“So,” he panted, “you both claim you own her.”
“She was mine, first!” both of them howled, hurrying forward to calm their cow.
Metwinger straightened his robes and sat back down, wheezing heavily. Watching them fawn over the cow, he was struck with an idea. “Then you shall both have part of her,” he proclaimed, thinking his decision not only brilliant, but incredibly fair.
The two kender looked at him, puzzled. “You want us to cut her in half?” Digger finally managed.
“Oh!” the mayor looked startled. “I hadn’t thought of that solution. Hmmm—well, anyway, what I meant was that you must share her. You, Digger, will have her on odd days, and you, Wembly, shall have her on the even ones.”
“But her birthday is on an odd day!” protested Wembly.
“And All Cows Day is on an even day!” complained Digger.
“Well, then I’d say that makes you even,” said the mayor, with an apologetic smile at Digger. “Next!”
“Brilliant judgment,” whispered council member Arlan Brambletow, who secretly thought he would look nice in the velvet mayoral robes.
Mayor Metwinger beamed with pride at his own cleverness. Never before had such a brilliant and impartial mayor presided over Kendermore’s council, he told himself. Fairly bursting with self-importance, he waved forward the next case, the contented-looking kender, who began to state his complaint against the city.
“Well, it’s not really a complaint, Your Highness,” the kender began, clearly nervous now in the presence of the mayor.
Metwinger flushed with pleasure. “You may call me Your Honor. I’m not a king, you know. Not yet, anyway.” He chuckled modestly. “Continue with your story.”
“Well, you see, the city recently completed cobbling a new street near my home—extremely near my home.”
“Let me guess,” the mayor began, having heard such complaints before. “The construction crew was too noisy, too quiet, or too sloppy. Or perhaps your taxes were raised too much?”
The kender looked surprised. “Oh, no, none of those things. Well, maybe the taxes were a bit high.… But the workmen were most pleasant, considering that they built the street through the middle of my home.”
The mayor slumped back in his chair, suddenly bored. “So what’s your point?”
“Your Honor, I don’t think the street was supposed to go through my house,” he said. “At least no one mentioned it to me.”
The mayor sat forward. “The city is very busy, you know, and can’t be expected to contact just anyone about every little thing.” He sighed. “I suppose you expect the city to disrupt its plans and reroute the street?”
The kender looked alarmed. “Oh, no, Your Honor! I’ve never had so many friends! In, out, in, out—carriages from all over the world! What I’d really like is a permit to open an inn.”
The mayor shook his head sympathetically. “You’re in the wrong place, then. What you want is the Department of Inn Permit Issuing. Up the stairs, first room on the right—or is it left?” The mayor waved toward the door at the back, in the left corner of the room.
But the kender did not move. Instead he shook his head. “Oh, no, you’re wrong. I went there and they told me that you issue permits.”
“They said that?” the mayor squealed. “Well, what do they do, then?” He turned to the council members, who all shrugged, except for one.
“Aren’t they in charge of new streets?” Barlo Twackdinger, the bakerman council member, ventured helpfully.
Metwinger shrugged. “Well, if they say we do it, then I guess we do it. OK, you can have a permit. Next?”
While the kender with the permit danced happily out the door, the domestic case shuffled forward, and a balding, paunchy human slipped inside the room. Phineas Curick sat at the back of the chamber and tried to calm himself. It had taken him hours to reach this spot. He thought he knew where City Hall was, but somehow he’d got turned around and had to stop and ask for directions. Those directions had led him to the outer fringes of Kendermore—practically out of the whole region of Goodlund, he fumed.
But he was most perturbed, because his desperation had caused him to lose his own good sense. He knew better than to ask a kender for directions!
It also galled him that, in the end, he’d only found City Hall because he nearly ran into it. Head bent, mumbling in disgust as he marched back toward where he thought his shop was, he’d nearly smashed into the side of the building. Somebody had run a street right up to City Hall’s west wall! Dazed, he didn’t even realize where he was until a concerned kender, wearing a badge and a uniform that was so small its buttons were straining, scraped him up and brought him into the building for a drink of water.
