by Logan Jacobs
“Require your payment up front,” I answered.
Chapter 5
I stayed over in the Fairfaxes’ home that night at Lucinda’s father’s insistence. In the morning I came downstairs and found that the table was spread for breakfast, with cornbread and sausages and eggs and fresh blueberries.
Lucinda was wearing a yellow silk gown with a black velvet choker. The color made her look like a very pretty canary, and the expression on her face made her look like the cat that had eaten said bird.
“Good morning, Mr. Hale,” she said sweetly when she saw me.
“Good morning,” I replied as I took my seat. “You seem to be in good spirits.”
“The full moon is tonight,” she said. “Soon, you can kill off all the werewolves, and everyone will see that I was right and that I have better judgment than all those incompetent idiots who brought back useless beanstalks like that Charlie kid.”
“Lucinda,” her father reproached her.
“I mean, it’s really all about saving the potencium, and saving lives, of course,” Lucinda hastened to assure him. “But, I shan’t mind that the people of this town will be inclined to give me a little more respect henceforth, too.”
“Everyone already loves you, darling,” her father said. “But you should try to mind your tongue a little more around them. They say that-- well, some of them say that you have uppity airs, you know. I have heard them say it. And these are the people who will always be your neighbors. Long after the werewolves are gone and Mr. Hale has left town.”
“I don’t have uppity airs, I simply know my own worth,” Lucinda said. “I hope that you gave whoever said that a piece of your mind!”
“Well--”
“And, there is no reason Mr. Hale should be obliged to leave town after he defeats the werewolves,” Lucinda continued as she turned and raised an eyebrow at me. I just kept munching on my cornbread. “After all, he’ll be the hero of Richcreek, after that. So he’ll always be very welcome here. And, he’ll have eight hundred gold pieces! That’s plenty to buy some land, or a herd of cattle, or set up a shop or some such. You could retire from the sellsword life on a sum like that, Mr. Hale.”
“Why would I want to do that?” I asked.
“Well, it’s not really… not really sustainable, is it?” she sputtered. “You’ll get old someday, won’t you? And you’ll want to take a wife and father children, and you could hardly drag a family along on the road with you! And I suppose Richcreek is as nice as any other town you’re likely to find.”
“Do you now?” I smirked. “And how many other towns, exactly, have you seen?”
“That’s not the point,” she huffed.
“Not enough to know,” I answered for her. “And neither have I.”
“Lucinda, dear, Mr. Hale has his lifestyle, and we have ours,” her father tried to intervene again.
“I just think it’s something he should consider, that is all,” Lucinda replied primly. “A man needs to think about finding the right woman and settling down and starting a family.”
I understood that Lucinda was coyly trying to convey that she was going to be the right woman, but before I could indicate that I’d rather just part her legs for a few fun nights and then be on my way, we heard a knock at the door. Lucinda rose to walk over and open it.
“Good morning, Ms. Fairfax,” a young man’s voice said nervously.
“Silas, what are you doing here?” she asked.
“Well, I just come to see if Mr. Hale wanted a tour about town,” the young man replied hopefully. “Thought I might show him the places where the werewolves have attacked before. Explain how things have been these past six months. Thought it might come in handy for him to know the lay of the land a bit before moonrise.”
“Well, it is kind of you, but I am quite capable of showing Mr. Hale around Richcreek myself,” Lucinda replied stiffly.
“Lucinda!” her father called out. “Bring the boy in here.”
Lucinda glided back into the kitchen, trailed by a boy of about seventeen or so, darkhaired with blue eyes and dimples.
“Good morning, Mr. Hale,” he said to me eagerly. “My name’s Silas.”
“Good morning, Silas.” I shook his hand.
“Lucinda, you’d better let the boy show him around,” Edmond Fairfax directed his daughter. “Paul wished to meet you for tea this afternoon, don’t you recall?”
