by Guy Antibes
The fun lasted until midday when a large party of pixies arrived. Whit wasn’t sure how they would react to people breathing underwater, so they all gathered around the tablecloth where their towels were stacked.
“I have to go,” Jonny said.
“A minute,” Whit said. “I forgot about my magic.” He spelled Jonny’s clothes dry, and soon, he did the same for the others. “I did something similar in Herringbone as a job during my first year, but I dried manufactured paper.”
“Is that why my skin feels like parchment?” He showed his dry skin to Whit.
“I have some lotion,” Yetti said. “We all shall have to use some, but it will be better doing that than walking through the inn in dripping clothes.”
After getting everyone dry, including himself, Whit followed the others to their villas. When he was in sight of the main building, he noticed a carriage pulled up at the front of the inn. He was sure it matched the conveyances of Deechie’s group. By the time he reached the carriage it was gone.
Gambol stood at Whit’s door. “The pot is gone along with the drawing,” the professor said.
“So that was a magic college coach,” Whit said. “By the time I reached the main building it was gone.”
“And our bait along with it.” Gambol grinned. “I’ve never enjoyed a swim during and after like this one.” He shook his head. “Such fools!”
Whit nodded. “I don’t know what will happen, but I can’t wait to find out.”
Jonny laughed when he stopped by before leaving. “I’d like to be there when they show their ancient artifact to King Quiller,” he said. “There must be a million pots with that same shape in Perisia.” He laughed again and shook his head. “I will see you again in Garri. I suggest you enter Garri from the southern gate. There are fewer complications.”
“I believe I’ll take your advice,” Whit said.
Jonny walked through the villas toward the stable and disappeared around a corner. He still didn’t know what to make of the man. He didn’t seem like a hardened revolutionary at all, and from his behavior during their trip to Willet’s Bay, it didn’t seem odd that he would be funding a medical clinic in a poorer section of Garri. Whit wondered how Ritta perceived Jonny Evia.
~
“Have we done what we’ve needed to?” Razz said to Whit, who was washing dishes after another Gambol-cooked dinner.
“Probably,” Whit said. “We’ve seen the ruin and gave our magic college friends a bogus part. I’ve also played around in the ocean.”
“Then let’s return to Garri. I’m a little tired of our own cooking,” Razz said.
“We can go tomorrow, then. I want to visit the shrine one more time and poke around. There is an easy connection to a different road back to Garri,” Whit said. “Are the others in favor?”
“I’ll find out.” Razz left Whit to his chores and returned soon after. “Some are more enthusiastic than others, but everyone is willing to leave.”
“Then I’ll settle with the front desk.”
Razz smiled. “You won’t send Yetti?”
“No,” Whit said. “We don’t have to cater to their bias, do we?”
“We did until it was time to go,” Razz said.
Whit smiled. He had been caught out in his bravado. “It’s time to go, isn’t it?”
After finishing up, Whit walked over to the main building.
“We will be leaving tomorrow morning,” Whit said.
The female pixie at the front desk was different from the one who “greeted” Whit when they arrived. “It’s a shame you didn’t try out our dining room,” the woman said. “We take pride in what we cook.”
Whit turned his head. “You mean we were welcome in the dining room?”
“Of course. The guests are thrilled to see foreigners,” she said.
“But the pixie who checked us in told me we were not permitted to eat with the pixies.”
“Grutto,” the woman said with a touch of anger. “He doesn’t like foreign folk. He wrote the note that you insisted on cooking your own meals. I hope your stay was enjoyable otherwise.”
“It was. We can have breakfast tomorrow, then?”
The pixie giggled. “Of course!”
Whit tramped back to the villas and assembled the team. “We can stay, if you’d like, now that I know we can eat in the dining room,” Whit said.
Everyone had made the decision to leave, but no tears were shed about not having to cook breakfast in the morning.
Whit walked back to his villa and made a note of the name “Grutto.” He would suggest the front desk man be reassigned to the stables.
The pixie woman was right about the dining room. The breakfasts served were as good as Whit had eaten on their trip and the withering glares from the pixie customers never appeared. They secured all their belongings and traveled south along the bay road to the crossroads that took them to the ruin.
Whit was surprised to see someone working on the site.
“Are you taking the stone?” Whit asked.
The two pixie workers looked shocked. “Not on a holy site,” one of them said.
“Holy to some,” the other muttered.
“We have been commissioned to reconstruct the shrine with the old stone, but we will need to bring in some more to make a tiny roadside chapel. An anonymous benefactor is funding the building, Varetta bless him or her,” the first worker said. “Don’t be disappointed since there wasn’t much left of the old shrine.”
Whit smiled and gave the workers a tip. “Do a good job. I’m sure Saint Varetta will be pleased.”
The reluctant worker took the money and nodded his head. “I suppose the old lady still works a minor miracle or two. I didn’t expect any work for a while. Got kids to feed.”
Whit gave them both a bit more and left the two men patting each other on the back for their good fortune. It felt good to help Saint Varetta in a small way, he thought. He hoped Jonny had picked these two pixie men for their circumstances as well as their construction skills.
