by Kevin Hearne
Al pushed open the door. The crowd within was loud and tipsy, the floor exactly as sticky as one might expect. Overburdened servers hurried to and fro with platters piled high with meat and totted taters. The clientele ranged from small, tidy gnomes holed up in a corner with a large vat of pudding to an enormous troll stuffed into a booth and thumbing through a stack of MacMurderclub and Watchtrolls comic books. In between were various collections of humans, dwarves, halflings, and elves, although Al noticed that the elves were wearing hideous caps to hide their pointy ears.
As Al scanned the room for a table, someone shrieked in his ear with no warning, and he spun around, dagger already in hand.
“Morgan! Al! Thank Pellanus!”
Much to his surprise, it was Tempest, who looked like she’d jumped into a lake and been strangled. Her green hair drooping and her black robes sodden and six inches deep in mud, she had a mass of books under one arm and, of all things, an irate flamingo on a bedazzled leash.
“What are you doing here?” Morgan asked, awkwardly hugging her moist friend and earning a harsh flamingo peck in return.
“Did you miss your ride to the castle?” Al asked. “I swear, these elvish pranks…”
Tempest looked down, blushing. “No. I got there. I just didn’t like what I found.”
Morgan winced. “Lawyers?”
Tempest snorted, making her hair fly out. “Didn’t even get that far. In between the labyrinthine transportation, the rudeness of the students, and the fact that they wanted me to wear a shirt with a roach on it, I just realized it wasn’t the school for me.”
Al first heard and then saw a booth empty of human bards, who announced their exit with a peppy tune performed on kazoos, and he led his companions toward it. A weary halfling man cleaned the oiled wood with a paisley handkerchief, and they sat.
“Well, it’s not the only school,” Morgan began cheerfully. “There’s Hillygorny and Batbuttons and—”
Tempest held up her books. “I think I’m going to do mail-away courses. Now that I’ve got Mingo”—she tried to pat the flamingo, but it upchucked shrimp-speckled white goo onto her hand—“I can learn by correspondence.” She smiled warmly at Morgan. “And stay on the ship.”
Morgan visibly brightened. Al smiled, too, and wished that he had a friendship like these two women did. He’d never actually met an elf he liked, and the tourists to the lighthouse had come and gone swiftly, staggering away with tubs of Morningwood grease and grumbling about how he wasn’t a proper elf at all. The king had ordered Al to bed as many women as possible to spread the elvish seed, but the closest Al had come to seduction at the lighthouse was when an older woman with cataracts had wandered into his upstairs apartment and confused him with a famous human bard named Ned Sheerin.
As Tempest wiped off her hand on a napkin and described her horrific time at Bogtorts, Al knew without a doubt that the school was run by elves as a joke. It stank of their humor and their ill-fated attempt to breed pet flamingos for profit. But Al wasn’t going to say that; Tempest felt silly enough as it was, without knowing she’d chosen a school that would likely hand out disappearing diplomas if not turn her into a newt outright.
“I’m glad you’ll still be around,” he said, at what felt like a polite break in their conversation.
Tempest gave him a warm smile. “Me too,” she said.
The waiter arrived to take their drink orders, and Morgan told Tempest about their trip to Dinny’s. Tempest made the appropriate noises of horror and victory and scratched Otto behind the ears. Al asked about her journey from the school, and Tempest explained that she’d simply made the most sensible choices heading back to the city proper and had discovered that the parts of Bustardo not recommended by the school were far less annoying.
“And so I went down Auspicious Avenue, and then the road dead-ended into this inn, and I was starving, so here I am,” she finished. Al noted that she had entered from a different side of the building than they had, which was good to know. Elves often enjoyed planting fake doors just for the joy of watching humans run headfirst into them.
Soon their drinks arrived, and Tempest ordered a ginormous salad of greens and shredded roots dubbed the “Rabbit Bonanza,” while Al and Morgan begged off, having eaten their fill of oranges and bonbons earlier. Otto, still feeling safe and full from his bucket of clams, sighed contentedly and went back to sleep on Morgan’s shoulder.