“But—”
“You’ve done your part by bringing Mr. Hale here,” her father said firmly. “It’s not in your hands anymore, Lucy. And you may have some ruffled feathers to soothe.”
“Paul is always getting his feathers ruffled over nothing,” Lucinda rolled her eyes. “I told him I’d marry him, didn’t I? So he doesn’t have to keep hovering over me the way he does like a mother hen.”
“He’s really quite patient with you, my dear,” her father said. “Not all fiancés would take too kindly to their brides-to-be riding off into the horizon and showing up again alongside strange men, don’t you think?”
“Very well,” Lucinda sighed.
“Come, Silas, join us for breakfast,” her father said. “Then you can show our guest around town. If you’re amenable, of course, Mr. Hale.”
“Entirely,” I replied.
“Thank you, Mr. Fairfax,” Silas said as he sat down. Lucinda had a mildly irritated air toward him like he was a little brother getting underfoot. I took it they’d probably grown up together.
“I’d like to be a swordsman myself,” Silas said to me. “And leave town and make my living that way.”
“You don’t have to be a sellsword, though,” Lucinda said. “You could be a knight. And serve an honorable household.”
“Well, I don’t really care which, I just want to be good at it,” Silas said.
“If you don’t care which,” I chuckled, “then you’re probably better off as a sellsword.”
“Will you teach me?” Silas asked hopefully.
“On second thought,” I said, “if you want the training, then you’re better off starting as a squire to some knight.”
“How did you ever learn, if you weren’t a knight?” Lucinda asked me curiously.
“I was trained by knights,” I said.
“Then why didn’t you want to become one?” Lucinda persisted. “Wouldn’t that have been more… ah…”
As a matter of fact the prospect had seemed tempting at times during my youth. But my family had commanded knights. Knights were bound to families like mine just like I had been, and traveled in the same circles, and lived by the same rules. I would have had to disguise myself under a helm constantly in order to avert certain political complications, and the country was too damn hot for that. Better to be a sellsword with a desert between me and everyone I had left behind. Better to be my own man and live by my own rules and pledge only the most temporary of allegiances, that I set my own price on.
“I’m sorry,” Lucinda said with chagrin. She seemed to interpret my silence as a wounded one rather than a reflective one.
“You don’t need to be,” I said.
“Treasure her apology, that’s a rare thing coming from my daughter’s mouth,” Edmond laughed, and Lucinda shot him an icy look.
“Well, thank you for the breakfast,” I said as I stood up. “I will stop in and check on Theo, and then you can show me the town, Silas.”
He nodded enthusiastically, unable to speak because his mouth was crammed full of sausage.
When I went over to the stable to see my horse, he stomped his feet restlessly and made his glossy curtain of a raven mane sway.
“Who is the little shit?” he asked.
Silas gasped. “I’ve never met a talking horse before.”
“That sounds like a Savajun name,” Theo snorted. “I’ve Never Met a Talking Horse Before. Well, now that you have, are you going to change it? To ‘Boy Who Has Met a Talking Horse’?”
Silas looked at me helplessly.
“Don’t mi
nd him, he’s always like that,” I said. “The kid’s name is Silas. He’s about to show me around town.”
“Well, I will accompany the two of you,” Theo announced.
“I thought you preferred to stay in the shade, since I have no need to ride for now?”
“I shall return to the stable when the sun becomes intolerable,” Theo replied.
“Suit yourself,” I said with a shrug, and opened his stall door. Lucinda’s white mare poked her head out to gaze at us curiously. I patted her nose, and then the three of us walked out.
“I think Lucinda fancies you,” Silas remarked.
“She’s engaged to that sheriff,” I clarified, even though I knew the boy was correct, I didn’t want to give weight to his observations.
“Well, I reckon he thinks the same as me, that Lucinda has her eye on you,” Silas replied.
“She’s better off sticking with him, I can’t offer her anything but a romp in the hay,” I said flatly.
