by Logan Jacobs
He agreed with a grunt, and I spent the next ten minutes or so making sure every scale on his body was scratched to his satisfaction.
Once the tub cooled, I poured the water into the metallic keg with the coiled copper tubes I’d constructed. Then I sat back and watched the whiskey drip into the wooden bucket. I replaced the bucket with a barrel once I felt the foreshots pass through. That’s the stuff that could kill me if I had a sip. Maybe not kill me, but fuck me up for sure.
Also, it would taste like ass mixed with mud.
Azure and I filled only a few of the barrels needed before my vision started to blur. Sleep was shouting my name, and I double checked the barrel count sitting in the corner of the stable.
Hebal’s next shipment would be done soon enough, but I wasn’t going to be much use tomorrow night during our catering event if I didn’t get a few hours of rest. So, I moved over to the stack of hay I called my bed, curled up with Azure on my chest, and fell asleep before my eyelids even closed.
“Hey, Wade,” a voice called to me, and I felt a light slap on my cheek.
“Wha?” I muttered.
“You gotta get up.” It was Dar’s voice.
“Did you just slap me?” I groaned.
“Yeah, cause I’ve been shaking your arm for the last minute and you haven’t been waking up.”
“Fuck,” I sighed. My eyelids felt like weighted sandpaper against my eyeballs, but I finally managed to crack them open.
“Time to feed the elves,” Dar said, and his face hovered over me in the darkness of the stables.
“Fuck the elves,” I groaned as my neck popped from sleeping on it weirdly. I squinted in the murky darkness and wished for some natural light to help wake me up. The stables were dimly lit and made my eyes even heavier than the whiskey barrels.
“Cimarra and Penny are waiting for us in the wagon,” Dar said as he shook my arm to get me out of the pile of hay. “We gotta get the food and supplies at the cottage.”
“I’m coming.” I waved to him, wobbled to my feet, and saw Azure was still sleeping on the hay with his belly in the air.
Some watchdog he was.
“Marver is meeting us at Adi’s, and I really don’t want to make his cranky ass crankier.” Dar grabbed my arm and pulled me toward a water bucket. “Wash up. It’ll help clear your eyes.”
“Shit, okay.” I cupped a handful of cool water and rubbed my face. Dar was right. A moment later, I was actually semi-conscious, and I turned back to my friend. “Let’s go feed the elves.”
I stumbled out the stable door into the fog of the night. Through the wagon’s sheet covering, I could see the silhouette of the girls already asleep, and a smile touched my lips as I took my spot on the driver’s bench.
I’d let them rest for now, there would be plenty of work tonight.
I flicked the horse tethers, and our horses shifted forward down the street. We rode in sleepy silence through the darkness until we got to the cottage. Then I woke up the girls, and the four of us walked toward the building.
“So, uh, something I forgot to mention is we have to wear uniforms,” Dar said as he unlocked the front door. “I have them inside.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I yawned and turned to the site of Marver’s wagon speeding toward the cottage.
“Let’s hurry up and get everything loaded!” Marver hollered as he pulled in front of the house like he’d just escaped from a bank robbery.
“Come on inside, first.” Dar waved the chef over, left the door open for him, and turned to us as he scratched his chin in thought. “Okay, give me a sec to find the uniforms.”
“Who’s that?” Penny asked and nodded toward Marver as he jumped out of his wagon.
“That’s our chef for the event,” Dar said as he dragged out a box of clothes from the back room of the cottage. “These aren’t fancy, but we have to look the part, right?”
“If you say so.” Penny shrugged.
“Try these on girls,” Dar said as he extended a pair of dresses to them.
“What a gray mess.” Penny smirked as she took the dress and went into the back room with Cimarra.
“And here’s yours,” Dar said as he handed me a gray shirt with Adi’s stitched in the upper left corner and a pair of trousers. “Hopefully they fit.”
“These look a little small, but I’ll give it a try,” I said as I held up the black trousers he handed me.
