There’s two kinds of people in the world – people who have read this next excerpt from my book, and people who blow.
Trof found the poster he was looking for with very little difficulty. There weren’t many posters of bandits, and even fewer of lady bandits. Hers, in fact, was the only one. He studied it closely from where it hung on the outer wall of the constable’s shop. He was just looking. He wasn’t sure the exact process for how one removed the poster to take it with them, so he grabbed the bottom edge of it and pulled down carefully, feeling as it ripped through the nails that held it at the top. He gritted his teeth in satisfaction and took a last long look before rolling it up and slinging it under his arm.
He wasn’t sure where to go. There was a bandit in town. Another bandit who was not a lady bandit. All Trof needed was somewhere quiet to think, but as he began walking through the sunny streets he saw groups of men hurrying in and out of doors, taking low careful steps as they held tight to scythes or shovels or even just wooden cudgels. He stopped in the street, feeling the sweat bead on his brow.
To his left, the expanse of the local graveyard ringed the high form of a local cathedral – one of the tabernacles of the Laughing God. Trof knew the place well. There was a woman there who cared for the graves and the grounds, living with her daughter in a shanty no bigger than Trof’s own. Along with the owner of the tack shop where Trof had found some work, she was the only person in Rainsreach who ever spoke to him.
The large, arched doors of the cathedral stood open. They seemed the only doors in sight that weren’t being actively patrolled by men looking for a fight. Trof quickened his step and hurried within, picking his way though the many gravestones that lined the courtyard.
It was dim inside, lit only by the sun that filtered in through the panes of rippled glass. The many benches in the hall were carved in uniform, constructed with a simple design and no ornamentation. A few quiet worshippers sat with heads bowed or approached the parishioner who manned the altar at the far end. The ceilings were very high, reaching up three stories to a pointed roof above. It was the only building of its sort in Rainsreach. Trof had never been in it before.
He found a seat off to one side, sat down, and unrolled the poster. The image of the skeletal woman stared back at him, drawn by a steady hand. The picture was … good. At the very least it was her. Whoever had drawn it had been careful to include the woman’s gaunt cheekbones and sunken eyes, but there was something that wasn’t quite right.
Trof closed his eyes. Dark washed over him. In the dim of the cathedral it was easy to find the blackness of the void. People said that orcs had a special fondness for the dark – that it was their reward at the end of suffering. They said that when the world fell to ruin and men and Gods alike turned at last in desperation to the Deep, it would be the orcs who took joy in a sunless world. The orcs knew that in such a world they would be equal even to their God, and so they yearned for the dark.
Trof hated it.
With broad strokes he painted over the blackness of his thoughts, adding layers of texture until the walls of his little wooden shack began to take shape in various shades of grey before him. He painted the wood lines with their erotic mysteries. He painted his thin mattress, and the door with its rusty spring. He painted two large men, one with a machete through his forearm. He painted her looking down at him.
“Why did the bird die?” He could still hear her voice, dry and cracking like rustling leaves.
He opened his eyes and looked again at the poster. Her mouth was wrong. It held none of the happiness that she found in pistol whippings and home invasions. That thin mouth with its knowing smile and lips that had laughed at him, mocked him, sneered at him. Lips … that had touched his own. He squirmed. Producing a small piece of hardened wax he’d taken from the constable’s office, he added strokes and lines until her mouth looked right.
Trof was staring intently now, remembering vividly the thoughts from the night before that had refused to leave him in peace. How she had jammed her flintlock so firmly and forcefully under his chin. How she had straddled him with hips that rocked back and forth. How she had tapped, tapped, tapped at his scar. Trof squirmed slightly in his bench, adjusting himself in his britches as he did so. He looked up to see if anyone else had taken notice of his transgressions.
“That is a very striking woman,” came a voice to his left. Trof saw the outline of a man slide into place on the bench next to him, silhouetted in the shadows of the cathedral. The man smelled of sweat and alcohol and held an ornamental flask in one hand. “Is she a friend of yours?”
Trof nodded, his obsidian eyes slowly taking in the man’s features with monochromatic accuracy. “No,” he said with a final nod of his head.
“She looks dangerous.” Trof couldn’t help but agree. “Why did you make her mouth green?” Trof froze, staring back, but only shrugged. The man squinted, studying him. “My apologies. I forget sometimes about your kind.” The man looked up to the ceiling, exhaled, then added, “You made it green, the color of plants.”
