The Princess Beard

by Kevin Hearne

  The man looked startled. “You have a wizard? Good gravy. Where is he? What’s he want?”

  But Vic was ready, and he pelted the man with a fat dollop of crème fraîche right in the face, shouting, “He wants you to get out of the way!” Soon everyone wearing a black work jerkin was fighting a face full of zippy whipped cream, bemoaning the tingle of it in their eyes.

  The head accountant’s blunderbuss went off, blasting a red shirt in the belly, and a grand mêlée began. The administrators were all blinded by fatty dairy products, allowing the crew to defeat and disarm them with only one other shot popping off and skittering off a stone wall.

  “Take these men downstairrrrs and lock them in the cages!” Luc shouted.

  Qobayne distributed three blunderbusses to the party of red shirts, who were more than happy to herd the physically unimpressive managers down the stairwell before things got even worse. A sign on the landing pointed the remaining crew up toward their goal. THE BIG BOSS, it said. For a moment nobody moved forward, so Tempest hurried to Vic, put a hand on his wither, and closed her eyes.

  “What are you doing?” he asked. “It’s warm and tickly.”

  “We need you whole,” she said, feeling the heat flow from her palm and into Vic.

  When she pulled away and looked up, the wound in his shoulder was gone. Her arms were still covered in bark, still long like branches and hard as ancient redwood, but now a single leaf bloomed out of her wrist.

  “That leaf is pretty,” Vic said, considering it. “Thank you for doing that.”

  She just smiled. “You’re welcome. Thanks for taking that arrow for us.”

  “Oh, it didn’t really hurt,” he said, and she saw the shadow of his old swoleness for a moment before he shook his head. “Naw, that’s a lie. It was the hurtiest thing I’ve ever felt. But it doesn’t hurt at all now, for real.”

  Morgan looked to Tempest, worry in her eyes. “Are you okay?”

  Tempest couldn’t tell her the truth, so she nodded.

  It was clear Morgan didn’t believe her, but she nodded back and asked, “Everybody ready?”

  To a one—the original crew of The Puffy Peach, Gorp and the bravest of the POPO red shirts, Al and his new elf friends, Tempest and Morgan and Vic—everyone raised their weapon and shouted, “Yeah!” Except Luc, who held no weapon, of course, and who was watching Morgan with a contemplative sort of look.

  They climbed the remaining few flights of stairs, ignoring plaques for OTTER SCOUTING and FOUNDRY SALES and EMPLOYEE RESOURCES, which was really just a broom closet, always following the signs pointing up to THE BIG BOSS. Once they reached the door labeled as such at the uppermost floor, Vic grasped the handle, shook his head, said, “Let’s do it,” threw open the door, and charged outside—onto a sunny rooftop rather than into the lavishly furnished office Tempest had expected.

  He’d only gone about ten feet before he took a cannonball right through the middle of his man-gut.

  “Oh, man, this is not good. This is intense,” Vic said as his legs suddenly folded underneath him like a lawn chair and his horse belly hit the stone.

  His head felt pleasantly floaty and numb as compared to his middle, which was somehow both searing hot and very, very cold. His hooves were very far away and had forgotten how to function—they couldn’t even dance. His human torso began to wobble, and then he was caught in someone’s solid arms, hugged from the front, his face cradled against a bosom that was most definitely not his dam’s bosom.

  “Sorry,” he managed to mutter. “Not objectifying you. This is awkward.”

  “Shh,” she said, whoever she was.

  Vic couldn’t see so well. He pulled away and looked up and blinked and saw bright-blue sky, for just a moment. They were on the roof of the factory, inside a waist-high stone wall. The sun was shining. Moss and grass grew in the cracks between the stones. It was pretty, even if a battle was raging. There were so many security guards, so many weapons. So much blood.

  “Glurgh,” somebody said, and a red shirt fell.

  Stiff hands pulled Vic’s head down, cradled him in shadow, and held him tight.

  “I don’t feel so good,” he murmured into someone’s chest, which had started quite soft and squishy but was swiftly becoming hard and rough.

  “I know,” she whispered back, her voice going raspy.

