CH6
“Nigel, quick your blathering, move over and give me the reins.” Bill pulled took the reins back by tugging them in front of Nigel’s grip. “You’re a mess, and you’re driving like a bloody idiot. The last thing we need right now is to get pulled over by the constables.”
“Yeah, Nigel, wear this.” Max took off his soiled greatcoat and wrapped it around his shaking friend as Bill brought the horses back to a trot. “In the inside pocket... no the other one... no the left breast inside pocket... yeah the larger one.. right, there’s an ampule in there, could you hand me that?”
“...yeah, here...” Nigel handed Max a small metal tube. It was fitted with a cork stopper on one end that Max twisted off to reveal a needle. Nigel barely saw it coming. “Ouch! What the hell was... ohhhhh, yeah... that’s a lot better...” Nigel smiled as the distilled essence shrewsflower passed into his blood and eased him from the soul outward. His hands quit throbbing in time with the raw stripe across his backside.
“Now, Bill could you explain to Nigel why we can’t afford a chat with the constables right now?” Max asked as patted Nigel on the back and made his way onto the roof of the carriage. The garish lights emitted by the small glass thimbles on either side of the carriage made them about as hard to ignore as a troll in high heels and a miniskirt.
“Oh that should be easy, Max.” Bill looked back at his classmate with a combination of excitement and frustration. Max was a great wizard, he’s seen that in the last few hours, but he was still a sportsman, and a tosser at that. Smart as he was, he was more brass than brains, the man had a habit of simply bashing his way through any troubles that he hadn’t anticipated. “Should I start with the fact that we’ve kidnapped the single most famous man in the kingdom? Or do you think I should tell him about the ten stones of ‘dust we’ve got with us?”
“Wherever you like.” Max grumbled at Bill’s grumbling. He walked across the jostling carriage and knelt at the first thimble in the back. It was basically a jar of colored glass threaded over a trio of bruised, adolescent candlesprites.
“What sick bastard would...” Max mused out loud to himself as he got a better look at the tiny, fluttering girls. Max was struck with a dark chord of concern as he unscrewed the bulb and held it upright. Between these enslaved fairies and the genuine evil of the lute, Max felt that whatever interests were managing Billingsgate’s career were very, very bad indeed. The young sprites fluttered cautiously to the rim of the jar and hopped onto Max’s collar in the breeze. One of them whispered something to him in the chittering music of their native tongue before all three buzzed off into the dark like joyous firebrands. He stepped from each thimble to the next, releasing the tiny girls into the air. Had his sense of balance not been so finely honed by years on the back of a falcon (even riding standing up at the draft derby every season) he would have fallen over as his legs wobbled watching the fairies drift off into the night.
“Let me sum up our situation, Nigel.” Bill began. His heart bounced in his chest and made him burp nervously as he realized what all they had gotten themselves into. “You have have stolen a what appears to be a priceless lute, kidnapped its owner and stolen his carriage, all while there happens to be a club full of the most influential trust fund dandies and gang-stars waiting impatiently for him to show up.”
“Yeah, well, I hadn’t much choice..” Nigel smiled sweetly as he dug around but failed to find the thick silver key in his pocket. “There were a couple of bad men threatening to cut my favorite organs out while I was still alive. I locked them in the shop and ran...”
“Oh, Nigel, I’m not finished, but yes, let’s add those bad men and their interest in you vitals to the list.” Bill shook his head as Max stepped back onto the bench and sat down heavily. “Then we have an unlicensed wizard’s staff with us, which as you might know is a hanging offense in the city limits. And finally Max and are the proud owners of ten stones of greyvesdust, another hanging offense.”
“Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention...” Max began. “I’m going to have a warrant out for my arrest in about eight hours.”
“You failed to mention this to me earlier.” Bill smiled facetiously at Max. “Yeah, um it seems that my uncle owed quite a bit of money in liens against the estate as well as insurance and legal fees... debts that are now mine as I am the sole inheritor.”
“Holy gods Max, you’ve got the Lawyer’s guild on you...” Bill exhaled a shocked breath. “No wonder you were so keen to leave town.”
“Yeah, and I’m pretty sure that they know I’ve got that staff.” Max sighed. “They seemed to think I could pawn it to cover my ‘good faith’ fees to keep out of the debtor’s stocks.”
All three men grimaced at the mention of the stocks. They traveled in silence until the neared the southern gate of the city.
“Bill, could you just pop inside and make sure Billingsgate won’t cause any fuss until we’ve got past the portcullis.” Max elbowed Nigel gently as Bill tucked through the curtain into the coach. “How’d you like to be Billingsgate for about ten minutes.”
