Magic and Misrule (Mishap's Heroes Book 1)

by KM Merritt

  Becky shook her head with a laugh. “Not a chance. Leyla would never have Porter, even if he was the last man on earth. That woman has standards.” She sniffed. “But now it’s not just them. Half the town’s gone quiet and strange. Standoffish. Lots of angry wives and husbands, worried daughters and sons. You can see why we’ve been praying.”

  “What are we whispering about, huh?” a voice said.

  Vola jumped and glanced down. The halfling stood between them with a wide, innocent grin.

  “Nothing for the likes of you now,” Becky said, making a shooing gesture. “Not unless you serve one of the Virtues.”

  “Well, actually—”

  “Go back to your beer. You’ve had too much to handle anything serious like this.”

  “I suppose if you insist.” The halfling skipped back to her seat and clunked her empty mug against the bar expectantly.

  Becky took Vola’s hand, ignoring the calluses across her palms. “You’re going to do something about this, right? That’s why you’re here?”

  Vola hid a wince. This wasn’t exactly a dragon burning down the town or a swamp creature dragging people away to eat at night. But Becky was right. The tale was strange. And what kind of paladin would she be if she rejected a quest just because it wasn’t glamorous?

  Besides, it could turn out to be the invasion of a cult or brainwashing. Something even slightly exciting.

  Vola drew herself up and angled her chest so the sunlight coming through the window flashed against her chain mail. It might have been cheap and full of holes, but she’d shined it till the right light would blind a charging bandit.

  “I will learn what I can about your people, Mistress Becky.” Vola placed her hand on her heart. “You have my word.”

  Half-orc paladins couldn’t be choosers after all.

  Two

  Outside, Vola caught sight of Henri rubbing down the horses in the stable beside Becky’s Tea and Tap Room. He smiled as his gelding leaned into his strokes and gave the horse a loving pat. Even the old nag lipped his sleeve hopefully and rested its head on his shoulder. Henri reached up to rub its nose.

  Vola steered clear of the idyllic scene. Henri’s horse didn’t care much about her, but anytime she got close to the nag she triggered its fight-or-flight response and ended up having to chase it down before she could actually ride it.

  One day, she promised herself. One day she would have a real horse. A noble charger who would be as brave as she was, who would carry her into battle with its head high without any of that running away in terror business.

  Vola sighed. Time to get to work so maybe one day reality would match up with the fantasy. Her academy wasn’t going to be sending her stipends, so her only option was to earn her shield and start working as an adventurer.

  She headed for the edge of town where Becky had told her Porter worked as a carpenter.

  Main Street hosted most of the shops and one stout temple. Outside its wrought-iron fence, a woman gathered her children against her skirts and hauled them all back a step to avoid Vola’s path.

  “Mama—”

  “Hush now, stay out of her way.”

  “But why?”

  “Orcs worship the Obstacles. And the Obstacles are evil.”

  There were so many things wrong with that statement, but Vola had long since given up on arguing theology with strangers in the street. It always worked better if she could find someone who was a more acceptable color to do it for her.

  Vola smiled at the woman, carefully keeping her lips closed over her teeth. The mother gasped and hurried her children away, leaving Vola alone on the street with a couple of workmen. Their grips tightened on their tools and Vola moved along. She was used to the stares and the not-quite-hidden hostility. As long as she kept her hands away from her weapons and her expression placid, she could usually avoid getting stabbed more than once by accident.

  Vola was so busy watching the workmen, she didn’t see the one who ran into her. A burly fellow dressed in the long leather apron of a blacksmith bounced off of her chest. He jerked back a few steps to find his balance, his face blank.

  “Sorry,” Vola said, waiting for the curses and the threats.

  The blacksmith rolled his shoulders and walked away.

  Vola blinked. Okay, that was new.

  A beautiful young woman with long, dark hair and impossible eyelashes sashayed down the street, her blank look completely at odds with her gait. Vola deliberately strayed a little too close, brushing the woman’s sleeve. She turned, ready to apologize again.