  “Are they gonna eat my kinneys?” he asked, remembering the last time he’d felt this woozy. “They gonner eat me like the otters?” He wanted to panic but couldn’t. His heart wouldn’t kick up. He felt so sluggish. Just wanted to lie down. To sleep.

  “No one is going to eat you,” she said. It was his mother, or an angel, or a goddess, or possibly a tree. It was all so confusing. “Just hold still and breathe. And when I let you go, get far, far away from me.”

  Vic swallowed. He could feel his hooves again. They had gone warm and prickly, like they’d fallen asleep and were now waking up, and the blood was rushing back into all his bits, both equine and man. His tail twitched, and his skin quivered as if he were covered in flies, and his body filled with energy. He was ready to stand, to run, to fight!

  The arms that had held him close released him.

  “What happened?” he said, standing and stepping back.

  But his savior was gone. All he found was a twisted, craggy willow tree with a gaping black hollow in the center, its roots grown into the stone roof and peppered with moss. Oddly, the tree had grown around a black cannonball, which bulged from the trunk, trapped by the rugged bark.

  “I told you to ruuuuuuun awaaaaaay from meeeeeeee,” the wind seemed to say as it shook the willow’s whips, making white buds and tiny green leaves rain down to speckle his glossy brown fur.

  Vic looked around, taking stock. He didn’t know what had happened after he’d gone through that door, but he knew he was going to make it worthwhile.

  “Thank you, whoever you are,” he said.

  A willow whip caressed his cheek with velvet buds, and another put his fallen machete in his hands.

  Whatever had happened, he was ready to fight again.

  The moment Tempest wrapped her arms around the dying centaur, her whole body began turning to bark, and her hair began to flower, and she cast Morgan one last, longing look, a look full of so many unsaid things about friendship and destiny and doing what’s right, about farewells and secret hopes and loving wishes. And then she tilted her head, just a little bit, her last real human movement urging Morgan on into the fight as Tempest gave her greatest gift to the centaur she’d once hated, and the groan from her lips became the deep creak of wood.

  And then Tempest, as Morgan knew her, was gone.

  Swallowing her sadness and charging into the mêlée was the hardest thing Morgan had ever done, but she did it. She petted Otto where he curled around her neck, hoping he wouldn’t get hurt but knowing he wouldn’t leave his favorite perch to escape the danger. He patted her cheek and nuzzled in, and that, at least, was some comfort. And then she was in the fight, and she wheeled and spun, parrying and jabbing with her rapier in one hand and her dagger in the other. Maul Security guards fell under her blade, and Luc flew overhead, giving directions and trying to plop on enemies at just the right time. Feng mowed down men with his sword, and Gorp showed himself to be an able fighter as well; Qobayne cried out, wounded, and Milly Dread defended him with her plunger, proving to be deadly with it. But the greatest threat was silently toiling behind the packed crowds of muscle.

  “Therrrre, lass!” Luc cried. “You’ve got to stop the trrrroll at the cannon beforrrre he can shoot again!”

  Morgan ducked under a sword’s swipe, stabbed a black-clad foot with her dagger, and burst into a run, headed for the cannon that had nearly taken out Vic permanently—until Tempest’s ultimate sacrifice. The centaur was now fighting with the strength of ten men and the feet of an elephant and
the magic of a really excellent baker, a whirling pinwheel of death and cake, but the troll was yet again attempting to take out the pirates’ most powerful fighter with a cannon on the other side of the roof. As Morgan ran by Vic’s cinnamon swirl of doom, she nearly got splashed with a rogue geyser of tea, but Vic blocked it with a well-timed scone hurled at a security guard. The wheaty projectile struck the man’s nose hard enough to break it with a solid pop and a howl of “Oh, doh!”

  “Sorry!” Vic called to Morgan, but she didn’t have time to answer.

  The troll had loaded up the powder and shot and was now preparing to light the fuse and aim for the centaur yet again. He looked clever for a troll, and instead of the usual fedora, he wore a plaid driving cap that matched his tartan kilt. He was big and gray and bulgy, sort of like a pyramid-shaped rock shoved into the skin of a giant toad. And he saw Morgan coming.