“Max, I love you, and I know you’re a brilliant when it comes riding and casting, but you’re daft if you think anyone would believe that I’m Billingsgate.” Nigel smiled and pulled Max’s coat tighter as he began to feel the need to sleep tug at him.
“Just sit there and mumble if they ask you anything.” Max whispered as they pulled up to a stop.
Bill was careful not to step on the unconscious minstrel as he climbed into the coach. It was dimly lit with a pair of moonseeds that were loosing their magickal charge. After a quick look at Billingsgate, including a feel at the man’s pulse, Bill decided that there was no reason to worry about there being any fuss from him. Once again, Max’s right cross proved to be quite effective at producing a near coma in its recipients. He shook his head and glanced about. Satin pillows, silk curtains, a long stem pipe left tangled in the mess and a long black box stowed closely behind the curtain he’d slipped through.
“Woah.” Max slowed the horses to a stop at the twin sentry’s boxes built into either side of the ramparts that climbed fifty feet to the parapets of Walesport’s southern gate. “Evening gentlemen.”
Two fellows armed with pikes, crossbows slung across their backs stepped out of their stone shacks. Each of them wore tunics embroidered with the twin whales and crossed tridents of the Walesport emblem. Each whale was impaled on a trident to form a circle. The effect of this rounded coat of arms when stretched across the pot belly of the sergeant made a sort of bull’s eye out of his expansive stomach.
“Evening.” The portly guard answered. He sized up the unlit coach driven by a pair of men who looked and smelled more than a little like soiled jugglers. “So, you’re Mr. Billingsgate’s chauffeur? Eh, boy?”
“Yes sir.” Max answered smartly.
“And who’s that?” The guard poked the air in Nigel’s direction.
Nigel was too delightfully drowsy to take much notice to the question. He was happy without cause or question and decided that the oatmeal like state of his brain could offer little more a chuckle at the guard’s query.
“Well, sir...” Max bent close to the guard and waved him nearer. “That’s my boss, Tyro himself.”
“Do I look dim to you, boy?” The sergeant squinted at the odor of sewage clinging to Max. “That is not Mr. Billingsgate. He looks nothing like him. And you smell like you’ve been wallowing in s**t.”
“No, sir. No offense but I’m afraid you don’t quite understand the situation.” Max tried to whisper as the second guard set his pike against the near wall and slung his crossbow around. “Let me ask you a question. In all seriousness, have you ever seen Tyro Billingsgate, rock star, out of his makeup or his signature diamond studded body stocking?”
The stout guard scratched at himself though his mail and considered Nigel for a few seconds. He turned up his mouth with a shrug that conveyed the notion that the dazed fellow wrapped in a filthy topcoat might be the famous minstrel. He was about the right size after all.
“That doesn’t explain why you stink like a cesspit.” The man put his pike against the wall nearest him and slung his crossbow around with a superior grin. He like the way this situation was turning out. Either way it was sure to end in his favor, like most of his nights at the gate.
“Quite right. But I’ve got another question.” Max was lying on the fly, which seemed to come naturally to him. He thought of his uncle for a moment before he continued. “Isn’t Tyro’s coach known throughout the kingdom for being lit like a screaming rainbow?”
“It is.” The guard tapped his fingers on the stock of his weapon. The man on the other side of the coach walked around, inspecting it as well as he could in the flickering light.
“Well, I hope you won’t tell a soul, but he insisted on driving, insisted... had he not threatened to sack me I wouldn’t have handed him the reins.” Max was on a roll. “So he gets to tearing through the streets, practically snapping the rims off on the stones, and starts hollering about wanting to see if the lights will shine underwater.”
The second guard stepped around as Max continued. Both of the men had gone past the line of suspicion and into that expectant sort of listening that accompanies learning a secret. The story had a juicy ring to it. It was the sort of thing that might stand out in the tabloid posts over at the market’s main board.
“So he makes through the park at the edge of Bagby’s Canal, laughing like a madman, has us headed straight at those filthy, black waters.” The story took a life of its own as Max leaned into it. He could see that both of the guards were growing more absorbed in the thought of being the first to hear about scandal of these proportions.
“What could I do?” Max leaned back and threw his hands up. “I yanked the reins away, nearly put us on our side. Tyro and I were pitched off, right over the edge of the wall into the muck. Thank Helios it’s low tide, would have been the end of us both.”
