The Amoral Hero

by Logan Jacobs

  “Didn’t your parents teach you more lessons than that?” Janina asked.

  “Yep,” I said in a tone carefully calculated to discourage strongly that line of questioning. They had indeed. They had taught me a lot about the importance of preserving appearances, of how to present yourself as one thing in one situation and another in another situation, about betraying your rivals before they had the chance to betray you, of keeping your subjects in too much fear to revolt against you and ensuring that they never quite crossed the threshold of misery that would make them deem the risk worthwhile, and about never trusting even your relatives, who often proved ruthlessly willing to sacrifice you for their own gain.

  “I have lots of principles to make up for what he lacks,” Theo piped up. By and large he hadn’t seemed very interested in participating in my conversations with the twins, probably partially because he didn’t like talking much while trekking under the hot sun, since it required extra breath. But I guessed that he either sensed my reticence and decided to step in and kindly provide a distraction, or he was genuinely eager to boast about his moral superiority to me. Knowing Theo, either option was about equally likely.

  “Like what?” Janina asked curiously.

  “I mistrust all strangers until they prove to me otherwise,” Theo said. “I never refuse free food when it’s offered. I never consort with stupid animals unless one of Hal’s contracts necessitates it. I never run faster than I have to. I never allow anyone else to ride me besides Hal.”

  “I don’t know if most of those rightly count as moral principles,” Katrina said doubtfully.

  “Well, only allowing one man to ride you could be interpreted that way,” Janina giggled.

  “Janina, that isn’t good manners,” Katrina hissed as a flush came to her cheeks.

  “And who is there to appreciate my manners, just now?” Janina replied. “Besides you-- and you’re well enough acquainted with my best manners and my worst manners not to be shocked at any of them.”

  “What am I, chopped liver?” Theo demanded.

  “That’s a very good point, I ought to mind my tongue in front of a nice horse like you,” Janina said in a conciliatory way. “But then-- you do hear worse from Mr. Hale on a daily basis, don’t you?”

  “Not every day,” Theo said after a moment’s consideration. “On some days, we don’t really talk at all.”

  “Because you’re angry with each other?” Katrina guessed.

  “No, because we don’t need to,” Theo replied.

  He was right. On countless days we had ridden together from sunup to sundown without encountering another soul, through a golden landscape simmering with heat, and silently observed the gradual ways that it changed across the miles, and I felt the rolling of his muscles beneath me and he felt my familiar heft above him, and had barely spoken a single word even when we stopped to let him cool down, and those were some of the days when our bond had felt the keenest.

  “I guess Janie and I don’t always need to talk, either,” Katrina remarked thoughtfully.

  “We have more ways of talking than one,” Janina said.

  “It’s like that for twins,” Katrina told me.

  “I think you have a bit more going on between you than the magic of twinhood,” I said wryly.

  “You are welcome to think whatever you please,” Janina replied airily. Both girls’ postures stiffened just a little, even though their corsets already held them ramrod straight at all times, and their bow-shaped lips closed and took on a prim aspect. Finally, I’d gotten myself a little peace and quiet from their incessant prying questions.

  The evening was still young when we reached the next town and stopped there for the night. We had a few more hours of daylight left to travel by, but that would have left us out in the open to sleep, and I wanted to minimize the amount of camping out that I had to do with the Elliott sisters. My job was to keep them safe, and out on the plains, without even so much as a covered wagon for shelter, anything could happen. More Savajuns could attack. A bear could eat them. A snake could bite them. In an inn, all I’d probably have to do was defend them from the advances of some drunken ruffians.

  That was how I figured things at first, anyway.

  As soon as we had gotten the horses settled in the stables and walked in the door of the inn, all eyes locked on the twins, two angelic visions in lavender and periwinkle. That was, of course, to be expected. But then I noticed the twins’ own bluish-green and greenish-blue eyes alight on a busy poker table in the corner of the room, and I realized they must be in a card-playing mood. I just hoped they weren’t also in a pickpocketing mood, because there weren’t many settings where everyone paid more attention to exactly where everyone else’s hands were than a card table. Sure enough, as soon as the Elliott sisters had made arrangements with the staff of the inn to have their luggage carried upstairs for them, clearly having learnt by now that I wasn’t going to do it whether they made a fuss or not, they settled themselves at the poker table full of strangers.

  “Will you play, Mr. Hale?” Katrina turned her head to ask as she fluttered her eyelashes at me.

  “No, I won’t.”

  “Whyever not?”

  “I told you exactly why I don’t gamble,” I replied.

  “So you just think Janie and I are a couple of fools?” she inquired with a pout.

  “I think you’re clever girls with some questionable habits,” I replied.

  “Diplomatically put,” she giggled and returned her attention to the table, with Janina equally focused at her side.

  I, meanwhile, seated myself at an empty neighboring table and ordered a beer and some hearty stew with bread. I wasn’t about to participate in the twins’ gambling shenanigans, but my contract required me to stay close by and ensure they didn’t get themselves into any trouble, or at least that I was ready to get them out of it once they did.

