Ilbei Spadebreaker and the Harpy's Wild (6 page)

Ilbei himself had come to Cedar Wood’s dilapidated tavern to question the locals about the highway robberies. He’d found himself with a pair of them and, using money the army had provided for just such a thing, plied them with Her Majesty’s generosity, learning what he could about the bandits’ activities. He’d just begun getting details of heists along a track the locals called Deer Trail Road when in came Major Cavendis in all his silver lances and golden clasps.

“I was informed there is a game here,” the major said simply to the tavern keeper. The arrival of the young lord and officer set nervousness dripping from the barman like ale foam down an overfilled mug. He dabbed at the pine-board counter before him, wiping away nothing with a filthy cloth as he stammered something unintelligible.

The major swung his gaze around the room and spotted the ruffs game right away, five miners seated around a table made from rough-hewn planks set atop four flat-cut logs. To the last of them, they were doing their best to cover their cards with dusty sleeves, or set mugs down as obstacles to the major’s line of sight. The two nearest to the bar stared into the wood, pretending they hadn’t noticed the resplendent officer enter. The major called their bluff, saying, “Ah, there it is,” which set them to shifting in their seats.

“At ease, gentlemen,” the major said as he approached. His silver spurs jingled at his boot heels with each long stride. “I’ve not come to stop you. I’ve come to play.”

Eyes darted from man to man, lips pursed, then the group together gaped as the young lord pulled a chair from a nearby table and inserted himself into their game.

There followed a period of sputtering and stammering, a few
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s interspersed with dissembling and unintelligible remarks, clearly protests, though muffled to indecipherability for fear and duty to noble blood. Fear and duty were things not much to the taste of men who’ve gone to the trouble of choosing a life so far from anything “civilized.”

The major shocked them a second time—shocking Ilbei as well—as he explained that he was a lover of the game. “I simply can’t find a good round of ruffs back home,” he said. “The stuffy sorts who haunt the manor or would curry favor with my family are simply incapable of putting up a proper game.” He explained that he had to travel pretty far to indulge himself in a game with men of real skill, and finished by saying, “And I have it on good authority that there were none so gifted in the art of ruffs than those who dig their wagers out of the very flesh of the world.”

This compliment put half the game into a state of ridiculous vanity, and as easily as that, most of them were exacting promises on his oath that there would be no penalties upon them should they “bleed His Lordship dry.” This was met with a broad smile and a happy clap on the back for the nearest of them, and it was Ilbei’s turn to gape.

“There weren’t suppose to be no magicks at ruffs, Milord,” said one dusty old miner whose seat was in the corner, the one player who’d not been so quick to grin and extract oaths from the nobleman. “And if’n ya are the ruffsman ya say, then ya know it true.”

“I do know it,” the major said. He glanced once over his right shoulder, then his left—the good fortune of that sequence giving Ilbei time to turn his face toward the wall. The major then leaned in and told them in a low voice that filled the room, “On your honor, boys, this can’t get out, but, sadly, I am as magickless as you.”

The revelation brought a breath of collective surprise from the men. Many commoners—mainly the uneducated and the blank—believed the nobility could not be born without magic of at least some kind. Ilbei knew better, having encountered enough nobles in his time, and he’d heard plenty of stories about bitter nobles born blank and doomed to ridicule among that high class. While Ilbei had no experience living in high society or being peer to those folks with the blood in them, he could still imagine what it might be like to be a blank among them.

“It’s true, gentlemen. A sad fact. But one that has put me on my own road, and today that road has led me to you, the truest men of chance, carving your very existence out of rock. I came to test my game against yours, straight and fair.” He poured out a small purse filled with gleaming new coppers, the commonest coin in the realm, and beside the stack he placed one gold coin, a royal crown, as the coins were called. It was imprinted on one side with the likeness of the Queen, which he turned, orienting it so that Her Majesty might be said to watch them.

“Weren’t likely you’ll see game for that, Milord,” muttered one of the gamblers. The bobbing heads around the table agreed.

