The Princess Beard

by Kevin Hearne

  “And after that?”

  Morgan shrugged. “Turning the rich into the poor through piracy sounds like justice to me. Odds are they got rich through means far more villainous than piracy in the first place. If you knew how most lords and earls got to where they are, you’d need a long weekend with a brain leech.”

  “No need. I’m well aware. My uncle is a king.”

  Morgan looked at the elf with concern. “So you ran away too, I take it. What will you do now, Al? I know you were disappointed by the Sn’archivist. Are you going to head back to Proudwood Lighthouse?”

  The elf’s amusement faded. “I don’t ever want to go back. Comfort is a trap. I’d much rather remain free, like you. And I think my disappointment was my own fault. I’d built up this fiction in my head about what the Sn’archivist was, and there was no way he could live up to it. Besides, he might have given us a clue about…all this.”

  “Really?” Morgan folded her arms across her chest. “Do tell.”

  Al leaned in and spoke softly. “What do you know about the Sn’archivist? Do you believe that he’s divinely inspired by Pellanus?”

  “I suppose it’s possible, although I’m not sure I believe it, especially considering your Grand Huff after meeting him.”

  “Well, divinity is mysterious. And there’s definitely a mystery here. The Sn’archivist just wrote a new book filled with only two words, repeated again and again: otter balls.”

  “Why?” Morgan asked as Otto screeched in outrage.

  “He said those words would save me in my most trying hour. That those were the words that I needed to hear, or was destined to hear, or something. Also, uh…there were two more words that he said were important…”

  Al’s eyes glazed over, horror suffusing his features, and Morgan shook him gently by the shoulder. “What is it, Al? Come on, you can tell me, no matter how terrible it is.”

  Al blinked, then gulped and licked his lips nervously. “This is going to sound ridiculous. I apologize in advance. But it seems we might somehow be saved by…my own butt.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Elf butts. Pellanus has supposedly been obsessed with them for decades, and the Sn’archivist has thousands of tomes on the subject. Apparently they’re far more important than anyone realized.”

  “What the Pell…?”

  “I don’t know,” Al said with a shrug. “Like I said, it’s a mystery. But perhaps you can now understand my disappointment. I expected knowledge. Enlightenment. Wisdom. And all I got was otter balls and elf butts.”

  “Right. Lots to unpack there. We’ll get to that later. But look, Al, you don’t have to go back and be what someone else wants you to be. I mean, you can, or you can choose to do anything else—that’s all your decision, which should be made for your own reasons. Are you still willing to go with me to Dinny’s?”

  “Yes,” the elf said, nodding nobly to emphasize his willingness. “We have a mission here. We should get to it.”

  It took them little time to find a dwarvelish inn and bathhouse: The Divine Suds was adjacent to the market and offered a quick De-Slime the Grime! option for sailors such as themselves on limited shore leave with limited funds. The owners cleverly offered basic garb as well so that sailors could get a new pair of trousers or a shirt that didn’t bear a thousand stains. Morgan and Al each took advantage of this, consigning their old clothes to be bleached, restriped, and resold, and asked where they might find a clothier selling used uniforms to complete their disguises. They were directed to Madam Merkin’s House of Jerkins around the block, and there they found some sober forest-green jerkins made of scratchy, cheap-looking fabric with a few lines of fake-gold thread to suggest that they were at least adjacent to wealth if they did not possess it themselves. They agreed that getting the same color and cut would make it seem like they were wearing a company uniform. And, honestly, they couldn’t afford much else. Until they hit the loot, Luc said, fickels would be scarce. They would even have to supply their own pit stains.

  The nearest Dinny’s was just a short walk away; the district near the docks was a bustling area catering to sailors and tourists alike. Morgan smelled the restaurant before she saw it, compelled by the delicious scent of cinnamon buns and crispy bacon. But once Alobartalus showed her the clever, glittering, elven-made urinal cakes hanging from every eave, she understood better the magic she’d been huffing with every breath. Nothing near a fisherman’s wharf could smell that good without a lot of help, and Dinny’s had its own greasy odor to cover up.

