by Dante King
I was about to apologize once more, when a breeze picked up inside the tavern. I looked around to see if one of the doors or a window had been opened, although there were no windows in this part of the tavern.
A fresh smell filled the air, of flowers and vegetation. Mistress Blossom stood motionless, her hands outstretched, and her eyes closed.
The candles flickered in the breeze, but none of them went out. From the Mistress’s feet, a glow of green light emanated into the wooden floor around us. It glowed bright as waves of energy pulsed from the Mistress into the surrounding room.
“What’s happening?” Amelia asked, her voice quivering.
“Ssh, wait and see,” said Jacques. “This is perfectly normal.”
As we watched, the table next to us appeared to rise of its own accord. The splintered boards met each other and fused. Green energy flashed in the gap between the boards, and wood regrew, splicing the pieces together. The benches on either side rocked back into position, green light zipping across the surface, knitting splinters back into the surface of the wood.
Fragments of stone beer mugs flew into the air in a whirlwind around us. The hundreds of shards merged together, forming whole mugs once more, which settled on the surrounding tables, some of them still containing unfinished beer.
“Incredible,” Veronica whispered. “I’ve seen this a few times already, but it never ceases to amaze me.”
“How are you doing this?” I asked. “You don’t have a wand. You don’t have tattoos, do you?” I suddenly wondered whether Mistress Blossom might have known about Ink Mages all along, and that I wasn’t so unique.
Mistress Blossom laughed. “Of course not. Whatever it is you’re capable of doing is extremely rare. I’ve never once come across such a thing in all my time in Brightwater.”
“But if you’re not doing it with tattoos or a wand, how are you doing it?” Amelia asked.
The Mistress pointed down at her legs. “Believe it or not, these fishnet stockings are good for more than just enhancing my gorgeous looks. They’re magical stockings, with small runes inscribed on the threads. A very expensive item, I can assure you of that.”
“The runes must be incredibly small and finely enchanted for so thin a garment,” Amelia said.
“It’s not all that hard to understand, really,” the Mistress replied. “There are plenty of magical garments out there; it’s simply unusual to see one with such fine thread work as this.”
The Mistress lifted a leg and placed her high heeled boot on one of the benches. The side of her leg was displayed prominently for us all to see.
I peered at the threads making up the stocking, and I could indeed see little patterns inscribed onto many of them.
“And what magic does this allow you to perform?” I asked.
“Nature magic,” Mistress Blossom replied. “I don’t normally go into this with customers, but you are all clearly much better informed than my usual patrons.”
“Where did you obtain such a remarkable vector?” asked Amelia.
The Mistress glanced sharply at her. “You are young, dear, and I guess you have not experienced much of the world. If you had, you would know that a Mage never shares the identities of her most talented enchanters.”
“Sorry,” said Amelia, reddening. “I’m not a Mage, so I didn’t realize it was rude to ask about it.”
The mistress waved one shapely hand in a dismissive gesture.
“No matter,” she said. “I’ll let it pass. Let’s just say that a long time ago—a very long time ago, so it seems to me—I trained to be a soldier in the Kingdom’s army. On that particular path of my life, I met a rather exquisite older woman who could enchant items so small you could barely see them.”
“I had no idea you were in the army!” said Veronica. “Why did you give it up?”
“Let’s just say the military life was not suited to my tastes.”
“Do you think we should ask her about the prophecy?” Amelia whispered to me. “She seems to know a lot; maybe she has some ideas?”
I suddenly remembered the prophecy inside her spellbook.
“Excuse me for a minute,” I said to the others before I went to retrieve Amelia’s spellbook. When I returned to the group, I opened the book to the first page and held it out for Mistress Blossom and Jacques to see.
“What’s this?” Jacques asked. “A blank page?”
I shook my head. “Just watch.” I placed a finger on the page, and the letters started to appear. In a matter of seconds, the letter that spoke of the prophecy appeared.
