Warden (Book 2: Lure of the Lamia) (6 page)

She stopped in front of him, looking him directly in the eye before continuing. “And I was happy to do it – would have kept on doing it
–
when I thought there was a chance for us. But I won’t fight for a man who doesn’t want me.”

She reached up a hand to pull a hairpin out of her tresses. She moved her hands through it and her locks came cascading down about her shoulders. Errol thought she was gorgeous enough to rival even Samara’s unnatural beauty.

“Now,” she said, putting her hands around his neck, “kiss me.”

“What?” It was the first thing Errol had managed to say since Gale began speaking. “What?”

“With everything that I’ve done to make you notice me, I won’t have it said that I did all that for nothing, that I never even got so much as a peck on the cheek. So you are going to kiss me.
Now
.”

Before Errol could offer an objection, she leaned in and kissed him. Her lips were soft and yielding, playfully inviting. She tasted delicious, an enticing blend of honeysuckle and exotic spices. Within a few seconds, he was returning the kiss more ardently than he would have believed possible.

It was Gale who, moments later, broke things off by stepping away. She took a second to catch her breath, then smoothed her dress out.

“Now,” she said, “now that I’ve retained a certain amount of dignity, you are free to pursue whomever you want, Errol Magnus.”

And with that, she haughtily turned and walked out the door, leaving a completely bewildered and befuddled Errol behind her.

Chapter 8

A few hours after Gale’s departure, Errol found himself with Mayor Sterillo, having a discussion with the leaders of the troupe – a man named Anru and his wife Miabi – at a table in a tent the troupe had set up. Anru was a big fellow, with large muscles and strong hands that bespoke of a lifetime doing a lot of heavy lifting. In fact, although getting on in years (as attested to by the iron-gray color of his hair) he still occasionally served as the strongman of their band.

His wife Miabi was a striking, dark-haired beauty. Despite over two decades of marriage and eight children, she had managed to maintain a svelte figure. Moreover, she was sensual in a way that defied explanation, and Errol found himself continually glancing at her involuntarily.

At the moment, Anru and the mayor were hashing out the boundaries within which the troupe could perform. Basically, the mayor didn’t want to give what he respectfully called a “gypsy clan” free rein to perform all over Stanchion. Mayor Sterillo wanted the entertainment venue limited to a specific geographic region.

Frankly speaking, Errol’s presence here was merely perfunctory. He cared very little about where the troupe was allowed to ply their craft. His primary concern was the extent to which they were dangerous and cheats. Glancing once more at Miabi (who, like him, was not really involved in the conversation), he was embarrassed to find her noticing his stare. She gave him a slight smile and a wink.

“Dear,” she said, interrupting something her husband was saying to the mayor, “the Warden and I don’t really need to be here for this. While you and the mayor finish your discussion, I can show him around and satisfy him that the people of Stanchion have nothing to fear from us.”

Her husband didn’t really reply, merely gave a dismissive gesture with his hand and went back to talking to the mayor.

Both Errol and Miabi stood up. Errol shook both Anru’s and the mayor’s hand, while Miabi gave her husband a kiss and waved goodbye to Mayor Sterillo. As they walked out of the tent, she lithely slid her arm into his. Errol felt an odd tingling sensation where their arms met, but ignored it to the best of his ability.

“Finally,” she said in exasperation as they walked away from the tent. “I absolutely abhor those discussions. Don’t you?”

“They’re part of the job,” Errol said with a shrug.

“Agreed, but there’s no need for them to be dull. Personally, I think sitting around talking about stuff like where we can perform is the height of boredom. There’s got to be a way to make it a bit more fun.”

“So how would you have it settled – with a knife fight?”

She laughed, a sound that was crystal-pure and lovely. “Nothing so drab. Maybe a knife-
throwing
competition.”

“Only if I get to throw for our side,” Errol said.

She gave Errol a sly appraisal. “You’re that good?” When he just shrugged in response, she said, “We’ll just have to see.” With that, she began showing him around their camp.

The troupe really was a family affair. The total number of people in their band amounted to about forty. Aside from Anru and Miabi, there were their eight children (ranging in age from eight to twenty-three), as well as four older children that Anru’d had with a first wife who had died of a pox. The rest were an assortment of aunts, uncles, and cousins, as well as a few drifters they had picked up here and there.

