Sword and Sorceress XXVII

by Unknown

  Lionel slapped the wall he was leaning against. “I never liked how she treated poor Lorn, but, well, I suppose I thought all magi spoke to their familiars that way.”

  “Not all,” Hesper said, her gaze still on Cluny’s, and Cluny felt her ears heat up.

  The princess leaped to her feet. “But Bea must’ve known Lionel and I were just out taking the lovely night air!”

  “My guess?” Cluny couldn’t keep the anger out of her voice. “She’ll keep saying that she didn’t know, that she was fighting Hesper in honest fear for Your Highness’s life. But it was her spell that unlocked the stable doors, and the only reason to do that would be so the horses could trample Lady Hesper and cover up the stab wounds.”

  “Alas.” Shtasith puffed black smoke. “Such plans needn’t be clever to be effective.”

  “Yeah.” Crocker sounded angry, too. “And when it’s the word of Her Highness’s personal sorceress against a dead and crazy familiar, who’s gonna look too close?”

  A knock at the door, and the guard captain leaned in. “Lord and Lady Crocker, Your Highness.”

  They swept through, the distress on Lady Crocker’s face entirely genuine. “Oh, Lady Hesper! I can’t begin to tell you how terrible I feel that this should happen to you here! If there’s anything my veterinarians can do—”

  Shtasith hissed, but Hesper panted a laugh. “Thank you, Lady Crocker, but we unicorns boast so often of our healing prowess, I’d like to find out if it’s true or not. Still, once I’m up and about, I’d be honored if I could visit your stables and thank Wanax and my other cousins for their help.”

  Princess Alison shook her head. “Rest assured, Lady Hesper, than Beatrice will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. And while I will support your proposal, there is a position for a sorceress that’s just opened up on my staff....”

  “Thank you, Your Highness.” A glint came into Hesper’s eye. “But might I suggest a sophomore of our mutual acquaintance? If you’re still looking in three years, that is.”

  Lady Crocker gave a gasp and turned to her husband. “Oh, Lawrence! How wonderful! Both our sons in the royal court!”

  “Mom?” Crocker’s magic went hot around her. “I’m not—”

  Another hiss from Shtasith, but Crocker finished with: “Not sure that’s the sort of thing I’d be interested in.”

  “What?” Lady Crocker’s face became more pinched. “Don’t be ridiculous, Terrence! Of course you’ll—!”

  “No.” He pointed a shaking finger at her. “When I didn’t have any talents at all, you didn’t care about me. And now that I do have some talents, I’m finding I don’t care about you.”

  “Terrence!” Lord Crocker barked. “I’ll not have you—!”

  “Don’t care, Dad.” Crocker reached a hand up to Shtasith, the other to Cluny; nearly cheering, she jumped in, scurried to her pocket. “I didn’t much like the way our family worked, so, well, I got another family. And while I’ll always love you guys for, y’know, whatever reason, I’d rather be with people who like the real me, not some me they think I should be.” He bowed to the princess. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, Your Highness, I’d like to show my friends around the grounds.”

  Princess Alison nodded, and for all the shaking Cluny could feel as Crocker stepped out the door, he made it most of the way down the hall before his knees buckled and she had to levitate him onto a window seat overlooking the sun-drenched woods. “Did I—?” He sucked in a breath. “Did I really just do that?”

  Cluny reached up to pat his chin. “You did.”

  A grin curled Shtasith’s snout. “And splendidly as well.”

  “Huh.” Eyes closed, Crocker leaned against the wall.

  “So!” Cluny couldn’t help it; she bounced against his chest, said in her squeakiest voice, “When’s the tour start??”

  Crocker laughed. “How ‘bout as soon as I can feel my legs again?”

  Netcasters

  by Layla Lawlor

  I like to get stories from new writers—not that it’s easy to find new writers these days. (The good thing about self-publishing is that anyone can do it. And the bad thing about self-publishing is that anyone can do it, regardless of their ability to write, use proper spelling and grammar, proofread, or format their book properly.) When this story arrived in the slush pile, I started reading it. And I kept reading it, all the way to the end. I don’t know if Layla ever heard Marion’s instructions to “grab the reader by the throat on the first page and don’t let go until the end,” but she certainly followed them. I didn’t even notice how long this story is until I did the word count.

