The Agent

by Brock E. Deskins

  Adam swallowed and stared at his feet. “We can put his face on someone else and have them pretend to be him.”

  Garran nodded as he considered the idea. “Yeah, we just need to find someone of similar height and build and teach him to talk and act like Elroy. He would only need to pull off the ruse long enough for Callum’s ships to set sail.”

  “It will never work, Garran. Isobel dotes on her brother. She will know it is not him immediately.”

  “She doesn’t know what happened to him in Urqua. He’s been gone for a couple of years. Who knows how that kind of imprisonment and torture can alter a person’s voice, mannerisms, or even memories?”

  “They did not torture him in the least. He lived better than most of their upper class.”

  “She doesn’t know that. The man was half-boggled before he went to Urqua. Trust me; this will work. So, how do we get his face on someone else?”

  Adam grew pale and looked almost faint. “We literally take his face and put it on someone else.”

  Garran blinked several times. “You mean like cut it off?”

  “Unless you know of another way to remove someone’s face, then yes, Garran, we cut the damn thing off!”

  “Relax. You don’t have to bite my face off.”

  “You are such an ass.”

  ***

  Despite its somewhat remote location, Lukh was a bustling town in Artemisia’s northern reaches. It was located in the heart of a fertile valley and produced much of the nation’s food.

  The inns and drinking houses were lively as hundreds of farmers and laborers relaxed after a hard day of toiling. Garran was somewhat sober, comparatively speaking, despite this being the third drinking house he had frequented this evening. His mission this night was not one of drunken debauchery but of finding a suitable candidate for his plans.

  Garran stood on his tiptoes and gazed over the heads of the crowd in search for someone who might fit the bill for what he needed. His eyes locked onto a man sitting alone at the bar who bore a slight resemblance to Elroy. He worked his way between the tables and small groups of mostly men reciting lines from plays or poetry. It was a thespian bar, and Garran had not chosen it at random.

  Of course, merely matching the dead prince’s look was the least of Garran’s challenges, but as he drew near and saw the man staring into the bottom of an empty cup as if mourning the death of a lost friend, he became optimistic.

  The stool next to him was occupied, but Garran made it vacant by grabbing the young man sitting on it by the upper arm, less than gently pulling him off, and pushing him away. The man looked to about to protest his rude treatment, but Garran slapped a hand onto one of the reaping blades hanging on his hip and cut short any complaint he wanted to issue.

  “Can I buy you a drink?” Garran asked the man next to him as he sat down.

  The man turned an eye his direction while still holding the empty cup. “Seeing as how I am once again bereft of coin and booze, such a thing would be as welcome as it is necessary.”

  Garran motioned to the bartender and slid a few coins across the counter. “Garran Holt.”

  The man took the drink set before him and smiled. “Friedrich Voss. Thank you.”

  “Are you an actor, Friedrich?”

  “Like most everyone here, I am actor, poet, minstrel, and in truly bad times, prostitute.”

  Garran smiled and nodded. “Older women of means and boredom?”

  Friedrich sighed and took a drink. “Only on the truly good days.”

  “Perhaps I can make this a good day. How would you like a job?”

  “Acting or prostitution? Mind you, neither is a deal breaker, but one requires considerably more…preparation than the other.”

  Garran bobbed his head from side to side. “Honestly, it could be a bit of both.”

  “Let us refill this cup before you tell me how much of each you shall require.”

  Garran motioned for a refill. “It is an ongoing role, and the man I need you to play is a bit…fanciful. In order to maintain character, you might at times need to play that part to its fullest.”

  “How ongoing is this role?”

  “Well, it is several days of hard riding to Merribourne. After that, you will need to stay in character for at least a week. You can then vacate the role if you wish, but I think you might choose to continue it.”

  “What exactly is this role?”

  “Elroy Sinclair, bother to Queen Isobel Bolten.”

  Friedrich gave Garran a quizzical look. “You want me to play Elroy? Is this some sort of vanity play the Prince is producing?”