“You mean you don’t want to,” Silas said.
“Guess not,” I said.
“Men are falling in love with Lucinda all the time, you know,” Silas said. “She’s been engaged twice before Alford, and she’s turned down at least a dozen proposals by now.”
“Well, she’s a fine-looking woman,” I said. I wondered how exactly Lucinda’s previous two engagements had been broken off.
“But you love another?” Silas guessed.
When he said that, another woman’s face did come to mind. Golden-skinned, black-eyed, with a sharp nose, a sensual, inviting mouth, and a mane as thick and black as Theo’s. The half-Savajun sorceress Vera Carlisle. But I wouldn’t have married Vera either, given the chance. That would have been a rotten idea in a hundred different ways.
“That was a pretty long pause though,” Silas observed as he smirked at me, which made his dimples deepen. Even though he was almost a man, he was one of those guys who’d retain his boyish charm into his forties. I’d never had that kind of face, even when I was actually a child. The kind of face that people instinctively trusted.
“You want to be around me, you’ll have to get used to silences,” I told him. “By which I mean the constant jawing anyway. The absence of words rarely means true silence. The earth and its creatures have their own sounds. And people’s movements and moods and intentions make sounds even when they’re not talking, they’re just smaller sounds, but more truthful for all that. Don’t get too distracted by words.”
“Sounds like wisdom,” Silas remarked carelessly. We walked in silence for a few steps. Then he asked, “So, who’s this other woman that Lucinda can’t compete with?”
“I’m not your father or your master,” I said, “but that doesn’t mean I won’t cuff you upside the head.”
“Fair enough,” Silas grinned. “So, you want to see the bank first? That’s where the werewolves always hit hardest.”
“Then I reckon I do,” I said. “That’s where you store all the potencium?”
“Pretty much,” Silas said. “There’s the assay office next to that where the rocks get weighed and counted up and you can change em in for coin. And the brewhouse where they get turned to drinkable form to be sold off. And Teddy stocks a bit of it at his store, for the eight magic users in town.”
“We’ll stop at Teddy’s store today then,” I said. “I’ll be needing a few vials.”
“Can you enlarge a quantity of potencium, like anything else?” Silas asked.
“Sure I can,” I said, “but it doesn’t last me any longer if I drink a bucket of it, made large, than a vial of it at its natural scale. I don’t know why. I can get drunk on a bucket of whiskey that I upscaled myself. I can get full on a loaf-sized slice of bread. But potencium just doesn’t work that way.”
“How peculiar,” Silas said.
“I’m not a magic theorist,” I said. “Just a user. I try it and, if it works, I keep doing it, if not then I stop.”
“There’s the bank,” Silas pointed. It was an unassuming dark wood building with “Bank” painted on the front. Next to it there was a building painted red which I guessed must be the assay office he’d mentioned.
“Do the werewolves raid any of the other buildings you mentioned where smaller quantities of potencium are stored?” I asked.
“Only if there’s potencium there at the time,” Silas said. “They just tear through the town sniffing everything, and they sniff those buildings more than others. But you can’t fool them. We’ve tried moving the potencium, we’ve tried burying it. Wherever it’s hidden, they’ll just destroy whatever and whoever they have to in order to get to it. So people make sure now not to have any in their houses on the full moon.”
“It’s odd that they’d have such an appetite for potencium,” I said. “Werewolves aren’t magic users. You can’t be both. It’s contrary to their nature or something. Just like how Savajuns have a greater tendency to be magic users, and more powerful ones at that.”
“I don’t know what they want it for,” Silas said. “No one does. They don’t act human when they come here. They don’t talk. You can’t reason with them. You can’t beg them for mercy, that’s as much use as begging a wild beast.”
“Werewolves have somewhere between human and lupine intelligence,” I said. “They probably understand you somewhat, even though they can’t talk in that form. They just don’t care.”