  Layla Lawlor is a freelance artist, illustrator and writer. She lives with her husband, dogs and assorted farm animals on 11 rural acres near Fairbanks, Alaska, where winters dip to 50 below zero and summers yield 24 hours of daylight. During the short (but bright!) summer she enjoys gardening and hiking, and in the winter she makes things. This is her first professional fiction sale.

  ****

  Zair was rocking by the fire, mending a fishing net, when the still night outside her window erupted in a ruckus. People shouting, dogs barking, goats bellowing—a regular set-to.

  She laid down her shuttle and pegboard, the rough mass of the seine slithering from her lap to the floor. Clearly someone with sense should sort things out. Besides, truth be told, she was curious. Zair picked up her walking stick and stumped outside to see what the fuss was about.

  A waxing crescent moon rode low over the marsh, throwing down a glittering trail from tidepool to tidepool and out into the wide dark ocean. The village’s hill cast a black shadow across the whispering sedge. By the slender shell of moon, Zair tapped her way around back of her house, past the middens and privies to the goat pen, where half the village had gathered.

  “What are you fools doing?” Zair demanded, pushing her way through the crowd. More people trickled out of their houses, drawn by the noise. Someone said “Pirates!” in a hushed whisper, and Zair rolled her eyes. Oh, there were always tales of raiders up the coast, and there had been that one time with the smugglers in the marsh... But pirates weren’t known for sneaking into goat pens.

  “We caught a thief, Auntie!”

  She might have known: her nephews Rig and Orrel, along with a few of their equally thickheaded friends. Someone held up a lamp, and Zair could see that the boys were sitting on somebody, a stranger to judge by the long coat of colorful patches that was spread in the mud around them. No one in the village had a coat like that.

  “Let him up,” Zair said.

  The boys, looking disappointed, let the accused thief rise to his—no, her knees. She wiped mud off her sharp cheekbone and smiled brightly at Zair: an angular, long-legged scarecrow of a woman, with a mess of short dark hair that looked like it had been hacked off with a dull knife.

  “Hello, honored mother. I’m sure we can work out this tiny misunderstanding like civilized people.”

  “What did she steal?” Zair asked, looking around at her neighbors and relatives.

  People started pulling items from pockets and cloaks. Spoons and other silver tableware. Jewelry. Small coin pouches of worked leather. Bits and bobs, the little precious things that poor people owned.

  The thief’s smile dimmed. “As I said, I can explain. My uncle—”

  “Cheri found her in the chicken shed.” Black-haired Solya pointed at her smallest daughter, who blushed and stuck her fingers in her mouth.

  “I was sleeping there,” the thief said. “As I explained—”

  “...with her pockets full of our stolen things.”

  The thief opened her mouth again. Zair interrupted. “Where did you come from?” The nearest town, Trenza, was a half-day’s travel with a goatcart. A lone traveler, especially one with such long legs, could have walked much faster.

  The thief offered a shy, deprecating smile, which Zair distrusted instantly. “I took shelter in your village from my cruel uncle’s hired brigands, until the moo
n set and I could leave under the cover of darkness.”

  “And our silver?” Solya demanded, shaking a bag that jingled.

  “I am so sorry,” the thief said. Her eyes dropped contritely to her hands, the long, graceful fingers clasped on her knee. “My uncle has cut off all my means of support. I would have paid you back once I regained access to my fortune.”

  Zair could see sympathetic credulity building on the wide-eyed faces of her nephews, who’d never been away from the village longer than it took to go to market. “Goat crap,” she said loudly. “Anybody turns up in a chicken coop with half the village’s silver is no princess. I say we tie her ‘til morning and then decide her punishment when we’ve slept.”

  Tired from a long day at the nets, no one argued. The thief offered a wide, warm smile and held out her hands, the bony wrists together. “Please, honored mother, I will accept whatever punishment you deem fit.”

