All That Glitters

by Auston Habershaw

  They frequently stopped to pay homage to Hool, as etiquette dictated. Tyvian found this richly amusing and wondered how many overglamoured Eretherian peers would press their lips to Hool’s graceful hands before she took it upon herself to rip one of their arms off. Hool, to her credit, never said anything and never attacked anyone, but she also never smiled or gave the least indication she was pleased at being fawned over—­a fact that perplexed more than one handsome young knight. Each evening, she would insist on ditching her shroud to go hunting for mice in the woods. Tyvian guessed it helped her feel normal again.

  Tyvian was easily able to pass himself off as a provincial noble’s second son, which meant he could glean a fair amount of gossip from each of the knights who happened by. On some occasions he was even invited to dine with the knight in his pavilion. They all had pavilions, since no self-­respecting Eretherian knight was likely to sleep in an inn, and not every self-­respecting knight was so well-­respected by other knights to secure himself a bed in the local castle. These pavilions were elaborate affairs, Astrally expanded and with a whole array of expensive magecraft allowing them to transport rather exorbitant amounts of food, drink, and furniture in containers that easily fit on the back of their squire’s horse.

  One such evening they were just outside of the Viscounty of Alouna and dining with a Sir Jenwal Esthir, a vassal of the Count of Hadda. He was a young man—­probably only older than Artus by a half-­dozen years—­well-­spoken, educated, and clearly wealthy. His taste in wine, for a rarity, was actually good, and he was sharing with Tyvian and Hool (whom Sir Jenwal had insisted dine with them) a bottle of Otove ’24—­a good year, and it had enough time to mature the flavor into something more complex, with overtones of caramel. Tyvian noted, with some distress, that Hool wasn’t even touching hers. She sat very still in the brightly lit tent, arms folded across her chest, and glared at Sir Jenwal. To her, Tyvian imagined this entire meal was a dominance game, and she was playing to win. Blissfully unaware, Sir Jenwal ignored her and focused his attention on Tyvian, as a gentleman who didn’t want to get into a duel should. Tyvian knew, though, that any second the idiot would find an opening and, in a flash, he’d be on one knee yowling poetry to Hool as earnestly as any tomcat on an alley fence.

  Tyvian decided to take his wine and get the hell out of there. Before he went, though, he gave Jenwal a wink and a significant look. “Careful, sir—­she bites.”

  He found Artus and Brana sitting around the campfire outside the pavilion—­Jenwal’s squire had been sent on some kind of errand, or perhaps was answering nature’s call. Tyvian sat himself on a log and sipped his wine.

  Artus, who had been sullen pretty consistently since Derby, roused himself from his adolescent doldrums to ask a civil question. He was sipping something out of a cup made of silver and inlaid with rubies. “Where do they get it all?”

  “Get what?”

  Artus motioned to the elaborate camp setup and the pavilion. “We’ve passed, what, fifteen guys like this since we been on this road? I’ve seen more fancy castles than I can count, too. And these weren’t defensive keeps neither, or watchtowers—­these were castles of rich knights in rich clothes.” Artus shook his head. “Where do they get all the money, is all I wanna know. I mean, these are fertile lands, sure, but all this?”

  Tyvian grimaced, but in truth welcomed the return of an Artus who didn’t actively despise him. “Loans. Investments. It’s all very complicated, Artus, but basically it’s like this: Eretheria has been fertile farmland for thousands of years. There hasn’t been a drought of any significance for almost a century. Now, what does that mean?”

  Artus frowned. “Lots of crops, I guess.”

  “Correct—­lots of crops. Lots of crops means guaranteed income. Guaranteed income means the capability to take out loans against your future prosperity.”

  Artus nodded. “Yeah, I heard about that—­but then you gotta pay it back, right? You’ve gotta pay back more than you borrowed in the first place. Why would you do that, when you could just wait a bit longer?”

  Tyvian shrugged. “You’re not thinking like an ambitious Eretherian peer, Artus. Why wait when you can borrow money to invest in your land to make it worth even more money? Then, you can refinance your loan for even more money, which you can then reinvest.”