“Who in Hades put a building in the middle of a street?” Phineas had growled.
“Oh, all roads lead to City Hall,” the kender guard had explained.
Phineas had shaken his head stupidly. “Never mind. Where do I find the prison?”
“Kendermore doesn’t have a prison—no point in it,” the guard said mildly. “Why, are you a prisoner?”
“No, I am not!” Phineas sputtered, more than a little aggravated. The human was sure Trapspringer had said he was a prisoner! Frowning, Phineas decided to take a different approach.
“If Kendermore had a prisoner, where would he be held?”
“Well, that depends …,” the kender said. “Say, you wouldn’t have any candy, would you?”
If it hadn’t been for the guard’s genuinely innocent expression, Phineas would have thought he was being asked for a bribe. In the end, it amounted to the same thing. “I’m not sure, let me look.” Phineas reached into his pocket and pulled out its contents: two steel pieces and a pocket knife. Sighing, he placed them in the guard’s outstretched palm anyway. “Sorry, no candy. Now, what does it depend on?”
“Huh?” the guard said, his attention riveted by the spring-action latch on Phineas’s knife. “Oh, where he’d be at depends on what he did and who he did it to. What’s his name?”
“I believe his name is Trapspringer Furrfoot, but I don’t know what he did to get thrown in prison.”
The kender looked at him. “You’re not sure where you’re going or who you’re going to see, and you don’t know what he did.”
Phineas felt stupid and annoyed at the same time. The only thing Trapspringer had said, other than that he was in prison, was that his nephew was going to marry the mayor’s daughter. Phineas brightened. “I think it may have something to do with the mayor.”
“Considering how little you know, you’re lucky I’m around to help you sort through this,” said the guard, puffing up his chest, straining the buttons to the bursting point. “Today is Audience Day, so Mayor—let’s see, it’s Metwinger this month, isn’t it? I’m not sure, since I’m just sitting in for my brother today. Our honored mayor is holding Audience on the third floor. If you hurry, perhaps you’ll be allowed to address him.” With that, the kender wandered back outside City Hall, Phineas’s knife in his small hands, Phineas’s coins jingling in his pocket.
Glowering at the guard’s retreating back, Phineas gulped down his water and rushed up the ever-narrowing circular stairs to the third floor. He searched every room there, growing more desperate with each, until he reached the last. There he found a kender cleaning woman, from the mop at her side and the overturned bucket upon which she sat, who seemed more intent on her game of marbles than tidying. She told him Audience was being held on the second floor, not the third. Sure enough, on the second floor Phineas found the council chamber where Audience was being held.
He was not sure how things proceeded, so he sat back to observe. There appeared to be a number of cases before him anyway, including a married couple who was presently stating their complaint.
“—So, I said, ‘these are my special rocks—my agates, my amethysts, and my very reddest rubies’—I collect them, you see—‘so don’t touch them,’ ” said the wife, a dower-looking kende
r whose age was difficult to guess, since her face was very wrinkled but her hands were smooth. “So what does he do?”
“He touched them,” the mayor supplied.
“Not only did he touch them, but he put them in his rock tumbler!” Her face was a mixture of outrage and astonishment.
“He put them in an ale flagon?” asked the mayor, perplexed.
“You know,” the husband said merrily, “everyone thinks that when I tell them I collect rock tumblers.” His age was no more discernible than his wife’s. His hair was dishwater brown and wisps poked out of his tightly stretched topknot, giving him a disheveled look. He had a slight, stubbly beard, unusual for kender.
The husband stepped up closer to the Bench of Authority, addressing the mayor directly. “Did you realize that the history of the rare gnome rock tumbler—a drum-shaped, crank-driven device used to reduce stones to sand—is long and very interesting? No, I’m sure you didn’t. In fact, many experts believe that throughout the ages, rock tumblers have played a large part in the development of the world as we know it. None of us might be alive if there weren’t rock tumblers! Many people don’t know that, but—”
“I know it!” the wife complained, clapping her hands to her ears. “It’s all I ever hear, especially after he pulverizes my prettiest rocks!”
