then he spins up a muted strum along with her, tracking the patterns across her cymbal. She opens up a little. So does he.

She tries a fill. He drops into an open strum and gives her space to circle the kit. When she brings the kick back in, he’s right there, stepping easily back into her groove.

She departs the safety of her dance beat, pops a flamadiddle. He oohs. “Okay, boss! I see you!” Her cheeks are tight. When did she start smiling?

He’s smiling back.

Those dark eyes aren’t so bad when he’s smiling. That stormy mean-mugging is more just an intensity, like he’s paying close attention to everything around him. He’s certainly paying close attention to her. Every shift she makes on her beat, he matches with his own change to his strumming or his dynamics.

She executes a complicated tom fill, finishes with a cymbal crash, and Nick laughs delightedly, slides down his string as he dives back in with her. This is fun. This is so much easier than when she’s squinting her way through someone else’s part. This feels natural, like breathing or beating your heart. This—

Her hand shoots out and stills her cymbal. “You aren’t trying to incant, are you?” she snaps.

His guitar squawks to a halt. “What?”

Anise has never done magic, but she’s had the feeling described to her. Deep, deep focus. The world narrowing. Music-making becoming instinctual, as though something bigger was playing through you.

“It felt like you might be,” she says.

“I wasn’t.” He goes pale. “I swear I wasn’t. I just—that’s what playing with people feels like. Have you jammed with people before?”

She hasn’t, but it chafes her suddenly, to hear him ask it. She’s old enough to be this kid’s mother. “Look, I’m already overdue to return this stuff to Kell,” she says. “I think we’re done.”

“Okay.” Nicholas’ face slips into neutrality, back to that resting sternness. Anise feels guilty, somehow, and deprived. “I’ll help you bring the kit back to the trailer.”

They get their winter gear back on and pack up. It takes a couple of trips to move all the drums. On the second, Nicholas breaks the stony silence. “I’m teaching Dee guitar. She wants to learn. Not magic, just guitar. Is that going to be a problem?”

“I don’t love it. But I won’t stop you.”

“How about you supervise?” Nicholas adjusts his grip on the floor tom he’s schlepping. “You could bring the drums and we could play again. I’m sorry that we had to stop. I know you don’t trust me.”

“I, uh…” Anise starts to deny it, then trails off.

“You can keep an eye on me this way.” His breath puffs out as steam into the air. “I had a great time jamming. I think you did, too. I promise it wasn’t magic you were feeling. It was just… music. You know? Fun music.”

They pile the drums near the trailer, zipped and clipped away in their storage bags and boxes.

“Should we knock?” Nicholas asks. “Let them know these are back?”

“Kell!” Thekla’s scream through the trailer wall is muffled but quite legible. Nicholas jumps. “Oh, God! Oh my fucking God!”

Something inside clatters to the floor. The trailer squeaks on its shocks. Anise power-walks away. “No. No, we’re good.”

“Jesus H. Christ.” Nicholas hurries after her. “Are they screwing that goblin or murdering her?”

“You will get used to Thekla,” Anise says.

She returns to her yurt alone, piles into the furs, tries to shut the chill out. Sleep doesn’t come easy. Of course it doesn’t. It was a four-coffee day.

She sighs into the still night and wiggles her pants down her thighs. She starts another of her regular rituals, the only way she can get sleep in this frozen campground. She should have downloaded material for this. Why didn’t she think of that? Videos or pictures. She’d even take a fucking audiobook at this point.

She thinks about the forearms of that big burly orc as he wrapped the cables up today. She thinks about Legendary tickling each other's tonsils. She bites her lip and picks up the pace. It’s so cold out here. Why is it so goddamn cold?

Dee’s cloak was warm.

Dee came looking for Anise herself. She didn’t need to do that. She has people for that.

Anise feels her face heat up. This is bad, what she’s doing. Dee is an employee. A contractor. She has to give this up. But it’s the one thing that always works.

“Fuck,” she mutters, and slides her fingers beneath her underwear, and thinks about sitting in front of the packmistress on her rhino, Dee’s arms reaching around her and Dee’s breath on her neck, Dee calling her boss, Dee’s face and her shoulders and her hands.

And when she’s finished, she’s embarrassed and mad at herself and profoundly, heart-shakingly lonely. But she manages to sleep.