24

Providence must have been hitching a ride on Old Nellie tonight – busted wheels aside - because when they got to the tavern they found three large banqueting tables set up in the middle of the room. Easily enough to accommodate a full carriage of commuters as well as the patrons already enjoying its comforts.

“I must say, your timing couldn’t be better,” said the landlady, a woman called Polly Lloyd. She had eight children, all of them working age. Mick knew this because all the bar staff, five boys and three girls, looked just like her. “We had a wedding reception here yesterday, and I hired these tables specially for the occasion.”

Mick and Zip took their seats at the end of the third banqueting table, which gave them a bit of space away from the others.

“S’pose since we’re here, we might as well eat,” said Mick.

“I…er…didn’t bring any gold,” said Zip.

For some reason, this made him feel a little sad. He guessed it was the fact that Zip would even question whether he’d pay for their food and drinks. Wasn’t that what uncles were there for? To treat their nieces from time to time? Did he do that enough? Sure, he was a bit of a skinflint, but not with Zip.

“Get whatever you want,” he told her. “Where are the menus? Oh, hang on.”

The menu was a single piece of paper with just a few things written on it:

Food:

Food of the day – 10 gold

Drinks:

Beer – 3 gold

Not beer – 2 gold

“Now this is a pickle,” said Mick. “Do I go for food of the day, or food of the day?”

Zip laughed. “Can I have a beer?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re a kid,” he said.

“Granny Wells said you had your first beer when you were fourteen.”

“Well, now’s a good a time as any for you to find out that what adults say and how they act are two different things. There’s not a thing you can do about it except behave the same way when you’re older.”

He expected Zip to push it even more. She could stoke a fire for a week if she was in the mood to. Instead, she just nodded.

“I’ll have the ‘food of the day’ and a ‘not beer’, please, Uncle Mick.”

“No problem. Any ‘not beer’ in particular, assuming there’s a choice?”

“Whatever they have, I don’t mind.”

“Righto, then.”

“I really am sorry, you know,” she said. “For everything at the station.”

“Sorry you picked the wrong day to play truant, more like.”

“No. Well, sort of. I didn’t know it was your big day, though. I wouldn’t have gotten in trouble otherwise.”

“Zip, the point of making trouble is that you usually don’t intend on getting caught. I doubt you wanted to get dragged to the station, did you?”

“Still.”

“Anyway,” said Mick. “It’s not me you should be apologizing to.”

“I’ll write mother a letter and leave it on the kitchen table. She might see it at some point.”

“We’ve been over this. It ain’t fair. She works damned hard.”

Mick had always looked up to his twin sister. Always had, always would. Never mind that he was technically the eldest of the pair by nine minutes. Kiera was his sister, she was the wise one, the person who always had an answer for everything and would make time to give it to you. Sure, she made a mistake in her teens in picking the wrong fella, but you’d be hard pressed to get her to call it as such now. She doted on Zip. It was just…she had this thing about gold. The security of having it, the fear of not enough. She didn’t want Zip to ever have to worry.

Feeling like maybe he was making some headway with his niece, he pressed on. “You need to grow up a little. You’ve got more brains than me and then some, but you’re going to waste ‘em on messing around. You’re not a kid anymore.”

“I was a kid a second ago when I asked for a beer. Seems like my maturity changes to suit you.”

“Well, maybe it does. Another rule of adulting – we twist things however we want. Now stay there and I’ll go order.”

At the bar, Mick was kept waiting while Polly Lloyd stood there chatting to the carriage driver. Laughing and joking for a good five minutes, they were. Normally a patient man, he started feeling the irritation a little.

“’Scuse me.”

“Sorry, my love,” said Polly, separating from her talk with the driver like they’d been caught plotting treason. Mick’s instincts began to wave for his attention, but it was too noisy in here to think.

“What can I get you?” she said.

“This ‘food of the day’ – what is it?”

Polly opened the door behind her, which led to the kitchen. “Bill? What’s today’s food of the day?”

A man grunted from the kitchen, “Fish.”

“Fish,” Polly told Mick.

“Okay, what fish?”

Polly turned around. “Bill? He says ‘what fish’?”

“Bream.”

Mick sighed. “Anything come with this bream? Veggies? Sauce? How’s it cooked? Saints alive, is this the tavern of riddles?”

When he returned to the table, he was surprised to see Zip sitting there with a book in front of her. He caught a glimpse of it over her shoulder. A diagram of a triangle, with ‘X’ written on one side.

“That a math book?” he said.

“I thought…you know…I had – should have had – math today.”

“Glad to see you catching up. You know I still need to tell your mother. It’s only right.”

Zip leaned forward and whispered, “What about this? I get ten gold per week from Mum, fifteen from Granny Wells, and sometimes I help Percy Tattersall inventory his books. I could make you a very rich man…”

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Bribing an officer of the law, now? You’re building up quite a charge sheet.”