  There were seven other people at the table, none of them too ruffianly looking. They were middle-aged gentlemen, some accompanied by their matronly wives. All the sort of people whom the Elliott sisters would probably describe as “respectable society.” All of them looked like they could afford to lose a few rounds, without having to sell their cows or their houses as a consequence.

  As I enjoyed my solitary dinner and observed the game, I noticed a few things about Janina and Katrina’s mannerisms. First of all, they were very vivacious and flirted shamelessly with all the men at the table which quickly had all the matrons seething with barely disguised rage. At first I thought that maybe they didn’t realize the effect they were having, and then I concluded that they knew exactly what they were doing and that they were doing it on purpose to keep their opponents in a distracted state. Secondly, Janina was flirting even more brazenly than Katrina, in the sense that she would actually sometimes reach across the table to touch another player.

  “It’s your turn, Mr. Nielson,” she’d remind a portly widower as she tapped him on the forearm, and then let her fingers rest there lightly for a moment as she continued, “Don’t you think you’d better fold? You can’t possibly hope to beat this.” In her other hand, she fluttered her own cards like a fan.

  “I certainly can, young lady,” Mr. Nielson replied, clearly flustered by her attention. He proceeded to raise. So did Janina, when it was her turn. When all the other players had folded and their cards were revealed, Mr. Nielson turned out to have only three of a kind, and Janina had a full house to claim the pot.

  I kept my eye on Janina very carefully, out of concern that she was trying to pickpocket her opponents and that she would undoubtedly be caught, but despite all the light touches she gave to various hands and forearms and shoulders, I never saw her palm so much as a poker chip. Either she was behaving herself, or she was such an extraordinarily skilled pickpocket that I couldn’t detect the act even while staring straight at it.

  During another round, she taunted another player much as she had the unfortunate Mr. Nielson while she rested her h
and on his forearm, but when he likewise expressed his confidence in his hand, I noticed that she decided to fold, and he ended up winning that round with a straight flush.

  Very interesting indeed.

  As for Katrina, I never saw her physically touch any of the other players, no matter how much verbal attention she lavished on them or how many times she leaned toward them in such a way as to make her décolletage threaten to spill over, except for one-- her sister. Every time Katrina received a new card, her elbow would nudge Janina’s, or her heel would slide over and tap her twin’s. That, too, was an extremely interesting gesture.

  Long after I’d finished the last delicious drop of my stew and my first two beers, the twins finally decided to bid their new friends goodbye and retire upstairs with their ample winnings. The matrons clearly despised them, and the gentlemen seemed to have conflicted feelings.

  As we reached the two neighboring rooms that would be ours for the night, I remarked casually, “So. That’s how you intend to win the tournament in Sunderly?”

  “What on earth are you talking about?” Katrina asked as she turned to me with wide, bewildered eyes.

  Janina put a hand on her hip as she awaited my response.

  “This,” I said as I reached out, seized Katrina’s right wrist and Janina’s left wrist, and brought their hands together until they touched.

  “Ow!” Katrina exclaimed indignantly as they both tried to yank their hands away. I released them immediately. My point had been made.

  “By holding hands?” Janina scoffed. “By the strength of our twinly bond? Is that what you’re trying to say?”

  “Don’t play innocent,” I said. “I watched you both all night. You, Katrina, are able to communicate somehow by touching people. If you want to anyway. You can send thoughts telepathically, or something like that. And you, Janina, can do the inverse. You can read other people’s thoughts when you’re touching them. Some of their thoughts, at least, and it only seems to work if they speak aloud at the same time. So maybe you can tell whether they’re telling the truth at the time. That is more or less the gist of your magical abilities. And that is how the two of you plan to cheat in Sunderly and win the tournament.”

  The twins gazed at me in silence for a moment. They had very expressive faces, with an almost childlike openness, but right then it was hard to read them. Janina, however, still had her hand planted on her hip with her elbow jutting out, and Katrina had folded her arms across her chest. That body language wasn’t hard to read. Their defensiveness. Their petulance. Their defiance.

  “You’re very clever, Mr. Hale,” Katrina said finally.

  “But not as clever as you think you are,” Janina added quickly. Her lips quirked up in a half smile, so I knew she wasn’t really upset by my accusation. Just maybe a bit unnerved, and unwilling to share all their secrets yet, despite that clause in the contract that I knew we were all thinking of, the one that stated I wasn’t responsible for any harm that befell them as a consequence of their deliberately withholding relevant information from me.

  Before I could respond to that, the twins quickly vanished into their room and shut the door behind them.

  I chuckled to myself and entered my own bedroom.

  Chapter Eight

  At breakfast the next day, I recognized one of the couples from the poker table last night sitting near us. A portly middle-aged woman with a black lace shawl and dyed auburn hair, and her potbellied, bespectacled mate with a habit of clearing his throat excessively. The couple definitely noticed the twins too and kept staring at them, both with a bit of resentment probably based on different reasons, but they didn’t attempt to approach our table or talk to them.

  “They’re going to the tournament too,” Katrina informed me when she noticed the direction of my glance. This morning, I’d been confident that it was her even before the other girl called her “Kat.” I think I was getting better at telling the two of them apart by then.