Trof shook his head slowly.
“I met an orc once who had escaped her enclave, asked her what it was like to live without seeing color.” The man looked at Trof, trying to hold his attention with a crooked half smile. “She asked me, ‘How would I know the difference?’”
Trof wasn’t really listening. Green was the color of plants.
The man took a drink from his flask. “What else does it say about the outlaw?” he asked.
Trof looked down at the various shapes and symbols that decorated the portions of the poster that weren’t her face. He wasn’t sure the right way to say, “I don’t know how to see letters,” so instead he just stared back blankly, the poster sagging in his hands.
“May I?” asked the man. He took the poster gingerly from Trof’s hands, careful not to crease it. Trof didn’t want to relinquish the image of her, but he was in fact very eager to know more. He pulled his fists back and fidgeted with the strings on the neckline of his tunic, trying to keep his hands busy. “It says here she is wanted for numerous crimes against the people of Highland.”
Trof scratched absently at the scar on his chest.
“Robbery. Arson. Extortion.” He gave a low whistle. “Even murder,” he said in a low voice. “What’s your interest in a woman like this?”
Trof stared back quietly, unsure of how to answer before remembering his alibi. “She’s traveling northward and wants to avoid running into any bandits,” he said with a self-satisfied shake of his head.
The man laughed. “That seems unlikely. According to this poster, most of her associates are bandits.”
“But she’s the only lady bandit.”
“Is that so?”
Trof shook his head again.
“Makes you wonder,” said the man returning the poster to Trof, “what a woman like this would have to do in order to survive in a world like that. One full of lies, and threats, and violence.” Trof wondered too, his mind racing back to the lewd images that had come so easily to him just the night before. Then there she was, straddling him as he lay on the floor. Tapping. Tapping. Tapping. Trof winced, and squirmed, and looked away.
“Do you think …” Trof stopped, his quiet voice trailing off into the emptiness of the church. He gritted his teeth. “Do you think somebody could trust her?” He asked carefully. “This woman?”
The man didn’t answer at first. He sank a little lower in the bench, and then folded his arms over one another, fixing his gaze on the altar at the front of the hall. “You could trust her … to look out for herself,” he answered.
A slow creeping panic began to tingle at Trof’s fingers and the back of his neck. “What do you mean?” he asked quietly.
“Well, according to your poster, she carries a flintlock.” When Trof didn’t say anything, the man continued. “Firearms are illegal. Punishable on sight by death. Only elven officers trained for years in Argwylon are permitted to carry them.” He waited, studying Trof. “So for someone to carry one openly, it says a lot about that person.” He looked Trof square in the eyes. “A woman like this will always do what she needs to in order to survive. She’ll burn down your world if it inconveniences her.”
Trof’s black eyes went wide. “Women do that?”
“And men,” said the man with a nod of his own. “Some folk never see beyond their own pain, at least not when things get rough.” He bit at his lip a moment and scratched at the stubble on his chin with a hand that emerged from his folded arms. “Otherwise there wouldn’t be outlaws.”
Trof mimicked the man, biting nervously at his lip too, clenching with such force that he tasted a trace of bitter black blood beneath his sharp, broken incisor.
The dark-haired man gave Trof a long, appraising look. “‘I’m surprised to find you in a place like this.” He spun one finger around in a circle. “I’ve never known your kind to be very religious.”
That was not true. Like all orcs, Trof had been born with a vivid memory of his God – an impression that lived just beyond his vision when he closed his eyes. “Orcs don’t build cathedrals,” he said quietly, “but they have other ways of honoring the Deep.”
“Like sacrifice?”
“Sometimes.” Trof bit down on his broken teeth, forcing himself to not remember some of the more brutal means of worship. “Is this your God?” he asked the man,
“The Laughing God?” The man chuckled. “Hardly. I grew up devoted to the Basilisk, following its every edict through the Book of Order.” He fiddled with his flask. “My people used to say that obedience was the only path to God. Then one day I realized it was the other way around.”
“People here say that, too.”
“Can’t be easy for you,” said the man, rising to his feet. “Being half-orc in a town like this.”
“I have horses,” said Trof in a voice that was somehow both hollow and optimistic.
“Oh you’re an ostler,” the man raised his eyebrows. “Do you have plans for them?”