Both Dar and I quickly stripped out of our city clothes and put on the gray serving uniforms. Sure enough, my pants only went to the middle of my shins, and I had to suck in my stomach to button the fly. My shirt was also too tight across the muscles of my chest and shoulders, but I could leave the black coat that went over it open in the front so it didn’t look that bad. The outfit could have worked if I wasn’t standing right beside Dar, whose outfit looked like it was tailor made for him.
“It looks good on you,” Dar snickered and glanced up and down my tall frame.
“I don’t think the elves will even notice,” I sighed as I tossed aside the too-small shoes and just put on my leather boots. “Humans might as well be roaches to them. As long as I don’t get their attention, they probably won’t notice the outfit.”
“True,” Dar admitted.
“It’s too early for this,” Penny yawned as she sauntered out from the back room of the cottage. She adjusted the two thin black straps over her shoulders, and smoothed down the front of the long and simple gray dress that draped down to the floor. Then she hopped on one foot and adjusted the black flats on her feet. “These shoes fucking suck.”
“It’s what Adi had for his female employees,” Dar explained with a shrug. “They look fine on you, though.”
“My toes will be begging for mercy by the end of the night.” Penny grimaced.
“Oh …” Dar jumped as he remembered something and pulled out two elegant white cloths from the box of uniforms, “I almost forgot, you have to wear these, too.”
“What is it?” Penny asked and held the cloth up to the flickering kitchen lantern.
“It’s for your head,” Cimarra said as she walked out in a uniform that matched Penny’s and took the same covering from Dar.
“Yeah, exactly.” Dar shrugged. “I guess it’s what human women have to wear if they enter an elven home.”
“Bullshit,” Penny sneered as she balled the cloth inside of her fist. “I’ll put it on later.”
“Make sure it’s on, human,” Marver said as he stepped inside the small cottage and pointed at me. “Help me load the food?”
“Sure,” I said as I followed Marver out the door.
“Better not bend over,” Penny snorted. “Your pants might rip.”
“I’ve worn worse,” I replied and ignored her snark.
We loaded up the cart with trays of food, pots and pans, and before we knew it, we were officially in the catering business.
“Let’s get going,” Marver said as he waved for us to follow. “We have a few hours ride ahead of us.”
“Lead the way,” I yelled as our horses had already started to move the wagon.
“Where exactly are we going in the Elven District?” Cimarra asked from the back near a clinking pot.
“Somewhere close to the White City,” I said as I steadied the horse on the trail. “We’re taking a way I haven’t used in quite some time.”
Adi’s cottage sat along the border of the Falrion Forest. This journey would bring us around the backend of the Elven District and closer to the capital district than I’d ever been.
“It’s not like where we’re from.” Dar leaned back next to me and dangled a foot out the side of the wagon. “The Capital isn’t full of mud, blood, and piss.”
“Yeah, they saved all of that for us.” I spat out the wagon as I steered around a bend. “The precious elves wanted to separate their capital from the rest of the districts.”
“Their luxury homes could house multiple families in the gutters,” Penny added. “Makes me sic
k.”
“It’s the way it is,” Cimarra sighed. “We humans just have to hope for their scraps and not their attention.”
“I want more than scraps for us,” I murmured.
A few minutes passed as our cart dipped and creaked along the dirt trail. Our heads bobbed with the wagon as if we were in a fight with the road, and I hoped the whole mission tonight wouldn’t be this bumpy.
“How many elves do you think will be there?” Cimarra asked from the back.
“Too many,” Dar chuckled as he rested his foot on the front ledge.
“Do we even know what the event is for?” Cimarra questioned.
I had to keep my eyes on the road, but I could tell she was nervous. Her usual soft voice was tense and shaky.
“A celebration for some noble named Eleran,” Dar said as he turned around to look at the dancer. “As long as we don’t mess up, we won’t die.”
That wouldn’t help her nerves at all.
