“Trout, quit wasting my time!” the captain yelled. “Grab her and unstick me already!”
“Sorry, miss.” Trout shrugged. He reached for her, his hands blocking out the world like a blindfold. “It’s really not personal, just… is that an Underbender?”
Alix stared into the dark star-shapes of Trout’s hands. “Is what a what?”
“Greni Underbender, the painter?” Trout eased off a bit. “Behind you on the wall there, miss.”
Alix, who’d retreated into a position she didn’t quite like to call a cower, straightened up and looked where Trout was pointing. There was indeed a painting on the wall to her left, hidden in the corner and somewhat protected from years of exposure to wind, weather, and storm. Alix stepped closer and squinted.
“Well, stap me! It ain’t Underbender, but you’ve got an eye on you.” She beckoned Trout over with a wave of her hand. “Look at the trees, the proportions are all rummy. Underbender wouldn’t’ve skewed ’em like that. Someone did their best to copy her, though, or I’m a night magistrate.”
“Not half bad, neither,” said Trout, leaning in.
“No it ain’t. Credit where it’s due, Trout, you’re no mean bravo. To care enough for art to stop a fight…” Alix shrugged.
“Lords Below, Trout, what are you doing?” screeched the captain from the doorway.
“Thanks, miss.” Trout squirmed. “It’s an interest, is all. Listen.” His voice dropped to a raspy stage whisper. “I don’t call it right, how my lord Flensy did you on that business of the letter. Then sending us out in weather over a matter of a pie and all. What about if you and that horse of yours went on to wherever you were going?”
“I’d proclaim you a square cove from Lackmore to Sunhollow, Mister Trout. But won’t your chum mind?”
“The captain?” Trout shrugged. “Not if he wants me to tug him loose.”
“I do need my sword back.”
“Let’s don’t tell him that.”
Alix stuck her hand out and Trout grasped it in one of his. It was a damned good thing he’d let her go, she thought as they shook, for his paw swallowed hers so completely she knew at once she’d never have wriggled free once he gripped her.
“Need a lift onto your horse?” Trout asked upon releasing her.
“Not at all,” she said. “But there is something. One can’t help but feel owed a little recompense for one’s troubles. Meanwhile it seems a shame to leave that lovely painting to rot, and I do believe the rain’s clearing. I know a gal with a tavern who’d love to buy it off me, if you’d just help me pull it off the wall there…”
KID GLOVES
Four and a half miles from the city of Lackmore, the Weeping River passes between four colossal granite monoliths that split it into three canals. Each is deep and wide enough to hold a Sunhollow merchant ship comfortably, and they run pin-straight for about a mile before the central canal disappears belowground and the western canal crosses below the eastern via a clever bridge-and-tunnel arrangement. They straighten again just as the central canal reemerges, the eastern and western branches having swapped places like strands of hair in a braid, then all three rejoin in a great crashing, tumbling pool and the Weeping resumes its natural course to wend the rest of the way to Lackmore.
Scholars and bards debate who constructed this diversion, and why. There were carvings on the monoliths once, but millennia of exposure have effaced them. The dwarves take credit, of course. So do the elves—of course. Both folk agree that humans are too young to have done it.
I had pondered this mystery many times, traveling to and from Lackmore with my mother. Now, staring into the ice-choked pool where the three canals reunited, I was contemplating my dinner, which had fallen from my travel bag and was swirling away down the Weeping River.
I lay on my stomach on the frozen ground, reaching desperately. Just beyond my fingers, a canvas pouch holding half a loaf of crusty bread, a stone crock of sheep’s butter, and an end of bacon tumbled in an eddy. My glasses slipped down my nose and I adjusted them against my shoulder. The packed snow beneath me was chilling even through my thick shearling coat, but I did my best to ignore it as I edged farther out over the lip of the pool.
“Come on…” My fingers brushed the side of the pouch, imparting a spin that brought it a hair closer. I almost had it, and the bread didn’t look too soggy. “Please come back…”
A wet plop drew my attention: a second dark shape was whirling in the river now. It took me a moment to identify it, and I gasped in horror when I did.
My gloves.
Despite the winter chill, I had removed them and tucked them into the breast of my shearling before getting onto the ground. I’d had no choice: they were thick, fleecy gloves made of the same ramskin as my coat, but that made them far too clumsy for the delicate work of retrieving supper from a river. Now they, too, had fallen in.
For a moment, all I could do was stare. My food and my gloves were tumbling swiftly away in opposite directions. If I could save anything—and that was uncertain—it would be one, not both.
There was no choice, really. I slapped a hand over my glasses so I wouldn’t lose those as well, lurched halfway over the edge of the pool, and scooped my gloves out.
By the time I had fallen back, soggy and panting, onto solid ground, my bacon and butter were lost under the current. Only the rump of the bread could be seen, standing straight up from the water like the mast of a sinking ship. Then that, too, disappeared.
Across the pool, the sun was slipping away behind a stand of evergreens. I looked down at the gloves dripping gently in my lap, and as if on cue, my stomach growled. I would reach Lackmore the next day—around noon, if I calculated correctly—and I could buy a little food in the city. My gloves, however… I was a bard by training, and my goal was to join the city’s Bardic Guild. Impressing the Guild Masters on my guitar would be difficult with frozen hands.
I had made the right choice, but my empty stomach felt otherwise.
“You all right, miss?”
The voice startled me, and my glasses nearly slipped off my nose as I looked around hastily. “Yes! Fine, thank you. I just… almost lost my gloves.”
A black-bearded dwarf stood watching me with an expression that mingled concern and disapproval in a decidedly parental manner. A small pince-nez clung to his nose, which was red from the cold, and a threadbare wool hat sat askew on his bald head. His patched coat and trousers hardly looked any warmer.
“Seems you lost your food. Looked a proper fine loaf I saw sinking just now.”
I sighed. “I bought that back in Dellycross. I was saving it for tonight, with the last of my butter from home.”
“Last road meal, eh?” He ambled over and offered me a hand up. “A fine tradition. You’re a highland girl? First time to Lackmore?”
“Yes, and no,” I said, brushing snow from my shearling. Between my springy mass of blonde hair and my denim trousers, folk identify me in an instant. “Gally Chaparral. I’m a bard. I’ve been to Lackmore a number of times, but this time it’s permanent.” I stuck out my hand.
“Joining the Guild? Lords’ luck to you.” We shook, and his hand was surprisingly soft. “Borgun Inkblot, wandering scribe. Do more wandering than scribing, these days. Heard the north needs writers, so it’s Dellycross for me and the family.” He clapped me on the arm. “Well, come along, then. The husband should have stew on by now.”