“So you say, my good man, so you say. And yet, I expect when time comes, one of you might surprise the rest, as is usually the case with men of chance. We’re all beggars, the lot of us, until the moment comes round. Then we wield our own sort of magic in procuring our next and our biggest bets.”

“Be that as it may, Lordship, I’m letting ya know straight off. So as ya won’t be disappointed after, and, ya know ….” The implication was left unsaid, but Ilbei knew they expected trouble from the major if the game didn’t go the way he wanted.

“Not at all,” the major said gaily, “not at all. On my honor, gentlemen, my coppers to you if you can take them. My gold as well. Nothing for you if you can’t, and no reprisals either way. The game is the game. That and, of course, you must promise never to say a word of my little secret to anyone.”

“Bugger me with Her Majesty’s broadsword if’n I say a word of it,” said the man who’d been apologetic just before.

“Right so,” said another. “Same fer me, twice.”

They were all in agreement and for the most part appeared eager to tap the coins of the rich officer, who they all quietly knew fancied himself a better player than they. Obsequiousness was a mask the lowly learned to wear early and well, but it’s not the countenance of truth. Ilbei watched them smiling and genuflecting with their eyes when the major spoke to them, but he saw them look differently to each other when the major’s eyes were away.

Only the old man in the corner remained reluctant about having the major in the game. “Now far be it for one such as myself to speak some impropriety, Milord,” he began, and from where Ilbei sat, he could see the man’s fingers twitching in his lap. “And I sure mean no dispute to your highborn assurances about, well, that secret you gone and shared, but as a rule of this here game—which I bank myself, mind you, and have steady and fair for the last twelve months—we always get the last say-so on the magic powers of newcomers through my old Abigail.”

The major’s eyes narrowed, and there was no way that the old man didn’t notice. Card-playing sports made their living watching people’s eyes. Still, Major Cavendis leaned back and waved his hand in the air, a “go on, then” gesture of acquiescence. He even smiled. “By all means, bring the lady in that I might win her over with my honest eyes.”

The men at the table laughed a little at that, as if they’d been crossing a deep ravine on a rickety bridge and finally made it to the other side. The old man waved to the barkeep, who came around from behind the bar and left through the tavern’s front door. The gaps in the plank walls were wide enough that Ilbei could see the man passing along the front and side, and for a long time after he’d gone out of sight, they all sat in silence, a nervous pall settling on the room like mist in a hollow.

That’s when Major Cavendis saw Ilbei sitting there. They locked gazes for a moment, and then the major’s sweep of the room passed on. The awkwardness that followed lingered for two full swigs of his ale before Ilbei turned back to his two companions and resumed his questions, pressing them for more information about Ergo the Skewer and his activities on Deer Trail Road.

“There was three muggins a month or so back,” a rugged fellow in his middle years went on. He scratched at a week’s worth of stubble growing dark like coal dust along his jaw. “We wasn’t there fer none of it, mind, but heard the stories enough times to know. First time caught us all off guard, what with the killins. But they just been mean since. Was eight of em jumped out of the woods and took aim on old Mitty and his boy Juke. Told him hand over all his dust and any nuggets that he got. Juke tried to tell em there weren’t no gold around here, that we dig copper and lead mostly, but they wasn’t havin it, so they bust poor Juke in the head. A big feller done it to him, near nineteen hands, tall as a tree and arms like anvils. Well, he bust Juke between the eyes with the arse end of a crossbow and down he went, and his old daddy to his knees beside him, snivelin ladylike and beggin they let em alone.

“The feller what struck him turned the crossbow round and pushed the bolt agin’ Juke’s eye and told Mitty he had count of three before Juke was done fer. So Mitty dumped out his wallet and sure enough gave em twice an ounce. Juke had nothin after Mitty turned his pockets out, so they clubbed old Mitty like they did his boy, and then all of em went off.

“That was the worst of it, but fer that first time. Word went round after, and when them villains showed up again a week or so later and waylaid Corbin Daiker and his brother Toes, well, they got to handin over what they had quick as wyvern strikes. Same for Zoe Spotrotter and his partner five or so weeks back. That was the last we seen of em round Cedar Wood.” He finished his narrative and turned back to his companion to confirm what he had said.

