by Logan Jacobs
“I’d like tea, too,” she said, though I had the distinct impression from her hungry gaze that she wanted more.
The innkeeper nodded and shuffled off to the kitchen to prepare our drinks.
“Alright, so you don’t like history,” I said. “What kind of books do you like?”
Lavinia arched a brow. “Maruk reads enough for the whole guild, I’m good.”
“I’ve seen you checking the bookshop windows when we’re in town,” I countered. “There must be something you like.”
“Damn, Gabriel,” she tried to counter, “has it been keeping you up at night?”
“There’s no need to get defensive,” I replied as I rubbed my thumb across her knuckles. “You don’t have to tell me, it’s just that I’d like to know more about you. I really like you, Lavinia.”
Her red eyes met mine, and she stared at me for a moment as she seemed to come to a decision, but just as she opened her mouth to answer, there was a clatter on the steps, and someone gave a surprised shriek as they fell the last few feet to the floor.
We all turned at once as Emeline picked herself up off the floor, her ears pressed back against her head and her cheeks tinged with a furious blush.
“I thought cats were supposed to be graceful,” Lavinia said under her breath as the innkeeper rushed forward to help the panthera up.
“I’m fine, I’m fine, really,” Emeline insisted and waved the woman away. “Just lost my footing there, that’s all.”
Seeming determined to move past the accident, she brushed past the innkeeper and came over to where Lavinia and I were sitting. She pulled one of the chairs closer to ours after she cast a nervous glance to the man who was still slumbering in the other armchair.
“Good, you’re up,” Emeline said as she settled in. “I thought I’d be the only one.”
“Did the singing wake you, too?” I asked curiously.
Emeline blinked, and as her catlike ears flicked up again, I guessed that she’d only really registered the music outside once I’d brought it up.
“Oh, no,” she replied with a small smile. “I can sleep through just about anything. You have to be able to in the University Tower. There’s always someone up in the middle of the night working on experiments or something.”
There was more shuffling on the steps as Maruk, Lena, and Aerin with Merlin still tucked in her arms, filed down into the tavern.
“What happened?” Aerin asked blearily. The healer’s red waves of hair were in disarray, and she squinted against the soft light of the tavern and the approaching day. “Heard a crash, and screaming.”
Emeline sank down in her chair slightly.
“Emeline tripped,” Lavinia explained as the others made their way over to us. She cast a glance to me. “The screaming is Gabriel’s fault. I wanted to shoot the singing guy.”
“Oh,” Aerin replied, and her tone suggested that, in her half-asleep state, at least, she would have been in favor of Lavinia’s plan.
The innkeeper returned with mugs of tea for me and Lavinia then took the rest of the group’s orders as well while they set their belongings down and arranged themselves around the nearest table.
“So what’s the plan for today?” Maruk asked blearily. “Shall we do some shopping before we continue on our way?”
“I saw an apothecary I’d like to visit before we go,” Lena put in.
“The festival lasts all week,” the innkeeper reminded us as she passed out the rest of the drinks. “You all ought to stay! You can’t really take it all in in just a day.”
I wondered if she was really interested in us getting the full festival experience, or if she just wanted to make sure she could have all her rooms filled for the next few days.
“Thank you,” I replied diplomatically, “but we’re on a schedule.”
The woman clicked her tongue regretfully as she bustled back to the bar to help some other patrons who had just walked in.
I sipped my tea as the others discussed our schedule for the morning. Aerin hadn’t given up on the idea that she could make a decent amount of money if Merlin would cooperate and jump through a few hoops for her, but at the mere mention of it, the puca squirmed out of her arms and curled around Lena’s shoulders instead. Just as Maruk proposed checking the shops for various accouterments for our guild hall, I found my attention drawn to the other patrons at the bar.
There were six of them, all men, and all dressed in leather armor that was old and stained. They wore their swords and bows openly, and they just put off a bad vibe to me. I couldn’t make out quite what they were saying from here, but their tones weren’t friendly, and the innkeeper frowned at them as she replied.