Tempest was complimenting them on their lovely new jerkins when the door from Obvious Hideout Row burst open and bounced off the wall, startling Otto awake with a squeak. Vic the centaur barreled in on unsteady hooves.
“Halp!” Vic shouted, wobbling a little. “Dey wanna eats me! I’m d’lishus an’ it’s not mah fault!”
“Oh, my gosh,” Tempest murmured, trying to hide her face under her hood. “He’s drunk. So embarrassing. He doesn’t see us, does he?”
The centaur danced farther into the dining space, his hooves sliding on the mead-sticky floors. Trembling and wheezing, Vic smacked a dwarf woman in the face with his tail and nearly trod upon a gnome, then spun in circles, apologizing profusely.
“What is he even doing?” Morgan murmured.
But Al could tell something was wrong. He rose and hurried to Vic, grabbing the centaur’s flailing hand and patting it.
“Hey, buddy. It’s me, Al. What’s going on?” he asked softly.
Vic leaned down, his eyes leaping from left to right. “Mah kinney. Hoomans tried to steal it! For eating porpoises!”
Al could see that Vic was either very drunk or possibly drugged. “Someone wants to eat porpoises?”
“No no no. Chef wanna eat mah kinney. He gimme droogs in mah ohmeal.”
“And where is this chef?”
“He dead! Cuzzee sploded. But udder hoomans, Al, they affer me! They all wanner eat mah giblets!”
Al glanced at the open door and around the inn at all the curious faces. “We’ve got to get out of here,” he said, mostly to himself, as Vic kept turning away to offer his heartfelt apologies to people who desperately wanted to get out of his radius before he accidentally stepped on their toes.
“What’s up?” Morgan called, and Al hollered back, “We need to leave. Now.”
“But I haven’t had my Rabbit Bonanza,” Tempest protested.
“No time, sorry.” He tossed her his bag of remaining fickels—careful not to throw the bags of various elven powders—and soon she and Morgan joined him near Vic, their bill paid and their waiter tipped, for they weren’t that sort of pirate.
“We’re going now, Vic,” Al said gently. “Back to the ship, where it’s safe.”
“Where zits safe,” Vic agreed, nodding vigorously.
“What happened to him?” Tempest asked, her face wary.
“From what I can tell, someone tried to drug him and steal his organs.”
Tempest’s teeth suddenly seemed sharper as she scowled. “They what?”
“They’re alwaysh trying to steal my lucky arms.” Up close, it was easy to see that Vic’s pupils were wide and black. Whatever he’d been given, it had to be potent to render a fully grown Clydesdale centaur stallion nearly insensate. These people—they meant business.
As if in punctuation, the door from Obvious Hideout Row swung open again, causing all the hungry halflings to wail in dismay and the gnomes to scoot under their table, pulling their hats down over their eyes. Three imposing humans in Dinny’s uniforms burst in, one holding a bloodstained cleaver, one holding a butcher knife covered in bits of gore, and one holding a bread knife that looked like it had seen some rancid butter. Behind them stood the most frightening thing Al could imagine: a pleasant but self-satisfied watchman, aware that he reeked of authority and righteousness.
“That’s them!” the cleaver holder cried, pointing at Al and Morgan. “They tried to kill our manager!”
“Why do all theesh people wanner chop up their customers!” Vic yowled, and Al was grateful to see Morgan pull her sword and step in front of Vic.
“Now, see here,” the watchman said, because that’s what they almost always said as they tried to work through whatever was occurring. “You can’t just go around nearly killing managers, even if you want to, and even if they usually deserve it.”
A smattering of timid applause went up around the room, mostly among those who looked like managers and were wearing tight cravats cutting into well-fed jowls, glints of terror in their beady eyes suggesting fear that someone might have noticed they were cooperating with business owners to exploit their workers.
“I only kicked him in the nards,” Morgan explained. “I never tried to kill him. If I did, he’d be dead—” The door slammed open yet again, interrupting her explanation, and some angry dwarves and humans in white aprons crowded in, pointing at Vic.
“There he is!” a dwarf shouted. “That centaur killed two people at the Knacker Barrel!”
“They desserts it! They drogged me!” Vic shrieked.
