Power Trio

Nick dutifully plays along to the line left by Sion Benefice, the original lead guitarist for Legendary. When the departed ash elf played it, it was abrasive and cold in a way that contrasted nicely with Thekla’s warm crunch. Nick is more straightforward in his dynamics than Sion was, but he’s got a good ear for when to push his guitar into overdrive, adding a muscular exertion to the sound.

His head slumps forward when he plays, like he’s in prayer, his eyes closed and his mouth just slightly ajar, enough to see the minuscule tusks jutting from his bottom row of teeth. He moves erratically, twists the guitar in his hands and staggers with it like it’s a living animal he’s wrestling with, a snake trying to get loose.

His eyes open, and he sees her watching him. He smiles at her. Either Nick always plays this way, or he’s performing for Anise. She isn’t sure which of these ideas she finds more appealing.

The song ends and a wash of applause washes through the arena, turned into a white noise explosion by the thick curtain between them and fame.

“Whatcha think?” Nick asks, as Thekla introduces the next song onstage.

Anise gives him the thumbs up. He beams and gives it back.

He’s handsome, okay? So what if he's handsome? He reminds her of a raccoon, the furtiveness with which he looks around at things. The way he just dropped illegally into their laps. But Dee’s satisfied with him. He’s taking pains to fit in. He wants badly to be liked, but not in that sweaty way some people do where it turns repellent.

And he is handsome. Strong jaw, firm arms, brooding eyes. It’s not like she’s going to do anything about it. She’s old enough to be his mother.

As the next number begins, a really sexy one called Vampire Facial that’s one of Anise’s favorites, she realizes she’s excited to see Nick play this for her (for the crowd, Anise, not for you).

When the tap comes on her shoulder, it jolts her. Dee is crouched next to her, a pensive look on the packmistress’s face. “Wanted you to know,” she whispers. “Bit of a drama problem in the stage team. One of the Earth guys and one of my pack guys were getting into it. We’ve separated them.”

“Shit.” Anise starts to stand up. Dee’s hand stays on her shoulder.

“You want me to handle it?” Dee asks. “You’re doing something right now.”

“It’s okay. Seriously. I’m just sitting with my thumb up my ass watching the new hire.”

“That counts as something. You wanna delegate this to me, you can. If you trust me to handle it fair.”

Anise should get up. She’s the manager; she’s should manage this. But she’s seen the packmistress handle disputes, and it’s never been less than impressive. She hesitates, then decides and settles back into her seat. “Okay, Dee. Keep ‘em cooled down till after the show, anyway. Then I can straighten things out.”

“You got it, boss.” Dee squeezes Anise encouragingly, then takes a moment to watch Nick play. “How’s our boy doing?”

Anise answers truthfully. “He’s very good.”

“He is, huh.” Dee watches Nick palm-mute his way through the song’s slinky verse, then throw his guitar open into its lascivious chorus. Her grin is like a proud dad watching his kid knock a homer out of the little league field. “All right, boss.” She chucks her knuckles lightly against Anise’s arm and hops off the lip of the scaffolding.

Nick looks up as she departs, still belting out that slithering guitar part. Anise sees a gleam in his dark eyes as he watches Dee depart.

Legendary pile offstage, buzzing with the afterglow of a stadium show. Kell swoops on Anise, gives her a hug with such energy that her toes leave the ground. Gosh, this drummer is sweaty. “What a venue,” she crows. “What a fucking crowd!”

“Killed it as usual, guys. Killed it dead.” Anise hugs Kell back, thrills at the skinship, as platonic as it is with her friend and client.

“Nick, dude.” Evan solicits a fistbump from their hidden guitarist. “That was sweet. I’ve missed playing with a guitar that’s reacting in real time.”

“We should loop you into the rehearsals,” Thekla says. “With your packmaster’s permission. There were some growing pains on Belladonna Daiquirí I want us to hammer out.”

“Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Sounds good.” Nick is doing a poor job of containing his excitement.

“I need to talk to you all,” Anise murmurs to Kell. “Legendary Classic. Leaving the newbie out.”

Kell deposits her back on the ground, wary but willing. “Let’s find a spot, Ani.”

Anise untangles the other two Kamiyons from Nick and leads them behind the trailer, outside of the arena. “I seriously won’t keep you from your public for long. But I’ve heard a rumor.”

“This isn’t about Nick?” Kell asks.

“No, it’s not. I’m still wary, but if incanting disqualified someone, Legendary wouldn’t exist. It’s your band, your call. It’s about this.” She pulls a crinkled missive from her jacket pocket, a radio transcript that came through the aerial this morning via the confidential tour channel. “Spotted outside Tarouna. That’s a half dozen stops from now.” She points at the bottom words in the last paragraph: DRAGON, RED.

Evan rubs his beard. “Do we think that’s her?”

“Not a lot of dragons around,” Anise says. “Not a lot of red ones, especially. And so close to our tour stop. I’m thinking it’s Conna.”

“What’s the play when we find her?” Thekla puts her glasses back on to scan the rest of the letter. “Like, are we mad? I’m kind of mad. But not mad enough to confront a dragon over it.”

“What we’re supposed to do,” Anise says, “is to get her to come back with us. There’s a lot she needs to explain. And answer for. That’s what happens when you rip open a hole to a new dimension.”

She already explained this to Legendary—it’s not a secret she’d keep from them. The reason they’re here is 70% to bring the music of Earth to the Old World and build relations with this dimension, and 30% to find Conna, the shapeshifting dragon who opened the door to it. Depending on your level of interdimensional security clearance, those percentages might be reversed.