  Katrina was wearing a gown of apricot-colored silk this morning, and Janina was wearing spring green. Their gowns invariably became dusty after a few miles on the road, and I had to suppose that their undergarments probably grew sweaty although there was never any visible sign of that, but they insisted on wearing fresh clothes every day anyway. But I suppose it wouldn’t matter much to the twins how many garments they ruined, if they managed to pilfer at least that value from the hapless patrons of whichever inn we ended up at each night, whether by pickpocketing or cheating at cards.

  “Then your reputations will precede you,” I mused. “Is it wise to play poker at inns along the way? If it means inviting additional scrutiny at the tournament itself?”

  The twins exchanged one of their secret, twinly smirks that I’d grown used to by then and giggled.

  “Don’t you worry about us, Mr. Hale, we’re quite used to attracting more than our share of attention,” Katrina purred as she twirled a loose silvery blonde ringlet about her finger.

  “You hired me to worry about you,” I pointed out. I couldn’t exactly argue the second half of her remark, I’d observed the truth of that for myself every time we passed by male eyes.

  “And hasn’t it been a splendid time so far?” Janina inquired. Her ocean-colored eyes sparkled with mischief.

  “It’s been tolerable,” I conceded.

  “You’ve barely had to lift a finger,” Katrina said.

  “Do you happen to recall five dead Savajuns yesterday?” I reminded her.

  “Oh, pooh, that wasn’t any trouble for you,” Katrina replied dismissively.

  “How do you know?” I asked. “You didn’t see most of it.”

  “Well, it was over fast, and you survived, and they didn’t,” she pointed out.

  “That doesn’t mean it couldn’t have easily gone the other way,” I grumbled. That was always true, regardless of how mismatched the combat skills of those involved might be, in a situation that arose spontaneously like that when I wasn’t able to go in with a clear plan. And when there were five of them, and only one of me, or rather two, including Theo. Who usually enabled my attacks rather than delivering any himself, although he had certainly been known to use his hooves to spectacular effect, when it was needed.

  The twins didn’t really seem to understand that I meant what I said, though.

  “I think you’re just being humble,” Janina informed me with a beatific smile.

  “You know, even though we hardly know anything about you, and we know that you’re a barbaric murderer without any principles whatsoever, I feel quite safe with you around,” Katrina confided.

  “Well, you ought to,” I said, “for about another week, anyhow.”

  “And then what?” Janina asked.

  “And then I go my way, and you go yours,” I replied. “Speaking of which. Seeing as we’re all headed the same way for now. You finished with that egg?”

  Janina spooned the last of it into her mouth. Then we rose from the table and headed out to saddle the horses. The girls had the inn staff carry their bags downstairs for them, just as they had carried them up. They compensated them in gold, at a fraction of the price that they knew I would have demanded for that service.

  Then I fed Theo some special treats saved from breakfast, while the Elliott twins loaded up the mares whose turn it was to carry the luggage, with the assistance of an inn worker.

  “Acquired any fob watches last night?” Theo muttered to me while I did so, low enough so that the inn worker couldn’t hear him speak.

  “Not exactly, but I have observed they have a remarkable aptitude for cards,” I replied, with enough of an emphasis on the word “remarkable” that Theo couldn’t mistake my meaning.

  “So that’s why they’ve invested so much in this trip,” he said thoughtfully.

  “It’s a risky investment even so,” I said. “There’s never any foolproof way of winning at the card table.”

  “If you kill all the other players?” Theo suggested.

  “That
doesn’t count as winning a card game, that’s just murder and a robbery that happens to take place at a card table,” I said. “And besides, does that seem like something two girls like that would be likely to do?”

  “Not in the least,” Theo replied. “It sounds like something two girls like that would hire someone like you to do.”

  “You’re getting too cynical,” I snorted. “There was nothing like that in my contract.”

  “You like to play by the rules, they don’t,” Theo said.

  “And whatever are you two conspiring about?” a sweet female voice inquired. I looked over to see the angelic face of one of the twins as she leaned over the door of Theo’s stall. She was silhouetted with the sun behind her, so I couldn’t make out her eye color well enough to tell which one. Then I glanced down at her folded arms and saw that the sleeves were apricot colored. Katrina, then.

  “We were merely remarking on the extraordinary beauty of our traveling companions,” I replied sarcastically.

  “A worthy topic,” Janina declared as she joined her sister outside the stall. “Let’s continue it as we ride.”

  The three of us mounted up and set off again, after consulting the map. We were on course to reach Sunderly the next morning, in plenty of time for the tournament to start the day after that.

  “When was the first time you ever bedded a--” Katrina began as we exited the town, but I decided to interrupt her before they could start up with their onslaught of nosy mainly romance-related questions again like they had during the previous day.

  “What was the name of the sorcerer who kidnapped your mother?” I asked abruptly.

  Both twins, who had been giggling slightly in anticipation of discussing Katrina’s question, abruptly fell silent. Maybe that had been a harsh choice of question on my part, but I’d wanted to make sure I got their attention.

  Then after a moment, Katrina said, “Ernest,” while Janina said, “Razputen.”

  There was another moment of silence after that, of a distinctly different flavor. I turned back to look at them sidelong.