“My friend was indeed drugged,” Al said, hands up and voice gentle. “He acted in self-defense because they poisoned his food and attempted to harvest his organs without his consent. With your permission, we’ll just take him back to our ship and trouble your fair city no more. Call it squaresies.”
“That’s not how squaresies works!” the Dinny’s lady with the bread knife cut in. “Or policing! You can’t kick someone in the nards and then beg off!”
“Or murder one of the city’s finest chefs and walk away because you were drugged!” the dwarf added.
“I’m afraid they’re right,” the watchman said, and he did look sorry about it. “We can’t have people nard-kicking and chef-killing willy-nilly and then traipsing away. Think of all the almost deaths we’d have on our hands.”
“And the actual deaths!” the dwarf chimed in. “Let’s not forget that centaur killed two people, all right? They’re super dead!”
“Since they’re already super dead,” the watchman said, frowning down at the dwarf, “they can afford to be patient, can’t they? The nard-kicked manager of my favorite restaurant needs justice now, however, so I hope you’ll forgive me, Master Dwarf, for hewing to clear priorities.”
“Yes, sir,” the dwarf said, looking down as if his beard required sudden inspection.
The watchman shook his head and then turned to Al and the others apologetically. “I’m afraid you’ll all need to come with me to the dungeon while we administer justice fairly and as swiftly as possible considering the backlog we have and our staffing shortages. Budget cutbacks, you know; nothing to be done, but we should have you on the docket in a few months.”
“Nuh-uh!” Vic said. “I’ll cake you firsht.”
“Kick me?” The watchman’s face purpled and he pointed a finger at the centaur. “Are you threatening me, an officer of the law? How dare you!”
“Hnngh,” Vic said, bringing his fists together, and a gorgeously moist three-layered red velvet cake fell from the ceiling directly onto the watchman’s head, making his face disappear entirely. “I said cake you.”
“Oh, that looks so good. I’m so hungry,” Tempest moaned.
“Let’s get out of here!” Morgan said, gently steering her friend toward the front door. Al likewise gave Vic a little push from behind, and it looked like they might make it. But before they could open the door, the Dinny’s employees rallied and screeched their war cries, surging past the caked watchman with their weapons raised and their greasy faces alight with fury.
Morgan met the encrusted butcher knife with her sword, sending sparks and bits of dried EATUM into the air as diners dove under their tables or tapped their feet extra loudly for their bills. Then she delivered a straight kick to the ribs of the wielder, driving him back into the flailing watchman and sending them both to the floor in a mess of red crumbs and cream-cheese frosting. Tempest tugged her flamingo out of the fray and hunched under an empty table. Al allowed himself a brief moment of frustration at that; every good pirate knew that you had to defend your shipmates. That was why he had his dagger drawn in one hand and was poking around in a pocket with his other hand, guarding Morgan’s flank from attack. There was no way he was going to simply hide or exit and leave Morgan to fight alone.
Vic spun and kicked the lady with the bread knife into the dwarves behind her, who wanted a piece of him too. He kept mumbling, “Sorry! Sorry!” as he did, and Morgan knocked the cleaver out of the other man’s hand and twirled her sword expertly at him. Al was about to engage the fellow with the butcher’s knife, who had risen to come back for more, when something smacked him right between the shoulder blades, robbing him of breath and leaving his new green jerkin drenched in what smelled like mustard.
“Sorry!” someone shouted. “I’m not a very good shot!”
“We need to go,” Al muttered as Morgan parried a strike of the butcher knife. “With this much chaos, someone’s going to get hurt for real, and Vic’s still not himself.”
“I’ve never heard him apologize so much,” she said, lunging and leaning as she fought off the various blades that hungered for her heart and Vic’s hocks.
“You keep them off Vic, and I’ll get Tempest.”
“I’m here,” Tempest said, popping up between them. Al had assumed she was hiding due to terror, but she looked quite pleased with herself and was unencumbered by her hateful flamingo. “I sent Mingo on with a message for Luc, telling him to have his sturdiest gangplank down and be ready to sail.”
That made Al smile; he’d been wrong about her. She hadn’t been hiding at all. “Clever girl,” he said.
Tempest scowled at him. “Intelligent woman,” she barked back. “Now, let’s go.”