  Morgan could see through the large windows that this Dinny’s was packed. People shoveled EATUM into their faces, ignorant of what they were really consuming, ignorant of the true cost of it; despite what the menu said, it wasn’t free. The sad emptiness of Otter Island had been testament to that. She reached up and gave Otto a reassuring caress, and he purred and went back to sleep. He would hopefully remain so and just resemble an unwashed mink stole, as long as no one looked too closely.

  Steeling herself, she said, “Follow my lead,” and strode into Dinny’s, with Al close behind. A cheerful halfling hostess greeted them with a practiced smile.

  “Welcome to Dinny’s. Two for lunch?” she said. Her name tag read Mallorie Butterbuns of the Muffincrumb Butterbunses, and Morgan really hoped that was her actual name.

  “No thank you. We’re here to see the manager on a rather important health issue.”

  Mallorie’s smile faded. “Oh. Wait here; I’ll go get him.”

  They waited, and after a couple of minutes a harried man with light-brown skin, an untrimmed mustache, and an atrocious haircut appeared to meet them.

  “Yes? I’m the manager. How can I help you?”

  “Hello, sir. I’m Verna Veal and this is Ham Hamlin. We are from the MMA, and we’re concerned about recent shipments of EATUM you’ve received. We’re afraid some containers may be contaminated.”

  “Contaminated with what?”

  “An infection that causes severe foot sweat, a shriveled tongue, and a dire possibility of intestinal explosion ending in a very sudden death.”

  Some customers who had come in behind them gasped and walked right out the door, and the manager’s eyes flicked between the busy waiting area and Morgan. “Let’s go back to my office.”

  He turned, and Morgan and Al followed close behind. “Have any of your customers reported feeling sick after eating here?” she asked his back.

  “No.”

  “Well, if they died,” Al said dryly, “they probably didn’t report it because they went home and exploded.”

  “In my office, please,” the manager ground out, tension in his voice. He was very aware that some diners were catching snippets of the conversation and looking uncertainly at their plates.

  They walked through the hot and steaming kitchen, past a stack of barrels of EATUM waiting to be used, and into a small office with a desk piled high with receipts, employee schedules, payroll ledgers, and old menus of Dinny’s past specials. There were also a couple of locked filing cabinets and a macabre motivational poster hanging on the wall. It was a painting of a tombstone, the name worn away by time but the grass doing quite well around it, and the bottom of the poster was emblazoned with the slogan TAKE HEART. SOMEDAY YOU WON’T HAVE TO MANAGE ANYTHING.

  Once the door was closed, the manager rounded on them and crossed his arms defensively. “All right, what’s all this, then? You’re not the regular health inspectors.”

  “Yes, they regrettably blew up,” Alobartalus snuck in.

  But Morgan had a spiel all ready to sling. “Recent shipments to Kakapoh, Cape Gannet, and Bustardo may have been contaminated. Two people in Kakapoh have already died, and we have reports of shriveled tongues in Cape Gannet. We’re relieved to hear you haven’t had any problems so far, and we’d like to prevent that from happening. We need to examine you
r shipping manifests for just the past month to see if you received one of the contaminated containers.”

  The manager nodded, a bit of sweat on his forehead now. “Sure. Sure, I can do that, easy. Haven’t even filed them yet.” He rifled through the papers on his desk until he said, “Aha!” and snatched one from the pile, presenting it to them with a flourish.

  Morgan scanned it, ignoring the shipment numbers and dates and looking only for names and addresses. Success! The EATUM had been shipped by the Mutae Mercantile Association on Mack Guyverr, with a Pellican Postale Service box accepting mail at Banhai in Teabring. Interesting. If one assumed that the mail would be near their place of business, that would put the location of Mack Guyverr somewhere in the Chummy Sea between Mack Enchiis and Banhai, rather than somewhere near Khugas or Sinuicho.

