“Upstairs” turned out to be a small mezzanine, with room for no more than a dozen tables. My target sat at one of those tables, tucked in the corner where the light was dim.
I don’t know what I’d been expecting. Perhaps a wizened crone with a hooked nose covered in hairy warts, cackling around a single tooth as she plied her trade. Maybe a young maiden dressed in a delicate gown embroidered with mystic symbols, or a middle-aged, blind woman with a dirty bandage covering her eyes and a Seer’s tattoo branding her forehead. Any of those old clichés, really.
What I wasn’t expecting was the shapely beauty sharing a raucous drink with a fat man who might have been the bread merchant’s brother, a couple of halflings (doesn’t that make a whole-ling?), a shriveled oldster who was staring fixedly at her breasts, and a gnome. She was laughing at something one of the halflings had said and sloshing her tankard about, completely unmindful of the oldster’s leers.
I paused and joined in with the leering. It wasn’t difficult. Curves less fine than hers had been known to make the most devout of clerics doubt their chosen course and end marriages thought eternally stable, and there was little enough fabric to cover them up. Had I not known she was a Seer (and had the crystal ball on her table not proclaimed her as such), I would have guessed at a much earthier profession.
She caught me leering from several tables away and hollered, “Like what you see?” in my direction.
I transferred my gaze to her face. Beautiful blue eyes, wide friendly smile with a hint of knowing seduction. “How could I not?” I replied, and gave her my best grin.
Despite my cool response, I was sweating. I was still young and had yet to truly master the art of flirtation. My tongue felt like it had swollen and closed off my throat. Perhaps another drink, I thought, and took a swallow despite the slight strangeness growing in my chest. I tried not to blush even as I walked, steadily I hoped, to her table and sat myself down in the chair opposite.
“Mind if I join you?” I asked.
Her smile grew broader. She raised her tankard like a salute in my direction. “As you desire,” she said, her voice a warm purr and her words an open invitation. As far as I was concerned, her companions might have ceased to exist. It was just me and her on that fine (all right, gloomy and drizzly) afternoon, with ale in our hands and the whole evening in front of us. She held my gaze and for the longest moment it felt as if we had a connection, as if I’d known her forever even though we’d only just met. “As long as you’ve coin enough and a craving to know what the future holds,” she finished, breaking the mood. To her I was no more than the next paying client. The laughter of the men, the halflings and the gnome flooded back.
I shrugged, my grin a memory and no more real than the connection we’d shared. Strangely despondent, I drained another swallow of ale and said, “You’d be Gabby, then?”
A flash of danger touched her eyes. “Gabriella,” she corrected. “You’ve heard of me?”
“Would it be so strange for a woman such as yourself to be known throughout the land? I’ll wager I’m not the first to have journeyed far to learn my fortune from you.”
It seemed to satisfy her. “No, you’re not the first. Although some seem to expect more for their coin than knowledge of their futures. So tell me, what do you want to know? Is it riches you’re hunting? Love perhaps? Or…” she looked me up and down “…do you seek a way out of some kind of trouble?”
I wondered if I was wearing a sign.
“You’re the Seer,” I said, “So you tell me what I’m looking for.”
A second flash of annoyance. “Fine,” she said. “Have it your way.”
I figured that if I kept this up, she’d be throwing knives at me soon.
Even so, she put down her tankard, leaned over the table (giving me a very fine view as she did) and knitted her brow as she stared into the depths of the crystal.
Up until then, my attention had been taken by the Seer herself. But now I considered the object of her study. While I couldn’t exactly call myself a connoisseur, Gabby’s crystal ball did little to inspire confidence. It was smaller than the palm of my hand and instead of being the perfect sphere I’d always imagined, it was sort of oval, like an egg but not so smooth or even. And it was a long way from perfectly clear. Yellowish was a more accurate description, as if it had been sitting unused in a dark pit somewhere, growing old. There was even a network of cracks on the underside near the darkwood base.
“Not a very good crystal ball, is it?” I said.
“Do you mind?” Gabby replied. She looked at me as if I was some sort of bug. Then she resumed her study.
Credit where credit’s due, the crystal ball certainly responded like it ought to. Almost as soon as Gabby started doing her thing, billowing clouds formed within it, then quickly parted. I caught very brief glimpses of a thousand different things, most of which suggested danger. Swords and knives abounded, and fire as well, but there were also people. Was that the immaculate Captain of the Guard looking angry? And was that just another drunken, enraged, scary-looking pixie, or was it Max, who I’d just met? And were those orcs? I didn’t normally have anything to do with orcs if I could help it. And could that possibly have been a dragon?
None of it made a lot of sense to me. Which is why Gabby was the Seer and I wasn’t. So I shook my head and leaned back in my chair, content to wait and sip my ale. Maybe it was the bubbles making me feel a trifle strange.
“I see,” Gabby began, then stopped. Then, “Aha! I’ve got it!” She looked up at me with a quizzical expression. “You’re after the Fracture,” she said.