“So I as soon as I chased down the carriage, I put out the lights, bundled this soggy bastard up and moved along. Now, all I’m hoping is to make a quiet exit out this here back gate of yours.”
Max finished with a pleading look.
“Oh that’s quite a story.” The sergeant stepped back with a grin. “A very good story.”
“I reckon it’s the best we’ve heard in a while.” The subordinate raised his crossbow at Max.
“How’s about you keep us entertained a bit more.” The fat man put his weapon away in the shack and came out with a pair of heavy gloves. “I imagine, if what you’re telling us is true, that Mr. Billingsgate must have been intoxicated on something not legal when he tried to cause your death with a nasty misadventure like that.”
“I agree with that completely sir.” The second man smiled wickedly from behind the arc of his weapon.
“So, I think I’m going to need to have a little look-see through your bosses vehicle.” The portly man tucked his chins in and grinned with mirth at the thought of what treasures he was about to confiscate. “How about that Mr. Rock-star, you mind if I take a look inside your ride here?”
***
Phil Pillywizzet used the rope next to his bed to pull himself upright. He took a series of long shaky breaths as he fought the pain of his compressed spine and took the rope in both hands and raised himself into his bent stance. It was precisely three in the morning. He was certain, as he had trained his kidneys to make water five times each night at two hour intervals. Each visit across the ten feet of of his bed chamber to to the pot took him fifteen minutes. Five to get out of bed and shuffle over to his toilet and seven to make water, and three more to return to his bed and get back to his rest.
***
Bill opened the polished lid of the long black case to find a series of small compartments that each contained a few neatly bound gauze pouches full of coins. They were arranged in order from largest to smallest. Clipped into the velvet lining of the underside of the lid was a pen and a simple ledger with what were amounts spent with notes made next to them.
“Doanish patrol, 10c: Ruined Suite, 15c: Dead Courtesan, 20c - Pimp, 25c Constables of Kerreton’s Reach...” Bill read the list of bribes out loud to himself and shook his head in disgust at the excess of the man so many envied. As the coach stopped, he scarcely let himself breathe as the guards questioned Max. Bill was struck by an idea borne out of the terror that being found half standing on unconscious form of the most famous man in the kingdom in a coach loaded with drugs and illegal weaponry. He took two of the largest sachets of coins and slipped them through the curtain next to Max’s hip. He let them drop onto the bench so that they made an unmistakeable jingle as they hit. Max snatched up both bags of money as the sergeant lifted his nose in the air like a dog catching the sent of a nearby stew.
“What’s that then?” The guard rubbed at his chin. “Because we don’t take bribes in the Gates Precinct.”
“I wouldn’t think of such a criminal act, sir.” Max responded as though shocked by the suggestion. “But I do know that the Constable’s Fund is a worthwhile and noble charity.”
“And I cannot think of a better time to contribute. No sir, my boss wants to make his respect understood. He would like to make a donation to that fund that helps to support the families of the fine, brave men of the Constables Guild... particularly those men who have chosen to defend the walls of this city.” Max nodded gravely. “I was hoping... Mr. Billingsgate was hoping to be able ask you if you could collect such a charitable gift on his behalf.”
Max lowered the two pouches of sixty or so crownes into the waiting glove of the sergeant at arms. The large man tucked his chins in a sign of happy success again as he raised waved the carriage past his post where both portcullises raised and the drawbridge clinked down before the trio.
***
At six in the morning, Pillywizzet pulled himself out of bed for the last time and took his usual two hours to get dressed and eat the cold porridge his maid had cooked and let cool for him. He spent the next two hours moving along the the street in the chill dawn towards his shop. He was running behind, the cumulative ache that was left as often as his shadow was worse than usual
that morning. The sun had made its way up and the night rain had cleaned the streets and knocked some of the usual stink of the city out of the air. None of that mattered to Phil as he had been without his sense of smell for ages, and the sun on his back did little more for his pain that make his shoulders itch at the memory of what comfort warmth used to bring.
As he moved towards the shop, his eyes caught a bit of shine from the obelisk out front. He had to sweep along for another twenty feet before he realized that the key was still in the lock. That idiot boy had left it there overnight. Had he the energy, Pillwizzet would have been enraged, the thought of his shop being open for any common thief or juggler to ransack brought a few flecks of porridge up into his throat. He burped acidly as he switched the lenses on his spectacles and leaned in to balance himself on his cane and turn the large key at the same time.
Having never looked up as he bent to work the lock, Phil hadn’t noticed the twelve knives hanging in space just above his head. The key turned and John and Errol blinked as they saw that every one of their blades had landed true, but none of them had met their intended mark.