“We’ll be fine,” I said as I eyed Dar. As much as I loved the halfling, he could be clueless about what others were feeling at times. “Marver has served these assholes before, we’ve made more than enough food for the noble’s thirty guests, and we’re not going to mess up or die if I have anything to say about it.”
“Okay,” Cimarra agreed and took a deep breath. “When was the last time you’ve all been in the Capital District?”
“I’ve never been to the White City,” Penny yawned. “But, meet one elf, and you’ve met them all.”
“Have you been, Dar?” Cimarra wondered.
“Not that deep, no,” Dar cleared his throat, “but I’ve wandered into the outskirts near the Entertainment District a few times. I think we all have.”
“Not me, my life has mostly been spent in the theatre,” Cimarra answered. “How about you, Wade?”
“I have … ” I paused as I tried to remember my last visit to the Capital District. It was shielded in a fog of years. “I was with my dad.”
“So, you were a little boy?” the dancer prodded for me to continue.
Want to take a trip with me? my dad’s voice broke into my mind.
“Yeah,” I began as I shielded my eyes from the sun that suddenly rose through the thick green and brown trees of the forest beside us. “We needed to fix our shed that had taken damage from a storm.”
“And you needed to go to the Capital to do that?” Dar asked with his eyebrows raised.
“My dad was a perfectionist.” I shrugged as I steered the wagon around a curve. “He needed a specific tool, and he knew the elves would provide the best one.”
“What happened?” Cimarra asked.
“He told me we were going to a very beautiful but dangerous place,” I sighed as I remembered my dad’s thin, drawn-out face.
“Had you interacted with elves before?” Cimarra urged my story on.
“No, my dad only told me stories,” I began. “We never really left our little town, but this time we had to. My mom was off with my sister and brother visiting her parents or something like that, and it was just my dad and me working at the house.”
“Were you scared?” Cimarra asked.
“No … ” I smiled. “I mean, a little, but I was mainly excited my dad trusted me to go with him to this ‘beautiful and dangerous place.’”
“Was it that?” Cimarra peeked her head between Dar and me in the front. “Beautiful and dangerous?”
“It was,” I nodded as I looked into the dancer’s sparkling blue pools for eyes, “I remember when I first saw an Elven Guard, I called them statues.”
“Did they give you any trouble?” Cimarra asked as she shielded her eyes from the rising sun.
“My dad told me to just stare at my feet,” I shrugged, “so, I didn’t see much of the elves.”
“Did you see any of the White City?” the dancer wondered.
“No, but I did see the storefront we went to,” I began. “It shimmered in the sun, like a diamond or like your eyes. There was beautiful green vinery sprawled across the entryway, and as we approached the store, the vines spread apart and smelled like roses. I tried to touch it, but my dad pulled me along.”
“Makes me wonder if the whole district is like that,” Cimarra mused and moved back to her seat in the rear of the wagon. “Do you remember anything else?”
“You’ll see it soon enough,” Penny added.
“No, that’s all I remember,” I said as a large bump in the road caused our wagon to jolt to the side, so I adjusted the reins a bit on the horse, and then the wagon moved a touch quicker to catch up to Marver.
Cimarra didn’t say anything for the next few minutes, so I guessed she was lost in thoughts of the Elven part of the city. Dar and Penny also didn’t speak, but with them I was more inclined to guess they were mentally preparing for one of the biggest heists of our careers.
And we didn’t even know what we were stealing.
“Look!” Marver shouted over his shoulder and pointed to his right, where a flock of bright pink birds chirped to life and flew over our heads.
“Never seen those before,” Penny remarked as she watched the long-necked birds join the clouds.
“We’ll be seeing a bunch of weird shit now,” Dar grunted as he folded his hands over his head and cracked his knuckles. “How much further?”
“See that shiny shit in the distance?” I asked and pointed past the green hills that rolled across the horizon like an emerald ocean.
“Everything is shiny right now,” Dar grumbled as he squinted into the new light from the sun. “The mountain?”