Trof gritted his teeth, thinking of gathering his horses up later that night before fleeing his shack and starting life over again on the run. Finding a new town. A new shanty. One where the lady bandit didn’t know how to find him and hadn’t seen his scar. “What’s her name?” he asked as the man gathered his things.
“Who? The woman on your poster?” His smile faded to a look that bordered on … was it sadness? That couldn’t be right. He handed the poster back to Trof. “Her name is Fendi Love. Right hand to Athradian Jaims. In these parts they call her the Kissing Bandit. Kisses all her victims, one way or another.” The man took a long, thirsty pull from the ornamental flask.
Fendi Love. Trof felt excitement, and dread, and more excitement, and … he squirmed again, adjusting his britches. “Her victims?” he asked quietly.
“Where did you get that?” A woman had appeared in the aisle next to where the dark-haired man stood drinking from the flask.
“Ma’am?” he asked.
“Where did you get that? That flask.”
“I brought it with me from home, ma’am,” said the dark-haired man.
“No, I don’t think you did. I think you got it from one of the graves outside.” The eyes of other people began to turn as the woman’s voice raised louder. “It’s my father’s flask!” Trof sank down in his bench, having learned some time ago that being a cro in the vicinity of an argument was reason enough for blame. He slid a few feet away from the confrontation.
The dark-haired man looked down at the flask. “To be fair, no one was using it when I found it.”
“It’s not for you!” shouted the woman. “I left it there as a memorial.” Trof slid farther away.
“Well, I’ve never met a ghost that likes whiskey as much as I do.” The dark-haired man tried laughing but the woman ignored the gesture.
“You’re a thief!”
“It was one drink.”
“Someone should get the constable!”
Trof stood and began to walk from the cathedral, then watched in horror as a dozen heads turned to regard him. He sat down again quickly on the first empty bench he could find.
“What is going on here?” The parishioner had made his way to the site of the altercation. Trof could see the look of annoyance on his face. “This is the House of the Laughing God. Not a place of–”
“THIS MAN STOLE FROM MY FATHER’S GRAVE!” the woman shouted. “THAT FLASK HE’S DRINKING FROM IS THE SAME ONE MY DADDY CARRIED WITH HIM TO HIS DYING DAY!”
“I doubt he’s taken a sip from it since.” The dark-haired man’s voice was growing impatient. “Look, if you want it back, just take it.”
“You would steal from the dead?” asked the parishioner in a shocked voice.
“The dead are the only people you can’t steal from!” The dark-haired man was on his feet now, and the entirety of the cathedral was focused on him. Near the back of the room, the creak of the doors announced a sliver of sunlight as someone went hurrying outside. “Look, just take it,” said the dark-haired man. “The whiskey is shit anyways.” He made to hand it back to the woman, but she recoiled. When he pressed the issue further, the parishioner caught him by the arm.
“Have you no respect for–”
“You’re gonna take your fucking hands off me or I’ll split your idiot, simpleton skull wide open.” The words weren’t yelled, but they echoed sharply in the dark-haired man’s voice – the same man that everyone had seen talking to Trof, laughing with him. Trof buried his head low into his shoulders and stared straight ahead, picking out shapes in the back of the wooden pew ahead of him. He saw the image of a mob and a burning barn. Trof the fool.
The parishioner let go of the dark-haired man’s arm, and for a tense moment everything was quiet. Then the man offered the flask once again to the woman, and when she refused it, he dropped it noisily on the stone floor. “Fine!” he said angrily. “That’s just fine!” He picked up his pack and slung his shortsword over one shoulder.
Trof peered out nervously from his pew. He studied the man in awe. His head cocked crookedly to one side as he really took in the man’s features for the first time. He was not tall, standing shorter than Trof himself. He had wide shoulders and long hair, with a little white in his beard. Trof had seen his face before. On the posters.
“Don’t let ’em get you down, cro,” he said, staring Trof in the eyes from across the cathedral. At the back of the hall, Trof heard the doors push open.
“Athradian Jaims!” came a loud voice. It was accompanied by the sound of several sets of footsteps. “Put down your sword.”
The outlaw stopped walking. He tilted his head back and looked up the expanse of rafters that climbed overhead. Trof wondered what he saw there.
“Well, shit,” sighed Athradian Jaims.
The Mischief of Magpies is made possible thanks to generous donations from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundation. But not really.
