The Princess Beard

by Kevin Hearne

  “Do you, uh…have money?”

  Vic understood that this question came up because he possessed no pockets and his fanny pack did not look nearly so swole as the rest of him. He jiggled the coins within, allowing the fickels to clink around, and leaned down toward the server. “All the oatmeal,” he whispered.

  “Y-yes. Right away.”

  He stood proudly at his table, one hoof cocked, and glowered at anyone who dared to look in his direction. He didn’t want them checking out his torso and estimating where his kidneys might be. Perhaps it was time to eschew the crop-top trend.

  The oatmeal started coming, and he shoveled it in as fast as they could bring it out, switching his esophageal valve to close off his human stomach and thereby shunting the oats down the long esophagus to his second stomach. He would savor the steak and eggs later; oatmeal was fuel, and he just wanted to get it in there as fast as he could swallow, in case he had to gallop away from a rogue spleen-snatching gang.

  It turned out to be twenty bowls, as promised, and then the steak and eggs arrived with the hash browns. He poured hot sauce on the eggs and shifted his valve over to close off his horse stomach. The proteins and taters were bound for the human stomach.

  He took his time cutting up the steak, a perfect pink in the middle, and enjoyed two bites before his eyelids unaccountably began to droop.

  Why was he so tired all of a sudden?

  His knees buckled a bit and he staggered to the left, knocking over a rake that had been badly nailed to the wall. He blinked furiously. That was embarrassing, and more than a little weird. Oatmeal didn’t usually have such a soporific effect.

  A human man dressed in a stained white apron emerged from the direction of the kitchen. He had a poufy hat on too. Probably the chef. Maybe the oatmeal chef?

  “Heyyuh. Dish ohmeal. Ohmeal? Ohhhhmeal! Whereza T? Suppozed be a T in that word. Ohmeal ish funny. Summin…wrong. Widdit.” He pointed at the stack of empty bowls with what he thought was a single finger, but somehow he saw three. How was that possible?

  “I know, I know,” the chef said. “Sometimes people have that reaction. We can fix it. Can you walk?”

  “I kin awk. Walk. Yeah.”

  “Follow me? I can fix you right up.”

  Vic tried to follow him and walk straight, but tables kept jumping in his path and getting knocked over. The ground wasn’t steady.

  “Summin wrong,” he said again.

  “I know, but don’t you worry,” the man said. “We’ll get you all settled. I’m very sorry about this.”

  Vic staggered into the kitchen, his hooves sounding very loud on the tile and not hitting in any rhythm he found comforting. They were nervous footfalls.

  “Muzza.” Vic’s mouth was so very dry, and he smacked his lips and tried to generate some saliva in there. He was going to say something profound. What was it? Oh, yeah. “Muzza bin summin I ate.”

  What had he eaten? Vic’s thoughts were thick and sludgy, like lumpy oatmeal. That was it! Oatmeal! He’d eaten a lot of it. At this place.

  The man in the apron fetched a long boning knife out of a wooden block and faced him.

  “You’re suffering toxic shock,” he said. “I can help you and you’ll feel instantly better. Would that be okay?”

  “Yeah. Do it.”

  The chef looked over at the server and several others in the kitchen. “You heard him say I should do it,” he said. “He gave me permission to remove one of his kidneys. To save his life, of course.”

  “Hole on now, hole on,” Vic said. “Wuh wuzzat? Kinneys? No kinneys.”

  “You’re having a bad reaction to the food, sir. Just relax. Lock your knees and go to sleep. I know you must be tired.”

  “No, izza ohmeal. Frumma place. Thish place! Hey! Yourra guy who made a ohhhmeal. You did thish to me!”

  “No, sir, you’re confused.”

  “Yourra guy my dam tol’ me about! You canna have mah kinney!”

  The chef took a step back and his eyes flicked to the left. “We miscalculated the dose. Hit him with the extra shot,” he said, and that is when Vic realized that his dam’s warnings weren’t just stories to scare him straight but were actually about real things that happened to real centaurs and it was really about to happen to him. They’d knock him out, and if he ever woke up at all, it would be in a very large ice bath with missing organs and hide-marring scars.

  But he liked his kidneys. Especially when he could pronounce them correctly.