Knowing it was, again, a last resort, Al told his friends to hold their breath as he whipped out his bag of powder and blew it in the direction of their foes, causing them all to suddenly fall prey to restricted airways. Tempest led them through the door to the kitchen, past a veritable army of halflings in aprons, and swiped a Rabbit Bonanza off the kitchen pickup area, which might have been hers anyway and which they had actually paid for. Al, firmly clutching Vic’s big, meaty hand in his, tugged the centaur along, murmuring the sort of pleasant things one said to horses and children on cough medicine. “Come on, now. Giddyup. This’ll be fun. Let’s just go this way. Oopsy, that’s a big vomit! Right into the soup! They’ll taste that later! And here’s the nice outdoors.”
Once they were outside in an alley—as all kitchen exits everywhere opened into alleys—Al slammed the door and placed a conveniently sized trash barrel under the door handle, hoping that it would hold whatever wheezing, knife-wielding maniacs tried to follow. With Vic wobbling along, moaning about kinneys and lucky arms, they hurried down the dark and twisty alley and onto the main thoroughfare. It had seemed so busy on their way into the city, but now, after the Ramrod Inn, it felt downright pleasant and freeing. The masts and sails of many ships bobbed against the late-afternoon sky, and the crew scrambled toward the docks at the fastest pace they could manage while keeping Vic on four hooves. All his former bravado and rudeness were gone; whatever drugs he’d been given made him pliable, friendly, and almost childlike. He thanked everyone repeatedly, apologized ad nauseam, and somehow kept coming up with fresh sandwich cookies, which he pressed into everyone’s hands with tender compliments about their eyes. He gave more than a few to Al.
They were very near the time when Captain Luc had said they’d be sailing—they might even be upon the very hour. Tempest forged the path by shouting, “Watch out! I’m eating salad here,” and she did so with gusto and plenty of noise, squirting more than one unwary passerby with the wayward juice of a ripe cherry tomato. Morgan and her sword followed right behind, and
Al hurried in the back, herding Vic along as he distributed excess cookies to the local urchin population. Although he kept looking back, Al didn’t see any Dinny’s uniforms, much less a red-velvet-crumbed watchman or someone turning the terrifying puce of anaphylactic shock. As they stepped onto the docks, he was quite sure they were safe. Qobayne and Queefqueg waited for them by the gangplank, their swords out and ready and their faces wearing Pirate Expression Number 19, the ol’ “I’ll Stab Ye in the Face,” as they waved everyone aboard. Al had never felt so welcome.
Getting Vic up the gangplank was not the easiest job of his life, and they ended up promising him a big vat of drug-free oatmeal if he’d just get onto the ship. Al was the last to embark, and he exhaled a sigh of relief as the gangplank was pulled up and the ship began to sail.
“That was neatly done, me hearrrrties,” Captain Luc said. “Sending on the histrrrrionic birrrrd like that. I’ll not have some line cook cuttin’ out the orrrrgans of me crrrrew. How ye feelin’, Vic?”
The centaur tried to puff out his chest but looked more like a toddler who’d eaten a frog. “Wobbledy, Cap’n,” he answered.
“That’ll do. Get some rrrrest, and Milly Drrrread’ll see to that bowl of grrrroats we owe ye.” As Vic wandered off to his favorite sleeping corner, the captain fixed Tempest with a beady eye. “So ye’ve come back, lass?”
She smiled shyly. “If you can use me.”
“We can always use cunning hands on The Puffy Peach.”
“But I still won’t perform any healing.”
He bobbed his head. “Didn’t expect ye to. And Miss Morrrrgan. How was yourrrr time on shorrrre?”
Morgan narrowed her eyes and looked to Al. “We’ve uncovered more clues about the otters. Have you ever heard of Mack Guyverr? Or Angus Otterman?”
“I have not, but we can ask arrrround as the jourrrrney continues. I don’t like this business, ye see. Them otterrrrs are a pirrrrate’s frrrriend. Neverrrr done nothin’ mean. Just bein’ joyful. We need joy on the sea.” He briefly entertained a look of painful, faraway longing, then snapped out of it and directed Feng to walk on.