  With a snarl, the troll stopped trying to light the cannon’s fuse, dropped his match over the wall into the sea, and plucked an umbrella from his belt. But of course it wasn’t only an umbrella; it was also a club, because trolls just loved nasty clubs.

  “You want to dance, little girl?” he jeered.

  “No, I want to fight,” Morgan said, rapier and dagger ready, dodging around him as she waited for his attack.

  Without another word, he slashed down with his umbrella club, and the fight began in earnest. Morgan danced or twirled away from every not-as-clumsy-as-she’d-hoped thunk of the club, and she soon realized that a rapier wasn’t the best instrument for troll fighting. Each time a thrust landed, it was like poking a stone with a twig. The troll grunted, to be sure, but the tip never fully punctured his flesh. There were no telltale leaks of blood. If he’d been anything but a troll, he would’ve been minced pie by then. Either troll skin was hard as diamonds, or this troll was protected by some sort of magic spell.

  “Alobartalus!” Morgan shouted.

  “What? That’s a weird thing to shout,” the troll said. “Is that a spell? Are you a wizard?”

  The elf appeared just far enough away to be heard without getting smashed by the troll’s club. “What do you need?”

  “I think he’s protected by magic. Anything you can do about that?”

  “I can hear you, you know,” the troll muttered, trying to bash in her brains but really just taking out another chunk of rather springy moss in the stone floor as she dodged the killing stroke. “I guess the elf must be the wizard.”

  Morgan couldn’t keep track of Al, but she was fairly certain he ran away, hopefully not for good. It was taking everything she had to fight the troll without getting squashed, and for all her piratical personal fitness, she was getting winded, and the muscles in her arms and legs were on their way to displaying the strength of boiled noodles. The troll could sense it too, and he upped his barrage of club-swiping, grunting and laughing nastily.

  Finally Al reappeared, along with the two more elfly elves with the weird fashion sense. They didn’t tell Morgan what they were up to, but they were edging around the troll, keeping out of smashing distance, and Al had stuck his hand in that glitter pouch on his belt.

  But unlike the elves, Morgan wasn’t out of the troll’s range. She dove left as a particularly wicked lunge nearly took off her leg; as it was, it grazed her calf and pain exploded there. “Ha!” the troll barked, but Morgan hacked at his fingers before he could follow up. Even if he was mostly impervious, he still didn’t like a rap on the knuckles. He recoiled and that gave her just enough time to roll back to her feet, albeit with a limp. The troll swiftly refocused, noting her weakness, and took a step forward. Morgan didn’t think she’d be able to dodge another blow.

  Suddenly, the two new elves started shouting very rude things at the troll, calling him nasty names like CEO and capitalist and Rando MacCannotfight. They turned and flipped up their PITA shirts, shaking their perfectly shaped rumps at him and thumbing their noses.

  “What the huh?” the troll said, and as he focused on the waggling elf bums, Al ran up, catapulted himself off the troll’s knee, and smacked him across the slabby cheek, leaving a glittery handprint behind.

  As if by magic—because it literally was magic in this case—the troll’s skin stopped looking like stone, the color returning to a more trollish green. The troll must have felt the protection draining away, because his eyes dropped to his empty left hand, watching the color change. He snorted furiously like a bull, and Morgan took that chance to slice him across the right arm, which finally yielded the result of a deep cut welling blood and gooey yellow troll fat—and a truly furious troll. Morgan flashed a smile at Al for making the small victory possible, and that split second was all the troll needed to catch up to her. She saw his left hand shoot forward, fingers extended to grab at her throat, and she ducked away as best she could, but she still felt hot, tiny claws rake across her neck as Otto screeched his frustration.

  The troll had just ripped the otter away from Morgan’s neck.

  Her sword lowered, she touched her throat and felt blood there. The troll was grinning with old yellow teeth now, holding Otto firmly by the scruff of his neck.

  “Now we’re closer to even,” he said. “So let’s have a chat. Everybody! Stop fighting, or the otter gets it!”