  “Or maybe you plan to slip the ropes as soon as we turn our backs,” Zair said. The thief gave her a look of wounded innocence. “Well, I can assure you that no one ever escapes from my knots.”

  “Of course, honored mother, I am sure they don’t,” the thief agreed meekly.

  Everyone in the village knew Zair was best with knots, so she took a twist of cord from her pocket and looped it around the thief’s wrists. The thief gave the loosely bound rope a look of surprise. Plainly she’d had no idea it would be this easy.

  “Where shall we put her?” Solya asked.

  “Oh, out back of your privy would prob’ly do, if you don’t mind the noise.” A night by the privy in the cold marsh air would do their guest some good.

  The thief came quietly, making no effort to escape, although the fact that she was surrounded by two dozen annoyed and well-muscled fishermen probably had a lot to do with that. Orrel took a big knife off her, a wide-bladed thing in a battered leather sheath. “We’ll give this back when you leave,” he said.

  “Of course,” the thief agreed, and her eyes followed it as it vanished under his cloak.

  The privy looked too rickety to make a decent jail, so Zair took another stout bit of twine and bound the thief’s hands to the stump where Solya tied up her goats for milking. There was enough rope that the thief could stand up, stretch, and lean against the side of the privy if she wanted to.

  “Good night,” Zair said, dusting her hands on her trousers. “See you in the morning.”

  “Of course, honored mother.”

  As they walked away, Zair’s nephew Rig said, “How long d’you think it’ll take her to try to escape?”

  There was a thump and a loud curse from behind them. “Not long,” Zair said.

  #

  In the morning, after the young and the strong had departed to fish for linget in the shallow channels of the estuary, Zair gathered the rest of the village—old women, small children, and Deke One-Leg—and went to see the prisoner. As expected, the thief was right where they’d left her, although her wrists were raw, her fingernails broken, and the dirt had been scraped back from the stump to a depth of two feet. Her eyes were wild, her short hair sticking up in spikes.

  “What did you do?”

  “Tied you to the privy,” Zair said.

  “No, no, it’s more than that.” The thief held up her bound hands and shook them. “You didn’t even draw it tight. I could escape from more complicated bonds when I was six years old. And yet it won’t come off!”

  “Course not,” Zair said. “When I tie knots, they stay tied. We couldn’t make a living if our nets were always coming undone, could we?”

  The thief scowled at her. “I didn’t want to tell you this last night, because I had no wish to frighten you, but I work for a man who takes a third part of my earnings. If I don’t deliver my take to him each night, he beats me—and if anyone stops me, he beats them. He will already be searching for me, so I suggest you let me go before he finds your village.”

  Deke One-Leg laughed, and Zair raised an eyebrow. “Really? I thought you were running from your cruel uncle.”

  “They are one and the same.”

  “You’re not just a liar, but a very bad one,” Zair said. “In any case, strong hands are always useful during fishing season. We’ll feed you and you’ll work for us ‘til the dark of the moon. Then you can go free.”

  The thief’s mouth dropped open. “But it’s waxing! That’s twenty days, at least!”

  “Then you shouldn’t have thieved from people who can tie good knots.” Zair folded her arms. “Or we could take a fish-cart into Trenza and dump you on the magistrate’s doorstep. The penalty for theft in Trenza, I recall, is the loss of a hand.”

  The thief’s jaw worked. After a time, she said, “You’ll feed me, you said?”

  “Surely. And you can sleep in the goatshed, long as you’re well-behaved.”

  “Oh,” the thief said, “the goatshed. How kind.”

  “It’s better than the privy,” Zair pointed out.

  “True.” The thief held out her hands. “Very well, you have my word. I’ll work for you until the moon is dark, and I won’t try to run off.”

  “Kind of you to give your word.” Zair slit the thief’s bonds with her fish-scaling knife, and after the thief had flexed her wrists and stretched, Zair reached out an open hand, palm up. The thief stared at it.

  “Now what?”