***
The sun had been up for better than an hour as Max slapped himself in the face several times to keep awake. While the grueling twenty five hour tourneys that Max had played in the past had inured him to fatigue, he’d been going for forty or more, he wasn’t sure, he didn’t have the energy to care. Nigel had barely made it past the gate before passing out, and Bill had succumbed to sleep only an hour or so after that. Driving alone in silence, Max had pushed on for close to a hundred miles when his body overwhelmed his will and told him to curl up on the bench and stop being awake.
When Max woke to the sound of the horses hooves splashing a few paces at a time, lurching the carriage forward with awkward tugs, he was thick and dazed. He looked around and realized that they were trolling through a wide cove of shallow water covered one to the next in lotus flowers as big as a man’s head. The horses were tipping forward a few feet at a time to drink and munch on the white petals. His vision was sticky with what little sleep he’d had and the brief sight of a tall very fair skinned girl who slipped back into the cypress trees at the edge of the small lake made him shake his head. Max lowered himself into the water, certain they were lost as he fought his senses. Every bit of his training was slipping at the edge of the notion that he was being watched, that he might have been for a while. The cool water brought him around enough to carefully move back to the coach as it continued to amble forward a few feet at a time. He opened the side door and shook the leg of Bill’s filthy trousers to wake him. Bill startled and started to ask a question when Max hushed him and pointed to Nigel and Billingsgate.
They exchanged a series of gestures for a few seconds until they both knew what to do. Bill gingerly slid his hands over Nigel’s mouth and forehead while Max quickly snapped his nose back into a straight line. Nigel screamed into Max’s palm, and sat up with both eyes wide and tearing. Billingsgate barely rustled in his sleep. Max put his finger to his lips as Bill slowly took his hands away.
“S**t! Max, what the hell was that?” Nigel managed to keep his voice to a whisper. He took stock of his surroundings for a second and clenched his jaw. “Oh. Right. Damn.”
“I’m completely knackered, I fell asleep at the reins.” Max motioned them outside to show them where they were. “I have no idea where we are, but if I were to guess I’d say we’ve left the road and wandered into the Catarian marshes.”
“Well it does seem we’ve left the road, doesn’t it!” Nigel barked in a whisper while tenderly grasping his swollen nose.
“I’m not sure if we’re alone. I thought we were being followed or watched a minute ago... it doesn’t seem so much like it now.” Max glanced about as his earlier sensations began to seem like they had just been a touch of paranoia. “Either way, if we were followed here we’d best leave Billingsgate and that damned lute here and move on.”
“Gents, I’m sure I can leave the two of you to another genius plan while I find a nice, calm pool around here to wash the s**t I’ve been wearing for the least twelve hours off of me.” Bill yawned and started off towards a small stand of trees that clung to a hillock of rocks a few hundred yards away.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Bill.” Nigel’s fear was creeping back into his voice.
“I’m going to agree with Nigel, Bill.” Max looked around to demonstrate his point. “I’m not one hundred percent sure that we’re safe out here.”
“Which changes things how?” Bill asked sarcastically. “How safe have we been since I showed up at Feudal Express with the seals? How is this any worse? If I am going to be killed, I’d like to go on to my great reward not covered in filth.” Bill made his way to the small dry looking rise in silence. Whatever lay on the other side, it did not include his friends bickering. That was enough, he decided.
“What are we going to do? We’ve got a real mess here.” Nigel started in on his familiar ballad of woe. “We don’t know where we are, we’ve committed... I don’t know, say a half dozen felonies. There are two men, each of whom is twice your size and armed to the teeth,who want to kill me out there, and you... you woke me up by nearly snapping my nose off my face.”
“Hysteria, Nigel, is not useful.” Max looked at the carriage and the horses. “This is easy, actually. We have everything we need right here.”
Bill worked his way up the short bluff, pulling at exposed roots and clambering over the smooth boulders. Once he stood up after his climb, he wet his lips and gaped at the pool in front of him. Smooth water flowed out from a slowly rising spring in the center, spilling over the rocky edges in tiny waterfalls to the marsh below. It was almost perfectly circular, about one hundred yards across and almost luminous. Something in Bill tugged at him, he stripped down and slid into the water, instantly eased by the glow of it. He hadn’t felt this tranquil even once in his life. It took no more than ten seconds for Bill to make up his mind that he had come to the end of his quest. This was it, he would build a small hut at the edge of the water, maybe could fish from marshes below for his dinner...
