by Jasmine Walt
I spent a few more minutes snooping around the place, then carefully closed everything up and hiked back to where I’d left my gelding. I was not certain how I felt about this discovery—if Marris, Roth, and Cobil were discreetly selling off the gold to a counterfeiter, that was one thing. But what if they were using it to fund the Resistance? That was high treason against the Federation, and if the authorities traced the gold back here, it would spell doom for these young men, and likely all their associates, including their new shifter neighbor. Hanging was the mandatory sentence for conspiracy and counterfeiting currency. They were playing with fire.
Of course, having fought with the Resistance was already a high crime, so they might think they had little to lose at this point. But the thought of those lively young men strung up on gibbets did not sit right with me, no matter how guilty they were.
No, I could not simply ignore this matter. For the short term, I would keep Marris’s secret until I found out what the illegal gold was being used for. Then I would have to decide what to do about the clandestine operation conducted under the town’s very noses before these young fools brought disaster down on the whole place.
9
Mina
The next evening, Barrla and I set out for the town’s weekly book club meeting. It was held in a different place each week. This time around, we walked to the house of Mrs. Cattin, the pastor’s wife. Barrla had baked fresh cinnamon tarts, and the most delicious smell was wafting from the basket she had slung on her arm. It blended wonderfully with the fresh springtime scents drifting on the air. Despite the worries that plagued me recently, I sighed contentedly.
“I’m glad to see you’re in good spirits,” Barrla said, looping her free arm with mine. “You’ve been out of sorts ever since the constable showed up at your door the other day.”
I frowned. “Yes, and seeing as how I’d like to stay in good spirits, I’d prefer not to talk about it.”
Barrla winced. “Sorry,” she said, squeezing my arm. “I’ll change the subject, then. Anything interesting happen since we last spoke?”
“I’m afraid not,” I lied. I didn’t want to tell her about my outing with Fenris, because that would lead to telling her about the horse’s injury, and the fewer people who knew about that, the better. Besides, I was worried Barrla might think I was spending too much time with her new “shifter beau,” and I didn’t want that to come between us. She was very good-natured—one of the qualities I loved about her—so I didn’t think she would mind too much, but I didn’t see any reason to destroy her hopes.
We arrived at Mrs. Cattin’s house just in time. The other ladies were seated in the parlor, enjoying the refreshments that had already been laid out. The pastor’s wife greeted us warmly and exclaimed over Barrla’s tarts. I’d brought some cheese pastries, which she also accepted, and Barrla and I helped ourselves to treats before sitting down.
We were the youngest members of the club—the other ladies ranged from their late thirties all the way up to their nineties, though admittedly, Mrs. Harpton, a great-grandmother, was twice as old as the next eldest. Most of the younger girls in town were too busy to make time for a book club—or rather, too busy batting their eyelashes at the men. But Barrla and I loved to read, and the other women were happy to have us, so we went to nearly every meeting. Usually, it was the social highlight of the week—there wasn’t very much to do out here in Abbsville aside from work and the occasional party or festival.
“All right.” Mrs. Cattin clapped her hands. “Let’s pull out our books. Who would like to go first?”
“I will,” Mrs. Tamil offered eagerly, shooting her hand up in the air. She clutched a mystery paperback in her hand. Mrs. Cattin gave her the nod, and she opened the book and began to read a passage.
Because Abbsville was so small, and had no public library, it was impossible for us to borrow and read copies of the same book at the same time. Our solution was to each bring the book we were currently reading and read aloud a typical passage. Afterward, we would discuss it for a bit, then move on to the next lady and book. If someone decided they liked the story, they could then borrow the book from the owner when she was done reading it. Most of the women couldn’t afford to buy new books very often—Barrla, Mrs. Cattin, and I were the only ones who did so regularly—and in this manner, the other women were exposed to new reading material, and we were all able to exchange our small collections.