  “Give me your wrist.” When the thief did, reluctantly, Zair bound one-half of the cut cord around it. Then, under the thief’s suspicious eyes, she tied the other half to the top rail of the goat pen, a less complicated version of the knot that kept the goats in.

  “What did you do?”

  Zair drew a circle in the air. “You can go to the spring, the back gardens, and the goat pen. No farther.”

  The thief held up her arm, where the bracelet of coarse twine swung below the bony lump of her wrist. “This will stop me?” Her voice dripped sarcasm.

  Some people had to learn the hard way. “Yes,” Zair said, and shooed away the onlookers. “I’ll bring up breakfast. I’m sure you’re hungry.”

  She didn’t expect it would take long for the thief to try an escape. And so it was. Zair and the other old people stopped to watch as the thief broke into a swift, graceful run towards the coast road to Trenza, her long patched coat billowing behind her. Then she hit the limit of the invisible tether Zair had set on her, and flipped end-over-end in a swirl of coattails and flailing limbs.

  Leaning on her walking stick, Zair strolled up as the thief scrambled to her feet, cursing loudly and brushing dirt off her trousers. Zair glimpsed a brilliant green stone on a thong around her neck before the thief stuffed it quickly down her shirt.

  “Now you know how far you can go,” Zair said.

  The thief glared through a fringe of badly cut bangs. “You did that on purpose.” She tugged futilely at the knotted bracelet.

  “Of course. Care for some goat cheese with your breakfast?”

  #

  In the next few days, with the linget running fast and everyone from fifteen to fifty out on the nets, no one missed an opportunity to put the thief to work. Whether it was painting tar on boat-bottoms, repairing holes in a thatched roof, feeding the goats or digging weeds out of someone’s garden patch, something always needed doing with never enough hands to do it. The thief couldn’t work on the nets or repair the protective knots that hung from every fencepost and door lintel, but there was no shortage of drudgework to keep her busy.

  Zair adjusted the tether when necessary, but kept it short enough that the thief could not reach the houses. No sense giving her ideas. They’d already caught her trying to steal eggs twice, and once attempting to hide a mattock under her coat, for all the good it would do her.

  Stumping out back to dump slops, Zair found the thief in an unhappy heap next to the midden, staring glumly at a ratty pack of cards that she’d produced from somewhere about her person. “Ah, good,” Zair said. “The goat pen wants raking.”

  Th
e thief glared. “Look at my hands.” She spread the long nimble fingers to display blisters and inground dirt. “My hands are my livelihood. They’ll never be the same.”

  “You stole from us,” Zair said evenly. “We are poor people, but I guess you never thought of that when you took our silver. You think this is hard? We do it every day.”

  “Oh, what a subtle lesson,” the thief sneered, tucking the cards away.

  “It’s no lesson; I doubt you’d learn anyway.” Zair shrugged and turned back to her house. “But I’m sure you’d rather blisters on your hands to having one cut off.”

  “Obnoxious old woman,” the thief said. “I can’t believe you haven’t even had the decency to ask my name yet.”

  “That’s because you give a different name to anyone who does ask.” Zair pointed. “The rake is at the goatshed. Pay special attention to the nanny pen; old Liddy-goat’s been sick, and it’s a mess over there.”

  “I really hate you!” the thief shouted after her.

  #

  “Do you think she’ll take any of this to heart?” Deke One-Leg asked Zair through a cloud of stinking smoke. The drudgery of rendering the linget for their oil had begun, and the two of them were tending a rendering fire on the long apron of sand that spread below the village hill. The moon was full tonight, its silver light competing with the fire’s glow on the trampled sand. Between stirring the kettle and poking the fire, they passed back and forth a clay cup of blueberry wine.

  “Don’t expect her to.” Zair looked up the hill. Their unwanted guest was wrapped in her coat with her back against the bottom rail of the goat pen. She’d stolen a flintstriker from somewhere, and Zair could see little flickers as she tried to set the cord around her wrist on fire. “A painted rock is still no jewel. But I don’t care to see her lose a hand. And it is useful to have extra help around the village during the busy season.”

  Deke stirred the kettle of linget, testing the greasy film on top. “We should make her do this part.”