“I’ll be damned,” Jacques said. “This is about you?”
“He’s the only Ink Mage in the world, as far as I know,” Mistress Blossom said. ““I don’t like the sound of a terrible evil, or the High Order of Arcanists, for that matter. I can’t offer much help with prophecies, but I do believe I know someone who might be able to. A seer who lives in the mountains. Unfortunately, I don’t know exactly where she’s located, but I can find out for you.”
“That would be great,” I said.
Mistress Blossom smiled at me. “Leave it with me, and I’ll find where the seer is.”
Just then, Sophie, the barmaid, approached the Mistress. “Should we open the doors to patrons again?”
“Yes, dear, that’s an excellent idea.” The Mistress turned to us. “Now, it’s been a pleasure to meet you all, but if you’ll excuse me, I have to fix those sappers you beat up. Your beds and dinner are on the house tonight. I’ll send one of the barmaids to take your orders.”
We thanked the Mistress before she busily hurried off.
The front doors of the tavern opened, and a crowd of customers bustled in. Judging by the number that immediately swarmed the bar and the tables, I assumed that they’d been waiting by the door during our fight. Obviously, they were accustomed to such occurrences.
I grabbed my pack, and we all moved over to the big booth that Jacques had been occupying previously. Here, we took our seats. The most glorious smell wafted from the kitchens behind the bar.
“Now, young William.” Jacques clapped me on the shoulder as we sat down. “We have a lot to discuss. I want to know all the details about how you arrived at this fine establishment.”
I smiled at my old friend. “I’ll tell you all about it.”
Chapter Fourteen
With nothing to concern us except getting caught up with each other’s news, we sat and talked while barmaids took our orders and brought our meals, together with another mug of beer each. I ordered the shoulder of pork, which arrived steaming hot and covered in gravy, with potato and cabbage on the side. Amelia and Veronica shared a big plate of local sausages, served with bread and mustard and pickled cucumbers.
Jacques ordered a schnitzel that overlapped his plate by a significant margin. He claimed that holding discourse with the god of luck consumed so much energy that he required more food. Seemed like an excuse for greed to me, but I had to admit, he could put food away. He’d been able to do that ever since our days in Aranor.
As we ate, I recounted the events since my escape from the slavers. Jacques listened with interest, but so did Veronica. She had not heard much detail yet about my initial explorations into my magic.
It was a long tale, and I did not conceal anything. I had grown up under Jacques’s wing, and he was like an older brother to me. I began with the death of Gregory, my foster-father. Jacques, who had known the old man well, shook his head sadly.
“Poor old bugger,” he said. “That was a good man. An honest, wise, and simple man. The world is poorer without him.”
“He certainly was,” I said. When I glanced up, I found Veronica looking at me with sympathy and understanding in her gaze. There were tears in her eyes, and she gave a very small nod, as if to say she understood.
He followed my tale through my sale into slavery, my journey north with the Trollmen, and my escape with Amelia at my side. He raised his eyebrows a couple of times as I told him ab
out our fights with the monsters and our experiments with the tattoos, and chuckled as I mentioned how I had gained my Cold affinity. Veronica seemed slightly aghast at this, having not understood my earlier euphemism about the subject.
I was relating our first meeting with Veronica when the barmaids brought us an after-dinner sweet of crushed nuts and some kind of red fruit. When they came back to take the dishes away, I was telling Jacques about our encounter with the Arcanist in the square, just before we arrived at the tavern.
“Ah, yes,” said Jacques, wagging his head sagely as I told of that encounter, “old Maximillian the Arcanist.”
“What’s he here for?” I asked.
Jacques gave an elaborate shrug. “Who knows? The Arcanists come here now and again, of course, and they collect taxes from the trading house, and have meetings with the Brightwater Governor. Governor Arnold, that is, do you know him? No? A good fellow, Arnold is, very amenable, very understanding of the challenges a man can face in a new town…” He trailed off, thoughtfully, and I guessed that this Governor Arnold was probably a man whom Jacques was able to bribe. The Governor would, if paid, likely turn a blind eye to tavern brawling, the selling of stolen or illegal goods, and cheating at gambling, all of which would suit Jacques well.
