The Brat's Final Gambit

Maerillus lay in pain in the very room he had been born in. The first place they had come to after slipping out of Kreeth’s estate had been Lord Joachim’s estate, which rivaled his own family’s home and then some. Joachim’s family had lived in the area so long and held the title of stewardship for so many generations that the towns of Pirim Village, Havel’s Dock, Old Flood, Silver Springs, and Siler’s Hollow were synonymous with the Joachim name. The choice to come here had been Davin’s. If Kreeth decided to send anyone after them, getting through Joachim’s guards would prove too insurmountable a task, even for a sorcerer.

Or so he hoped.

With any luck, Niam’s last minute plan worked, and the only thing anyone saw was one hooded figure escaping in the cart they stole. But as far as Maerillus was concerned, the three of them were walking on the thin ice of too many “what-ifs” already.

A knock sounded at the door and Mr. Kirse, Joachim’s physician, stuck his head in the room. “I have more medicine for the pain if you’d like, young man.”

Maerillus shook his head. “It makes me feel too mushy-headed, sir.”

For some reason this made the physician smile. “Good boy,” he said approvingly. “Too many people become dependent on the essence of poppy. I’ve seen it wreck lives. If there’s an icehouse nearby, I tell people I prefer ice and heat to control the swelling, and the bark of the asprodil bush also helps reduce inflammation.”

“It’s helping a lot,” Maerillus said gratefully.

“You’re lucky you didn’t break it, but then again I’ve seen sprains that were far worse than breaks.”

Maerillus asked, “How long will it take to get back to normal?”

“I expect you’ll be limping for several months.”

Maerillus sat up and exclaimed, “I don’t have several months!”

The physician made a sour face. “You’ll have as long as your body takes to heal, which reminds me, while you were sleeping, I left a pair of crutches for you to use. Do I need to show you how to use them properly?”

Maerillus responded, feeling rather surely. “No. Thank you.” Then, remembering his manners, he added, “I’ve used them before. I appreciate what you’ve done for me. Honestly.”

Before either could say anything else, a commotion in the room outside drew their attention. Lord Joachim, dusty from the road and as grizzled as ever walked peremptorily into the room. He took one look at his physician and then another at Maerillus, and said gruffly, “Not you too.”

Maerillus’s ears perked up when Joachim told the physician, “Jolan Kine has been hurt. Arrow went through his thigh. Solum bean poison.”

“I’ll have to examine him immediately,” the physician replied.

As the two men left the room, Maerillus quickly grabbed the crutches at his bedside and gingerly helped himself up out of bed. Carefully, he made his way into the antechamber where Kine lay on a couch. His face was pale, and his breathing sounded rough and phlegmy.

“I need help getting this off,” the physician said. Once he was able to see the wound, he winced. “There’s a lot of pus, but we’ll drain that. Falion!” he yelled. And then cursed to himself, “Where’s that old badger when I need him?”

Moments later, though, Falion shuffled into the room. “You called, sir?”

“Yes. I need you to go to my offices and get the black bag on top of the shelf beside the patient table—the black bag, mind you, not the brown one.”

“Yes sir,” Falion murmured as he shuffled back out of the room.

“Well?” Joachim demanded impatiently.

“Well. He’s lucky to be alive. A full dose would have killed him outright. Solum bean poison acts on the heart in high doses. In lower doses, the lungs fill up with fluid. I’ve got to give him something to clear his lungs or he’ll die of pneumonia or some other infection. Nasty stuff, that. Too bad the vine grows everywhere.”

“Convenient, too,” Joachim said bluntly.

“What happened?” Maerillus asked.

Joachim’s response was as dry as it was curt. “Somebody’s bad aim happened.”

The physician let out an ironic laugh. “Bad aim indeed. A little more to the left and he’d be dead.”

“I can hear you talking about me,” Kine wheezed.

When Falion returned, the physician rummaged through his bag and pulled out something that looked like a plunger attached to a fat needle at the other end.

“What’s that?” Maerillus asked.

“A relatively new invention from the school of medicine in Pallodine. Needle’s hollow. Allows medicines to be sent directly into a patient’s body. Wish I’d thought of it,” the physician said. “I often use it to give essence of poppy.”

As the physician bent to work on Jolan Kine, Maerillus pulled Lord Joachim aside. “We need to talk,” he whispered. “We’ve got what Kine needs to bring Kreeth to justice.”

“Tell me again what you saw,” Garrolus Kreeth snarled.

“It was only one person,” the servant stammered. “That’s what we saw. One man in a dark cloak riding away with the cart we use to drive to town in the mornings.”

