by Logan Jacobs
“Well, Janina said it was a base desire,” I reminded her. “And it’s not. It’s an honorable desire. The desire to trade, instead of taking by force.”
“But what if you take gold by force?” Janina asked.
“Some men do, they’re called bandits,” I said. “But I’m not one of them. I never have been and I never will be.”
“So you’ll kill for gold, but you won’t steal it?” Janina said skeptically.
“Right you are,” I replied.
“How is that morally better?” Katrina demanded.
“I’ve never claimed to be a moral man,” I said. Well, I hadn’t made that claim since I turned eighteen, anyway. “But I’m not an immoral one, either. I have simply made myself the instrument of others’ desires-- of allaying their fears, or enacting their hatreds, of furthering their ambitions-- whether those desires are moral or otherwise. All I do is provide a service that society demands, just like any other tradesman.”
“So you don’t think there are any wicked trades at all?” Janina asked me curiously.
“Trades, no,” I said. “There are wicked actions, to be sure.”
“Like kidnapping a woman?” Katrina suggested. “Or abandoning your children?”
“Some might say,” I agreed. “But others might say differently, in the latter case at least. Your father might have thought that not to pursue his wife, would have been to abandon her to the sorcerer’s mercies, and that that was a greater wrong than leaving his children in the care of their grandmother.”
“If I had known about bounty hunters when I was ten years old, and if I had any money of my own, I would have put a price on that sorcerer’s head,” Janina said.
“I might have hunted him then, but I wouldn’t now,” I said.
“Why not?” Katrina asked.
“Because I have no idea where he is, or if he is even still alive,” I said. “I don’t even have an accurate description of him. No matter how many details the two of you gave me, they would be colored by the doubtful memories of a couple of frightened little girls. That’s not a job with an end in sight. That’s not a job worth taking.”
“Our memories have always been exquisitely accurate,” Janina retorted. “We never forget a thing. And our memories of everything always coincide exactly.”
“How remarkable,” I said politely. I supposed that meant they must conspire with each other on all their falsehoods, too.
The sun had become truly uncomfortable by then. My shirt was sticking to my back. Theo’s flanks were slick, not from exertion, but just from the heat. At the next grove of trees we spotted, I called for a rest in the shade, such as it was, and I poured water into a tin canteen and used my ability to enlarge the canteen into the size of a horse trough for Theo to drink from. The mares watched enviously and shuffled a bit nearer, but they seemed too intimidated by Theo to approach.
“Go on then, you dumb beasts, I won’t bite,” Theo grumbled at them after he had drunk his fill. They couldn’t, of course, comprehend human speech, but they seemed to understand well enough what he meant to communicate, and shuffled forward to start slurping, while I crouched down and kept my hand against the side of the trough to maintain its magically enlarged size. After the mares were done too, I lifted my hand away and the trough gradually shrank back down into a tin canteen.
“How very useful for you,” Katrina observed.
I nodded and pulled out a vial of amethyst-colored potencium to drink. After I had drained it and felt the familiar sense of vitality seep into my veins, I drew out another vial and offered it wordlessly to Katrina.
She stiffened and raised her eyebrows. She had never confessed to being a magic user herself, not to me anyway. And I wasn’t sure of it. It was just the timing of those little hand gestures interchanged between the girls at dinner the night before that gave me the suspicion.
After a moment of hesitation, she reached out her slim hand and delicately accepted the vial from me. Her bow-shaped lips curved into a smile as her bluish-green eyes gazed directly into mine. Then she tipped back her shining silvery-blonde head and drank deep of the potencium.
And then, she proceeded to hand the remaining half of the vial off to Janina, while she arched her eyebrows at me. Janina accepted and drank the rest of it.
Well, then. Two confessions for the price of one.
Non-magic users didn’t drink potencium, not only because it had no health benefits for them, but because they tended to find the taste disgusting, and it actually made them ill in most cases, and could even poison them in sufficient quantities.