The road back to Garri was hillier than the one they took on the way to the inn. It headed north but with an easterly drift. There was less tilled land and more pasture, but it still had that haphazard feel that Whit now recognized as a pixie characteristic.
They spent the night in a crossroads town. There were taller hills to the east and the innkeeper claimed there was mining done in that direction, hence the industry that helped support the town. The food was equal to Gambol’s efforts, but Whit wished they would have known about the pleasure inn dining room when they arrived. He looked forward to their inn in Garri. The rooms weren’t quite as nice, but the food was much better than Gambol’s cooking. Whit almost missed the place.
Without scout games to hold them back, like their stay in Hammer Town, the trip back was much quicker, and when they rolled into Garri after a quick dinner in a village inn a few hours earlier, Whit was glad they had their vacation and glad they were back.
“We’d like our rooms,” Whit said.
The innkeeper nodded and handed out the keys. “We kept your rooms unoccupied. They should be fresh and clean for you.” The man clapped his hands, and a young pixie lad ran to the counter. The innkeeper pulled an envelope from underneath the counter and handed it to the boy. “Take this to Master Pin. The address is on the front.” The innkeeper turned to Whit. “He wanted to be notified as soon as you returned.”
Everyone went to their rooms once Whit distributed the keys. Whit sat in a comfortable chair and stared at the opposite wall. The vacation was a diversion, but he felt good about every aspect of it. Perhaps the visit to Willet’s Bay would have been better if someone had directed them to a real Eye artifact but fooling the magic college team was close enough to making the trip satisfying.
Now that they had returned, it was time to visit King Quiller again. If they couldn’t come an agreement, Whit would ask his team to become smugglers. He didn’t want it to come to that, but they had already
spent a lot more time in Perisia than he had planned.
Chapter Twenty-Two
~
P in waited until breakfast before showing up. Whit hoped that was better than having the pixie pound on his door in the middle of the night because something had gone terribly wrong while they had been away.
“Your vacation was successful?” Pin asked.
“Definitely memorable. We didn’t have any objectives other than making the trip a diversion, but we accomplished a few things,” Whit said.
Gambol nodded. He sat with Pin and Whit at their own table. Whit presented most of the story, but Gambol contributed when the gnome thought it was appropriate.
“It looks like you’ve seen all sides of how pixies live,” Pin said. “Some good and some less good, I would say.”
“So far, it’s like everywhere else,” Whit said. “I thought pixies were carefree and friendly, with an occasional lapse, but…” he shook his head and related the differences between the front desk clerks at the pleasure inn that Gambol had missed.
“And the shrine? There was no indication of relics?”
“We weren’t about to comb through a pile of stone, but,” Whit shook his head, “I couldn’t imagine anyone hiding anything there. The only part we discovered was the old pot at the dunes, and the magic college’s team stole it.”
Pin laughed. “Now that I know what you’ve done, I haven’t been idle. Word came back from Hammer Town that you participated in the between-battle events. Believe it or not, but that excited King Quiller. He is eager to talk to you and Razz.”
“About playing scout?”
Pin nodded. “Razz was a professional scout player, and you were nearly so. You can play a little scout for the king’s team and earn your permission to remove what artifacts you find.”
“Really?” Whit asked.
Pin smiled and nodded. “Better than bribery. Not that you could bribe a king with money. Help him out, and he’ll help you.”
“Jonny Evia’s report won’t hurt,” Pin said. “If he says the same things you do.”
“Did you know he was working for the king?”
Pin frowned. “He didn’t tell you that, did he?”
“He didn’t deny it,” Whit said.
“Then assume he doesn’t. I don’t know what he is. He could simply be an informant playing his own game. That might be why the king hasn’t moved in on Ritta or his thugs at his pub,” Pin said. “King Quiller would like an audience this morning. I know it is short notice, but there is a national tournament starting today.”
“We can’t transform the team,” Whit said.
Pin smiled. “You just might transform this one. You better change your clothes. Let’s bring Razz along. I’ll wait.”
In less than a quarter-hour, Razz and Whit joined Pin for a walk to the palace. He didn’t stay behind this time, but went into the royal part of the palace, and they were taken to a private audience chamber that Whit hadn’t yet experienced. It was for very informal conferences, and King Quiller told all three to sit. He didn’t sit on a throne, but on the same overstuffed chairs as the others.
Pin nodded to the king, who began the conversation. “I heard a report on your exploits in Hammer Town,” the king began. “You almost won two events.”
“I understand I won one, but I couldn’t get to the end of the other,” Whit said.
“No matter. No matter,” the king said. “I want both of you to play on my sponsored team for the next three days. It is for a national tournament, and we always get thrashed by the competition. If you’d like some help from me, as we discussed before, I’d like a little help from you. I understand you were both professional scout players in Herringbone.”
“Razz was the professional. I played for the University of Herringbone team. If nothing else, we can provide some size for your team,” Whit said.