“Look,” Silas pointed at the side of the bank as we reached it. On the wall, I could see deep scratch marks gouged by claws. Closer up, I could also tell that the bank was a sort of patchwork construction of old wood and new. It had clearly had many series of repairs done on it. Maybe that was why it looked so shabby in comparison with others of the town’s buildings.
“And there are tooth marks here,” he led me around the backside of the bank to show me a ragged hole that had been ripped in the wood. “Plenty of others if you need to see more.”
“Oh, I’ve seen the source of those marks,” I said.
“You’ve fought werewolves before?” Silas asked.
I just nodded. A couple of them had attacked Theo and me when I was riding late at night once. It was one of the nearest misses we’d ever had. Luckily, I’d had a toothpick with me and been able to enlarge it into a wooden stake, since only wood or silver could kill a werewolf. They were immune to steel. It cut them like it would cut any other creature, to be sure, but those wounds healed up in the blink of an eye. Only wounds from wood or silver lasted. Ever since that night several years ago, I had always made sure to be indoors during the full moon of every month.
“Have you fought anything?” I asked him. I didn’t mean it to sound rude or condescending. I just wanted to know whether he’d taken steps yet to become a swordsman, if that was what he wanted.
“Weeell, my brother more times than I can count until he married and built his own house, and then some fistfights with miners from Charlie’s camp a few times,” Silas said with some embarrassment. “But not the way you mean, I guess.”
“Tonight’s your lucky night then I guess,” I said.
“You mean it?” he asked. His eyes widened with excitement and hope.
“I’m not fighting fourteen werewolves singlehandedly,” I said. “That’s a fool’s errand. So, as long as all the potencium is stored inside the bank by dark, the werewolves always head here first?”
“That’s right,” Silas said. “They sniff around. They go to the bank. They barge in. They take all the potencium they find there. Then they sniff around town some more to make sure they didn’t miss any hidden stashes. Then they leave.”
“Hmm,” I said. “I have some ideas, then. Why don’t you run and rustle up as many volunteers as you can get who’ve got shovels. Have them gather over here by the bank. I’ll go buy myself a draught of potencium meanwhile.”
Silas pointed me in the direction of Teddy’s general store, and then he ran off to do as I’d asked.
I spent almost all the money I’d just made in H
ighridge for taking out Gold Tooth Jimmy and his gang on the four vials of potencium that Teddy had in stock, which he said he’d been about to bring over to the bank anyway since he didn’t want werewolves rampaging through his store that night.
Potencium was terribly expensive, worth many times more than its weight in gold. For that reason, many magic users limited themselves to just a drop a day, or went without altogether. But I couldn’t imagine living that way. It wasn’t just a matter of losing your magical power in and of itself. When there was no potencium in my system, I felt listless and hollow. Like something was missing, something more profound than my ability to shrink and grow objects, as useful as that was. I didn’t feel just like any other human, whatever that was anyway. I felt like less than human, like a ghost drifting through my own life.
It had been a long time since I’d been forced to feel that way, by people who thought they could control me. And for as long as I could still wield a sword, I would never feel that way again.
I walked out of Teddy’s store with the four vials. I stuck three of them in a pouch at my belt. The other one I uncorked and drained right then and there. It tasted smoky, acrid, and herbal. Closer to liquor than anything else, but not really like liquor. And maybe a bit like grass and maybe a bit like woodsmoke. It was an unpleasant taste that I’d grown to love. I just felt immediately sharper and more vital afterward.
“Addict,” Theo said as he watched me.
“I think it’s not a drug because it makes me more me, not less me,” I said.
“That’s probably what drug addicts say,” Theo retorted, unimpressed by my explanation.
He was probably right. I just shrugged.
We walked back over to the bank where townspeople were already starting to gather, toting shovels of all shapes and sizes. It was a potencium mining town in origin after all, even though it had been successful enough to allow for a diversification of trades after that, so pretty much everyone had a shovel.