by Jasmine Walt
Oh well, I thought as I headed back to check on the cat. Sure enough, he’d finished his food and was now contentedly curled up in his cage. I reached in and gave him a rub behind the ears, and he nuzzled my hand with a deep purr that made me smile, banishing the despair that had settled into my bones. Working with animals, even the most recalcitrant ones, always lifted my spirits. Regardless of where I went, there would always be animals to tend to, and as long as I had that, I was mostly fulfilled.
Besides, I only had another two years of hiding out. Once I reached thirty, I could return to my hometown and claim my inheritance. There was a large fortune waiting for me once I reached my majority. I could use it to arrange my life as I saw fit without interference from my so-called guardians.
A flash of anger lit inside me as I thought about the relatives who had so carelessly used and abused me. They’re not worth thinking of, I told myself firmly, pushing those old memories aside. No, I had to focus on the plans for my future. Surely I could wait out the last two years here, so long as I kept my head down. It was not that long, considering how many years I had to look forward to, and now that I’d cleared things up with the constable, all I needed to do was stay away from Roor.
Even so, I resolved to pack a bag and deposit what little savings I had under a new name at a different bank. I would hate to have to start over without a copper to my name. It was too bad that I’d never learned to make gold, like all trained mages could. My practice was prospering, but many of my clients were hard up for money and paid me with eggs, meat, and other forms of barter. Nobody in Abbsville seemed to have much ready money, aside from the Boccols and one or two other well-to-do farming families.
There is the shifter, I thought, thinking back to what Barrla had said about Fenris. I wondered where he had gotten all that money and what had brought him to Abbsville. Of all the places in the Federation that a wealthy, single shifter could have moved to, why did he choose a tiny town that was populated solely by humans? The guarded look that had entered his eyes when I’d asked him about his education told me he did indeed have a past that he did not wish to discuss.
We really are both outsiders, I mused as I prepped the surgery for my next appointment. And we had gotten along quite well during those few minutes of conversation. Perhaps we could become friends, though I didn’t know if it was worth it to try and establish any kind of relationship. After all, once I left Abbsville behind, I would never see any of my friends here again.
6
Fenris
As promised, I arrived at the Purple Pig at seven o’clock sharp on Tuesday evening, my first visit to Abbsville’s sole pub and the town’s general watering hole. The place reeked of stale tobacco smoke, but I’d come prepared—a special charm was pinned to the inside of my collar that helped mute the stench around me, making it bearable to my shifter nose without dulling it completely. The pub wasn’t packed, but it was still plenty busy, with nearly every seat filled and the buzz of conversation filling the air.
“Hey, Mr. Shelton!” Marris was sitting at a table in the corner with two other young men. They had a pitcher of beer in the center of their table and tankards full of the frothy amber beverage. “Right on time.”
I headed toward them, ignoring the stares of the other patrons. Everybody in town knew of me at this point because of that unfortunate incident at Mrs. Boccol’s birthday party. Perhaps using that sleeping spell on Mina’s assailant hadn’t been the wisest choice, not with so many witnesses around, but most seemed to have accepted that the brute had been overcome by drink, and it had been a harmless enough solution. Far more civilized than having to resort to fisticuffs, as would have been Roor’s preference. The man had been itching for an excuse to punch me for daring to lay my “filthy paws” on “his woman.”
I wonder how she’s doing. The thought flitted briefly in my mind, along with the image of her, beautiful and vulnerable and headstrong all at once as she tried to fend off the brute pawing at her. I’d smelled the acrid tang of fear on Mina when he’d refused to let go—her mind had gone someplace else, and I strongly suspected this was not the first time she had been subjected to a man’s unwanted attentions.
She’d been a delight to talk to, her eyes sparkling with a level of intelligence I’d yet to glimpse from any of the other women I’d met in this place. And when I’d woken the next morning, it had taken everything in me to stop myself from going to check on her. I’d already interfered enough, and she didn’t need another man sniffing around her after she’d only just fended one off.
But that was neither here nor there at this moment. Right now, I was here to play poker, drink beer, and see what I could find out about Marris and his nighttime activities.
“Thank you for inviting me,” I shouted over the noise, bumping Marris on the shoulder before I sat down in the empty chair and accepted the mug of beer that was pushed my way. “If we are going to drink and play together, you might as well call me Fenris.”
“I’ve already bet that you’re gonna clean us out,” one of the other men said—a lanky fellow with rawboned features and stringy yellow hair. I recognized his scent and build—he was one of Marris’s friends from the other night. “What with that keen nose and all.”
I laughed. “I’ll try to keep my nose out of this,” I promised, and they all grinned at me.
“This is Cobil,” Marris said, indicating the man who’d just spoken to me. “And this other guy here is Rotharius, but we call him Roth for short. We’ve known each other since we were in diapers.”
“Nice to meet you,” Roth said, extending his hand. He was a big man, even taller than Roor, but I sensed a gentle, easygoing nature about him. “You’re the talk of the town.”
I bit back a sigh at that. “I wasn’t aware that the resident veterinarian was supposed to be off-limits,” I said. “I’m looking at purchasing some horses, so I consulted with her last night on who would be the best person to buy them from.”