  Artus laughed. “You’re kidding me, right? That’s crazy—­you can’t do that forever.”

  “Of course not.” Tyvian grinned. “When things get tight, though, you can just invade your neighbor’s land and seize a particular part of it—­say a well, for instance—­and then you can pay off the loans with the new income that land generates.”

  Artus shook his head, considering the implications. “That still sounds crazy to me.”

  Tyvian nodded. “It is, in fact, crazy. I assure you of that. Such Eretherian financial gymnastics also happen to be the basis of the entire economy of the West. That, Artus, is where they get all the money.” Tyvian motioned to the smoke climbing into the night sky. “From everywhere and nowhere in particular.”

  Hool stalked into the firelight and threw Jenwal’s squire onto the ground and sat on him. He was unconscious. She said nothing, but took to examining her human nails with some curiosity. Her illusory hair was mussed, and not in a wind-­blown kind of way. Tyvian sighed. “Hool, what did you do?”

  Hool glared at him, and in her copper eyes Tyvian could see every inch of the man-­eating beast she was. “That man touched my breasts.”

  Tyvian swallowed hard. “Did you . . .”

  “I didn’t kill him. I just hurt him,” Hool said simply. “We should leave now.”

  Tyvian looked down at the velvet-­wrapped object in Hool’s hands. “Fine,” he said. “But we don’t steal anything.”

  Hool shrugged. “Who would want all this stupid stuff anyway?”

  Tyvian ducked back into the pavilion to check on Sir Jenwal’s injuries, but the knight was nowhere to be found. He looked everywhere in the Astrally modified tent—­under the table, under the cot, behind the weapon stand—­until, finally, there was only one place left to look: the chest.

  Tyvian took a deep breath and opened the lid. There, folded up like a pocket handkerchief and stuffed inside, was the bruised and barely conscious body of the young Sir Jenwal. Tyvian sighed and shook his head. “Perhaps I should have been more specific, sir. Of all the things the Lady Hool does to overeager suitors, biting is only the most common.”

  He reached into the chest and removed Sir Jenwal’s signet ring; the knight only moaned in protest. The ring was much less understanding—­it seemed to hiss on his hand, but Tyvian ignored it. Just to spite it, Tyvian decided to nick the wine, too. Life was too short to pass up good wine, ring be damned.

  Three days later the four of them were crowded inside a private compartment aboard the Eretheria-­Saldor express. They had been riding for almost twelve hours, the spirit engine screaming past the green pastures and azure ocean vistas of southern Eretheria at top speed. The sun had set while they wound their way into the Tarralle Mountains, and now, as they picked up speed heading down the other side, the Sovereign Domain of Saldor and its titular capital city was no more than an hour or so in their future.

  Tyvian felt a certain dryness at the back of his throat that he had come to associate with unease. The Quiet Man back in Derby still unsettled him—­it was only raw luck that he had survived, honestly. Indeed, this entire enterprise—­his decision to return to Saldor, his plan for crossing the border, everything—­was almost entirely based upon luck. Tyvian felt as though he was going mad, somehow. He wondered—­not for the first time during their trip—­if Artus wasn’t right about him. Maybe his judgment was off. Maybe the damned ring had finally robbed him of his edge.

  “The border between the counties of Eretheria and the southern end of the Saldorian domain is the Vedo River, which we are crossing right about now.
” Tyvian pointed to a map he had laid out across the table in their cabin, indicating a major branch of the Trell River that split off from just north of Bridgeburg and ran all the way south to the Sea of Syrin.

  Only Artus was looking at him. Brana had stuck his head out the window and was letting his tongue loll, inhaling the seaside air in great gulps. Hool was growling at him, just an edge of fear in her voice. “Get back inside! You will fall out and die! Brana! BRANA!”

  Artus looked worried, “Won’t they catch us once we get there? I mean, we aren’t stowaways, but we are smugglers, sort of, and . . . well . . .” Artus looked at the gnolls haplessly; Hool was dragging her pup inside by his belt while Brana howled.