“It’s just, Billie Felton’s having a sleepover for her birthday. I never get invited to stuff. What happens if I’m grounded the one time they ask me?”

“I can’t lie to your mother, Zip, and that’s that,” said Mick. Then, to change the subject, he spoke in a whisper of his own. “Something ain’t right here.”

“What?”

“I just can’t stop thinking about that wheel. Cheap or not, no driver in the world would use one as bad as that as a spare. Not with the state it was in. Might as well have a wheel made out of paper.”

“Maybe he’s just stupid.”

“You have to memorize almost every road in Easterly to earn the driver class. Not to mention all the driving techniques they have to learn, the animal welfare, the stuff about load bearing. This driver of ours is a canny guy.”

Mick took out his narrative notepad. He opened it to the first blank page, then pressed his finger against the bottom half of it just like he had in Jessie’s workshop. It took a moment or two, but words began to appear on the page.

“What the-”

“Hush,” he said. “I’m trying to concentrate.”

“But the words are written down, Uncle. You aren’t listening to them.”

“Just…just be quiet.”

The place was nothing unusual. It was a tavern where a man could buy a dream for a coin then gamble it away in seconds. An inn where old friends met up, old enemies buried hatchets.

The floor had seen its share of spilled beer and muddy boots, and the wind whistled a maudlin tune through the window frames. The tavern showed signs of care here and there, though. A freshly varnished bar, the liquor bottles all cleaned and lined up in size order.

The clientele was made up of commuters sheltering from the rain, though what brought so many of them here…it was hard to say.

Points of interest:

The tavern lady, Polly, keeps touching the driver’s hand.

The banqueting tables don’t look right.

The roof looks new.

“What the heck is this?” asked Zip.

“Language!”

“What, heck? Heck’s not a swearword. Granny Wells says it all the time. Mrs. Ladbrooke says it.”

“This is a notepad I bought,” said Mick, turning it around so she could see it better. “Supposed to be useful for writers getting inspiration and all of that, but Jessie altered it a little for me.”

“Isn’t that cheating, having the book tell you stuff?”

“Would it be cheating for someone to dig a hole with a shovel instead of their bare hands?”

Zip shoved her math book to one side and leaned to get a closer look at the notepad. “What’s it mean?”

“Well, for a start, the newness of the roof is a gray weasel.”

“Gray…”

“You must know that,” said Mick. “Have you never read a detective book, girl? Gray weasel- a misdirection. You know, a clue that ain’t a clue, but looks like a big one.”

“Right.”

Mick pointed at the line about Polly. “This is what interests me. Now, watch Polly and the driver guy. The book’s right. She keeps touching him.”

“Might fancy each other,” said Zip.

“No, this is something else. They’re way too familiar. They know one another, I’d bet my last gold on it. And you know what I say about gambling.”

“It’s a mug’s game.”

“Right. But this is the interesting part. Look at the tables. The tavernlady said she set ‘em up for a wedding reception, and that we were lucky they were still here to accommodate us. Don’t you see anything wrong with that?”

Zip, maybe for the first time today, looked something other than bored. She stared at the long, wide tables, idly tapping the cover of her math book as she did. Her eyes widened with recognition.

“They’re too wide.”

Mick grinned. “These tables aren’t artificed, and they don’t have any hinges to make them fold up. So, how’d they get them in and out? Are you telling me they removed the roof or something?”

“They could unscrew the legs, maybe.”

Mick shook his head. “Put these tables on their side, even without legs, and they’d be too tall for the doorway. There’s just no way of getting them in or out without a heck of a hassle. You wouldn’t do it for one wedding reception.”

“Why would she lie?” said Zip.

“There are two reasons why people lie, Zipsolera,” he said, secretly enjoying the disgusted look she gave him when he used her full name. “To make money…or to play truant from school.”

Mick got up and approached the bar, walking through a cloud of fried bream and grilled vegetables aroma that made his stomach feel like it was shriveling to the size of a pea. The kitchen door briefly opened and a barlad walked out bearing three plates of delicious-smelling bream. From behind him came the sound of a kitchen busy catering for the unexpected arrival of a bunch of stranded commuters. Or was it unexpected, after all?

“Hate to intrude,” said Mick.

“Not at all,” said Polly, straightening up. She reached for a tankard. “Another beer?”

“A word, actually. If you don’t mind.”

“I’m a little busy…”

“I noticed. Bit of good luck for you, ain’t it? Having a wagon break down so close to your tavern?”

The driver and Polly shared a look. It was a brief one, so quick it might not have meant anything. But Mick knew he was right.

“How often do you do it, then? Twice a week? A month? I reckon weekly carriages full of passengers ordering food and drinks ought to see you right. Only, I’ve never heard Striding commuters complain that carriages always break down, so I’m guessing you must alter your routes. You know, switch up which carriages break here. If it happened to the same passenger in the same place, it’d looked damned fishy. That right?”