“Sure you did,” Marris teased, grinning at me. “I saw you with her at the party last night—she was the only woman you talked to who didn’t look like she was boring you out of your skull.”
“She is very pretty and intelligent,” I allowed. “But she is hardly my type.”
Cobil gaped at me. “Hardly your type? What are you—gay?”
Marris elbowed him in the ribs, and Cobil yelped. “He means she’s not a shifter,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Which is understandable, though it makes me wonder why you chose to settle down here, where there are no eligible shifter females. You planning on ordering one in, like a mail-order bride?” He waggled his eyebrows.
I chuckled. “I hadn’t thought much about it,” I admitted, though that was a lie. The truth was that I would love to have a family, but I wasn’t in a position to settle down with anyone. Apart from being a wanted man, my predicament was similar to my friend Sunaya’s—I wasn’t quite a shifter or a mage, and didn’t fit in with either crowd. No shifter female would want to marry me if she knew I had magic, and I could hardly keep a secret like that from a spouse.
“It’s a real shame,” Roth said, “because Mina showed more interest in you than I’ve seen her show any man. It’s high time she settled down with someone—she’s rejected every eligible fellow in the area. I hear she’s never even allowed anyone to kiss her.”
“Really?” I found it hard to believe that those rosebud lips had never touched any man’s. She really was most appealing, the way her golden hair had been piled on top of her head, begging for a man to sink his fingers in and undo the knot, and those sparkling silver-gray eyes…
Realizing I was daydreaming about her, I yanked my thoughts back to the present. “Well, no matter. I’m sure someone will come along eventually for Miss Hollin. Now, are we going to get on with the game?”
Marris called for a refill on our pitcher, and Cobil pulled out a deck of cards and began dealing out the first hand. It took me several rounds before I started to catch on—it had been
a while since I’d played poker—but I eventually settled into a rhythm, winning some here, losing some there. I didn’t need to use my nose to read them—my shifter instincts had attuned me to the intricacies of body language. It was easy enough to tell when someone was bluffing or when someone else had a good hand and was trying to hide it. But I was here to ferret out information, not clean out my new friends’ pockets. I had more than enough money, and I could always make more if needed.
“You say the three of you have been together since you were in diapers?” I asked after losing the fifth round. Cobil gleefully scraped the handful of coppers on the table toward him—his second win of the evening.
“Oh, yes,” Roth said. “Me and Marris are next-door neighbors, and Cobil’s mother makes and sells the best pies in town, so we saw him regular enough.” He grinned. “We ought to get Mr. Shelton here a peach pie with some whipped cream. He’ll think he’s died and gone onto his reward.”
“Please, call me Fenris,” I reminded him. I wanted them to feel at ease around me, and I knew that in addition to being a stranger, my obvious wealth wasn’t doing me any favors. Hence my strategy to lose more than I won tonight. “Did the three of you go away together, too, since you are all so close? Marris mentioned to me the other day that he only recently came back.”
“We did.” Cobil’s eyes narrowed. “What’s it to ya?”
“Now, Cobil, I’m sure our new friend is just curious.” But a wary glint had entered Marris’s eyes too. “Where did you say you were from again, uh, Fenris?”
I held in a sigh. “Uton,” I told them. It was one of the Federation’s southwestern states, and hopefully none here would be familiar with it. “Barnas, specifically.”
“That’s home to one of the largest wolf shifter clans in the Federation,” Roth said. “You’re from that clan, then?”
“We had a falling out,” I said evasively. “A misunderstanding regarding a lady, you could say.”
The three men nodded sagely. “We know how that goes,” Marris said. “Just last week, Ria Smorth, who was engaged to this one’s brother”—he jerked a thumb toward Cobil—“eloped with another guy who she’d been secretly seeing for years. I’m guessing you were the ‘other man’ in the equation?”
“I don’t really like to talk about it,” I said, pretending the memory still pained me. “But I came out here because I wanted a fresh start. No meddling shifter clans, and no Mages Guild breathing down one’s neck, either.”
Marris’s eyes sparked at that. “Yeah, it’s one of the best perks to living in a small town like this. Those lofty mages consider us beneath them, aside from tax time, and, thankfully, that’s only once a year.” His expression darkened at the mention of taxes, and I imagined that nobody in Abbsville much liked it when the tax collector came. I knew from my time in Nebara, which had plenty of farming communities, that most farmers struggled to save up enough cash for the yearly tax day.
“As for where the three of us ran off to,” Roth said, leaning in and lowering his voice, “we joined up with a Resistance recruiter who was passing through the area. The three of us were young, restless, and looking for adventure.”
“Not to mention we all wanted to fight against the vile mage regime,” Marris added. “Like you said, we don’t much have to deal with them out here, but it is very unfair that they tax us so heavily while giving us so little in return.”
I nodded, unable to argue with that. Sunaya had mentioned something similar to Iannis when she’d first come to Solantha Palace. The system certainly needed an overhaul, though not the kind of overhaul Thorgana Mills, the late shadowy head of the Resistance, had in mind for the Federation. I was glad she was no longer around to spin her web of intrigue, though I doubted her death spelled the end of the Resistance. There was always someone else ready and willing to take up such causes, and the only way to truly stop them was to fix the flaws in our government that were stirring up all this unrest in the first place.