The rest of Kreeth’s staff cowered in the corner, keeping together as if bunching up might somehow siphon off their master’s terrible fury. On the wall across from them, another servant was pinned several feet above the floor as if an invisible hand held him.

Kreeth’s voice was sharp and dangerous as a viper’s fangs. “Tell me again how this intruder got in?”

“We think it was at breakfast time. He—he must have come in through a window.”

Kreeth made an angry motion with his hand. The servant slid backward as if being pulled by an invisible rope until he thumped against the wall. Then he began to lift off of the floor as his body slid up the wall.

“That means someone here left a window unlocked,” Kreeth growled. “And that means one of you has been working with my enemies.”

Everyone in the room went deathly still.

Before Kreeth said another word, the door to the room swung open and Ravel walked into the room, pausing only long enough to give short notice to the two servants hanging against the wall several feet off the ground.

“He lived,” Ravel said without preamble.

Kreeth raised a hand and muttered a word, then with a casually dismissive gesture, all of his servants’ faces suddenly went blank, and in their eyes, a glassy, vacant stare replaced their fear. The sorcerer snarled, “Why is he still alive?”

“It was Joachim. He jumped me before I could finish Kine off.”

Kreeth went silent for a moment. His face lost some of its previous fury, which was quickly replaced with annoyance. “This means I will have to disappear for a while.”

“But what about your search?”

“Are you so suddenly concerned with my welfare?” Kreeth asked suspiciously.

“No. I’m concerned about my money.”

“I have to see to my servants, first. After that, there is the matter of my guest upstairs. And I have more searchers to command. You’ll get your money, and more.”

With that, Kreeth snapped his fingers and the two suspended servants fell to the floor in crumpled heaps. “Help me gather these two up,” Kreeth said, looking down at them with contempt.

“What are we going to do with them?” Ravel asked.

“Feed them to my guest; I have no use for them anymore,” Kreeth said.

Ravel just shrugged his shoulders and bent to grab a servant underneath the arms. What Kreeth did with his staff was his business. After all, the money was good.

“He got what?!” Niam blurted out as Maerillus rewrapped the bandage around his ankle and foot.

Maerillus’s answer was succinct. “Arrow. Thigh. Poison.”

Davin shook his head. “This isn’t good.”

“Like we haven’t had to stand up for ourselves before,” Niam said angrily, and Davin understood why. Of the three of them Niam had been the one most personally affected, first by Seth’s and Sarah’s murders, and then by what happened with Bug and Corey.

“Not when a sorcerer was involved,” Maerillus said with a grimace of pain as he tried flexing his ankle.

“You need to leave that alone and let the thing heal,” Davin said sounding more than a bit paternalistic as Niam began to count off all of the run-ins they had survived involving sorcery in some way over the past several months.

“The Vandin Camp, the trall, the wolfstrosities, that damned door I had to get us through, Kreeth’s angry furniture—in fact, his whole stupid estate,” Niam said.

Maerillus added humorlessly, “Let’s not forget the squirrelstrosities.”

“No,” Niam sulked. “Let’s not.”

“Niam,” Davin said as consolingly as possible, “you have to admit that with Kine out of business for a while, it does complicate things for us.” Then, to Maerillus, he said crossly, “You really aren’t doing your foot any favors. Knock it off.”

“Yes Dad,” Maerillus said gloomily. “Every time one of us hears the Voice, I get more certain our lives are supposed to be complicated.”

Davin sighed. His brain had been spinning furiously since Maerillus had given them the news about the ambush and Kine’s injuries. Lord Joachim had personally threatened to make them spend the rest of their lives cleaning out stables if they didn’t remain indoors until Kine was better. Davin figured there was fat little chance of that actually happening, but Maerillus hadn’t been in a position to protest too much.

“I just wish I knew if Niam’s plan to make it look like only one person was escaping Kreeth’s estate actually worked,” he said.

Maerillus shrugged his shoulders. “I’m sorry. I did my best. I don’t know how pain affects my ability.”

Davin nodded his head. “I know you did, Maer. For all we know, your ability may actually work better in times of danger.”

Maerillus laughed. “Wouldn’t that be something if all anyone saw was a driverless cart racing away from the estate.”

Niam rolled his eyes and said theatrically, “But you all have to know what’s going to happen if we just sit still and hide. The Voice is going to be back with its usual commands—‘look,’ ‘listen,’ ‘remember,’ ‘eat your spinach,’ and mess like that.”

“Well I for one plan on eating my spinach if it tells me to.”

Niam crossed his arms and said, “Spinach just gives me gas.”

“But if the Voice is involved it’ll be super-gas,” Maerillus smiled.