Neither of the girls said a word about it besides thanking me, so I didn’t question them about their particular abilities yet. But this meant that we were a party of three magic users and a talking horse. Not exactly conventional, even by my standards.
The girls continued to chatter almost the entire time as we rode that day, so much so that I could see even Theo’s ears twitching in annoyance. I didn’t mind their chatter myself, though. I would have minded if I had to live with them always, but for a short while, it seemed harmless enough. They gossiped about Dunville and all of its inhabitants, almost none of whom I’d ever even met. They told me stories of their childhood, which made me think that their grandmother had shown remarkable patience and fortitude in persisting in raising them.
All the while I kept on the alert for any potential threats, for any hostile persons or creatures poised to make me work to earn my money. But no matter how loudly the girls chattered or how heavily their luggage clunked along on the backs of their poor long-suffering mares, no other humans appeared throughout the entire day. The West was a vast place, and we seemed to have this particular patch of it to ourselves for the time being. And there were animals, but only smaller, shyer ones of the sort that posed no threat. Although I did notice quite a few vultures circling overhead. It wasn’t their nature to attack us, but I supposed they cynically assumed that a group of humans so far from the nearest settlement must have lost their way and eagerly anticipated our perishing of starvation or dehydration.
However, I supposed to the vultures’ great disappointment, the Elliott twins and Theo and I reached the first town on our itinerary a little before nightfall. It was an even smaller town than Dunville, a potencium-mining post from the looks of it, but at least it had an inn.
“So, you have not failed us as a guide yet,” Janina observed as we approached the scattering of crude wooden buildings.
I guessed that meant she hadn’t known the way herself and whether we were traveling in the right direction all along.
“Is this the farthest you’ve ever been from home?” I asked.
“Oh, no, we’ve been to many larger towns east of Dunville,” Katrina replied.
“But it is the farthest west we’ve been,” Janina said.
“Me too,” I said, upon reflection, but what I didn’t tell them was that I tended to not go East since there were people looking for me. Some to kill me and some to take me back to my royal duties.
I would have preferred the former to the latter, but neither to just moving westward.
So, that is exactly what I did.
Chapter Four
We found our way to the inn, and the twins started unfastening all their luggage from their horses and depositing it on the ground in front of the inn. Then they looked over at me expectantly and waited for me to volunteer to do the gentlemanly thing.
I laughed.
“You’re paying me for protection,” I reminded them. “And protection of yourselves only. If you want me to transport or protect your property as well, you’ll have to hire me for that job separately.”
They stared for a moment in bewilderment and indignation. Evidently they were very accustomed to men being eager to cater to their every whim.
“But don’t you wish to cultivate our goodwill?” Janina suggested a little crossly.
“I’d think it rather more important for you to cultivate my goodwill, consid
ering that your safety depends upon me, but not vice versa,” I pointed out.
“Well, you can hardly expect us to carry your bags upstairs,” Katrina huffed.
“My bags don’t need to be carried upstairs at all,” I said. “I’ll unload them from Theo and leave them in the corner of his stall. If anyone tries to steal them, Theo will dash their brains out.”
“Well, Theo can guard our bags too!” Katrina suggested.
“No, thank you,” Theo said as he glanced at the luggage-laden mares. “There wouldn’t be any room left for me inside the stall.”
“Perhaps in the future you’ll consider only bringing a reasonable quantity of belongings, that you are capable of carrying for yourselves,” I remarked.
“Just because you are not a gentleman, does not mean that gentlemen do not still exist in the West,” Janina said coldly before she turned on her heel and swept off.
“Janina, where are you going?” Kat asked, but her twin did not respond.
I unloaded the bags from Theo and started brushing him down.
“You’ll stay out here with me, won’t you?” Katrina asked nervously. “Until Janina comes back?”