By the end of the hour, several of us had decided to borrow books from one another, and I was greatly looking forward to reading Mrs. Tamil’s new mystery novel. I collected the book from her since she’d already finished it, then prepared to leave before the customary gossip session started. But Barrla was still in conversation with Mrs. Vamas, and I’d promised not to leave without her.
“And how are you doing, Mina dear, after your terrible ordeal with the constable?” Mrs. Staffer, a motherly widow in her late forties, asked me. I stiffened as the entire room turned toward us, but I could hardly rebuff her when she was looking at me with such concern. “I heard all about those nasty accusations from Mrs. Roor. That woman delights in mischief-making. And if she had brought her son up right, he would not drink so much and would have an easier time finding a woman to take him on.”
“Thank goodness she doesn’t come to our book clubs.” Mrs. Cattin sniffed. “I’m not sure I could abide her nonsense. Really, accusing Mina of using magic. What else will she come up with—that hogs fly?”
“I appreciate the support, ladies,” I said, doing my best to smile. “Really, though, I wouldn’t worry about it. The constable hasn’t come back to bother me about it since, and he assured me he didn’t really believe the claims either.”
“I wouldn’t write off the situation too quickly, Mina,” Mrs. Staffer warned. “Mrs. Roor told me the other day that she was not satisfied with the constable’s report. She has written to the Watawis Mages Guild asking for an investigation.”
My blood iced over.
“Well, I hope the mages fine Mrs. Roor for wasting their time,” Barrla said sharply, her blue eyes sparkling with anger. She came over to me and squeezed my hand, and I was startled to realize that my skin had gone cold. “Surely we would have all seen something out of the ordinary by now if Mina truly could use magic? She’s lived here for years!”
“You know…” I said thoughtfully, acting as though this didn’t faze me in the least. “When I was speaking with Mr. Shelton at the party, he told me that shifters can smell magic, and that it has an odd scent, similar to burnt sugar.”
“Burnt sugar,” one of the women exclaimed. “How strange.”
“What else have you learned about him?” Barrla asked eagerly, her eyes now sparkling with excitement rather than anger. She clutched my arm tightly, like a small child begging for a piece of candy. “Has he told you anything about his past?”
The conversation quickly devolved into a question-and-answer session about Fenris. Where did Mr. Shelton get his fortune? Was he planning to marry? Why had he moved to Abbsville? That farmhouse really was much too big for a single man, one of the women declared.
“Oh, I simply must get him alone again,” Barrla said, pressing a hand to her chest with a sigh. “He really is so very handsome, with that beard and strong jaw, just like the shifter from Falling for the Wolf.” To my amusement, she pulled the very same book from one of her skirt pockets. “His yellow eyes flared with lust as he took her into his muscular arms,” she began to read out loud, “and he crushed his lips to hers in a scorching kiss that seared every coherent thought from her mind. All she could think about was the feel of his iron arms banded around her and the hardness of his bare chest pressed against her pebbling breasts…”
“Oh, stop it!” Mrs. Cattin exclaimed, her cheeks flaming. The other women were shaking their heads at Barrla, scandalized by the racy passage. “What would Mr. Shelton think if he knew you were picturing him while reading such naughty words?”
“I think he might fin
d it rather sexy,” Barrla said saucily. “What do you think, Mina?”
I choked back a laugh. “Mr. Shelton is a hard man to read,” I said, not wanting to encourage her too much. Somehow, I got the sense that bubbly Barrla was not his type—she was very pretty, and she had a good head on her shoulders, but she was not an intellectual. I suspected Fenris would want a woman who shared more of his interests.
Still…he is a man, intellectual or not, I mused. Surely he found Barrla attractive, and if she spent enough time with him, she could very well entice him to her bed. What kind of lover would he be? Would he be rough and animalistic, like the shifter from Barrla’s book? Or would he be attentive and thorough, using his heightened senses to find a woman’s sweet spots and make her sing with pleasure?