“Yes!” I agreed, surprised. I hadn’t expected her to be able to guess.
“Why?”
“Because—” I started, then found I didn’t want to continue. It was too private and this was too public a place. I nodded back to the crystal. “If you really want to know, find out for yourself. But you’ve seen it. You know where it is. I’ll pay you to tell me where.”
Now it was Gabby’s turn to look uncertain. Instead of telling me what she knew, she turned to study the crystal again.
“Um,” I said.
“Quiet. I have to know I can trust you.”
Trust me with what? I wondered.
I decided I could wait. But then she jerked her gaze away as if what she saw had burned her.
“You ruiner!” she said.
“What?” I was genuinely puzzled.
“They’re coming for you!”
“What? Who?”
“Little guy with a crossbow. He set it up. But it’s your fault!” She stood abruptly. It was as if she was eager to get away from me, some imagined danger or both.
Unfortunately, she knocked the table as she did.
I saw it as if it happened in slow motion.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
If the crystal ball had been perfectly spherical, perhaps it wouldn’t have mattered. But it wasn’t. It was shaped somewhat like an egg, with the widest, heaviest bit near the top. The darkwood base failed to hold it. The knock Gabby had given the table was enough to topple it over and start it rolling.
Gabby had time to cover her mouth with her hands as if that would help. The crystal rolled, rolled, and rolled some more. It reached the edge of the table, started to slow … and I did exactly the wrong thing at exactly the worst time imaginable: I lunged for it.
My only intent was to stop it from falling off the table. But Gabby reached for it at the same time. Our hands collided and neither of us managed to catch it. Worse, we nudged the crystal ball just enough to send it over the edge.
Even then, it should have been fine. Any other crystal would have survived a fall from such a height, especially as the floor on this mezzanine level was made of wood rather than stone.
But this crystal already had a network of fine cracks, like a spider web covering one side. It touched the floor and bounced. Then it touched the floor a second time and shattered into ten thousand shards.
Time sped back up.
“No!” cried Gabby. She turned to me with an expression close to hatred. “You half-witted dolt!” she said as if it had been my fault.
Strangely, my only thought was to try to comfort her somehow, for it was obvious that the crystal meant a lot. But just at that moment there was a commotion downstairs. This, combined with her warning and the strange feeling in my chest (which had suddenly become more urgent) was enough to impel me to action.
I sprang to my feet and took two quick steps to the banister. Looking over, I saw a full dozen armed guardsmen pushing their way into the tavern, led by the Immaculate Captain.
That worthy chose the wrong moment to look up. Or perhaps it was the right moment. Depends on your point of view, really. In any event, our eyes met and he recognized me without any problems at all.
“There he is!” he yelled. “Get him!”
I couldn’t believe that they would still be after me because of my earlier antics at the market. What had Thork Yurger told them?
Dismissing the question as unknowable, I hurled my tankard as hard as I could at the Captain’s face. It would have been a good shot too, but a pixie chose that moment to blunder into the way, deflecting the tankard just enough that it missed the Captain completely. It hit another guardsman on the shoulder, doing little damage. The pixie (could it have been Max?) circled like a falcon with a damaged wing and crashed to the ground.
There was only one way up to the mezzanine floor and the guardsmen were heading straight towards it, elbowing halfling, man and orc out of the way as they went. In moments they would be up the stairs and I would be caught. Except that I had no intention of being there when they arrived.
A large, candle-studded chandelier hung from the ceiling over the main room. Without pausing to wonder if I could even reach it and choosing to ignore whatever was going on in my chest, I stepped quickly up onto the banister and leapt, catching the chandelier with both hands. A simple swing and I dropped casually to the ground near the door. It was almost too easy. I wasn’t even puffing.
Some of my pursuers had reached where I’d just recently been. So I offered them a cheerful salute and pushed open the door, intent only on getting out of there as fast as I could.
Unfortunately, the good Captain had seen fit to station a handful of guardsmen there as well. They grinned at me and drew their swords.
As quickly as I could, I slammed the door again and sought a new escape. There was a second door over the other side and the way was mostly clear. If I could just—
Poodle stepped in front of me. “Boss said no trouble,” he said. “Think he’s right. You won’t be.” Just like the guards outside, he was grinning.
I kicked him as hard as I could in the shin and he didn’t even flinch. It probably hurt me worse than him. Even so, I darted around him and…
“Urk,” I said. He’d caught me by the collar of my tunic as I tried to pass.
He raised me into the air with one hand and held me dangling in front of him. I heard tiny laughter from somewhere and remembered that I’d held Max this way not so many minutes before.
I tried to kick Poodle in the nuts. Didn’t work. Maybe he didn’t have any to kick. Attempted to punch him in the face. Couldn’t reach. I hit his arm repeatedly, aiming to make him let go, but I might have been hitting stone for all the good it did.
“Captain!” Poodle called sweetly. “Oh Captain! Is this what you’re looking for?”
Mostly quiet until now, several of the tavern patrons joined in with Max’s laughter.