“You never change, do you, old friend?” I said with a grin.
He opened his hands and smiled innocently. “I don’t know what you mean.”
I chuckled under my breath.
“Anyway,” he continued after a moment, “this Ink Mage business really is something special. To think that something as uncouth as a tattoo could act as a magical vector for a man with an affinity. It’s marvelous, and it opens up a whole new set of possibilities for the uses of Magic in the Kingdom!”
“You don’t find the tattoos disgusting, then?” put in Amelia.
Veronica spoke up. “I wondered the same. I’ve traveled in the south of the Kingdom a lot, and tattoos are almost universally detested there. But some of the people in this tavern showed approval when they first saw them, and even the ones who disapproved didn’t seem to care that much.”
Amelia was nodding to her words.
“I don’t find them disgusting,” said Jacques, “and I think this far north you’ll find that the tastes of people are a bit different from the southern cities of Aranor and Astros. I’m from the Sunlands originally, of course, and that’s a two-week journey by boat west of the Kingdom. They view things differently there. In the Sunlands, tattoos are considered a mark of beauty. I’ve never heard of the use of Magical tattoos—indeed, magic is seldom used in the Sunlands—but the creation of tattoos is a highly refined art in that land. In Zelin, where I was a boy, behaviors were acceptable that would kill some of you Kingdom prudes dead with shock!”
Amelia and Veronica were staring at Jacques with wide eyes, lapping up his story. I sat back and smiled, watching him play to his audience of two as he described the brothels and drug-dens, the palaces and pleasure-houses, and all the decadent ways of living which were the norm in Zelin, port capital of the western Sunlands. Jacques was an artist when it came to spinning a tale and even I, who had heard it all before, got caught up in the telling.
When he finished speaking nostalgically about his home, he sat back thoughtfully for a moment, then returned to my tale.
“I can’t believe those cheap bastards in the village sold you for a bit of coin, William,” Jacques mused.
“Well, I suppose you could see it like that,” I said. “But I don’t blame them really. It’s always been hard to get by in that place.”
“You’re telling me,” Jacques said, his tone indignant. “Aranor consumes a lot and doesn’t really give back to the villages supporting it. I haven’t looked back once since leaving that city. But about those tattoos. You got one of them in Aranor if I’m not wrong. With that girl, what was her name?”
“Katlyn,” I said. “I gave us both tattoos. It seemed like a fun idea at the time. I had no idea what it would lead to.”
“Well, maybe you can give me a tattoo when you have some ink spare, old chap.” Jacques reached across the table and clapped my shoulder with a laugh. “I may not have a magical affinity, but the tattoos look pretty smart all the same; they’re growing on me.”
I laughed too. Jacques got up and went to the bar to order yet another round. The tavern was quite full, and the barmaids were busy with other patrons.
“I have to say, William,” Jacques began as he returned carrying four full mugs, “I’m glad you escaped from Aranor. That place was never much good, not for someone with potential like you. To think, here you are with me, ready to join the fight for freedom.”
I chuckled. “You mean the freedom to swindle workers of their earnings to line your pockets?”
Jacques put his hand on his heart and drew back, head back, eyes closed, making a comical show of being appalled and offended. “You dare suggest such a thing? I don’t just line my pockets. I sometimes help people out with my ill-gotten gains.”
Everyone laughed at his clowning, and he joined in, pleased as ever with his showmanship.
“I’m sure you do, Jacques,” I said. “Ever the friend to the underdog. So tell me, how did you end up in Brightwater? What have you been up to since you left Aranor?”