  Tyvian sighed. “Hool and Brana definitely count as contraband, yes. The shrouds they’re wearing aren’t technically illegal, but they’re definitely frowned upon and will attract attention if detected. Saldor is a place that takes security very seriously, as you will soon see. What’s more, the Defenders will be using auguries to scry the future to a limited extent, so they will know within a reasonable degree of accuracy what is going to happen and who they are going to find when they search the train, before they actually search.”

  Artus looked like he had just been stabbed. “Wh-­What? Seriously? They can see the bloody future?”

  Tyvian shrugged. “To a certain extent. Scrying has its limits.”

  “I am waiting for your stupid plan to start making sense,” Hool said. She picked up the teapot from the end of the table and drank from the spout. “I am tired of having to act like a human. It hurts my back.”

  “Unfortunately for you, Hool, acting like a human is an integral part of the plan. I’ve gone to some lengths to make this work, now, so don’t let your negative attitude get in the way.”

  Artus shook his head. “How can we avoid them if they already see the future? I don’t get it—­how will Hool acting like a human fool anybody? Won’t they be using magic—­won’t she be detected?”

  Tyvian grinned. “Of course she will. My plan relies upon that fact, actually.

  This time both Artus and Hool spoke in unison. “What?”

  “In fact,” Tyvian said, delighted at their reaction and not quite willing to let them off the hook, “in Derby I sent letters ahead of us to ­people I know to be Defender informants, saying that I and my companions intend to cross into Saldor via spirit engine, and that we will all be wearing shrouds, so they will definitely be looking for us, and what’s more, I’ve already furnished them with a description of all three members of our party.”

  There was dead silence for a few moments as Tyvian waited for them to catch up. Hool got there first. “There are four of us.”

  Artus was a close second. “We aren’t all wearing shrouds.”

  Tyvian nodded. “My mother perhaps said it best: a little misinformation will go a long, long way. Furthermore, by letting them know who they think they are looking for, they won’t bother to scry the future, since scrying is an inexact science, at best.”

  Hool narrowed her eyes at him, which on her shroud Tyvian thought was a very fetching expression. “Explain. Don’t make it confusing.”

  Tyvian took the teapot from Hool and held it over the map. “When I pour this, which way will the tea go?”

  Artus frowned. “It could run in almost any direction, I guess. Whichever way is downhill.”

  Tyvian nodded, “And, given the rocking of the train on its tracks, what constitutes ‘downhill’ at any moment is subject to random chance. So . . .” Tyvian let a drop of tea fall on the oilcloth map. It beaded up and ran toward Hool. He repeated the process, and this time it ran toward himself. “It could be different every time. Scrying works similarly—­the future is wide-­open, not predetermined. Auguries are not destinies, my friends. However, they are pretty good predictors of likely events. Somebody unaware that they were being scryed and contemplating murder can be predicted as committing the murder sometime in the future—­that much is easy—­but predicting when they will murder and how is far less precise, since those things rely on chance as much as planning. Furthermore, if the murderer is aware ­people are trying to predict his behavior, he can alter it, therefore making it even harder to scry accurately. This means that even talented augurs—­such as the ones employed by the Defenders—­will only be able to predict an action with any specificity sometimes less than an hour beforehand. This makes interception a rather dicey proposition.”

  “So, I still don’t understand what we’re going to do.” Artus rubbed his head and stared down at the map as though it might have Tyvian’s plan scrawled into a corner somewhere. “Don’t telling them where to find us still kinda screw us over?”

  Tyvian sighed. “The description I gave in the letters depicts me as a middle-­aged man with a spreading paunch, a nice jacket, and a guild medallion around my neck. Now, Artus, how many such gentlemen are currently aboard this spirit engine?”

  “A lot—­at least six or seven, I think.”

  “There are seven, and good for you for noticing—­it’s those eyes of yours that make me keep you around. It’s no accident it’s that many either—­what I’ve just described is at least fifty percent of the fellows who ride spirit engines at any time, day or night. The Defenders know this, too, which is why my disguising myself like that will make perfect sense to them. So . . .”

  “So you’re gonna make the Defenders think you’re some other guy, while we slip right past them disguised as somebody else entirely.” Artus straightened, his face glowing. “I got it, right? That’s it, right?”