“No idea what you’re talking about,” said the driver.

“Oh, really?”

“If you’re going to cause trouble, I’ll have to ask you to leave my tavern,” said Polly.

“The minute I step foot outside that door without choosing to, this stops being a friendly chat and becomes something else.”

The driver shrugged. “Technically….technically, I’ve done nothing wrong. The carriage did break down. If there’s a law been broken, then slap my arse and call me the king.”

“It’s fraud.”

“Oh, really? My broken down carriage says otherwise.”

Was he right? Mick had tried reading all the laws in Easterly in preparation for the token exams, but that was like trying to pole vault over a mountain. He guessed that yes, the carriage technically did break down. What it would come to was proving intent. Did the driver choose a poor-quality spare so it’d break down on purpose, or was it just bad luck? You couldn’t send a guy to jail because fate wasn’t kind to him. He was pretty certain he knew the answer here, but proving it would be difficult.

“Law or no law, it ain’t right,” he said. “These folks have had a hard day. They just want to get home.”

“And they will get home. Polly’s kindly sent one of her barlads to the Robertson farm over yonder. They’ll have a spare that ought to fit my carriage. Ought to take him maybe an hour or so.”

“Just enough time for folks to eat some bream and have a couple of drinks,” said Mick.

“Well, isn’t that lucky. We could have been stranded in the middle of nowhere, after all, but we’re not. When everyone’s eaten and paid up, we’ll be away, back to good old ‘hampton.”

The driver clearly wasn’t going to crack, so Mick wondered if maybe Polly might be the better target. He wasn’t optimistic; if anything, she looked even more hard-faced than her friend or lover or whoever the driver was.

“People have lost businesses for fraud, you know,” he said. “If this thing went to court…”

The driver put his hand on Polly’s “He can’t prove a thing. The guy that does the blabbin’ also needs to do the provin’.”

“Ah. But in a civil court, the burden’s not so strict, is it?” said Mick. “All we need to do is convince a bunch of honest, working ladies and gents that it was likely you were swindling people. Balance of probabilities, they call it. I reckon I wouldn’t have to do too much digging to find other folks who’ve had their journeys interrupted and found themselves eating bream in this very tavern.”

“Don’t always serve bream,” called Bill from the kitchen. “Sometimes halibut.”

Polly wavered. “I can’t afford a civil suit.”

The driver crossed his arms. Big, burly arms they were. Out of proportion with his body. “He can’t prove a thing. Don’t say another word, ‘cos this gentleman is leaving. Him and his niece.”

Polly shook her head. “No, I won’t send him out in the rain.”

“Polly…”

“Let’s just forget about all this, shall we?” said Polly to Mick. “Fresh start, no harm done.”

“He knows nothing,” said the driver.

Mick could see he was trying to mine for copper using a wooden spoon. Walking back to his table, he caught the tails of a couple of conversations between the other commuters. One of them, a man dressed in a smart suit, was getting angsty because he said he’d be home for his son’s school play. Mick had been to one of Zip’s school plays years ago, and he reckoned the driver had done this guy a favor. Another commuter, who Mick recognized as Jules Winters, was heading back to Sunhampton with a crate full of medicines that Healer Brown had ordered from Full Striding.

No, this wouldn’t do. This scam might usually have caused no more harm than making peoples’ gold pouches a little lighter and delaying them for an hour or two, but sometimes the consequences went deeper. Someone needed to put a stop to it.

He told Zip he was just nipping outside for a minute. Putting up his hood, he stepped out into the rain. Saints alive, it’s a bad one, he thought. It wasn’t just rain but wind, as well. Seemed like the elements were trying to test the old tavern, see what it was really made of. The guttering system had already given up, and rain was coming down in a waterfall from a spot where it had overflowed.

Mick circled around the tavern and to the stables, where the driver’s horses were sheltered in a cozy-looking wooden structure. One was chewing on some hay, the other snorting and staring out into the night. It was nice and peaceful out here. Mick thought maybe he’d rather be out here with the horses than inside.

“How are we doing, ladies and gents?” he said. “Seen any wagon wheels around here?”

Getting no answer from the horses, he started to look around. He did it slowly, methodically. Once he had earned the Forensics skill tree, he’d have a quick-use ability that’d instantly mark up anything that might be evidence. For now, he had to rely on his own senses. His smell, weakened as it was by his slightly bunged up nose. His hearing, dampened by the rain. His eyesight was only marginally better, given how dark it was out here.

“Now let’s see what we’ve got here,” he said, sweeping his gaze over the yard.

It took his sight a few more minutes to adjust properly to the gloom. When it did, he noticed drag marks in the hay scattered all around the stable yard. Following the marks, he soon found a sturdy-looking wagon wheel covered by a green sheet.