  Many times over the years, Pissing Victorious had wished for the ability to call down lightning on his foes, but this was the one time he truly, desperately needed it: to smite the evil human who wanted to steal his kidney. And not just for his own sake—to smite him for all centaurs, so that humans would know what dire fate befell those who tried to snaffle centaur body parts. But all he could summon was tea and cake.

  Or maybe a pastry? A dire pastry. A scone!

  Yes, a day-old scone with expired raisins in it, dense and dry and angry that its ingredients had not been used to bake something more winsome and moist and altogether delicious. A furious scone, an unwanted scone, passed over by hundreds of customers in the kuffee-shop pastry case, the Scorned Scone of Dry and Crumby Death!

  With this thought, Vic raised his swole arms and clenched his fists at the chef. In his head he said something victorious and cutting and clever, but what came out was “Gyyyauuughh!” as he poured all his will into a desperate scone-summoning. The chef shortly ceased to exist as a single contiguous unit.

  Blood sprayed behind what was left of the chef, and his eyes widened in surprise as a large portion of his abdomen was blown out by a deadly high-velocity scone, which had appeared in the air, rocketed forward, and disintegrated into crumbs even as it destroyed, leaving a visible hole clear through the man’s torso.

  A gasp from his left drew Vic’s gaze, and he saw his server standing there agog as the chef collapsed and the knife clattered on the floor. The server held a small tube that probably contained a blow dart; he sucked in a big breath and prepared to blow.

  “Gyyyauuughh!” Vic said again, and another scone missile obliterated his server’s head. Vic hoped he’d remember later how he did this, because the results were every bit as good as lightning. Maybe even better.

  Other people in the kitchen, however, noticed that two of their co-workers had just been exploded by a vengeful centaur wizard. Some of them screamed and ran, which Vic appreciated. Some of them grabbed knives and shouted, advancing on him, which he did not appreciate at all.

  “You don’ wanna come ammee, bros,” Vic said, backing up until his rear hit a wall. He waggled his fifteen thousand fingers at the scone-peppered bodies as he made his case and staggered slightly to his right. “They wuz tryna take mah kinney. Whuh wuzzeye sposed ta do? Leddum havvit? Well, I did leddum havvit, hurr hurr. Lemme go, jus’ geddoudda daway, an’ nobuddy getzurt.” Vic belched. “I mean besides dose guys, who are dead ’cause they’re kinney thieves!”

  An overweight dishwasher, seeing his chance for promotion, erupted with a battle cry as he approached Vic with a cleaver. Vic made a slashing motion with his right hand and shouted, “Yaaah!” and a high-pressure stream of scalding tea splashed in the man’s face. He screamed, dropping the cleaver and clutching his burning cheeks. That gave the others pause, and Vic seized on it.

  “Jus’ lemme go. Jus’ step aside. Don’ threaten me an’ I won’ hurcha.” Vic hastened toward the back door and the people in his way drew aside, flattening themselves against the walls and hiding behind barrels of mayonnaise and eatum. He had a clear path to the exit, but he was incapable of walking a straight line to it. He swayed and weaved on unsteady hooves down the length of the kitchen, shouting at everyone as he went. “Drop your knives! If you havva knife I’ll make you hate cake, I swear!”

  Someone promised h
e would pay for this. They’d get the city watch and call the local battle wizard. He was a dead centaur trotting!

  Vic didn’t like the sound of that. He didn’t want to face a real battle wizard, one who could summon actual lightning. His only hope was to get back to The Puffy Peach.

  Outside in the alley, Vic got tangled in rocking chairs and tried to move faster, hooves scrabbling on cobblestones, knocking over garbage bins along his way. But he did manage to miss the last one. He hoped that meant he was shaking off the effects of the poison and it wasn’t just luck. He turned right, sending a couple of people sprawling in the street as he passed by the front entrance of the Knacker Barrel. Someone burst out of the door and pointed at him.

  “Stop that centaur! He just murdered two people!”

  There were some gasps and most folks screamed and ran away, giving him a clear path down the street.