  But the woman just kept walking, her hips swaying while her gaze drifted from one side of the street to the other, never settling on anything in particular.

  Vola stared after her. In her entire life, no one had ever outright ignored her. The Knight Commander had deliberately overlooked her once or twice, but that had been as malicious as the threats and hazing. Was this what it was like to be normal? Or at least human?

  She shook her head and made for the workshop with a hammer and an awl nailed to the sign. Inside, someone sawed away with a constant shushing noise.

  Vola peeked around the side of the workshop and spied a man working in the gloom. He hadn’t lit any of the lanterns around to illuminate his work.

  “Mister Porter?” Vola said. She didn’t want to startle him. Startled humans with sharp implements tended to stab first and apologize later.

  The man didn’t look up.

  Vola sidled around the doorframe and stepped into the shop. Lank, straw-colored hair fell in the man’s eyes and a thin faded shirt strained over his belly. He matched Becky’s description of her husband.

  “Mister Porter, may I speak with you a moment?”

  He didn’t respond. He kept sawing away at the plank he’d balanced across two sawhorses.

  Vola planted her hands on her hips. “Hey, you!”

  Nothing.

  She stepped forward to wave a hand in front of his face.

  He didn’t respond to that either.

  What the heck? Bracing herself, Vola took a deep breath, then roared in the man’s face. Orc breath, orc tusks—she gave him the full experience.

  Porter didn’t even flinch.

  “Huh.” Vola stepped back and crossed her arms.

  “I’m a little worried he’s going to saw his thumb off and not even notice,” a voice said.

  Vola spun to the door to see the halfling lounging against the frame.

  “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.” The halfling grinned at the irony. “Are you going to roar at him again? I don’t think it did what you wanted it to, but it was highly entertaining.”

  Vola joined her at the door. “If that didn’t shake him, nothing will. What are you doing here?”

  The halfling examined her nails. “I was bored. Mysterious personality changes seemed like fun. Do you think it’s a cult? Or some kind of brainwashing?”

  “I’m…not sure yet.” She could have said she had absolutely no idea but she was supposed to be a paladin. Almost. And it wouldn’t do to go around admitting just how little she knew.

  Vola rubbed her mouth as she leaned against the other side of the door.

  A market square stood on this edge of town. Several farmers waited behind stands of produce in the open space. From here, Vola could see a couple of townspeople with blank stares meandering from one stall to the next. One housewife laid down her coins, put her selections in her basket, and moved on without acknowledging the farmer at all.

  Vola’s eyes narrowed as an older woman with a blank stare approached another man with the same wooden movements. The two stopped.

  “How are you today?” the woman asked, voice flat and toneless.

  Vola straightened.

  “Yes. Lovely weather we’re having,” the man said, matching her inflection.

  “I’m fine. Thank you for asking.”

  “Be seeing you.”

  The two went their separate ways, leaving Vola watching with lips
pursed.

  “They talk,” the halfling said, voice rising in surprise.

  “Yes, but did that sound like a real conversation to you?” Vola said.

  “Hardly. More like a kid playing dolls. A lonely kid who’s never had any friends.”

  “Exactly.” Vola glanced back at Porter, who had sawed through his board and picked up another one to start over again. “It’s like they’re going through the motions of life. Going through the routine, but it doesn’t mean anything.”

  A slow smile spread across the halfling’s face. “So disrupt their routine.”

  Vola glanced at her, then waved a hand, telling her to go on.

  “Let’s see what happens when we knock one off their predestined path.”

  “We?” Vola had sized up the halfling in the bar as short and friendly. Now she took a closer look, her eyebrows went up. The halfling wore a gray linen tunic crossed and belted at her waist. Loose pants were bound around her calves like the monks from Maxim’s monasteries. She carried herself tall and straight, even if she only stood three feet tall, and balanced on the balls of her feet. Like someone used to fighting.

  The halfling shrugged. “Yeah. I want to see what happens, too. And no one else is lining up to help you.” She extended her hand. “Sorrel Thornbough.”