I shifted in my chair, and Lavinia turned to follow my gaze to the men. We were both halfway to our feet when the largest of the men shouted and picked up a metal tankard and threw it against the wall.
The innkeeper screamed, and I took a step forward.
“Emeline, stay here,” I ordered. I didn’t need to signal to the others as they jumped up after me. I heard Lavinia grab her bow and quiver behind me, and the rest of our guild scrambled into action as well.
“What’s going on here?” I demanded as I stopped before the three men.
“This is none of your concern,” the man who had thrown the tankard replied. His long hair was matted and graying, and he had a wicked scar across his lip that seemed to exaggerate the sneer that he directed at me.
The innkeeper threw us a nervous glance, and that told me that this was indeed my concern.
“I think you’d better leave,” I replied firmly.
The man’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, yeah? Why don’t you make us?”
I didn’t want to get into a brawl right here in the tavern, but I wasn’t about to let these guys go around threatening people. Evidently, they didn’t realize just who they were up against. I jerked my head toward the back door.
“Let’s go, then.”
The leader grunted, and another of them spat on the floor, but they didn’t turn down the opportunity for a fight, and we all made our way out the back door into the shelter of an alley. I was grateful for the relative seclusion, it would provide some cover from the public eye, and I wouldn’t risk revealing my magic to the entire street.
Once we were all outside, however, there was no formality to the proceedings. One of the men seems to decide that they ought to take out Maruk first, and tried to sneak in a cheap shot as he swung his battered old sword at the orc with a furious cry.
Maruk was far too cagey to be caught unaware, and my big friend deflected the blade against the edge of his shield and then rotated the shield down to wrench the sword out of his attacker’s grip before he slammed his other shield into the man’s chest. The man staggered back against the wall with a choked breath, and I left Maruk to deal with him as I turned back to the others.
Instinct drew my attention to one of the men with a crossbow. He had had just raised his weapon and aimed it at Maruk, but before he could press the trigger, I threw up my hand and cast an illusion over him. He cried out and nearly dropped his weapon as the image of giant cave spiders cropped up in his mind, and a moment later, he fell into the gutter with one of Lavinia’s dark arrows protruding from his throat.
I sensed movement behind me, and I caught the stench of old alcohol as I turned to face the scarred leader. I took in his grizzled beard and the long scar that marred his grin a moment before I registered the flash of his knife in my periphery. Then several things happened at once.
I grabbed the man’s hand and channeled my mana through it to his blade as I shoved his clenched fist up toward his own throat, but before the blade had touched his skin, a ball of fire exploded around his head.
He screamed, loud enough that I knew the people in the street must have been able to hear, and that let me push his wrist the last inch forward to drive the tip of his own knife, now enhanced with my mana, through his throat. Every nerve in his body lit up upon contact, and for a brief moment, he looke
d like a bizarre creature made of light with his head on fire and his body shining like a Christmas tree.
I coughed as the acrid smell of burning hair and flesh filled my lungs and pushed the man’s smoking body away, and through the gray haze, I caught sight of Emeline, her hands still raised from her spell and her green eyes wide.
“Are you okay?” she shouted.
“Yeah!” I responded with another cough. “Get back inside, we can deal with these guys!”
I couldn’t see if she’d listened, however, because, at that moment, another of the men charged at me. I reacted reflexively, and instead of trying for some other kind of magical attack, I just turned and threw a punch at his jaw.
He reeled back with a look of shock and stumbled into Aerin, who wasted no time in wedging her axe between his shoulder blades.
One of the remaining men was bent double and wheezed as a bright pink smoke drifted up around his feet from one of Lena’s special concoctions, and a moment later, Lavinia shot an arrow through his head.
