by Kevin Hearne
And he worried about what to do regarding corruption in general: how to protect his people from hostage situations like this, how to weed out the corrupt already in power throughout the kingdom, how to prevent more innocent people from being corrupted. He was having, he thought, a proper corruption conniption.
The weeding bit was going to be tough. Back when his pooboy, Worstley, used to pull weeds around the farm, it looked pretty easy to Gustave, so long as you had hands. It was work, to be sure, but there was no possibility that the weeds would win and slay the pooboy, no matter how weak and ineffective were his noodle arms. But Gustave supposed corruption, like weeds, would keep coming back and that getting rid of it would be a constant chore, as weeding was.
He left his cabin to see if Grinda was awake and willing to talk about it. The former, but not the latter, turned out to be true.
“Dealing with corruption is an excellent conversation for us to have and we should have it, but not right now. I need to concentrate,” she said.
“So what are you working on?” he asked. Grinda sat on the edge of her bed, waving her wand and muttering at two humanoid shapes rising out of piles of sand that had come from who knew where. Then he realized he wouldn’t be surprised if Grinda had stocked her cabin with sandbags. She paused to answer him.
“Two sand golems. I’m going to use them to infiltrate the dungeon and the refugee center to find Ralphee. Can we talk later?”
“Of course.”
Gustave retired to his room and actually caught some sleep after that, able to rest knowing that Grinda had a plan—a plan she’d already set in motion by the time he woke in midmorning and was served his oatmeal and apples. His gnomeric oatmeal chef, thank goodness, was not a spy.
“The golems will enter from the eastern gate and look for Ralphee,” Grinda said once he’d emerged from his cabin and they were sitting on the main deck, looking down into the wretched city of Bruding. “Meanwhile, we will sit outside this western gate and never enter the city walls, demanding that Lord Ergot come visit us on our centipod.”
“Why is that?”
“We will not place ourselves in his power. He has already demonstrated that he’s willing to take a hostage to spy on you. He’s dancing on the precipice of treason as it is; he killed my nephew Bestley because he sensed a potential rival, and he has many, many more swords at his command than we do right now. And if we stay outside the walls, he will feel safe, believing we won’t find out what he’s up to.”
“Wouldn’t he be right about that?” Gustave asked. “How can we find out what he’s up to if we’re out here? I’m worried about the gnomes.”
“We’re going to use your musicians and yodelers to have a look around the city. I’ve already sent most of them in, along with the golems. And we’re also going to employ your spy network.”
“I have a spy network?”
“You have the beginnings of one. Your postale service.” She signaled to one of the guards. “Bring the mail carrier here, please.” The guard departed and Gustave gaped at her.
“You intercepted the mail? Are you insane? That’s an offense against the crown!”
“You are the crown. The postale workers all work for you.”
“Oh. Yeah.”
A stocky woman with a carisak slung around her torso appeared, wearing the uniform of the Pellican Postale Service and finger gloves. She was a Qul person, with warm-brown skin and dark hair falling to her shoulders, a generous nose, and large brown eyes. One hand held a sheaf of letters.
Grinda gestured to her and made an introduction. “King Gustave, this is Qandy Liffer, a carrier in the service.”
Qandy raised a hand to her heart and bowed her head. “King Gustave, it’s an honor. Thank you for making the lives of all postale workers better. We’ll never forget it. You have our stamp of approval.” She handed him a stamp, which he accepted and stuck to his jerkin.
“The honor’s mine. Thank you for doing your job so well, Qandy. I really appreciate all the advertisements for pea-za.”
Grinda cleared her throat gently, in that way she had of suggesting that pea-za wasn’t the current problem. “Tell me, Qandy, do you deliver anywhere else besides Borix? The Skyr, perhaps?”
“Oh, yes. I make several trips to the Skyr each month, mostly to Koloka. Gnomeric carriers take over from there and I bring back whatever’s addressed to Borix.”
Gustave broke in, his chin suavely resting on his fist. “Interesting. When was the last time you were in the Skyr?”