“So, the mayor helps determine the field of play,” she said as they walked, “but the Warden sets the rules of the game. What are they?”

Errol took a deep breath. “You leave everything as you found it. You don’t churn up the ground, you don’t needlessly chop down trees, you don’t fling all your trash in the river.”

“Agreed.”

“You respect our laws. I know you have your own code for righting wrongs, but you will abide by our ordinances while here – no one takes matters into their own hands.”

“Agreed.”

One by one, Errol laid out the ground rules, and Miabi agreed, on behalf of the troupe, to each of them. When they had finished, she showed him the various games of skill and chance that the troupe wanted to showcase. Errol went through them all and in the end only decided that two were off-limits: one was a tumbling contest that he felt offered too much opportunity for injury, and the other was a knife-throwing competition.

The entertainers running the tumbling event accepted Errol’s decision with good grace, but the young man running the knife-throwing booth – one of Miabi’s sons named Baro – was furious.

They were standing in front of the booth at the time, which was set up with three bulls-eye targets about twenty feet away. Winning a prize required putting a knife in the center of each target, with each contestant being given three knives.

Errol had picked up each of the throwing knives to be used in the booth – felt them, hefted their weight, balanced them on his fingertips. In the end, he had decided that most of the knives were unbalanced. Baro, who had been standing nearby, exploded in anger.

“There’s nothing wrong with my knives!” he screamed. “This is a fair game of skill!”

“No, it’s not,” Errol replied. “And I won’t let you run this game.”

Baro let out a stream of invective that shocked Errol, particularly since his mother Miabi was right there.

“Look,” Errol said, when Baro had finished, struggling not to take the man’s words personally, “I’m trying to do you a favor. There are people around here who know their way around a knife, and they’re going to accuse you of being a cheat. The next thing you know, there’s going to be a dead body lying around somewhere, and I’d prefer not to have to deal with that.”

Instead of responding, Baro grabbed three of the knives from the booth counter. Errol’s dagger was immediately in his hand, but the young man barely even looked at him. Instead, Baro threw his knives at the targets, hitting all of them dead center.

“There!” he said smugly, waving an arm in the direction of the targets. “Could I do that with bad knives?”

Errol put away his dagger, then picked up three of the knives himself and flung them at the targets. Each sank into the hilt of one of the knives that Baro had thrown. The eyes of both Miabi and her son went wide with surprise.

“As I was saying,” Errol stated, “there are people around here who know their way around a knife. They can throw an unbalanced knife just as well as a balanced one. So again, I’m doing you a favor by shutting this down. That way I won’t have residents angry about a rigged game, and you won’t get cleaned out by one of our knife experts.”

Baro had merely nodded as Miabi and Errol moved on. She then brought him to the last item for inspection: the troupe’s sideshow of oddities and curiosities.

According to their barker, the sideshow had a number of unique subjects, including a wood nymph and a mermaid. It only took two seconds of inspection to realize that almost everything on display was fake (for example, the nymph was just a girl painted green), but this wasn’t a real concern to Errol because everyone knew they were fake to begin with. However, he let the troupe keep its dignity by saying that he was impressed. Miabi had laughed out loud at that.

“You are quite generous in your praise,” she said, “and fair in your assessments.”

“Thank you,” Errol replied.

“That said…” She looked at him oddly, seemingly pondering something.

“What is it?” he asked, sensing that something unusual was afoot.

“In truth, we do have one valuable and unique item. It’s exceptionally rare, so we seldom display it anywhere. Yet, for some reason, I think we’d like to do so here.”

With that, she guided him to a tent on the edge of the troupe’s camp. It was clearly special, because an over-muscled young man (from all appearances, another of Anru and Miabi’s sons) stood guard outside. He nodded to Miabi as she and Errol entered.

Inside, a large table occupied the center of the tent. Two girls – obviously daughters of Miabi – were hovering over something there. They turned as Miabi and Errol entered.

“He’s refusing to eat,” said the younger one said.

“Not that it matters,” replied the other one, “since he doesn’t need to eat anyway.”

Miabi sighed. “Warden, may I present my daughters Tilbi”
–
the younger daughter did a small curtsy
–
“and Sharn.” The older daughter, a younger version of her mother, gave Errol an inviting wink. He would later learn that she was excellent with a bow and arrow, and had her own act which involved a lot of trick shots.