  Tyvian nodded, and motioned to a small box he’d been lugging around since Derby. “You’ll find stage makeup and a variety of wigs in that box—­we’ll be arriving in Saldor in under an hour, so get started.”

  CHAPTER 8

  HOME PRETTY CLOSE TO HOME

  The Saldorian Spirit Engine Terminal was a massive, gleaming construction of marble, mageglass, and polished brass. Here, spirit engine lines running from Freegate by way of Galaspin and from Akral by way of Camien, Eretheria, and Daventry, both terminated beneath a vast dome inlaid with glittering mageglass starbursts and the bas-­relief visages of every Keeper of the Balance since the dawn of the modern age.

  Even now, late into the night as it was, the place bustled with activity. Pallets of cargo levitated by, under the guidance of teams of uniformed warlocks fiddling with enchanted rods; guildsmen and traders of every size and description, their guild-­pins and trading-­house livery forming a heraldic structure every bit as complex as the lineage of the Akrallian kings, shoved, jostled, and shouted at one another in their haste to be on with their errands. Then there was the nobility and minor gentry—­floating along the platforms at a stately pace, their retainers and champions and valets caught in their orbit like so many moons, carefully and resolutely aloof from the hustle and racket of the largest city in the West. It was in this last group that Tyvian, Artus, Hool, and Brana arrayed themselves.

  Defenders were all over the platform when their spirit engine arrived, searching compartments and patting down merchants and guildsmen with mechanical efficiency. Tyvian, dressed in the finest clothing they could still afford, wore Sir Jenwal’s signet ring on his right hand, a fake beard on his chin, and the affected air of placid superiority common to Eretherian nobility on his face. Behind him, Brana wore Chance at his side—­taking on the role of champion—­while Artus, laden with baggage, his hair dusted to look near-­black rather than brown, took on the role of manservant.

  Hool lay on a baggage cart. If her eyes were weapons, Tyvian was pretty sure he would have been bleeding. “I hate you.”

  Tyvian gave her a tight smile. “Just clutch your stomach and start screaming.”

  Hool folded her arms. “That’s stupid. I won’t scream.”

  “Hool, women scream when they’re having a baby.”

  Hool snorted. “How m
any babies have you had?”

  Artus shifted his weight beneath all the luggage. “If you two is gonna argue, can I put some of this down?”

  Tyvian grimaced and looked over his shoulder. Two Defenders had spotted them and were drawing close. “Kroth! Hool, just act like you’re having twins, dammit—­do it however you like!” He pointed to Brana, “Push your mother and don’t say a damned thing, understand?”

  Brana wiggled his hips a bit and nodded.

  Tyvian took a deep breath. “Everybody ready?”

  The lead Defender—­a sergeant, judging by his mageglass armor—­pointed at Hool and Brana. “Sir, I’m going to have to ask your associates to remove their shrouds.”

  Tyvian looked at Hool. “Now!”

  Hool grabbed the sides of the luggage cart, put her head back, and began to grunt like a ninety pound hog. She then put her knees up and spread her legs and began to thrash and snarl, baring her teeth at the distant, domed ceiling.

  Tyvian waved everybody forward and adopted a look of extreme distress. “Thank goodness you’re here, Sergeant! We need a doctor at once!”

  The sergeant blinked at the grunting, thrashing Hool. “Is she all right?”

  Hool glared at the Defender. “I AM HAVING PUP—­” She paused at Tyvian’s grimace. “BABIES! ARROOOOOOOO!”

  The other Defender made the sign of Hann on his chest and followed it up with, “Kroth’s teeth—­she’s dyin’!”

  The sergeant frowned. “Sir, I need the shrouds to come off, please.”

  Hool kept howling. “AROOOOOOOOOOO!”

  Tyvian puffed himself up in true noble fashion. “Sir! My wife is in great distress! We must be allowed to pass immediately!”

  ­People from all over the platform were watching them. Hool had her tongue hanging out the side of her mouth now and was breathing so rapidly, Tyvian thought she might actually pass out. The sergeant shifted in his boots. “Yes . . . well . . . surely removing the shrouds would take only a moment, and then you and your wife could—­”