“I’d like you to evaluate the coaching staff too. I have no way to do that on my own, but I need someone to tell me that I need some change there too. You can be my spy,” King Quiller said with a laugh. “I’m joking, in my own way.”
“I understand,” Whit said. “Is your team playing today or preparing?”
King Quiller raised his eyebrows. “I don’t really know. All I know is that they are practicing behind the palace on a scout pitch I’ve put on my lawn.” He looked at Pin. “You can take them there?”
Pin bowed in his seat. “I can do that.”
The king stood. “I don’t want to delay your practice time. Piesson Nistia can arrange when we meet again.”
They left the room through the door leading to the corridor as the king exited through a door built into the woodwork.
“What do you need to play?”
“We’ll just get these clothes dirty,” Razz said. “I’m guessing the team is pretty putrid.”
Pin nodded. “That’s what the king gets for appointing friends as coaches. It looks like he’s caught on if he wants you to evaluate them. King Quiller is embarrassed by the team’s performance, but up to now, he’s been reticent to assert himself.”
“That was plain enough,” Whit said.
Pin took them out a side door and through a formal garden to the back of the palace. A huge field was out the back. There were ornamental copses and fountains and, toward the back, a large grassy area. Whit could see pixies talking to one another. He had expected warmups or something, but they just stirred around.
“You can get there from here. I’ll tell Gambol what happened.” Rather than walk away, Pin took flight and flittered back toward the palace, flying like any other pixie in a mildly erratic fashion.
“If he can fly, so can we,” Whit said.
Razz and he took off and flew the nearly quarter mile to the scout pitch. They landed close to the players, who lounged around.
“Where is the coach?” Whit asked.
“You are the elves from Ayce?”
“Herringbone, to be precise,” Whit said.
His correction was acknowledged by grunts.
Another player piped up from lying on his back on the ground with his eyes covered by his arm. “The coaches won’t show up until the afternoon matches.”
“No coach? What do you do to practice?” Razz asked.
“I’m practicing,” the pixie player said from the grass. “I practice in my mind.”
A few of the players in earshot smiled.
“Then I’ll do some coaching,” Whit said. “I’m not going to disappoint King Quiller. Let’s introduce ourselves.”
“Let’s not,” another player said. “We never win.”
“Have you ever delivered a message?” Razz asked.
“Once or twice a battle. The other team takes pity on us. We are the royal scout team, after all.”
Whit did a count, and they were missing a few players. “Where are the others?”
“Others? Oh, we alternate matches. With you two, we drew lots, and two of us took the day off,” a player said.
Whit knew enough about pixies and the game of scout to know that teams didn’t operate this way. Pixies liked to compete, the ones he had played against, anyway. They liked to play tricks but made an effort to win. These players seemed to be freeloaders, if they were paid to be professionals.
“The king called me his spy,” Whit said. “I wouldn’t want to spy on all of you, but I will present King Quiller a report, so if you want to stay on the team, I suggest we have a bit of a practice.
The players gathered, but the pixies took their time. Finally, Whit gathered them together.
“If any of you can beat me in a race from home to home, I’ll let you coach yourselves.”
The pixies looked surprised. “Really?” one of them asked.
Whit nodded. He looked at Razz. “Everyone participates.”
Razz was taken aback but managed a smile and a nod. “We will start at that home tube.”
Whit pointed to the one farthest from them. He flew slowly, making sure he wasn’t the
only one in the air before heading to the tube.
Everyone lined up. “No funny business. Everyone flies unimpeded.” Whit had to wait for a few groans to finish. “When I lower my arm.”
The players had the good sense to watch Whit and took off when he lowered his arm. Razz was at a disadvantage since pixies were very good for short distances. Whit caught up with ease and passed them before they made it two-thirds down the field. He turned and watched them come in. Once he had passed them, a few of them slowed enough for Razz to catch up.
“Who are scouts and who are soldiers?” Whit asked.
All of them claimed they were scouts.
“What happens when a team’s scouts get past you?”
The players shrugged almost as one. “They score,” one of them said.
Whit looked into their eyes. He didn’t see the fire of athletes, but the dullness of laggards.
“I’m going to do some exercises. If you want to join in, please do. If you don’t…” Whit shrugged and walked in front of Razz where they began to do warmups with Razz leading.
Three of the seven players joined in, and the others walked away, talking among themselves. Whit didn’t care if they played or quit. They only took up space on the field. No wonder the royal scout team didn’t win. They didn’t have any competitive players. In fact, Whit guessed that the Red Bees, the worst team in Turpentine, would beat these lazy pixies.
“Where is the tournament being held?” Whit asked one of the exercisers.
“At the scout stadium,” a pixie said.
“I think we’ve warmed up enough for now. Do whatever else you do to practice. We will meet you just before game time at the stadium.”
By the time Whit and Razz flew to the stadium, they found they had been given the wrong time for their match in an eight-team tournament. They would have been late if they hadn’t checked. Razz asked about uniforms and were sent to the player’s quarters. Two packages waited for them with Whit’s name on both.
Whit opened the package to find a pixie-sized uniform.