  “No, I want you to be Elroy in real life. You are going to take his place at the palace. You will assimilate his life and all of the benefits that come with it.”

  “I’m not sure I understand.”

  Garran discreetly showed his agent pin. “I have a job that requires me to deliver Elroy to his sister. Circumstances beyond my control make it impossible for me to deliver the real Elroy, so now I need a substitute.”

  “I consider myself a convincing actor, but I hardly think I can fool the man’s sister.”

  “You can, and I will explain it in greater detail away from here if you are amenable to proposition.”

  “Well,” Friedrich said with a sigh, “this does interrupt my plans of hanging myself soon, but I suppose whether a gallows in Merribourne or a tree in Lukh is of little difference. At least I might not die hungry and sober.”

  Garran clapped Friedrich on the shoulder. “That’s the spirit!”

  ***

  The clopping of horse hooves heralded the approach of riders. Adam and Liam made ready to escape through the window of the old hunting cabin in which they hid should anyone other than Garran appear. They both relaxed when Garran opened the door and entered with another man, both of whom strode in on unsteady legs.

  “I got our guy!” Garran announced. “Friedrich, this is Prince Pickle Tits and Lord Paininmyass.”

  “Pleased to meet you all.” Friedrich tried to make a sweeping bow and promptly fell on his face.

  Adam watched the man climb back to feet. “Garran, does he even know why he’s here? I absolutely refuse to do this on someone who is not entirely willing and doing so under their own volition.”

  “He told me everything,” Friedrich slurred. “I am to be a prince of Artemisia.”

  “And did he tell you what that entailed?”

  “You are going to cut our faces off and switch them. Garran said you could use magic,” Friedrich snorted, “because you’re a big faery!”

  Garran and Friedrich burst into uncontrolled laughter and did not stop until they were both gasping for breath.

  “Wonderful,” Adam replied dryly. “Do you want to start now?”

  “I sure as hell don’t want to wait until I’m sober.”

  Adam motioned to a hastily constructed table made of small logs bound together with cord. Friedrich took notice of the form already lying upon it and covered by a blanket.

  “Is that him?” he asked.

  “No, it’s a different dead guy we carted halfway across the kingdom,” Liam answered.

  Friedrich narrowed his eyes then chortled as he lay next to the body. “I guess it was a stupid question.”

  Adam said, “You do understand that this change is permanent?”

  Friedrich nodded. “My face failed to achieve fame and wealth. Perhaps this one shall do better.”

  “I am going to use magic to put you to sleep. Try not to resist it.”

  Adam let his magic flow and put the actor into a deep, unshakable slumber. He pulled back the blanket from Elroy’s face and studied it once more, committing every contour to memory. He picked up a small, sharp knife, sighed, and began to cut along Elroy’s hairline, behind the ear, and beneath the jaw.

  Liam clamped a hand over his mouth when Adam began peeling Elroy’s face off. “I think I’ll go wait outside.”

  “I think I’ll join you,” Garran said.r />
  “Sure, leave me to suffer the grisly details alone,” Adam said bitterly. “Cowards!”

  Adam repeated the cut on Friedrich, swapped faces, and used his magic to close the wound, leaving only the faintest of scars the width of a strand of spider silk. He then molded the bone and tissue beneath like a sculptor working clay until the effect was as complete as he could make it.

  Some two hours after he began, Adam stepped out of the cabin and took a deep breath. “It’s done.”

  Garran and Liam followed him back inside and looked upon his handiwork.

  “Wow, it’s uncanny,” Garran exclaimed.

  “It is awful,” Adam replied. “I will have to spend the rest of my life repenting and atoning for the sins you force me to commit.”

  “How is this sinful? Imagine the implications of this kind of work just within the Diplomacy Corps.”

  “Which is one reason why it is forbidden!”

  “Okay, forget espionage and deceit. Could you replace other body parts?”

  Adam looked at Garran out of the corner of his eye. “What do you mean other body parts?”