The man turned to his wife. “It wasn’t my fault that your rocks got tumbled,” he said defensively. “You left them sitting out where just anyone could take them, so I put them in my tumbler for safe keeping. Only I forgot they were in there the next time I tumbled some rocks.”
“Out where just anyone could find them? They were locked up in two boxes and hidden under a loose floorboard before the fire!” she cried, giving his arm a vicious punch.
“Exactly!” he exclaimed, rubbing his arm and pulling away. “Everyone knows to look under floorboards! Nobody would think to look for gems in a rock tumbler! Don’t you agree, Mayor?”
“Huh? What?” Metwinger asked, looking up guiltily from under the table. He’d found their argument tedious and had turned his attention to the shiny buckles on councilman Barlow Twackdinger’s boots. “Oh, yes. It’s obvious to me that one of you must develop another hobby. Perhaps rock gathering isn’t the wisest hobby for a woman whose husband collects rock tumblers.”
The mayor was about to suggest a specific solution when, to his surprise, the couple proclaimed in unison, “A brilliant idea!” Hand-in-hand they walked through the door at the rear of the chamber, though their voices could be heard rising even as they descended the stairs.
“Now, honey, you should be the one to find a new hobby,” the wife could be heard saying brightly. “At least my gems aren’t worthless!”
“Worthless, dear! Why, rock tumblers are the most valuable investment—”
But the council was on to other business. Phineas looked up as a kender burst through the door, pushing a wheelbarrow full of bricks, his brow sweating. The kender began to explain how his neighbor had been tossing the bricks from his window and into the kender’s own house one story down. It seemed he didn’t mind, since he could use the bricks. However, they had not stopped at his home, but had fallen through his apparently thin floor to the house below his, and he was having a difficult time getting them back from the neighbor below. Phineas let his chin drop onto his chest, and he promptly fell asleep.
“Hey, where are my boots?” Barlo Twackdinger demanded suddenly. He glared down his red-veined, flour-dusted nose at the mayor seated to his right on the Bench of Authority.
“Oh,” mumbled Mayor Metwinger, surprised to find the thick, furred boots in one of his many pockets. “You must have put your feet in my vest, and somehow your boots fell off.” He handed them over, letting his fingers linger on the shiny buckles near the plush toes. “They’re very nice, even with the flour on them.”
“They ought to be,” said council member Windorf Wright, snatching them from Barlo’s expectant hands. “They’re mine!” claimed the leader of Kendermore’s farmer’s union. Stockier than the average kender, his bright red vest looked too tight to be comfortable. His head was shaved right up to his thinning topknot to show his delicately pointed ears to their best advantage.
“Not until I get those chickens and turnips you promised me for these boots!” said Feldon Cobblehammer, a blue blur as he leaped across the meeting table to pluck the coveted boots from Windorf’s hands.
A scuffle broke out on the table, and soon three pairs of boots were flying. Scrabbling happily among the throng, the mayor found some pointy animal teeth, six-sided, wooden gaming dice that looked just like a set he’d been missing, and some tasty-looking sweets. He barely had them in his pocket before someone grabbed him by the topknot and conked him soundly on the head with his own gavel. Metwinger sank to the floor behind the Bench of Authority.
Phineas awoke with a startled snort. Looking around quickly, he realized that he was the only one in the room not involved in the brawl, which was rolling like a huge, living ball, toward the door—and his chair! Standing, he dove to his left, away from the door, and landed on his stomach between the last two rows of chairs—a scant distance from the precipice of the open wall.
Propping himself on his elbows, he looked behind him toward the door. The chair he had occupied was smashed into firewood in the wake of the melee. Bottle-necked by the door, the mass of bodies tumbled apart, arms and legs flailing to the accompaniment of savage, joyous shouting. Leaping to their feet in unison, the constituents of the living ball threw the door open and dashed out into the hallway to resume the riot.