At the other end of the alley, close to the tavern door, the last of the men was locked in battle with Maruk. They almost seemed to be dancing to the music their weapons made as they clashed, as Maruk took measured steps back and his opponent darted forward. There was a wild fury in the man’s eyes as he hacked at the orc’s dual shields with his sword, but Maruk blocked each blow with easy grace and held him off. The big orc actually looked a bit bored, but then he tripped as his heel caught on a stone that had come loose and jutted out of the cobbled street.
I lunged forward as the orc fell back, my arm outstretched in an attempt to distract the swordsman with an illusion, but before I had even cast my spell, the man suddenly froze then dropped with a knife in his ribs. Behind him stood the man who had been passed out on the armchair in the tavern, and he curled his lip in an expression of distaste as he stepped over the body and offered his hand to Maruk to help him up.
“It was about time someone stood up to those ruffians,” he said, and as I recovered from my surprise at his sudden and unexpected appearance, I realized that his accent wasn’t regional, though there was something familiar about it. “Nothing more than bullies, no honor whatsoever, and they smell.”
“You can say that again,” Maruk agreed emphatically as he brushed off his clothes.
“Ah, and look at this. That’s never going to come out. What a shame,” the man went on as he dabbed morosely at the specks of blood that now joined the wine stain on his satin vest. Then his tone became cheerful. “Well, at least some luck came of this, and I found you all. Would you believe I was just on my way to Ovrista to fetch you?”
“What in the nine hells are you talking about?” Lavinia’s fingers tightened around her bow again, and I put my hand out to signal for her to wait as I approached the man.
“Um, look, we appreciate your help, sir, but I think you have us confused with someone else,” I said cautiously.
“Not at all,” the man replied. “You’re Gabriel, and your guild is the Shadow Foxes. I didn’t know you’d be here, of course, but as I said, it was lucky that we stumbled across one another this way.”
His smile was perfectly friendly, and his confidence was so assured that I wondered if we had met him before and I was the one who was wrong. I glanced back to Aerin and Lena, but they looked just as confused as I felt.
“Who are you?” I asked warily. “How do you know who we are?”
Surprise flitted across the man’s features, and then he put his hand on his chest and laughed.
“Oh, of course, we haven’t met before,” he explained. “Pardon me, I had a bit too much wine last night, I’m afraid. My name is Rezo, I was seeking you out on behalf of my employer, in the hopes that your guild might accept a job from her. She’s here in town as well, actually. She’ll be so pleased to see you.”
“Who is your employer?” I asked.
Rezo swept a little bow. “Why, none other than Yvaine Estrella, Marchioness of Constello.”
“Oh, by the Goddess,” Aerin sighed. “Not her again.”
Chapter 4
The carriage ride was so smooth that I wondered if our coach had been enchanted somehow. I supposed if anyone could afford enchantments for all her carriages, it was Yvaine. Furthermore, the coach was large enough to seat our whole party of six plus Yvaine herself comfortably, and the roof of the coach was tall enough to accommodate even Maruk’s near seven-foot height.
Yvaine, who had managed to look gorgeous even after she’d spent several days in the wilderness and nearly been sacrificed by cultish dwarves to a river monster, was nothing short of exquisite now that she was in her element. Her long, dark brown hair was caught up in a net of pearls, though she’d left one shining strand to curl down over her exposed collarbone. Her emerald green dress left her shoulders bare and was cinched at her narrow waist with a thin belt of silver. Matching bracelets encircled her graceful wrists, and a hint of silver eyeshadow shimmered around her large, gray eyes. She could have put any queen to shame.
The trip was to take about two hours, and Yvaine kept up a conversation the entire time. She told us all about what she’d been up to since we’d parted ways all those months ago in Ovrista after the Foxes had rescued her from a clan of murderous dwarves. She may not have belonged to a guild or gone on all the adventures we had, but Yvaine’s life had been full of drama and intrigue nonetheless. She spoke in detail of the magnificent parties she’d attended and told us what she thought of the decor and the guests. She gossiped about which lords were conspiring against each other and which of them were the best dancers.