“And this,” Miabi continued, as her daughters stepped away from the table, “is Berry.”

Sitting in the center of the table, previously obscured by Miabi’s daughters, was what appeared to be a large birdcage. However, instead of containing a perch, swing, or the usual accessories one might expect to find in such a habitat, it contained miniature furniture. A tiny table, tiny chairs, a tiny bed – basically a full complement of dollhouse furniture. And there, seated at the tiny little table in a tiny little chair, and playing with a tiny little deck of cards, sat a tiny little man.

Errol was unsure of what he was seeing. He had at first thought the little fellow – “Berry,” as Miabi had called him, who was about six inches tall – was some sort of pixie or sprite (or the like), but aesthetically Berry didn’t fit the mold of any of the wee folk Errol was familiar with: no pointed ears, no wings, etc. In essence, he just looked like a tiny human being – albeit one who seemed to ignore everything around him.

Overcome with curiosity, Errol was about to ask exactly what type of creature the troupe had caged when the truth quietly dawned on him: Berry was a homunculus.

Chapter 9

Miabi seemed more than a little surprised when Errol suddenly turned to her and asked how a homunculus came to be part of their show.

“You continue to surprise me, Warden,” she said, raising an eyebrow. “First with your knife skills, now with your knowledge. Not many are easily able to recognize homunculi.”

Errol said nothing, but silently he was thankful for the thoroughness of his tutelage under Tom. Again, his brother’s rigorous mentorship had shown its value.

Miabi went on. “Berry has been part of my husband’s family for generations. According to legend, my husband’s five-times great-grandfather fashioned him from clay and brought him to life with earth-magic.”

“And he’s part of your sideshow?”

Before Miabi could answer, Berry himself responded. In a voice that seemed far too big for his small body, he turned to Errol (deigning to notice him for the first time) and said, “I am not one of those fakes or freaks!”

Both Miabi and her daughters seemed startled. They all looked from Berry (who went back to his cards) to Errol, as if the latter were a singing tree. Errol was unsure of what to make of it all and found his guard slowly coming up as the silence in the tent lingered.

“You must forgive us,” Miabi said, breaking the silence after what seemed minutes but which was most likely only seconds. “Berry is, to be frank, an unsociable creature at best – even with those of us who could probably be considered his family. Outside of the show we occasionally use him in, he seldom ever speaks to anyone, let alone strangers.”

“What sort of show do you use him in?” Errol asked.

Again, it was Berry who answered. “First of all, you can stop speaking of me as if I weren’t in the room. Next, my name isn’t ‘Berry.’ That’s just what I allow my
family
here to call me since they’d rip their tongues out at the roots trying to pronounce my
real
name. Finally, these slavers use me as a fortune-teller.”

“Fortune-teller?” Errol repeated.

“Yes,” said Miabi. “Homunculi are known to be extremely wise. For one coin, anyone can ask him one question and receive an answer. For you, Warden, we’ll allow a question without payment of coin.”

There were a few seconds of palpable silence while all eyes focused on Errol.

“What? You mean now?” he asked. “You want me to ask him something right now?”

“Please,” said Sharn, whom Errol would later learn was seventeen. Tilbi, on the other hand, was only twelve.

Errol thought about what he knew regarding homunculi. According to legend, they were more than just wise; they were reputedly the repositories of all knowledge. That being the case, Berry might be able to shed some light on Tom’s location.

At the same time, however, Errol was well-aware of the fact that few things in life were free – particularly in situations where magic was involved, and Berry was, by all accounts, a creature of magic. Errol didn’t like the idea of being indebted to the troupe, Berry, or anyone else by virtue of asking a single question.

“Maybe another time,” Errol finally said. “I really can’t think of anything at the moment.”

“Very well,” said Miabi, somewhat disappointedly. Even her two daughters looked slightly crestfallen. Berry, on the other hand, gave Errol an appraising stare followed by a slight, almost imperceptible, nod that made it seem as though he had somehow earned the homunculus’ approval in some way.

With that, Errol’s tour of the troupe’s camp came to an end. He departed, thanking Miabi for showing him around and assuring her that he would be on hand when performances were slated to begin the following day.

*****

That evening, Errol made a trip to the Beverly farm. Ostensibly, the purpose of his visit was to apprise the family that a gulon had been spotted in the area, and – upon arrival – he began explaining that to Gale’s parents as the three of them stood on the porch of the Beverly home. Gale’s no-nonsense mother, however, was having none of it, and she cut Errol off before he got more than ten seconds into his alleged warning.