“Last week, sir.”
“See anything unusual on your trip?”
“Yes, sir. Lots of gnomes on the road to Borix.”
“Any idea why that was happening?”
“They said it was halflings, sir, driving them out of their homes. Firebombs and whatnot. Lots of smoke clinging to their clothes.”
“That’s not good for their lungs!”
“No, sir.”
Gustave nodded wisely. “Tell me what else you saw.”
“Well, there certainly were fires in Koloka when I got there. Plenty of smoke in the air. And there were halflings riding around on alpacas. They suggested the smoke was from a booming barbecue business hatched by the gnomes. But I didn’t personally see them do anything to gnomes, sir, and they left me alone. I was able to complete my run as usual, although I never found anyone selling brisket.”
“Thank you. I believe my chamberlain has some questions for you, if you wouldn’t mind.”
“Certainly, but I have to give these to you, sir.” She held out the sheaf of letters.
“Oh, for me?” Gustave took them.
“No, sir, these are for Lord Ergot. Your chamberlain asked me to pull them out of my bag and I did, but the only people I can deliver them to are Lord Ergot and yourself.”
Gustave shuffled through the envelopes and spied a wee yellow one addressed to Lord Ergot, which he pulled out. There was no return address, but this was probably the last letter sent from Hurlga at Dower. It had routed through Tennebruss and they had just beaten the mail. He kept it and returned the rest, breaking the seal on the envelope. The brief note inside read:
Still on the road to Tenebruss. Please don’t hurt Ralphee, sir.
—H
Written proof of espionage and the hostage situation Hurlga described. He showed it to Grinda and she grunted before addressing Qandy.
“Does Lord Ergot send any letters into the Skyr?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Can you remember to whom any of those letters were addressed?”
The postale carrier nodded. “He often wrote to someone named Marquant Dique in Bigly-Wicke, as well as others in that city. It appeared they had a regular correspondence, because whenever I picked up in Koloka, he’d get plenty of letters written on halfling stationery.”
“How do you know it was halfling stationery?”
Qandy looked down at her fingertips and then splayed her hand in front of them, her voice proud. “These fingers have delivered a whole lot of mail, and papermaking isn’t the same wherever you go. I can tell by touch.” She lowered her hand and explained. “Halfling-made paper is rougher, with a high rag content. The ink bleeds and soaks in. Gnomeric paper is very fine, just as good as the papers you find in Qul and Teabring. It takes the ink well and is pleasant to handle. Lord Ergot also gets letters on gnomeric stationery, but the people he writes back to are almost always halflings.”
“Thank you, Qandy,” Grinda said. “We have delayed you long enough. Resume your route as usual, but please keep this visit a secret. It simply did not happen and you are delivering all the letters you’ve been given. You may rely on us not to reveal that we’ve taken anything from you.”
“I appreciate your time and service very much, Qandy,” Gustave added. “Is there anything the crown can do for you?”<
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Her large eyes opened fully, surprised to be asked. “I…am not sure. For myself, no. But perhaps for my relatives and so many people in the south: A campaign against the llamataurs to make mail and trade routes safe from Qul to Teabring? Right now everything has to go through the dank and smelly part of Kolon, and it is a dirty business. And even farther south, the seas are beleaguered by—”
“Pirates?” he asked excitedly.
She shook her head. “Oh, no. The pirates are fine. It’s the POPO that’s the problem.”
“The Pellican Ocean Patrol Office,” Grinda supplied. “The private merchant police force.”
Qandy nodded. “We lose tons of mail to the POPO, sir. They do not respect your postale service one bit, and they even capture mail flamingos to sell for meat.”
Gustave raised his eyebrows. “That’s a serious problem. They both are. We’ll look into it.”
She thanked him and he smiled at her in the benevolent way that Hurlga had painstakingly taught him in front of a mirror. Smiling wasn’t a thing that goats really did, so he had needed the training. He was fairly certain he had mastered it to the point that other humans thought the expression looked natural and not creepy.