  “Who’s your sales representative?” Al asked, and Morgan blinked. That was a genius question. It would give them a lead to pursue, at least. She would not have thought to ask that.

  The manager frowned. “Don’t you know that already?”

  “No, we’re not connected to sales. We’re troubleshooters. We work for the big guy.”

  The manager’s eyes widened. “You work for Angus Otterman? You’ve met him?”

  “Angus Otterman?” Morgan recalled the chewed-up hat they’d found on Otter Island with the letters ANG on a label inside.

  “Yes. What’s he like?”

  Morgan improvised, making an assumption based on Otterman’s name and the fact that he was more than willing to kidnap and kill otters to make his fickels. “Terrible,” she said. “Fearsome.”

  “So I’ve heard!”

  Al pounced. “What else have you heard?”

  The manager gulped. “Well, uh. Only rumors.”

  Morgan didn’t let it go. “What rumors have you heard exactly? And please remember that our report will go back to the inspection division, not to upper management.”

  “He…maybe eats people,” the manager almost whispered.

  “Maybe?”

  “Well, a bit.” The manager put his thumb and forefinger close together to illustrate the concept of a smidgen. “Just a little.”

  “Which people?”

  “His employees on the island.”

  “You’ve heard he eats just a little bit of his employees? Like, one or two bites?”

  “No, I mean, he eats all of a few of them.”

  Al asked, “Why would he do that?”

  The manager shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe they misbehaved? Or they looked delicious or tried to unionize? I sympathize, believe me.”

  “You do? You want to eat your employees?”

  The manager waved his arms. “No, no, that came out wrong. I sympathize with the employees who get eaten. Never mind. They’re only rumors and nobody believes that stuff.” Desperate to change the subject, he pointed at the shipping manifest. “So, did we get a contaminated shipment?”

  “No.” Morgan handed the paper back to him. “You’re in the clear. Thanks for your cooperation.”

  “Who’s your sales rep again?” Al pressed.

  The manager responded without thinking, relieved. “Brenna MacFleshgrinder.”

  Al and Morgan blinked, exchanging a glance. “Isn’t that a troll name?” Al said.

  “Well, of course it’s a troll. All the sales reps are—hey, wait! You’re not really from the MMA, are you? What is this?” The manager’s eyes, half dead with dread and the spirit-crushing weight of customer demands before, now glittered with suspicion.

  So Morgan kicked him squarely in the groin.

  “Oof!” The manager curled in on himself and collapsed. Otto screeched a war cry. Al opened the door and they bolted out of the office, heading for the employee exit.

  “Back to the ship?” the elf asked as he ran, huffing and puffing a little.

  “Back to the ship,” Morgan agreed, grateful for her superior physical fitness. “We have a target now. He employs trolls, kills a lot of otters, and occasionally eats all of some of his employees or possibly some of many of his employees.”

  “Or so the rumors go.”

  “We know two out of three are true. So that’s reason enough to go after him.”

  Al chuckled as they exited the filthy, grease-spattered alley behind Dinny’s and slowed down. “By Pellanus, that was fun! This is so much better than selling Morningwood rods to tourists. It scratches that elvish itch for mischief while also being useful.”

  The door burst open behind them, and they whirled to see the manager pointing in their direction. “There they are! Get them!”

  Three rather tall and athletic Dinny’s employees sprang into action, each of them holding a weapon and each of them bigger than Morgan and Al, and the manager shouted something at their backs, which Morgan didn’t catch because Otto screeched in alarm.

  “Well, this isn’t better,” the elf corrected.

  “I agree,” Morgan said. “I don’t want to die behind a Dinny’s. Run!”

  Al had grown up being told that elves were superior to humans by most any measure, but the length of his stride and the capacity of his lungs were definitely areas in which he fell short. Unfortunately, the long-legged, EATUM-powered waitstaff of Dinny’s had most likely been promised something insanely attractive by the manager, like fair wages or health benefits, if only they caught the two strangers in green jerkins. They were rapidly closing the distance.