  Vola grinned, not bothering to hide her tusks. The halfling seemed like she could handle them. “Volagra Lightbringer.”

  “Lightbringer, cool name.”

  Vola shuffled her feet. “Thanks, I—uh, chose it myself.”

  “Aw, jealous. Mine was picked for me. Bunch of old humans trying to decide what a halfling’s name should sound like.” She waved her hands in the air. “Woo, nature blah blah.”

  Behind them, the sawing stopped. Porter lay down his saw and grabbed a covered basket. Then he walked out his door without a word to either of them.

  “After him!” Sorrel said.

  Vola raised an eyebrow. “It’s not like he’s trying to get away.”

  Sorrel rolled her eyes. “Fine, pursue him slowly. Is that better?”

  Three

  Sorrel scampered after Porter while Vola followed, her long legs eating up the ground between them.

  “What are you going to do?” Vola said.

  “Knock him out of the routine, remember? Hey, you.”

  Sorrel jogged to catch up to the carpenter, then darted around and planted herself right in front of him. She held up her hands, palm out. “Stop.”

  Porter didn’t hesitate or blink. He kept walking.

  The halfling bounced off his legs, stumbled, and went down. She curled into a ball as Porter walked over the top of her.

  “Ouch.”

  Vola gave her a hand up out of the dirt. “You all right?”

  “He didn’t even flinch.”

  “Maybe I should try next time.”

  “Be my guest.” Sorrel dusted off her rear end.

  Porter turned abruptly between a house and a feed store.

  “Follow him,” Vola said. Then she took off around the store, racing Porter to the other side. She arrived in the opening ahead of Porter, who hadn’t adjusted his steady pace.

  “Brace yourself,” Vola said to Sorrel, lurking behind him. Then she turned her shoulder and planted her feet.

  Porter walked into a wall of Vola. And stopped.

  He jerked, his foot raised. Then he shuddered and tried to walk forward once again. Vola leaned into it this time, and Porter stumbled back. He spun into the wall and fell over in the dirt.

  “Mister—” Vola started, then choked on the word.

  Porter seemed to flicker for a moment, then his form disappeared entirely, leaving a man-shaped mud monster lying in the narrow alley.

  The mud shuddered and then collapsed, sinking into the ground as Sorrel and Vola stared.

  “Shit,” Vola said.

  A miniature lightning bolt zapped the ground at her feet, and she glanced guiltily at the sky. “Sorry.”

  Sorrel didn’t even notice. She gaped at the splotch of muddy alleyway. “Sooo, that just happened.”

  “What just happened?” Vola threw up her arms. “A man turned into a pile of goo? Did you see it, too? Or am I going crazy?”

  Sorrel knelt and used two fingers to poke at the spreading mud.

  “Ew, stop. That used to be a person,” Vola said.

  “I don’t think it was,” Sorrel said. “If we’d killed a person, this would be a pile of much redder goo.”

  Vola’s brow furrowed as she thought back over all her classes on the various magical enemies she might encounter in her travels. She did not remember anything about goo monsters dressed as people.

  “I guess it could be a simulacrum. Or maybe a golem.” She wasn’t too sure about the difference. She’d always paid more attention in the lessons about pointy things. Magic was her connection to her goddess. But anything beyond that was just a pretty light show.

  “Some sort of construct with an illusion over top?” Sorrel said. “At least it’s what I imagine an illusion would look like. I never paid much attention to things I couldn’t hit with my fists.” She looked at her hands with her lips twisted.

  “Do you think they’re all like this?” Vola peered around the corner of the building and spied another blank-eyed townsperson sweeping the front step of the house next to them. A boy sat on the railing beside him, staring up at the sky, unblinking.

  “Only one way to find out.” Sorrel stood and dusted off her hands. Then she strode purposefully out into the street, heading for the two on the porch.

  “No, wait.” Too many other townsfolk were watching, and they didn’t have the blank-eyed stare. They were more on the suspiciously horrified side.