Nigel took Billingsgates feet as Max hauled him through the curtained opening behind the bench. With a minimum of struggle, as the famous minstrel weighed only nine stone or so, they had him slumped over with the reins loosely set in his lap. Max shook out a hefty spoonful of dust from one of his duffle bags and put it one of the pouches inside billingsgates rainbow hued waistcoat. Then he sprinkled a liberal amount of the drug all over the man’s face and chest.
“Right, now, we just leave him here. At some point he wakes up, or maybe somebody finds him, whatever, it doesn’t matter. It looks like he’s been off on a tear again.” Max shrugged as though what they’d done was the most natural thing in the world.
“You are a deviant, you know that.” Nigel balked at the plan, yet he felt relieved, certain that Max had the best of all potential ideas in place and working. “I’m serious, you have a criminal streak that’s quite frightening.”
Bill was leaning against a rock with his eyes closed, simply absorbing the music he heard in his mind as the water took all of his lifetime of resentment at being neither human nor dwarf or even elf and washed it away. His aches from a night of fear in the sewers, his nerves sang with delight in the mystical pool. He was in a state of fluid ecstasy as three long, slender shapes slid under the water towards him.
***
Errol and John had just come downstairs and stepped over to the body. John pulled the key from the lock and Errol took Pillywizzet’s gaunt corpse by one ankle and had begun to drag him inside. They had every intention of retrieving their knives, leaving the master luthier’s remains in the shop and then locking the place up and losing the key.
And they would have made a quick show of it, except that a pair of constables stopped by. They had ben alerted to the fact that a very famous and very wealthy rock star never made it to his show the night before. Their usual routine of knocking a few local jugglers provided them with the address of the last place Billingsgate’s coach had been seen. And now that they were there in front of Pillywizzet’s shop, the sight of two enormous men engaging in what was obviously some form of homicide or another got their attention. Errol dropped Phil’s bony leg as both men put their hands comfortably behind their heads and grinned evilly at the pair of crossbows trained on them.
***
As Bill was marched back to the coach covering himself with both hands, he saw that his companions were similarly compromised. A ring of tall, lithe women with little more than scraps of what looked like moonworm’s silk covering their more important anatomy were stationed around the trio and their carriage. Each of them held a thin but vicious looking bow as long as any of them were tall. Thirty arrows that glinted white and metallic in the sun were trained on each man.
“Kerre’tuk naan dole’tis palan?” The leader of the elvish women asked something Max couldn’t understand.
“Uhh, gellash’kor... naan mill’ep ... ahh, sa’inn...” Nigel offered. Bill and Max looked at Nigel nervously. They had forgotten that four years of training as a minstrel included quite a few language classes.
“Prek taalig’kip salva?” She asked.
Max noticed one of the elves to his right was watching him specifically. A faint memory was wound into his senses from that first moment he awoke and stumbled into the water. She was probably the one who found them and reported back to her tribe. Damn. She didn’t look away when he met her gaze.
“What is she saying Nigel?” Bill whimpered through a clenched smile.
“She want’s to know why we’re here...” Nigel began timidly. “Why we just wandered into their holy place and let the horses eat the... ahhh... ‘rememberances’”
“What did you tell her Nigel?” Max asked. “And what do you mean, ‘rememberances’.”
“Uhhh...” Nigel moaned quietly.
“Naan dole’tis palan?” She repeated, the anger rising in her voice. Several of the women around her drew back their bows a few inches further.
“Ummmmm... Gelash.. kor, ineyp palan.” Nigel blundered through the elvish. He turned his head to his friends without breaking eye contact with their leader. “We.. ah.. we parked in their graveyard... it’s a bad thing... real bad.”
“Prek taalig’kip salva?” She repeated herself yet again, her impatience beginning to radiate off of her in waves that made little droplets of water shiver up off of the surface of the water. The men could see that her rage was, in fact, the anger of the whole marsh.
“Well... at least I got a nice bath in first...” Bill mused, resigned to what had been a joke about his fate.
“What does she want, Nigel?” Max asked, frustrated by his friend’s recalcitrance.
“She wants to know which of us drove in here...” Nigel told Max flatly.
“Oh...” Max felt a half second of despair before he looked past Nigel to Bill. Both of them shook their heads and looked at the water as they pointed to Billingsgate in the driver’s seat. Nigel played along, following their lead a half second after.
Billingsgate was still asleep as an arrow flashed through the air and lanced cleanly through his skull. It had barely slowed when a woman on the far side of the circle snatched it out of the air and put it in her own quiver.
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