Heat flooded my veins at the thought, and I had to quickly push away the sudden flurry of mental images before the other women noticed the blush rising to my cheeks. There was no point in trying to romanticize him. He was probably just like any other man when making love.
Not that I had very much experience with men. My one sexual encounter had been with a colleague in the town where I had first started practicing veterinary medicine, and it had not ended well. I had accidentally set the sheets on fire with my magic when I’d gotten close to my climax. My cheeks flamed as I recalled the embarrassing incident, and I turned back to the refreshment table before the other ladies noticed. I had managed to convince my lover that it had been a freak electrical accident, but I had never attempted to have sex again. It was too dangerous for me to allow someone to get that close to me.
That incident was also what had led me to Abbsville. I’d felt compelled to move before any other “freak accidents” could give me away.
“Oh, before I forget, I have something absolutely juicy to tell you all,” Barrla squealed, clapping her hands together. “But you must promise not to discuss a word of it outside the room.”
This caused another flurry of excitement, and we agreed to take the secret to our graves.
“Someone has been leaving gold coins in the post boxes of several farms over the past few nights,” Barrla said in a hushed voice, leaning in as if there might be someone listening at the windows. “Not a fortune, mind you—just enough to pay the yearly taxes coming up, or a little over.”
“Oh, yes, I’ve heard something about this,” Mrs. Canterbew exclaimed, her eyes widening. “This happened to my neighbor the other night. She was beside herself with joy. So it was not just her, then?”
“Do you know who is leaving these mystery gifts?” Mrs. Staffer asked eagerly. “I sure could use some gold to help pay the taxes this year.”
“Us too,” Mrs. Bartow said, sounding a little dejected. “We had a bad harvest this past year—we’re not sure how to make ends meet.”
As the others speculated about who the mysterious benefactor might be, I found myself wondering if Fenris could have been the culprit. He had plenty of gold…but no, a new arrival would not have any idea who was in need, or how much they fell short for the year. It had to be a local, someone who had intimate knowledge of the families that lived here and their economic circumstances. Yet who in Abbsville could afford such largesse? Not even the Boccols were that rich.
Well, whoever it is, I’m very grateful, I thought as Barrla and I finally left. I just hoped that whoever was doing this wasn’t bringing trouble upon themselves or stretching themselves too thin in the process.
10
Fenris
The sound of hoofbeats pounding down the road caught my ears as I was pouring oats into Makar’s feed bucket. The horse swiveled his ears in the direction of the sound but did not appear otherwise alarmed, so I patted him on the head and walked out of the stables to see who my new visitor was.
“Fenris!” Marris hailed me as I rounded the front of the house. He trotted up on a gelding of his own, then hopped off the horse to greet me. “I’ve come with this year’s rent.”
“Excellent.” I smiled at him, even as alarm bells went off in my head. I’d given Marris and his family a few months to get the coin together—how did they have it so soon? “Why don’t you come inside so I can get you a receipt?”
Marris eagerly accepted my offer to get out of the sun. After tying his horse to one of the posts outside my porch, he followed me inside. I sat him down at the breakfast table with a glass of water, then went into my bedroom to fetch a piece of paper and a pen.
“Here you are,” he said, reaching into his pocket as I sat down. “Five gold coins, as promised.” He slid the money across the table.
“Thank you.” I took the coins and put all but one in my pocket. As Marris took another drink of his water, I surreptitiously lifted the coin to my nose and took a whiff. As I expected, there was no trace of magic on the precious metal.
“Marris,” I said slowly, placing the coin back onto the table. “Where did you get the money?”
“From the family coffers, of course,” he said nonchalantly. If I were human, I might have believed him. But his scent changed subtly, soured by the faintest trace of fear, and I knew I had him.