“At Lord Dumont’s birthday party, someone poisoned the cake, it was just dreadful,” Yvaine intoned with a hand pressed to her chest. “Everyone who had some got a horrible stomach bug. I didn’t partake, of course, I haven’t eaten anything made with eggs since last year. It’s so out of fashion.”
“It is?” Maruk asked, and his face paled to a pastel green. I guessed he remembered the four omelets he’d had for breakfast.
Emeline was equally engaged, though for a different reason. “Who poisoned the cake?” she asked as she leaned forward in her seat, her expression rapt. “Was someone trying to kill Lord Dumont?”
“Oh, heavens, no,” Yvaine replied with a small smile, and I could tell she enjoyed having such an interested audience. “His sister was jealous because he’d copied the decorations for the party that she was planning to throw in a few months. Now she’ll have to come up with something entirely new.”
“Why?” Aerin’s nose wrinkled. “If her brother already has the decorations, she can just reuse them, can’t she? He saved her the money.”
Maruk shushed the redheaded elf hurriedly as Yvaine fixed her with a skeptical look.
“Reuse the decorations? Don’t be absurd. She’d be a laughingstock.” The noblewoman ran her fingers through her hair and shrugged. “It was all for the better for the sister, really, now she’ll have a chance to put something together that has a better color scheme.” She leaned forward then as though she was about to impart a secret. “Plum and saffron - honestly, what was she thinking?”
“No,” Maruk breathed.
“Yes,” Yvaine replied solemnly.
“How could she?” my big friend moaned.
“That’s exactly what everyone has been saying!” Yvaine sighed.
“Does anything exciting ever happen at these parties?” Emeline asked. “I mean, do people get into duels or expose each other’s misdeeds to the entire court?”
“Oh, certainly,” Yvaine replied, and before she could finish speaking, Emeline jumped in again.
“Does anyone ever die?”
“How morbid you are,” Yvaine said with a slight furrow to her brow. “It isn’t very common these days. You don’t want to thin out the noble lineages too much, of course, but oh, I’d say it was about three months ago that Vicomte Rodier was frozen in a duel with Baroness Allaire. He was absolutely mortified, it took him hours to thaw o
ut.”
“The baroness was a mage, then?” I asked. “Are there many mages among the nobility?”
“Quite a few, actually,” Yvaine replied. “Most of the older generations still have something of a distaste for magic and resent the authority of the Mage Academy. Old superstitions, you know, though it’s better around here than in other places. No one disowns their mage children, but nonmagical heirs are preferred over their mage siblings when it comes to inheritances and the like. If you ask me, it’s ridiculous.”
I was relieved, if somewhat surprised, to learn that Yvaine didn’t share the other nobles’ disdain for mages.
“Why do you say that?” I asked.
“Magic is like any other talent, as far as I’m concerned,” Yvaine answered. “What’s next, shall we start sending off every young person who can carry a tune to boarding school? Throw nervous glances over our shoulders at fencers? Magic can be dangerous, but so can just about anything applied to the right purpose, and shunning young mages is no way to address those fears.”
“I’m glad to hear you say that,” I said, and I saw that Emeline looked equally relieved. Of course, Yvaine didn’t know I was a manipulator, specifically, and there was always the chance that her attitude wouldn’t be quite so lenient in that regard, but it was comforting to learn that she was more welcoming of mages than some.
The noblewoman fixed me with a warm smile and reached over to take my hand. “Of course, dear, of course,” she said. “You must know we’re not all so entrenched in the old ways of thinking.”
The coach began to slow, and Yvaine clapped her hands together excitedly as she reached to lift away the gauzy curtain over the window.
“Oh, we’ve arrived!” she said. “I can’t wait to show you around. My art collection is the envy of the region. It’s almost as grand as the one in Revin.”
Next to me, Maruk shuffled excitedly in his seat as we shuffled out of the coach and onto the wide path of white gravel. I hadn’t even realized we’d been on gravel until I saw it, so I decided that the carriage must have been enchanted.