“The barn,” said Gale’s mother, Bea.

“What?” Errol asked, somewhat mystified.

“The barn. She’s in the barn.”

“Who?” Errol asked, as if he didn’t already know.

“Gale, you young idiot.” And with that, Bea went inside, leaving her husband Dennis outside snickering at a dumbfounded Errol. On his part, Errol was on the verge of protesting, saying Gale had nothing to do with his visit, when Dennis placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder.

“Listen,” said the older man, “you don’t ride this far out just to give a warning like that – especially when sending word by a raven would have been faster and just as effective.”

Errol could have kicked himself. His clumsy attempt at masking his true motives hadn’t fooled anyone.

“Now,” said Dennis, pointing Errol in the proper direction. “The barn.”

Errol sighed, and then began walking. A few moments later, he reached the barn, the door to which was open. Inside, he saw Gale cleaning out stalls. Even hard at work performing a distasteful chore, Errol was surprised to find his heart skip a beat at seeing her. She glanced in his direction as he came in, but didn’t stop working.

“Good evening, Warden,” she said when he got close. “Something I can help you with?”

“Uh, no,” he said. “I just really wanted to talk.”

“That’s ironic,” she said, continuing to muck out the stalls with a shovel. “Before, when I had nothing but time, you had nothing to say. Now that I’m in the middle of chores, you find your tongue.” She paused, holding the shovel upright and leaning against it for a moment. “Well, out with it.”

“I, uh…well, I…” Now that he was in front of her, words appeared to be deserting Errol again. Scrambling for anything to say, he finally asked, “Were you, uh, planning to go see the troupe perform?”

“I was. Possibly tomorrow, if I can finish my chores soon enough.”

“So you’ll be going in the evening, after you finish things here?”

“Yes.”

“Then I want you to have this.” He held out a bracelet towards her – a shiny band of metal covered in strange runes.

Gale took it gently from his hand, looking it over. She recognized it as one of the ornaments worn by Jarruse – the sorcerer who had forged weapons from the Wendigo’s bones. Jarruse had claimed that the bracelet’s magic would protect the wearer from the monsters of the Badlands.

“If you’re going to be out in the evening,” Errol went on, “and traveling home in the dark, you should have it.”

“I won’t be coming home in the dark,” she said. “Several of us girls from the outlying farms are going to stay with Margo Messen.”

Errol nodded in understanding. The Messens operated Stanchion’s general store and lived in a large home not far from town. It made sense that some of the girls would stay with them. In fact, there were several families with homes near where the troupe was performing that would be entertaining guests until the performers left town.

“You should keep this,” Gale said, trying to hand the bracelet back to him. “You need its protection more than I do. I’ll be fine.”

“I want you to have it anyway.” He took the bracelet and slid it over her hand and onto her wrist. Then he took a deep breath, and blurted out the rest before he had time to think about it and decide against it. “You’re special to me, Gale. I need you to know that.”

Gale looked at him in unabashed surprise, and then the corners of her mouth slowly twisted up into a smile. This was as close as Errol had ever been able to get to saying something meaningful, and it had taken him months to get there.

“Well, it’s not the piece of jewelry a girl ideally dreams of getting,” she said, looking at the bracelet admiringly. “But I’ll take what I can get…for no
–
”

Her words were cut off as Errol, surprising himself, leaned forward and kissed her. She initially seemed on the verge of resisting, then yielded, letting her shovel drop to the ground forgotten as she returned his kiss with passion and abandon.

“You are really a mystery to me, Errol Magnus,” she said, when they separated a few moments later. “Earlier, when I’m at my prettiest, I almost have to force myself on you. Now, while I’m covered in grime, you insist on kissing me. I suppose if I fall into the pigpen and come up covered in muck, you’ll ask me to marry you.”

“Assuming I can pick you out from the other denizens of the pen.”

She punched him playfully in the stomach, and he danced away laughing as she menacingly picked up her shovel.

“Go,” she said. “Get back to the Station House before it gets too dark. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Despite the threat of the shovel, he managed to steal one more kiss before departing with a huge grin on his face. He was halfway back to the Station House before he realized that he’d been happily whistling since leaving the Beverly farm.