I hung there, fuming, not used to situations like this at all. I’ve said it before: I’m fairly tall and strong, and not bad in a fight. (I’m also good looking and wonderfully charming, but that’s a little off topic for now. Maybe we’ll go into it later.) So to be manhandled so easily, no, so nonchalantly, was frustrating at the very least. If I didn’t start making some sort of impact soon, I thought, it may well wreak irrevocable harm to my delicate self esteem.
I considered my options. I’d already tried everything obvious. My tail was no help at all in this situation. But I’m resourceful and don’t fight fair. I was outmatched, outmuscled and caught. And outnumbered. If I couldn’t get away now, I’d have a much more difficult time later on. Especially if, as Gabby had suggested, this had anything to do with Thork Yurger, who’d tried to put a crossbow bolt in me the last time we’d met.
Thinking of Gabby, I twisted my neck to look for her but she was nowhere to be seen. Maybe she’d already left, or maybe she was hiding somewhere. Maybe she was watching from her dark little corner and I just couldn’t see.
Oh well, I thought. Might as well get on with it.
I drew back, sniffed really hard until the snot started to collect at the back of my throat, then spat, aiming for Poodle’s eyes.
It was a masterful shot. Right on target!
Poodle snarled and wiped at his face with his free hand, but I wasn’t done yet. My tail wasn’t the only weapon I had. I didn’t carry a sword. To me, they always seemed too long and unwieldy. But I did carry a number of knives secreted under my clothes, as well as a few throwing stars, a couple of small cudgels, and even a garrote. While he was still distracted by my spit, I picked my least favorite knife (I figured there wasn’t much chance of getting it back) and buried it as deeply as I could in his forearm.
It went in all of an inch and a half. Not much, but not even Poodle could stand that sort of treatment. He howled in pain, tried to blink through the remnants of spit in his eyes, and turned the howl into an inarticulate roar of anger.
I’m not sure what he would have done from there. He could have punched me, thrown me to the floor, or maybe bitten my head clean off. But I hadn’t stabbed him randomly. I’d taken good care, and my aim had been true. I’d pierced a bundle of nerves that controlled a few key muscles.
He couldn’t maintain his grip on my collar.
I twisted free and scurried behind him. Several of the guards had joined us, so to add insult to injury I aimed a second, much stronger kick at Poodle’s nuts. This time I must have connected. His inarticulate roar cut clean off and he fell to his knees, uttering a much quieter whimper. The guards who had reached us took note of my triumph and approached cautiously.
“Now, now,” one was saying. “Don’t try anything rash—”
I lunged in his direction, watched him flinch, then picked up a chair and charged towards his companion.
That worthy hurried to get out of my way.
From there it was easy. I dropped the chair, hopped up on a table, leapt over a trio of halflings and threw open the door.
I threw it closed again just in time to stop a bolt fired from Thork Yurger’s crossbow. The irritating little man had been standing there, waiting.
I considered my options. Should I open the door again and rush him as I’d done before? Should I pick up that chair again and use it as a shield as I did? Or should I seek another way out?
In retrospect, perhaps I should have spent less time thinking and more time acting, because a couple of the tavern patrons decided to help out the guards by tackling me and sending me crashing to the ground.
“What did you do that for?” I demanded from my spot on the floor. That tackle had hurt. I’d skinned a knee and banged my head on the door. To complicate matters, whatever was going on in my chest had grown worse. It felt like there was a blockage somewhere around where my lungs ought to be, but my breathing still felt normal. I really needed to do something about that soon, I thought, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what.
“Sorry,” one of them said. “Thought we’d, you know, try and help.”
“And you chose to help them rather than me? Thanks a bunch!” I cuffed him around the ear. He cringed but didn’t let go.
I was in serious trouble and I knew it. Sure, I could have dislodged both of them without much effort, but the key problem was time. I didn’t have any left. Beyond these two I could see Poodle climbing back to his feet, but he wasn’t the real issue.
The real issue was that the Captain had arrived with about a dozen other guards. Several of them approached.
“Look,” I said, smiling sweetly and trying one last time. “I don’t know what you think I did, but I promise you I’m innocent.”
It was a weak effort, I knew that, and it was as far as I got before the nearest guards started kicking me. My tacklers finally figured out they shouldn’t be there and scurried away as best they could, leaving me to my own defenses.
I did what any self-respecting man would do. I squeezed my eyes tightly shut, brought my knees up to my chin, curled into a ball, hoped that my armor would protect me somewhat and prayed to all the gods I could think of (I might have invented a few) that the guardsmen would stop before they did any serious damage.
No such luck, I thought. They kicked me wherever they could and they weren’t holding back. My legs and arms bore the brunt of it, but now and then someone thought to stomp and I could only protect my head so much. I felt my consciousness slipping away at the same time as that blockage in my chest started to move.
My last conscious thought was to laugh. I’d figured out what the blockage was. It was wind, caused by that too-fizzy ale. As I faded away, I distinctly heard the large, loud and fairly disgusting sound that my body produced:
“BUUUURRRRRPPPP!!!”