  “Iwwuz self-defense!” he hollered, both his shouting and the mad clopping of his hooves warning people that a fast horse was incoming. He hadn’t known before today that he could summon scones capable of mortal blows, and it wasn’t fair to cast him as the villain here. “They woulda stole mah kinneys!” he added, but he didn’t think the current witnesses were understanding of his position. While most folks just let him pass with a blank stare, he saw some men and dwarves set their mouths in grim lines and flex, and when he risked a glance over his shoulder—which caused him to drift to his right and knock over a fishwife in a slippery tumble of salmon and petticoats—he saw that people were starting to chase after him.

  He hoped Captain Luc would be ready to set sail and that they could actually get away without being blown out of the harbor by the inevitable battle wizard.

  He should have listened to his dam and never trotted into this human city.

  Morgan felt incredibly giddy. Here she was, stepping off a pirate ship and onto some creaky wooden docks that smelled like years of bad decisions, and it was great. Because it wasn’t her sheltered life back in Borix. It wasn’t on anyone’s orders. She wouldn’t be measured for a single froofy dress, and she might even pick up some of those dashing pirate pants with the ragged hems. She was in Bustardo and could do anything she wanted; she could go debauch herself with the other pirates, or shop for striped shirts and kerchiefs, or maybe even bathe! But instead she wanted to team up with an unelfly elf and investigate the sinister Mutae Mercantile Association. Because otters.

  “What’s the plan?” Alobartalus asked.

  “First, we need some distance between us and the sea lions around here.”

  “Oh, they’re not that bad.”

  But Morgan wasn’t so sure. The Bustardo docks and shore were simply rotten with sea lions. Desperate for attention and even the tiniest sorts of nourishment, they barked and clapped and fought to interrupt every thought. “Odd, odd, odd,” they barked, splashing the passersby and befouling everyone’s conversations and shoes and generally ruining everyone’s day. When Al reached into his pocket and held out a piece of hardtack, Morgan jumped between him and the obnoxiously capering swarm of sea lions.

  “Kindness won’t work,” she said firmly. “They’re not reasonable. Give them an opening, and they’ll overrun you. We don’t have that kind of time to waste.”

  “Odd, odd, odd!” the sea lions clattered, and a few large ones muscled their bulk onto the shore and tried to galumph directly at Al, their beady eyes shining with avarice.

  “I didn’t think they’d actually come after me,” Al said, nervously shoving the hardtack into his pocket and backing away from the oncoming menace.

  “They definitely play on your good faith and altruism,” Morgan admitted. “That’s why the ship is fitted with such heavy chains—so they can’t climb aboard and make a nuisance of themselves.”

  “But they seem so clever—”

  Morgan slashed a hand at the sea lion standing on its nose and waggling its tail. “Performative cleverness is all a ruse. Don’t fall for it. Keep walking.”

  They hurried away from the dock, glad to hear the obnoxious calls of the sea lions fading into the distance. At least the loud, offensive things were limited to the foul, chummy waters of the harbor and couldn’t invade real life.

  “Now that we’re out of range, we should find a fishmonger to make sure Otto is well fed,” Morgan said, for the otter was still draped around her shoulders and chirping at her every so often to remind her that he would enjoy a little smackerel of mackerel. “Then get ourselves to a Dinny’s and see if we can’t find out who’s behind the Mutae Mercantile Association.”

  They quickly found a bustling market full of assorted mongers and got Otto a bucket of clams from a clammonger, and a small bucket of oranges for themselves from a fruitmonger, and a smaller bucket of bonbons for later from a bonbonmonger.

  “I wonder if all the mongers buy their buckets from a bucketmonger?” Al asked, and that was the moment Morgan knew they would be friends.

  They paused to sit on the rim of a bubbling fountain to enjoy their quick repast. Morgan could almost feel the citrus beat back an incipient case of scurvy, and it was good to taste food without the fumes of grog dulling her senses. Otto splashed in the fountain and ate his clams while floating on his back, and Morgan smiled at his adorable antics. She was happy that Tempest was following her dream, but she already missed her friend. At least she still had Al and Otto.

  “So what’s our angle at Dinny’s?” Al asked. “Elf magic? Force? Stealth?”