His chamberlain led Qandy away and Gustave slunk into his comfy chair to consider: What were the odds that a correspondence with a lot of halflings in Bigly-Wicke, seat of the mob’s power, was a completely innocent thing during a time when halflings were driving gnomes from their homes? Maybe Lord Ergot was telling them to cut it out, as in: Hey, you rascals! You cute little scalawags! Stop with the firebombs, will you? I’m up to my knees in gnomes here!
But that didn’t match up with Ergot sending letters to Gustave saying that everything was fine or taking Ralphee as a hostage to leverage Hurlga. No, Lord Ergot was not only up to something, he was up to something with the Dastardly Rogues. And that was not only a terrible alliance for the gnomes in the Skyr, it was terrible for Pell as a whole.
When Grinda returned from seeing the letter carrier off and her eyes met Gustave’s, they said it to each other at the same time: “He’s a threat to the kingdom.”
And then Gustave said, “Jinx, you buy me a Qoka-Qola,” because he’d heard a child say it recently and thought it quite urbane.
Grinda pointed to his Traveling Icebox, although something about her manner suggested she had far-more-pressing things on her mind. “You know Qoke gives you gas. As for threats to the kingdom, you may not be familiar with the name Marquant Dique, but I am. He’s the leader of the Dastardly Rogues Under Bigly-Wicke.”
Gustave shook his head and said, “It doesn’t look good. I’m glad we didn’t go into the city. That was a good call. I’m not sure we would have come out again.”
Grinda opened her mouth to respond but suddenly flinched and clutched her head with both hands. Gustave worried that she might be having some kind of episode. “Grinda? Are you well?”
“Yes, yes—no.” Grinda blinked and let her hands fall back to her sides. “We have to move around to the east side of the city. The sand golems have found Ralphee in the dungeons and freed him.”
“That’s great!”
“They are being pursued by many armed men. They’re taking fire.”
“You mean they’re on fire?”
“No, I mean soldiers are firing crossbows into them. That’s what I felt and saw in my head. So far they’re protecting Ralphee, but that’s only so long as they can keep their shape.”
Gustave’s goatly instincts told him that this would be the perfect moment to drop a load of pellets out his backside, but his training with Hurlga had taught him that humans tended to say it rather than do it. “Oh, poo. Let’s get over there.”
“I need to focus on the golems getting Ralphee out safely. Can you think of everything else and do it, please?”
“Yes,” Gustave said, though he didn’t know if he really could. Usually he and Grinda decided things as a team and he liked that, because she always had some small tweak to add or a detail to consider that he hadn’t thought of. He was afraid that he’d fail to think of something a human would, while remembering something entirely goaty, like where to find good socks.
The first thing to worry about was the rest of his party now circulating throughout the city, looking for information. There’d be no way to get those humans back to the centipod in time. No way to even inform them all this was happening—unless he sent one more in.
Gustave strode to a lutist garbed in colorful tights and curly-toed shoes, the only entertainer left behind on the ship, in case the king required luting, and seeing the king coming for him, he scrambled to get his instrument in position for a festive melody.
“Never mind that. I need you for something else.” Gustave plucked a purse of what Grinda called “emergency gold” from his belt and handed it to the lutist. He figured this was an emergency. “What’s your name?”
“They call me Yeasty John, sir.”
“Yeasty John, something’s come up and we have to leave right away, but we have people in the city—your fellow musicians and yodelers. I want you to go in and find them, join them, and then settle on an inn or someplace that will accept mail in your name. Write to me in the capital from there. We will come back for you all—you have my word—but we need to know where to find you. Until then, I need you all to find employment as you can in the city and do not reveal, under any circumstances, that you work for me. That would be very dangerous. Lord Ergot is now an enemy of the crown and you’ll be in a hostile city.”
Yeasty John gulped. “Oh.”
“Go now. Be careful. We’ll see each other again in Songlen and have some proper music then, all right?”