“Too many things to tell in a night, lad,” he said. “But I went to Astros first. I had to leave Aranor, things had become impossible for me there. The women of the place, they wouldn’t believe that I’d sold my lovemaking abilities to Loku in exchange for good fortune. It caused me all kinds of trouble. Lord’s wives, bar maids, wenches, and washerwomen, noble and commoner alike, everybody wanted some of Jacques. The women themselves were bad enough, but their husbands, fathers, brothers…” He gave a shudder. “Anyway, I needed to lose myself in a crowd, and what better place to do that than the capital city, Astros? I went there directly.”
“You were in Astros?” said Amelia. “I came from Astros myself. I was raised there and trained as a scholar in the library.”
“Oh really?” said Jacques with a crooked smile. “So, you’ll know the tower in the east wing of the Great Library? Where they keep the messenger birds?”
“Yes,” said Amelia, frowning. “It’s one of the highest towers in the whole library complex, and its base forms one of the great corner buttresses.” I kept quiet, wondering what on earth Jacques was leading up to.
“That’s right,” said Jacques. “And do you know the narrow stairway that runs down through the outer wall from the privy chamber in the tower, down to a little hidden entrance behind a grog shop on the street far below?”
Amelia shook her head, confused. “No, I didn’t know about that.”
Jacques sat back in his chair, chuckling. “Neither did anybody else! I discovered it all by myself, I did. That’s the advantage of an observant eye. The little entrance hadn’t been used for decades, but I took a lantern and made my way up, and found myself in the Great Library one night, and no one was any the wiser! I count that as the first real manifestation of Loku’s luck!”
“What did you do with the knowledge?” asked Amelia suspiciously.
“Made a living,” Jacques replied, off-handedly. “There are supposed to be over a million volumes in the Great Library. I figured nobody would miss, say two per week, for a year or so.”
“You stole books from the library?” Amelia was outraged but seemed unable to keep from being impressed at his luck and ingenuity at the same time.
“A man has to make a living somehow,” he said.
She shook her head and laughed. “I suppose so,” she said. “And it’s true that nobody ever noticed! Nobody really knows how many books there are in the Great Library.”
“Well, I spent a year or more there, distributing valuable books and reinvesting my earnings until I was able to open up a little ale house of my own, where men could play cards and take their ease. All went well, but I got a bit too settled, and eventually Loku sent me a message.”
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br /> “And what form did the message take?” I asked.
He shook his head sadly. “It took the form of Lord Hay, the husband of one of my… patrons in Aranor. He had heard my name and came looking for me, seeking revenge for some imagined slight.”
“Imagined?” I laughed.
Jacques dismissed that with a wave of his hand. “Well, whatever. It was time to go anyway. Loku was clearly telling me that I’d gotten too comfortable, and I felt it was time for an adventure. I grabbed my few belongings and all the coin I could carry, borrowed a horse, and set off in the dead of night for Brightwater.”
“Why Brightwater?”
He shrugged. “A rough trading town is a good place for a man like me. Plenty to do. Coin to be earned, adventures to be had. And as far from the city life of Astros as it’s possible to be in the Kingdom.”
“And as far from any jealous husbands,” added Veronica.
“Wait a minute,” said Amelia, who had been sitting thinking. “I remember a scandal that happened in Astros not long before I left. Lord Hay, I remember his name, he was arrested.”
“Arrested?” said Jacques, “what for?”
“He and his men set fire to a tavern one night. He said he was looking for the owner. I remember something else, too, it was strange—on the same night he burned the tavern down, someone broke into the main city stables and stole his horse. It was one of the best horses in the Kingdom, and it was never seen again…”
Jacques sat silent, listening serenely, a look of polite interest on his face. After a moment, Amelia, Veronica, and I all burst into laughter.
“Shall we have another drink?” said Jacques, standing. “My round this time.”
Jacques went back to the bar. My friend was not patient enough to wait for barmaids to serve us. Not long after, he came back with another round of drinks. Jacques raised another toast to our little party and the bright future ahead of us. We set our mugs down after a large swallow of beer.