Alone in the chamber, Phineas stood slowly and tried to shake away the fuzziness inside his head. He’d been led a merry chase, then nearly crushed by kender, and for what? Nothing! He still had no idea where Trapspringer might be!
“I say, what a splendid Audience Day!” a voice said weakly from behind the Bench of Authority. A small hand grasped the edge of the bench and pulled up the owner of the voice. Phineas recognized the disheveled head of Mayor Metwinger, his topknot completely undone. “Oh, hello!” he said, spotting Phineas at the rear of the room.
“Hello, Your Honor” the human said politely. “You mean the fight wasn’t so very unusual?” His tone was incredulous.
“Oh, it certainly was. The brawl usually starts after the second or third case,” the mayor responded, his voice breathy as he smoothed his tangled hair. His head was throbbing, and he didn’t feel quite right. “The last thing I remember is getting thumped on the noggin with my own gavel.” Drawing himself up, Mayor Meldon Metwinger brushed off his sleeves and noticed that his purple mayoral robe had somehow been exchanged with a bright blue cape that looked just like one Feldon Cobblehammer had worn at the start of the Audience. Straightening the collar, the mayor decided the color looked very nice on him.
Phineas hurried forward to take advantage of this unexpected turn of luck. “Your Honor, I understand you might know the whereabouts of a, uh—” he treaded lightly, in case the mayor was sensitive on the subject—“a person named Trapspringer Furrfoot.”
“Trapspringer, Trapspringer,” the mayor muttered. “I know quite a number of Trapspringers. Can you describe him?”
Phineas’s eyebrows puckered as he concentrated. It had been dim during much of his talk with the eccentric kender. “Urn, he wears a topknot, his face is very wrinkled, I guess, and he’s short.” Which describes every kender ever born, Phineas realized with dismay. “I believe he collects rare bones,” he added desperately.
“Oh, that Trapspringer!” the mayor said cheerfully. “Why didn’t you say so? He’s my dear friend and soon-to-be in-law! His nephew is birthmated to my daughter Damaris, you know. Yes, I know where he is. I had to put him in prison.” Only Metwinger didn’t sound the least bit concerned or remorseful.
“You put your daughter’s future uncle in prison?” Phineas asked the question despite the little voice in his head that told him he probably wouldn’t understand the answer anyway. “What did he do?�
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“Oh, he didn’t do anything,” Metwinger said lightly. “His nephew is late for the wedding, so we sent a bounty hunter after him—standard operating procedure concerning wayward bridegrooms, actually. We had to do something to ensure that he would return, so we locked up his favorite uncle. Now, if you don’t mind, I think I have a concussion.” The mayor looked toward the door and swayed unsteadily.
“I’m sorry to bother you with this, Your Honor,” Phineas said quickly, blocking his path. “But there’s a small matter of a debt which is owed me.”
The mayor looked up, his eyes glassy. “If I have a bill, then I should pay it.” He reached into his robes. “How much—”
“Not you, Your Honor,” Phineas said, willing himself to remain calm. “Trapspringer Furrfoot. If I could just speak with him, I’m sure we could clear the matter up.”
“He’s not here,” the mayor said, grabbing the edge of the table as the room began to swim. What pretty colors! he thought.
“Yes, I know that, Your Honor,” Phineas said with forced patience. “Where is he being held?”
“Prison, dear,” the mayor mumbled incoherently, crawling onto the table. “At the palace. We’re having a party tonight. Wear your blue dress to match my new cape.…” Laying his cheek on the cool wood, he closed his eyes.
“Thank you, Your Honor,” Phineas breathed in relief. He was about to dash out the door when he felt a twinge of guilt. He looked at the snoozing mayor—could he leave him like this? He was a doctor, after all—well, sort of. Phineas didn’t think Metwinger would die; at worst, the mayor’s head would feel like a pumpkin when he woke up. Still …
Just then, several giggling kender padded through the door; Phineas recognized them as council members who’d been seated with the mayor. Thinking fast, he bolted by them and shouted, “There’s been a terrible accident! The mayor struck his head. Keep an eye on him while I get help!”
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