  Al sighed—or more accurately, wheezed—hating what had to happen next.

  “See that alley up ahead?” he panted, flailing a hand in its general direction.

  “You mean Obvious Hideout Row?” Morgan asked, squinting to read the sign.

  “Yes, that one. Skid in there and hide between the conveniently placed garbage bins.”

  “How do you know there will be—”

  “Because this whole neighborhood reeks of elvish knavery.”

  As Morgan darted down the artificially slimy-looking alley between two tall buildings, Al reached into a bag on his belt and pulled out a handful of glitter. He hated this trick back home and couldn’t understand why elves still found it funny after thousands of years. He’d never used this particular glitter a single time, but now he would join legions of his ancestors in messing with humans in the name of magic, ultimate embarrassment, and possible near-death experiences that would make great stories one day.

  Tossing the glitter in the air in his wake, Al followed Morgan and found her waiting, as he’d assumed, between two large garbage bins. As they watched from this handy hiding place, three tall humans in Dinny’s uniforms ran directly into the cloud of glitter hanging in the air. One began coughing as if she were choking, one started whooping as if he were having an asthma attack, and one turned red and stopped breathing altogether.

  “Are they okay?” Morgan whispered.

  “Not really,” Al whispered back. “But they were going to kill us.”

  Morgan tilted her head at him. “You really think they were going to kill us?”

  “I don’t know! I’ve never been involved in corporate mustelid espionage before! But as they’re all holding EATUM-stained cutlery, I assumed that at least a serious case of sepsis was on the line.”

  “True. Are they going to die, though?”

  The trio had begun to attract quite a crowd as they choked, whooped, and flopped around on the filthy cobbles. The audience seemed to think it was some sort of wrestling bard show and kept throwing coins and shouting, “Give him the chair!”

  “They probably won’t die, no. Elven glitter doesn’t generally last too long. If it did, the king would never fill his cheese larder with bribes. So let’s saunter to the end of this alley and join the crowd in whatever shady-looking eating establishment we find on the other side.”

  “How do you know we’re going to find
an eating establishment?”

  Al stood, stretched his back, and sauntered with expert nonchalance. Morgan joined him, although her saunter looked more like she was dancing in slow motion; she must not’ve gotten to that part of the pirate manual yet, or at least had not done the practice exercises, Al thought.

  “The thing is,” he said, “elves like to mess with people. In the Morningwood, there’s a predictable pattern for dealing with humans, a mixture of pretending to be the mythic elves of song while being randomly nasty when the humans least expect it. Outside the Morningwood, they tend to drop the mythical pretense and just lean into the random nastiness. It’s obvious that this part of the city was masterminded by elves. The layout, the decorating touches, that hole in the wall of the bathhouse that looks so inviting but will probably be full of squirrels or acid leeches. And you can’t trust it, can’t trust the magic at all, because it’s an elaborate farce. But at the same time, if you recognize the magic, you can use it to your advantage.”

  Up ahead, warm light shone out of thick glass windows, and a sign over a welcoming wooden door read: THE RAMROD INN.

  “There it is.” Morgan gasped in surprise, which Al’s elvish heart enjoyed, much to his dismay.

  “Exactly. An inn so conveniently placed that it’s bound to be the breeding ground of tempestuous dungeon parties, star-crossed lovers, and raucous pie fights.”

  Morgan’s sword made a threatening sort of rattle against her leather scabbard. “And you think we should go in?”

  Al chuckled, pointing at the stone walls now blocking them in on either side and around back.

  “I think we have no choice but to go in. That’s how ramrodding works. But look at it this way: We’re beyond the Dinny’s cleavers for now. Might as well have a glass of mead, yarrrr?”

  Morgan grinned. “True. What’s the point of shore leave if you don’t have a pint?” When Otto woke up and chittered winsomely, she added, “And perhaps there will be some clam juice.”