“I suppose I will,” I said. “It isn’t safe for you to stay out here by yourself. And I can’t be in two places to protect both of you at once, and Janina is the one who chose to go off on her own, so I suppose my duty falls with you.”
“I am sure that she only went to fetch help with our luggage,” Katrina said reproachfully. “If you had consented to carry it, she wouldn’t have needed to.”
“If you had made it worth my while, I would have carried it,” I said.
“What would you consider worth your while?” she asked.
“Hmm, two gold pieces per piece of luggage,” I said.
“But that would be-- why, nearly forty gold pieces!” Katrina exclaimed. “I’ve never heard of anything so absurd!”
“You might say that now,” I said. “But if we encounter a situation when I am the only one around to move your luggage, and you or the horses cannot do it for yourselves, and the luggage will be lost otherwise, well, I imagine you might reconsider.”
“So you intend to rob us if we get into a desperate situation?” Katrina demanded indignantly.
“No, I intend to adjust my prices in accordance with supply and demand,” I said. “As is only rational, given that being your valet was not included in the wording of our contract.”
Janina returned at that point, with a gangly teenager trailing behind her.
“There,” the beautiful blonde said smugly as she pointed at the enormous heap of luggage piled up in front of the stable.
“Er, all of that is yours, ma’am?” The teenager looked visibly dismayed. He started chewing nervously on his thumbnail.
“Oh, heavens, no,” Janina reassured him.
The teenager looked momentarily relieved.
“Half of it is mine,” Katrina explained as she stepped out of Theo’s stall, into his view. His eyes widened.
“She’s my sister,” Janina explained, “and we will be sharing a room. So you can bring all the luggage up to the same room.”
I’d finished brushing Theo’s coat by then, so I patted him on the flank and stepped into view too.
“Howdy,” I said with some amusement to the teenager who was starting to look like a cornered animal as he stared down the mountainous contents of the Elliott twins’ travel wardrobes.
“Good evening, Sir, are you… are you in the company of these ladies?” the kid squeaked hopefully, as he glanced back and forth between me and their luggage.
“Yes, I am,” I conceded.
“Are you… er… of some relation?” he prompted warily, after a moment’s hesitation, as none of the three of us volunteered any further information.
“Nope, I sure ain’t,” I said.
“Oh, I s-see,” the boy’s eyes widened hugely as he appeared to draw some certain conclusions. Now, he glanced back and forth between me and the twins, the daunting pile of luggage momentarily forgotten in favor of the other images that had clearly filled his head.
“He is in our employ as a guard,” Katrina snapped. I was sure she could read the teenager’s wandering mind as easily as I could.
“He’s in your employ?” the teenager asked hopefully. His mind had clearly snapped back to the matter of the luggage.
“As our guard,” Katrina repeated with a sigh.
“So, can you help us, please?” Janina asked the boy with a sweet, dimpled smile.
“Yes Ma’am, of course I can,” he coughed and blushed red. “I’ll just… uh… this might, er, take me a few trips. Perhaps you ladies would like to go up and wait in the room?”
“No, we’d better stay and watch the rest of the luggage,” Janina huffed.
“But won’t--” the boy looked at me in confusion, then evidently decided not to ask. He heaved a deep sigh, grudgingly sidled up to the mountain of luggage, and grabbed two suitcases off the top. Then he hobbled off toward the inn under their weight.
“Just what point are you trying to prove, anyway?” Janina turned to me and demanded.
“Several points, actually,” I said. “I’m glad you asked.”
“You shouldn’t have asked,” Katrina muttered to her twin.
“Firstly, that it is quite impractical to bring along ten pieces of luggage each, especially for a mere ten-day trip, when you have neither the capability nor the inclination to carry them yourselves, and your horses barely do,” I stated. “And secondly, that the two of you cannot wrap me around your fingers as you do with the rest of the fellows. You’ll get exactly what was outlined in our agreement from me. Nothing less and nothing more. And no amount of begging, complaining, or eyelash fluttering will change that.”