  Morgan wrinkled her nose. “Elf magic is messy, and force would bring the city watchmen pretty quickly. But I don’t think we should go in there as customers either.” She fiddled with her beard as she considered it. “Because then we’d have to deal with servers, and if experience is any guide, they’ve been trained to deflect questions about EATUM and ultimately say they don’t know anything, which is probably true. We need to see the manager and get him or her to show us some paperwork. So I say stealth.”

  “Yes! Subterfuge. I like it,” Al replied. “What did you have in mind?”

  “I think we should pretend we’re from the MMA.”

  “Great! Uh…how do we do that?”

  “Well, first of all, we probably need to look like we didn’t just walk off a pirate ship.”

  “An excellent point. A bath, then, and clothing that looks mercantile. Very middle management. Wrinkles easily and shows pit stains.”

  “Hopefully we can find something pre-wrinkled and pre-pit-stained, because we don’t have all day.” Captain Luc planned to ship out with the tide around sunset.

  Al pointed to a large board off to one side of the public square in which they sat. It was plastered with notices and advertisements, and a small throng was clustered in front of it, reading them. “That might tell us where we can find a clothier.”

  They finished up their oranges, and Morgan checked on Otto. “How are you doing? Still eating?”

  He squeaked at her. He’d finished off most of the bucket and only two clams were left. He’d made quite a mess, however, and she and Al had to pick up the empty shells and put them in the bucket after she set aside the two survivors. “We’ve gotta go. You want to come with us, right?”

  Otto squeaked in protest as she stood up, and he put his little otter paws on the two uneaten clams.

  “Go ahead and eat them. We’ll wait that long.”

  Otto cracked open the shells with his sharp teeth and sucked out the mollusks inside in a minute. Morgan reached down to pick up the shells, and Otto used the opportunity to scamper up her arm and curl across her shoulders again. He was, of course, soaking wet from the fountain, causing Morgan to cringe a wee bit, but she figured she’d be bathing soon anyway. Being chosen by an otter was, after all, no small thing.

  They joined the crowd in front of the board, looking for clothiers but finding mostly dwarvelish-potion vendors claiming that they had th
e absolute freshest and strongest batches of Ol’ Chub’s Tubby Nub Elixir for Potent Virility sold in convenient crocks. But there were also several notices advertising handsome purses for the capture or slaying of various criminals and, in one case, a hefty reward for the recovery of a lost lady.

  “Oh, badger buns,” Morgan cursed.

  “What?”

  She pointed at a flyer in the lower left corner and whispered, “That one’s about me.”

  Al squinted at the artist’s rendering of her likeness, which included long, flowing locks, a dainty dress, and an utterly hairless, ethereal face. “Looks nothing like you.”

  “I know. I’m glad I kept the beard and lost all the floof.”

  “Yeah, good call.”

  Morgan ripped the sheet off the board to study it more closely.

  HAVE YOU SEEN THIS LADY FAIR?

  THE LADY HARKOVRITA OF BORIX HATH GONE MISSING

  STOL’N FROM HER COMFY TOWER BY SOME DASTARD

  THE EARL OF BORIX WILL PAY HANDSOMELY FOR INFORMATION LEADING TO HER SAFE RETURN

  SHE MAY OR MAY NOT BE ASLEEP.

  “You were stolen?” Al asked. “Uh, pardon me: stol’n, which is for some reason more sinister when pronounced as a single syllable?”

  “No, I left on my own. My father just can’t believe that. He thought I was property to be married as he chose, so of course he thinks I must have been stolen like property. Plus, as far as he knew, I was under a sleeping spell.”

  Al grinned at her. “And now you are a pirate. Not the career path he would have chosen for you, I’m sure.”

  “No. I was supposed to be married to Lord Vendel Vas Deference of Taynt, whom I’ve never even met.” She crumpled up the paper and tossed it into the fire upon which a local vendor was roasting hot chestnuts of the non-equine variety.

  “And are you happy now? You’ve defied your elders and you have an uncertain future and few resources, none of the comforts you’re used to.”

  Morgan nodded and smiled. “I do miss pie, but I’m very happy. I’m seeing things I’ve never seen before. Making new friends who appreciate me for myself rather than for who my father is. And my future’s quite certain, as far as I’m concerned: I’m going to save the otters.”