  “You know—like if someone lost a hand or something. Maybe a person was born with a shriveled appendage or other disfigurement. Could you replace it with another?”

  “Garran, I am not going to transplant your penis.”

  “Whoa, where did that come from? Nobody was talking about penises here. But you could do it?”

  Adam turned and walked away. “I am going to bed.”

  “That wasn’t a no!”

  “No!”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “Both!”

  ***

  Adam left Friedrich sleeping throughout the rest of the night. Feeling physically, mentally, and spiritually drained, Adam lay out on his bedroll on the cabin floor and slept as well. Liam soon followed, but Garran stayed up, as usual, doing whatever it was he did for most of the night when any sane person would be asleep.

  Adam awoke to find Garran already up, or just as likely, having never gone to sleep. He could not fathom how anyone could operate on so little sleep regardless of the chemicals in their system.

  “How’s our patient?” Garran asked when Adam emerged from the cabin and sat across from him near the small fire.

  “He seems to be fine. We’ll see how he reacts when he wakes up sober and able to fully comprehend what we did to him.”

  “He’ll be fine. He went into it with full disclosure.”

  “It still doesn’t make it right.”

  “Necessity and right rarely ride together.”

  Adam looked at Garran and cocked his head. “Is that what it is for you—being an agent?”

  “Most of the time.”

  “How do you reconcile the things you have done out of necessity when in your heart you know it is wrong?”

  Garran pulled his opium pipe from the pack next to him and lit it with a burning twig. “Superior emotional control honed through years of intense training.”

  “Training…”

  Garran leaned back against a log and smiled. “Years and years of it.”

  Liam appeared from the cabin and sat next to Adam. “I see the lecher found breakfast. What about the rest of us?”

  “There is tea brewing on the fire now,” Adam replied. “You can wait for me to boil water for some oats or eat some trail food.”

  “I may have had to wear a dress, but at least I ate properly back in Bale,” Liam grumbled.

  “You also had about a thirty percent chance of waking up wrapped in the arms of a hairy laborer with more fingers than teeth,” Garran retorted.

  “And my chances now…?”

  Garran shrugged. “Twenty percent, tops, but with a cumulative of one percent increase every day I don’t find a whorehouse. I figure that if we make good time, you will break even. Might even be a point or two in your favor.”

  “I’ll break a stick off in your eye, you pervert.”

  Friedrich shuffled out of the cabin looking exhausted and hung over but otherwise hale. He plopped onto the ground between Adam and Garran.

  “How do you feel?” Adam asked.

  “Like an express courier used my face as a saddle. How do I look?”

  Garran retrieved a polished steel shaving mirror from his bag and handed it over. Friedrich gazed at his reflection, bobbing his head from side to side to verify that it was his image he saw.

  “It is bizarre but not unflattering,” he said as he prodded his face with a finger.

  “From this point on, you are Elroy,” Garran said. “You have to walk, talk, and act like him at all times, even with us. By the time we reach Merribourne, Friedrich must be well and truly dead. You have to be Elroy.”

  “The last and greatest role of my life. I can do it.”

  “Let’s work on your voice first. It needs to be softer and higher and sound almost as though you are talking in your sleep.”

  Friedrich recited some improvisational lines as Garran expertly guided him through pitch, tone, and cadence.

  “Good,” Garran said. “Remember, you are obsessed with fashion and expect only the best things in life. You have a snarky comment about everything, and everyone is beneath you.”

  “Yeah, make everyone you meet want to kick you in the nuts,” Liam chimed in, “and walk as if you are trying to hold in a fart with a look on your face like you failed.”

  “Ah yes, I know the type well,” Friedrich replied. He poured a cup of tea from the kettle, sipped it with an extended pinky, and grimaced. “Is this chamomile, or did Garran wash his balls in it?”

  “Perfect!” Garran handed him a book about half an inch thick. “Study this every chance you get.”

  “What is it?”