“Well if that happens I’ll just fart and save the day.”

’Try not to be so cross, Niam. We’re all in this together,” Davin said. Then he threw a pillow at Maerillus for trying to bend his ankle again.

At that moment a knock at the door interrupted them. A petite maid stuck her head in and asked what they would like for lunch. She looked sleepy. Her eyes were puffy and bloodshot. Davin could tell she was nearly dead on her feet. Before she left, the maid gave Maerillus a tired but appraising look and said enviously, “Oh, such pretty locks of hair. Wish mine did that, young man.”

Maerillus smiled widely and thanked her.

Niam threw another pillow at him. “Always the pretty one,” he complained. Then his eyes opened suddenly as an idea struck him. “Hey, wait a minute!” he called out to the maid and jumped up to catch her. “When was the last time you cut your hair?” Davin heard him ask.

The maid came back in. “A week ago yesterday,” she told him. “My sister does it for me.”

Niam gave her his most charming smile, the one that made ladies constantly want to squeeze his cheeks. After the maid had gone, Niam said a bit quickly, “Davin, I need your help with something.”

“Oh great,” Maerillus interjected. “You two are going to do something and I’m stuck here!”

“Just something small,” Niam said as he virtually pulled Davin out of the room.

Before the door completely closed shut, Maerillus called out, “Hey, aren’t you going to tell me what you’re doing?” and then followed it up with, “Don’t hate me because I’m handsome!”

Niam said nothing as they walk down the spacious hallway and marched directly into Lord Joachim’s study, where he was busy listening to a foreman discuss plans for repairing a damaged roof before the big snows hit. “I need to talk to Jolan Kine,” Niam said without waiting for them to stop talking or even acknowledge his presence.

Lord Joachim looked up from his desk in surprise and frowned, but the expression was gone before it became too noticeable. He held his hand up curtly and told the carpenter to finish talking first. Shocked at Niam’s brazen interruption, Davin elbowed his friend in the ribs. “You do realize that is a lord of the realm, don’t you?” he whispered.

Niam stood with his arms crossed, tapping a foot impatiently. “He puts his pants on like anyone else.”

Davin tried to force a smile on his face that was politely appropriate and at the same time said, Don’t blame me. My friend can’t help himself.

When the carpenter left, Lord Joachim looked up and said in a voice that was always full of rust and gravel, “I trust that is the last time you’ll ever barge into my office unannounced.”

“Absolutely sir,” Davin said quickly. Then he cast a horrified look at Niam who actually hesitated for a moment and said, genuinely confused. “Sure.”

And then, “No.”

And then, “Well . . . maybe. It all sort of depends.”

Lord Joachim’s face showed no emotion, though the corner of his right eye did twitch.

“What is it, Maldies? You do know that Jolan Kine has sustained a life threatening injury?”

“I’m sure he’ll have more before all of this is over with,” Niam said shortly before Davin elbowed him a second time. Again Joachim’s eye twitched.

“What is so important that you need to disturb his rest? He is under the effects of poppy extract, you know.”

“Um, it’s kind of between us, being wizard stuff and all,” Niam said. Then he had to add, “Hey, how can we get some of that extract stuff?”

Davin elbowed him harder.

“I’m just saying,” Niam quipped. “Everyone wants to hurt us these days. Some of that might come in handy.”

Davin looked at Niam, and then at the unreadable expression on Joachim’s face. Davin felt that the best course of action at this point was to take two steps away from Niam and punch him in the arm. “Mr. Hapwell, if you hit him every time he deserves it, you’ll have to beat him until his arm falls off,” Lord Joachim said dryly.

Davin broke his silence. “I’m sorry Lord Joachim. When he gets an idea—” he began.

“I am aware of your friend’s penchant for mischief,” Lord Joachim finished. Then he looked at Niam. “I suppose this must be an emergency, Mr. Maldies?”

“Um yeah. It could be,” Niam answered.

And then, “I think.”

And then, “Maybe.”

Lord Joachim raised an eyebrow.

“That’s why I need to talk to him.”

“About?” Joachim demanded.

“Um hair,” he told him. Then, more specifically, added, “And stuff.”

“Hair,” Lord Joachim repeated, “And stuff.”

Niam shuffled his feet. “Yes sir. That’s exactly it.”

Joachim looked up and said, “It’s days like this that I’m glad I never had a boy.” He sighed after that and said, “If ‘hair and stuff’ is important enough to interrupt a member in good standing of the royal court, I am forced to assume that it is of paramount importance that you pester my half-dead Wizard’s Hammer.”

“Yes sir. That’s exactly it. Exactly.”

Davin punched him in the arm.