“Anyway, the three of us served as infantry. We fought mostly in the south, about as far away from Abbsville as you can get,” Marris continued, a wry smile on his lips. “We had some adventures out there, let me tell you. And as I mentioned before, we had some shifters in our unit that we got on pretty well with. But when we found out that the leadership was planning on betraying them, our shifter comrades cut their losses and went home.”
Cobil shook his head in disgust. “Unbelievable,” he muttered, lifting his tankard to his lips. He took a long drink, then slammed the mug down on the table. “Still gives me chills to think about how many of our comrades they were planning to kill.”
“We thought about leaving at the same time, but we hadn’t been paid in a while, so we decided to stick it out at least until the next payday so we could bring something home to our families,” Roth said. “Unfortunately for us, payday never came, and we were forced to come back home empty-handed.”
“Some of our troop advocated robbing the locals,” Marris said darkly, “but we weren’t having that. Stupid fucks would have brought an entire mob down on us all. Besides, we were supposed to be fighting for those people. So yeah, we trekked back up northwest to this tiny town. Our mothers were pretty damn happy to see us, at least.” He grinned briefly, but a shadow overtook his face. “Others, not so much.”
“I can imagine.” I sat back in my chair, studying them. “I can also imagine that it has been hard for the three of you to settle back into small-town life after all that fighting and adventuring.”
The three men nodded. “We’re waiting for a better opportunity to come along,” Roth said, “but in the meantime, we make do with farming land and chasing skirts.” He winked at me. “Marris, especially, is trying to get a certain redhead to look at him.”
“Evening, boys,” a balding, rotund man with a handlebar mustache greeted us. It took me a second to place him—Constable Foggart, Abbsville’s local head of law enforcement. I bit back a smile as he came to a stop next to Cobil—I couldn’t help but think of what Sunaya would say if she were forced to come work here as an enforcer. She would walk all over Foggart and likely have the run of the entire place within a week or two. A pang of homesickness hit me, and I forced myself to pay attention to what was going on.
“Don’t think I’ve introduced myself properly,” the constable said, holding out a meaty hand. “I’m Constable Davin Foggart.”
I shook his hand. As I did, I noticed a similarity to Cobil in the lines around his mouth and the shape of his eyes. “Are you two related?” I asked.
“Cousins,” Cobil said with a grin. “You’d never know it seeing as how respectable Davin is now, but according to grandma, he was a regular rabble-rouser in his youth.”
“Yes, well.” Constable Foggart coughed, the tips of his ears reddening. “No need to talk about me when we have such an interesting guest at this table. Tell me, Mr. Shelton, what brings you to Abbsville?”
I gave the constable the same story I’d told Marris and his friends. He did not seem convinced that a broken heart was what led me to Abbsville, but Cobil and the others quickly steered the conversation in a different direction, distracting him. Marris gave me another wink as they harassed Foggart about inviting them over to his house for another barbecue—the young men seemed to sense my need for discretion. After a few minutes, the constable finally left.
I held my breath, waiting for the men to press me for more details. But they simply dealt another hand, and, in low voices, began to regale me with tall tales of their time in the Resistance. From the occasional knowing looks and grins they gave me, I gathered they suspected I too was a former Resistance member, and I did nothing to correct the assumption.
“You don’t have to worry about us ratting you out,” Roth said as he swept up another small pile of winnings. “We may not have served together, but we were all part of the same cause. Resistance members always stick together.”
I shrugged. “I am not worried,” I said as Marris dealt another h
and. “After all, you do not know anything to betray, now do you?”
The men snickered, and we played a few more rounds before I bid them good night. As I walked home, relying only on the half-full moon to light my way, I reflected on the night’s conversation. Marris had said the three of them were waiting for the next opportunity to strike back at the mage regime… Did their sneaking about at night have anything to do with that?
All of these Resistance veterans and sympathizers…they were a complication I did not expect. What would these young men think if they knew I had a hand in the downfall of their cause? It didn’t seem as though they were still particularly loyal, but from what I’d gleaned, they still considered any member of the Resistance, former or current, to be a friend rather than a foe.
What Marris and his friends would think about me is the least of my problems, I reminded myself. If the Watawis Mages Guild got any inkling that there was Resistance activity down here, they would come down hard on Abbsville. And even though I barely knew these men, I found I did not want them to be caught and punished. After all, they had only been fighting for what they believed, and they had abandoned the Resistance once they discovered the betrayal planned by the late Benefactor.
As I turned down the road leading to my lands, I decided to continue monitoring their nocturnal activities. Any pointed questions regarding that subject would only make them suspicious, and while I believed I’d gained a bit of their trust, they were not ready to confide whatever it was they were up to with those heavy saddlebags.
I only hoped that whatever I found was mostly harmless. If not, I might have to decide between delivering them to the mages’ rough justice or leaving town myself before I was swept up in some illegal exploit.