  “It is everything I know about Artemisia’s history, particularly pertaining to the royal family.”

  Adam took the book from Friedrich and skimmed over the pages. “Garran, this is incredible. When did you have the time to do this?”

  “I did it while you girls were resting your ovaries. What did you think I was doing all night?”

  Adam and Liam answered at the same time. “Getting drunk.” “Masturbating.”

  “I guess it’s a good thing God gifted me with ambidexterity.”

  “I can’t believe you actually have this great a store of knowledge in your head,” Adam said.

  “I am a master of my craft—as I continually remind you. My mind is like a library when it comes to geopolitical knowledge.”

  “I always imagined it as more of a privy,” Liam said.

  “Keep being a smartass and I’ll use one of your boots as a privy.”

  “Your breath smells like someone has been using your mouth as a privy.”

  “Yeah, well…shut up.”

  “Oh, good burn. I guess we found the limits of that library. It’s more like a shelf half-filled with books with small words in large print and drawings of naked women and farm animals.”

  Garran reached for one of his reaping blades.

  Adam leaned over and grabbed his arm. “Remember, you are a master of emotional control.”

  Garran dropped the weapon and picked up his pipe as he glared at Liam. “There isn’t enough opium in the world.”

  CHAPTER 34

  Adam peered through the darkness at the bobbing light of a lantern as a stablehand checked the paddock for the night. “I still don’t think this is a good idea.”

  “Our horses are exhausted, and we are behind schedule,” Garran argued once again. “The next town is another day’s ride and away from our direction of travel.”

  “We are behind schedule because we spent two days running from a farmer and his posse because of you.”

  “How was that my fault?”

  “You asked if you could work a three-way with his wife and daughter!”

  “How was I supposed to know that was a sensitive subject? It’s only because of your constant nanny nagging that I even asked!”

  “We
already stole horses from this courier station on the way up here. It is beyond stupid to do it again on the way back!”

  “Which is precisely why it is a brilliant idea. Only an idiot would return to the scene of a crime, and The Guild knows I am not an idiot, so they will never expect it.”

  “You really don’t have a clue about how people perceive you, do you?”

  “Obviously they think I am a brilliant agent full of roguish charm.”

  “You have the emotional depth perception of a one-eyed, sociopathic chicken.”

  “Will you both shut up before they hear us?” Liam whispered, his voice growling.

  Garran’s eyes sought out Liam in the waxing darkness. “A: There is no one out here to hear us as they are all inside getting drunk and playing cards, as all couriers do. B: there’s like four couriers in there. I could beat them all into submission with a stick of salami even without transcending, so shut up.” A whooshing sound cut through the air. “So stop shushing m—”

  The brainer struck Garran in the side of the head with a spray of clay shards and lead shot. He staggered from the blow but managed to pull his reaping blades as a chorus of shouts erupted from the woods and dark figures rushed them seemingly from all sides.

  Garran slashed drunkenly at the form that materialized in front of him, but the man contemptuously slapped the haphazard strike aside with his sword. Garran’s eyes focused just enough to bring Victor’s smiling face into view.

  “Stupid move, Holt.” Victor’s fist, gripping the hilt of his sword, collided with Garran’s jaw and dropped him to the ground.

  “Agent Law, what do you want us to do with these two?” asked one of the soldiers holding Liam and Friedrich at sword point.

  Victor strode over to the pair. “Who the hell are you?”

  Friedrich stood straight and tugged and the hem of his shirt. “I am Prince Elroy Sinclair, and this is my valet, Peter. Seeing as how Mr. Holt is no longer able to deliver me to my beloved sister, I insist that you now fulfill his duty.”

  The soldier cocked his arm back, ready to thrust. “Want me to kill him?”

  Friedrich gasped. “Don’t you dare! I refuse to die in the woods without a proper royal funeral, and I positively cannot be buried in these awful clothes. To die under such conditions would certainly leave my spirit in a state of unrest, and I will return to haunt you for the rest of your days.”