The younger man nodded. “Yep. That’s how it happened as I heard it too. Word is they went upstream and hassled the boys at Fall Pools fer a week or so, then headed over and set in on Camp Chaparral. I haven’t heard anythin since, so it’s been maybe a month since we got news.”

Ilbei pulled out a pipe and set himself to tamping in a bit of tobacco as he thought about their report. When he got the pipe lit, he drew on it for a moment, preparing to ask his next question. The door swung open and in came the tavern keeper again. Padding along behind him was a lanky hound dog with ears dangling down the sides of its head like long brown tongues. It was a lean creature but well fed, its coat dusty but otherwise clean. Ilbei knew a well-kept creature when he saw one.

The tavern keeper walked across the room, threading between the few shabby tables until he stood beside Major Cavendis. He looked nervous standing within reach of the young lord and all his gleaming weaponry. He glanced across the table to the old man in the corner, who nodded.

“That there is Abigail,” the old man said. “If it pleases Your Lordship, give her leave to sniff one of your hands, so we can be on with it, on with lightening you of that there gold crown and what others might be rattling in your pockets besides.” He made a point of pushing as much levity into the remark as possible, but the miners found themselves once more upon that rickety bridge, swinging in the winds above the gorge of noble privilege.

Cavendis, however, let go a great laugh, one from the chest, and Ilbei knew instinctively that the officer was genuinely amused. “By my sword, she is a dog, then? And here I’d prepared my most charming set of lines.” He pulled off his glove and reached out a hand to the dog, who raised her head and gave his outstretched fingers a sniff. She leaned forward a moment after, tilting her head a little so that her left ear swung pendulously, clearly in hopes of a friendly scratch, which she got. The major gave her skull a vigorous rubbing and the velvet of her ears a good-natured fluff. “Sweet thing,” he said. “A fine specimen, and well maintained. You people must do fairly enough if you can pamper a creature so much as this.”

Once more the miners were on sturdy ground, the gorge now well behind them, and all the smiles were genuine. “She’s a peach,” the old man said. “Can track raccoons in a rainstorm, and even led us straight to Doonger Wagonright’s boy after he turned werewolf a half year back. Found him curled up naked as a harpy, lying in the bone pile of the lamb he ate. Was a sore thing having to do him like we did, but least we got him before he got somebody other’n a lamb. Abigail is a blessing from Mercy round here.”

“Well, on the subject of harpies,” Major Cavendis said, “how about we deal some around and get this game aloft, now that I have met with the approval of your good Abigail here.”

“Fair enough,” the old man agreed. “Coppers only to start, no limit, and for the first hand, the harpy’s wild. Just the lady, of course.”

“A wild card? Are we children?” the major said. For the first time since Cavendis had come in, Ilbei saw a flash of the man he’d come to know these last three days.

“Round here folks start the first hand with the lady bird wild. You’ll find it the same any game in the camps. It’s for … well …,” he paused and glanced up at the tavern keeper, whose gaze dropped to the floor. No help there. “Well, it’s on account of staving off bad luck is all. Harpy ghosts and that sort of rot.”

“And I suppose next we’ll have our nannies trimming our bread crusts? Maybe stir some honey into our Goblin Tea?”

“Miners is superstitious folks, Milord, and in these parts, it’s only prudent. There’s been deaths, you know. And it is but one hand. Only the first.”

“Well, get on with it, then. I didn’t come all this way for children’s games.” He tossed a lone copper into the pot. “You can be sure that’s the last of mine this hand.”

Ilbei cringed inwardly, though there was little he could do for it. The major could afford to insult those men, for, as a nobleman, he had no care for their opinions anyway. Ilbei, on the other hand, needed to be polite. Beyond it being his nature to be so, he also needed to learn everything he could, which the major’s behavior could put in jeopardy if Ilbei didn’t get on with it straight away. So, hiding his irritation, he turned his attention fully back to the men he was talking to and got back to work.