  No one really stopped, and the troll’s huge fingers cupped Otto’s head like he was thinking about twisting it off.

  “Stop!” Morgan shouted at the top of her lungs. “Do what he says!”

  Morgan’s voice carried, loud and commanding. The clatter of swords and thumping of clubs and squawking of one very enraged pirate captain went silent. The only sound was the wind whipping around the willow withes and Otto’s furious, terrified shrieking.

  The troll sat down on the edge of the wall and gave Morgan an intelligent, knowing smile. With hands both cruel and somehow gentle, he held Otto down and stroked him in a brutal facsimile of what animals actually enjoyed. Otto’s eyes met Morgan’s, and she realized she’d never come this close to losing someone she loved. Even Tempest was still alive—trapped and changed, but alive.

  “Don’t hurt him,” she warned.

  “Well, actually,” the troll said, stroking the otter. “You’re hardly in the position to bargain.”

  “It was an order, not a bargain. You don’t have to live this way, you know. Whatever Angus Otterman pays you, we’ll pay you more. We don’t want to hurt anyone; we just want to save the otters.”

  The troll’s hairy eyebrows went up. “The trail of innocent but dead security guards and middle managers you’ve left on your way here suggests you’re perfectly happy to hurt people, whether or not you think you want to. And the otters are free now. So you can go. Walk on out. I’ll let you.”

  Morgan shook her head. “I’m here for Angus Otterman. But I’m guessing, like all villains, he’d cut and run as soon as he was threatened.”

  The troll smiled and stroked Otto. “Oh, no, Miss Pirate. I’m right here.”

  No. It couldn’t be!

  The bottom dropped out of Morgan’s belly, and her heart kicked up like Vic’s hooves during a lightning storm.

  “You’re lying,” she said. “Angus Otterman isn’t a troll name.”

  The troll chuckled and shook his head. “Oh, and runaway ladies from Borix are the only people allowed to change their names and destinies? That’s right, Lady Harkovrita. I know who you really are. I read newspapers and periodicals from all over Pell, and there’s a hefty reward for your safe return. You’d look better without the beard, by the way, but I’ll take you to a proper barber before I send you back to that lordling in Taynt.”

  “My name is Morgan,” she said firmly. “And I like my whiskers, and whatever your name really is, you’d best give me back my otter.”

  Angus—if that was indeed who this troll was—clutched Otto by the scruff and dangled him over the side of the factory and, Morgan w
ell knew, the jagged, knife-sharp cliffs below.

  “I’m a businessman, Harkovrita. I like money. That’s why I built my EATUM empire and put considerable investment into hiding our operations. You’re not the first person to make the connection between everyone’s favorite side dish and what happens here on Mack Guyverr. But you’re the first person to care enough to find my secret overground lair. And you’re a pirate, which means you haven’t told the authorities. Which means you just showed up, furious and self-righteous, ready to take down the bad guy. Is that correct?”

  “I don’t see how that matters.”

  “It does matter!” he shouted, slamming a fist into the stone and making Otto squeak. “Because what you’re missing, my precious lady, is something every businessman knows about: You have no leverage. If you love otters as much as it seems, you’d do anything to save this one you particularly care for. If I give him back, you kill me or, at best, take me captive. Or try to. So there’s literally no reason on earth I would hand him over, is there?” He gave a smug grin and waggled Otto over the abyss again.

  Morgan swallowed hard and tore her eyes away from Otto to look around at the rest of her compatriots. Several of their sailors had fallen, some dead and some wounded. Tempest, of course, was still a tree, but she seemed to be aware, listening, waiting. Al and his elf friends were hovering nearby, their shirttails firmly grasped, ready to moon the troll again if necessary.

  Across the roof, Vic was standing in the center of a pile of Maul Security guards dripping with tea and studded with panettone. Just to his side was another cannon and a stacked pyramid of cannonballs. Captain Luc sat on the centaur’s shoulder, whispering in his ear. Making eye contact with Morgan, Vic gave her a slow, deliberate nod, the sort of nod that suggested that decisions had been made, that chips were about to fall, and that shite was about to go down.