She always thought that if she ever went on a UN-funded tour, it would be some kind of feed-the-world benefit. Instead, they’ve been press ganged into a dragon hunt. The governments of Earth are very interested in why, exactly, the Door was opened, and how the O-Dub kingdoms were involved. Every nation-state of the old world professed to share Earth’s shock at their sudden connection. Anise is inclined to believe it, that Conna tore this hole in reality by herself. Out of homesickness, maybe. Apparently, some very important people think otherwise.

“If she says no, what do we do?” Kell chews her lip. “Even if we could force her back, would we? She’s still our friend.”

“We don’t know that,” Evan says gently. “We don’t know much about her at all.”

“I just wanted you aware.” Anise takes the letter back from Thekla. “It’s nothing we need to worry about right now. It seriously might be nothing at all. The red dragon could be a red herring.” She’s proud of that one, but her clients are too disquieted to laugh. “Listen, guys. If we get to Tarouna and we run into her, and she tells us to kick rocks, we’ll kick rocks, and go home empty-handed. You’re a rock band. Nobody’s expecting you to get her in a hundred-foot birdcage.”

“If not us, then who?” Thekla asks.

“That’s not what we’re gonna worry about.” Anise is firm. “We’re gonna worry about rockin’ the old world. Okay?”

They cautiously agree, then break to meet their adoring fans and sign some battle-axes, which always puts them in a good mood. Anise heads backstage to coordinate the breakdown and check in on Dee’s handling of whatever scuffle happened.

By the time she’s found the crew members who were at each other’s throats during the show, the human is teaching Dee and her once-wayward packmate how to play dominoes.

Striking the stage and packing things up stretches into late evening, and eventually she lets herself step away long enough to explore Reiara. Despite the distance city orcs have with their nomadic kin, there’s still a sense of familiarity as she walks its streets. Orcs are fantastic weavers, and splendid, intricate carpets and hanging tapestries drape across the entire city. Every business is in competition to outdo its neighbors with brocaded banners and aggressively cozy storefronts. She supposes it’s kind of the old world equivalent of neon signage.

The air is thick with conversation, hails and bickering and barter and invitations. And music everywhere. The Old World was in the middle of its own rock renaissance when the Door opened, fueled by a curious instrument called the handgrind, a sort of drony electric hurdy-gurdy thing. It’s got a proto-punk sound to it, O-Dub rock, lush and aggressive, with hand drums instead of kits. Anise hasn’t gotten too far into it, but she’s been meaning to change that, maybe bring back a discovery or two for Warcry to bring across.

Here and there she’ll overhear a Legendary song on a tinny speaker or a chunky sound system. It never fails to make her smile.

Anise will not miss the weather when they teleport to the tour’s next leg. But she’ll miss being around all these orcs. They’re big and good-looking and friendly, and they call her sek’va and bow her into places and haggle cheerfully. She’s always had an affection for the tusked ones back on Earth, their tight-knit loyalties and their gregarious ways. She had a no-strings fling with an Earthling orc once, back when she was young and fun, a UK-based artist who she worked with on a few album covers for Warcry. That was just about the best week of her life. She still thinks about him occasionally.

She trades that spiky cuff she picked up in the Packlands and a pair of zirconium earrings for the warmest cloak she’s ever worn, a miniaturized version of Dee’s big fur, decorated with braided charms and strips of fluttering golden fabric. She looks at herself in the strip of mirror the jovial shopkeeper holds up for her. She’s sure her daughter would roast her right now, but Rosalia isn’t here. And Anise is.

She grins at herself in the mirror. Nick grins from over her shoulder. “You look cool as fuck, boss.”

She jumps. “Nick, what the hell? How are you so fucking quiet for an orc?”

“Sorry, boss. I guess it’s my human half.”

“Are you following me?”

“Dee’s orders. She saw you dip and told me to make sure you didn’t get lost.”

Anise scoffs. “I’m not lost.”

“Okay.”

“We’re right back that way.”

“Well, that way.” He nudges her pointing arm down a different street.

“Whichever way.” She strides in the direction he corrected.

He catches up. “You don’t have to rush. We can keep looking around.”

Anise briefly considers it, taking Nick with her and exploring the city together. “No,” she says. “That’s fine. I need to be there when we run inventory.”

“Boss. We can totally run inventory for you.”

“That’s good of you, kiddo, but there were mistakes last time. The fucking guy who put the lights away mixed up the fresnels with the follow spots.”

He tuts. “Well, that’s just terrible. I assume.”

“It’s not terrible. But it’s inefficient.”

He raises his hands. “At least let me help, huh? Dee said either I’m on rhino riding lessons again or I’m your bitch for the evening. And I don’t know if my ass can take the former.”

She did, did she? “Very well, bitch.” Anise tosses her hair. “Lead on, if your ass can take the latter.”

He hits an exaggerated bow and guides her back through the crowds. And if Anise sorta feels like some kind of wildlands princess with her new cloak and her handsome young chaperone, well, so what? She can imagine for a while before she goes back to her yurt to jill off and balance the travel budget.

“So kiddo, huh?”

Anise looks back at Nick as he scoots his way past a wagon laden with lumber. “What?”

“What you called me back there.”

“Well, sure,” Anise says, and his smile softens. She reminds herself as much as she reminds him: “I’m old enough to be your mother, after all.”

“How old do you think I am?”

“How old do you think I am?”

He chuckles and drops it, focuses instead on getting in front of her so he can clear a path through the crowd for her.

He really does have remarkable eyes when he smiles.

It’s not like she’s going to do anything about it, she repeats to herself.

She’s old enough to be his mother, she repeats to herself.