“You should know better than to lie to a shifter,” I said lightly, knowing if I grew stern with him, it would only push him away further. “We can scent whether a person is telling the truth…and we can also scent if coins are counterfeit.” I picked up the coin again and tapped it against my nose. “Authentic coins are made by the Mages Guild and smell faintly of magic. This coin here has not even a tiny bit of magic in its scent, which tells me it was created from mined gold. So, I ask you again, Marris—where did you get this?”
Marris’s jaw had dropped, but he clenched it at my question, his eyes narrowing. “I don’t see why I would need to tell you that,” he said tightly. “As long as we pay the rent, why does it matter where the gold comes from?”
“Because if I pay my taxes with these coins, and the Mages Guild discovers they are counterfeit, I will be investigated by the authorities. Something I very much do not want,” I said calmly.
Marris’s eyes widened in shock. “I…I suppose I never thought of that,” he said. “But the Mages Guild would have no reason to suspect anything. They just want to get paid, don’t they?”
“Why don’t you start from the beginning,” I prodded gently, “and tell me where this gold came from. I have no intention of running to the Mages Guild if you are not doing anything dangerous, but I must know exactly what I am dealing with if I’m to avoid the worst kind of trouble.”
Marris sighed. “As you probably know, the Resistance has been funding some of its operations through gold mined from a few caves across the Federation,” he said, scooping a hand through his hair. “Aside from the last few months of my service, we were always paid well, and our gold was never turned away from any establishment, so we didn’t care that it was technically counterfeit.” Marris rolled his eyes at that. “The irony doesn’t escape me, mind you, that naturally created gold is considered ‘fake’ while magically created gold is considered ‘real.’”
I cracked a smile. “The thought has occurred to me as well,” I said. “Are you telling me that this gold you have is from your time with the Resistance?” I did not want Marris to think I had already discovered his secret.
Marris shook his head. “When we came back from the fighting, half of the local farms were in danger of being auctioned off for tax arrears due to the terrible harvest last year. These were our neighbors, people we’d grown up with, and we couldn’t bear to see their homes being taken away. We were up late one night thinking about it, when Roth pointed out that there was a gold vein hidden in the area that we had accidentally discovered back when we were kids.”
I raised my eyebrows, as if surprised. “So this gold is local?” I asked, hefting the coin in my palm. “You mined it yourselves?”
“Yes.” For a moment, Marris looked extraordinarily proud of himself. “It took us a bit to figure out how, but we managed to get the tools together. The hardest part wasn’t
the mining, to be honest—it was finding someone who could turn the gold into coins. We finally got in touch with a jeweler in another town, and he’s been transforming the nuggets into coins for a cut of the profits. He had to produce the dies first, which took quite a while, and it’s only just these last few days that we finally have some actual coins to use.”
“Right on time for tax season, I see.” I smiled, even as my mind churned with the implications. “You are only using the gold on behalf of the local townsfolk?” I pressed.
“We’re not sending it off to the Resistance, if that’s what you mean,” Marris scoffed. “I still believe in the basic concept, but after all the bigotry and hatred that’s come to light, I wouldn’t support them if you paid me. My loyalty is to Abbsville now,” he added, “and I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure my neighbors don’t go hungry or lose their homes.”
“That is very admirable of you,” I said, masking my astonishment. My nose told me he was being frank, which indeed seemed to be his default mode. I had not been expecting that Marris would use the gold for such a selfless cause—in my experience, most people tended to hoard their riches rather than hand them out free of charge. Despite everything, I could not help liking the scamp.
“However,” I continued, injecting a stern note in my voice, “this counterfeiting is not without risk. If the Mages Guild does take notice, they will send a team to investigate, and you probably know the penalty is hanging. Already, one Chief Mage I know about is aware of the Resistance’s use of illegal gold, and he will have informed his fellow Chief Mages to be on the lookout for such coins.” In fact, it had been Sunaya and I who first spotted the counterfeiting with our shifter noses. At the time, it had seemed natural to immediately inform the Mages Guild, but as I sat here, I realized there were unintended consequences.