“Yeah, but that’s not a mountain,” I added.
“If that ain’t a mountain then I don’t know what is,” Dar said.
“It’s not a mountain,” I chuckled, “I believe those are the rear walls of the Capital District.”
“Walls?” Dar asked as he crossed his arms and strained to see what was ahead.
“Yeah, and Eleran’s house isn’t far from them, according to our master chef up ahead.” I nodded toward the culinary wizard, who pointed toward the gates and motioned for us to hurry up.
“Should be interesting,” Dar yawned and dropped his head back to absorb the sun’s radiant warmth.
“Hopefully,” Penny whispered as she peeked her head in between us like Cimarra had earlier. “You think the dancer will be okay?”
“She’ll be fine,” I replied with a nod.
“Okay,” Penny said as she brushed a strand of her hair out of her eyes.
“Put on that head covering,” Dar reminded her.
“Ah, shit,” Penny huffed before she disappeared into the back of the wagon, and a moment later, Cimarra took her place.
“The walls are incredible,” the dancer murmured as we neared the gates around this part of the city. “What’re they made from?”
“Looks like magic,” I said as I pointed toward small waves of light, “see it rippling through the stone?”
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Cimarra murmured with a look of awe on her face.
“These are much different than the ones closer to the guilds, huh?” Dar said as he rubbed the back of his neck.
“Just a bit,” I laughed as I slowed our wagon down.
Marver’s cart rattled and creaked to a stop right before the towering arched front gates, and ours stopped behind his.
“Speak your business!” an armored elf shouted from atop the arched front gate.
“You let me do the talking,” Marver whispered over his shoulder to us and then turned to face the elf. “We’re catering an event for Eleran the noble, my lord!”
“We’ll need to see your papers then!” the elf answered as he motioned to someone beneath him. “Please wait, and do not move your wagon or you will be treated as a threat to the empire.”
“Of course!” Marver responded, and then he turned his fat neck around to face us. “Should be just a moment.”
“Got it,” I answered the chef and covered my nose as the
gates slowly opened in front of us. “I can smell the elves from here.”
“You can smell them?” Dar asked as his face contorted into a look of disgust.
“Or maybe it’s just the magic from the walls,” I said as I took a few shorter breaths. “It’s like the air is thick, humid, and it’s hard for me to breathe.”
“Maybe it’s the keys?” Cimarra guessed.
“Could be.” I shrugged. Even though I didn’t have the keys on me, could they be communicating with me somehow? I’d started to smell magic since I found the Thief’s key, but this felt even stronger.
“That’s a useful skill to have,” Penny commented as she also took a long breath and tilted her head. “I knew you could sense magic.”
“How?” I asked and turned to the emerald eyed beauty.
“That day Dar stupidly tried to steal from the elf guard who visited Rindell’s,” Penny replied as she widened her eyes, “that fuckin’ elf knew it, too.”
“I don’t know if I can sense magic or what, but right now we have to stay focused.” I turned around to face the front, but I could still feel Penny’s stare.
“Maybe this new skill will help us find whatever you think we need to steal from these ass--” Dar started, but the arrival of the Elven Guard interrupted us.
“Show me the papers, halfling!” the tall, statuesque elf commanded as he slammed his long silver tipped spear against the ground. He then walked effortlessly, as if he floated atop the surface, over to the side of Marver’s wagon. When he stopped, he gave us a quick once over with his sapphire eyes as well.
“Yes, yes, of course, my lord,” Marver lisped and handed him the paperwork we found at Adi’s for the event.
“What company are you with?” the elf asked as he swiped the paper out of the halfling’s wrinkled hand. The capital didn’t get too many visitors outside of the elven kind, so some push back was to be expected.
“Adi’s Catering,” Marver said as he pointed to us. “The cart behind me is with me too, my lord.”
All this “my lord” stuff was a different look from the cranky asshole Dar and I had seen in the kitchen last night. Not that I could blame him, but I despised the fact the elves wanted to be called “my lord.”