  Either Sorrel didn’t hear her or didn’t care. She stepped up on the stoop, and without ceremony, shoved the boy off the railing.

  “Ah!” he cried, falling into the street. “What did you do that for?” He blinked up at Sorrel, definitely not disappearing or turning into a mud monster.

  “Sorry,” Sorrel said, popping her head up over the railing like a tunnel drake. “Just testing a theory.”

  The other man still swept the porch, eyes not quite on his work. Sorrel dropped to one knee and her other leg shot out to hook the sweeper behind his ankle, dumping him on the ground.

  He immediately flickered, just like Porter, and his image disappeared, leaving behind a pile of mud splattered across the porch. It oozed between the cracks.

  The boy on the ground gasped and scrambled backward.

  There was a thump behind Vola. “What did you do?”

  A man with red hair and broad shoulders stood at the corner of the house, a sack of grain at his feet. He stared at Sorrel and her victim. The others crept forward, craning to see.

  Vola stepped between them while Sorrel examined the mud. “Official business, sir,” she said in her best paladin voice. “Just investigating a disturbance.”

  “She killed him.”

  “Well, no,” Vola said and hesitated. How did she explain when she wasn’t even sure what she was seeing herself?

  “Can’t kill something that was never alive,” Sorrel called from the stoop.

  The guy’s breath hitched, and he stumbled back a couple steps. Vola buried her head in her palm.

  “That’s not what she meant. Just give us a second to figure out what’s going on.” She deliberately turned her back on him and his cry of outrage.

  “So, they’re all illusions?” she asked Sorrel quietly.

  “Covering something solid, yes. Which means these people aren’t brainwashed or anything like that.”

  “They’re missing,” Vola said. “And they’ve been replaced.”

  Sorrel glanced up at her. “You sure?”

  “Well, the real people aren’t here, are they? Unless Becky has Porter stashed in a closet somewhere. But then why would she draw attention to his replacement?”

  “No, not Becky. But you’re probably right. Someone took these pe
ople. But why bother replacing them?”

  They stared at the seeping mud.

  Vola glanced over her shoulder at the crowd led by the big redhead. “It kept people from guessing the truth for a while,” she said. “If these folks have been abducted or kidnapped, no one noticed because it seemed like they were still around.”

  “So now we’re dealing with a kidnapper.” Sorrel stood, eyes still on the mud, her mouth pressed into a thin hard line. “Damn. I think I would have preferred cultists. Those at least I can hit.”

  Vola knew how she felt. At least the next step seemed obvious, even if it was a little terrifying. “I have to tell Becky. The town needs to know what’s going on. And she should know her husband’s missing.”

  Sorrel nodded, mind still obviously elsewhere. “Uh huh. Definitely.”

  “You all right?”

  “Yeah,” Sorrel said. “I’ll uh…I’ll meet up with you back at the Tap Room, all right?”

  The halfling jumped off the stoop and trotted off without a backward glance.

  Vola almost reached out to stop her. But it wasn’t like they were friends or anything. If Sorrel didn’t want to help her face Becky, then there wasn’t anything Vola could do to convince her. That was her responsibility alone.

  You volunteered, Vola told herself. She didn’t. And it’s not like you don’t know how to deal with abandonment.

  She turned, and her eyes fell on the redhead, who stood with his arms crossed. She stepped up to him. The others around him fell back a step.

  “What did you do to them, you monster?” he said.

  Vola rubbed her forehead. It shouldn’t get under her skin. It wasn’t even original. She rolled her shoulders as if letting the words slide off. “Has anyone gone missing in Water’s Edge?” she asked. “Anyone disappeared recently?”

  His eyes narrowed like he was about to spit in her face, but then his gaze flicked to a building across the street.

  Interesting.

  The structure loomed over everything else in the town, big, but dilapidated. It hadn’t seen a new coat of paint in years, and the roof sagged from water damage.

  “What’s that?” she said.

  “Orphanage,” the man said. “Chock full of kids from all around the countryside.”