“Well, I think it is very rude of you to let that poor boy struggle all on his own,” Katrina said as the teenager from the inn came trudging back in our direction.
“Are you doing any different?” I asked.
“I am a lady,” she said.
“That hardly seems relevant,” I said. “The fact that you’re the owner of the luggage seems a lot more relevant to me.”
“Thank you kindly for your help,” Janina said to the teenager as he slung another piece of luggage over his back, and clung to a hat case in each hand. He made a valiant effort to smile at her as he turned and made his next trip.
“We’ll be here all night,” Katrina grumbled as soon as the teenager was out of earshot. “Wasn’t there anyone… larger on the inn staff?”
“The innkeeper himself is a sizeable fellow,” Janina replied. “He was the one I went to first. But when I asked for help, he sent the kid outside with me.”
“Men are lazy bastards,” Katrina grumbled as she cast me a sideways glare.
“Then what exactly are women?” I asked with amusement.
“The fairer sex, and deserving of considerate treatment,” Katrina said haughtily.
“Deserving?” I asked. “In what sense?”
“We don’t have as much strength as you do,” she said. “Most women don’t.”
“Well, disadvantaged doesn’t equal deserving,” I said.
“It means you ought to help us when you can,” Katrina insisted.
“It means nothing of the sort,” I said. “The only way I’d owe you my help, is if I had had anything to do with your disadvantage in the first place, which I certainly didn’t. Men aren’t supposed to be the servants of women. The strong aren’t supposed to be the servants of the weak. Where’s the sense in that?”
“It’s the code of chivalry,” Katrina said.
“One nonsensical code among countless other nonsensical codes that extinct societies have dreamed up,” I said. “Did you know there have been some ancient Savajun tribes that believed children should be sacrificed to the gods to ensure good harvests? Or that there have been some Tanamoor nations in which it was considered a man’s right to possess at least five wives of childbearin
g age? Not everything that a society may preach is ‘how things ought to be.’”
“She isn’t talking about barbarian societies, she’s talking about our society,” Janina interrupted. “Proper society.”
“Everyone’s a barbarian to someone,” I snorted.
“But some more so than others,” Janina said as she turned up her nose at me.
The boy from the inn reappeared then, and the twins’ demeanor changed. They were all smiles and gratitude toward him, because they wanted something from him, and because he was currently demonstrating himself to be obedient to their wishes. As soon as he departed with more of their luggage, they returned to their attitudes of haughty indignation.
This slow process continued and the pile of luggage slowly depleted, while Theo and I looked on in amusement, and both girls started shivering slightly in the cold night air.
“You know, I’d be very glad to lend a hand to that poor lad,” I reminded them. “All I ask is to be fairly compensated for my services.”
“He thinks two gold pieces per suitcase is fair,” Katrina said bitterly to Janina before her twin could respond to my suggestion.
“Two gold pieces?” Janina scoffed as she wrapped her traveling coat tighter. “Two gold pieces for the entire stack would be more than generous, so I don’t know what you mean by fair. Are you saying that it would really cost you two gold pieces’ worth of effort for every case that you carried?”
“No,” I said. “I’m saying that it gives me two gold pieces’ worth of satisfaction for every suitcase that you have to wait for, based on the additional amount of time you have to ponder the consequences of your unreasonable obsession with fashion.”
Neither twin responded to that. Then, the next time the boy from the inn came back outside, he had an announcement to make.
“Er, they’re about to stop serving supper downstairs in a few minutes, the cook told me to tell you,” he said apologetically.
The shivering twins exchanged looks of consternation. We had, of course, packed ample dried provisions for the journey in our saddlebags. And I was used to eating stale bread and jerky. But I was pretty sure that wasn’t the Elliott girls’ preferred fare. Not when we were standing twenty feet away from an inn where they probably served hot stews and roasts.