“A-all right,” the lutist said, trembling in his tights and his eyes as wide as boiled eggs.
“My thanks. Courage, man.” Gustave lightly clapped him on the shoulder twice. Hurlga had taught him that men did that to indicate support for their fellows and trust in their ability to succeed. He thought it was weird and wasn’t sure he did it correctly, but Yeasty John appeared mildly heartened. “You’ll be richly rewarded, if you do as I say. Just keep your wits and be a musician. You can do that very well.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Excellent.” Gustave gave him a gentle push and the musician picked up a small sack of belongings and slung it over his shoulder, clutching his lute in the other hand as he took the steps down from the centipod’s deck to the cold earth surrounding Bruding.
As soon as the lutist was safely away, Gustave glanced over to Grinda, who was sitting down with her head in her hands, her eyes closed in concentration. He ordered the automaatti pilot to move around to the eastern gate as quickly as possible while staying out of range of city defenses the entire way. “Does this vehicle have its own defenses?” he asked the metal man.
“Yes, sir. Keep it safe and your bits won’t chafe! We can encase the entire length and girth of the centipod in a prophylactic sheath. We also have several pods of antipersonnel and anticavalry automaatti that we can deploy.”
“What do you mean by anticavalry? What do they target? The riders or what they’re riding?”
“Either or both.”
“Okay. Let’s put on the prophylactic now and program the automaatti to target only the riders. No reason for the innocent steeds to get hurt here.”
The pilot pressed some buttons on the conn tower and the centipod began to move as a clacking metal curtain descended from the roof to fasten onto the waist-high guardrail. Portions of the curtain could be slid open to view the outside while giving only a minimal target to anyone attempting to shoot at them. Gustave pulled the nearest curtain to the left and watched as the city’s gray walls slunk past. What would Argabella call those looming walls? Loomful. Gloomful. Grimful, perhaps. Whatever they were, Gustave didn’t approve.
His stomach churned, an unfortunate phy
sical indicator of stress that he’d never suffered as a goat. They were moving far faster than they had thus far on their journey, but it still seemed too slow when he wanted to be there now for Ralphee. Each of his citizens was important and deserved not to get shot full of arrows or exploded by rogue halflings.
Grinda gasped behind him and Gustave whirled around. “What is it?”
“I lost a golem at the gate. But the remaining golem and Ralphee are out, running due east.”
“Poo and bonus poo,” Gustave said. He stalked over to the steersman. “Are we moving at top speed?”
“Yes, sir.”
It wasn’t fast enough. They should be there already. Hurlga would never forgive him if Ralphee died.
Gustave returned to the view slot and finally saw the corner of the Grimful Wall and, beyond it, sodden farmlands on either side of a road leading to the Skyr. Running down that road toward the gnomelands was a solidly built young man and something huge and flailing behind him, which Gustave at first thought to be a monster that wanted to eat the boy; then he realized it was Grinda’s sand golem, trying to protect him. Uniformed city watchmen were firing arrows at the retreating pair, and the golem was taking the bolts in the back, allowing Ralphee to run on, uninjured.
“Cut through the farms!” Gustave said, realizing after he spoke that they had been tromping through turnip fields all along; the city needed plenty of agriculture to support it. Now that he had someone else’s speed to compare it to, he saw that they were in fact moving quite fast. “We need to pick up that man running along the road. Do you see him?”
“My sensors recognize the warmth of human terror,” the automaatti pilot replied, which was not the same thing but good enough. The centipod turned northeast.
“Great. Get us in front of him—no! Right behind him. We’ll call him back to get on the centipod while we take fire.”
He stole a glance at Grinda and saw her nod at this, though she did not open her eyes or say anything.
As the centipod gobbled up ground beneath them, Gustave saw that Ralphee was reaching the limit of bowshot range, and that was good—the sand golem took one last bolt and disintegrated. Grinda cursed softly and came to stand next to him, opening her own slot to see through. Two other bolts narrowly missed Ralphee, but no others came flying after him. The city watch had other plans.
