Wanna read an excerpt from muh book? Course ya do!

Ladrian wasn’t asleep. One of the benefits of her elven bloodline was that she was spared the need for rest. She felt this was an almost unfair advantage over the mortals who made up the vast, vast majority of the known world. Their lives were already so painfully short, their years so few in comparison to her own. To imagine them wasting half of it asleep, well, it seemed cruel. The byproduct of some cynical creator who had cursed them with both the need to stay awake and the inability to do so. Mayflies that hatched, and mated, and died.

“Children of a mischievous God,” she said under her breath.

“What’s that, sir?”

“Children,” she cleared her throat, “… of a mischievous …” She looked at Garth out of the corner of her eye, unconvinced he was really listening, “… God.” She punctuated the final words by sucking briefly at her teeth. “Something my fàder used to say.” She didn’t really care if Garth was listening or not. It had never stopped her from talking before. She wouldn’t be much of a constable if it had.

“Children of a mischievous God,” Her deputy repeated the words, turning them over in his mouth like he was unfamiliar with the taste. “Your fàder said that about the elves?”

“What?!” Ladrian lowered her brow. “No. Not about the elves. About the … you.” She waved her hands in front of her face. “Mortals like you.” She gave Garth a look that was equal parts disdain and disbelief. The moon-filled saucers of Garth’s round spectacles hid the expression on his face. He motioned with his head down the lane of storefronts to where the constabulary sat dark and grey in the moonlight.

“Would you like me to lock up, sir?”

“Mmm. No, I’ll do it.” She sucked at her teeth and talked slowly, still feeling the effects of the ale she’d had with dinner. “Why did you think I was talking about the elves?” she asked Garth.

“To be honest, sir, I wasn’t really listening.” In the moonlight, the spectacles that covered Garth’s eyes were white, unblinking orbs. “I was thinking about the caravan robbery,” he said deliberately. “Second one in a month’s time.”

“Mmm. That’s an imperial matter,” she said. “Not ours.”

“That’s true of every matter,” said Garth flatly, and a little too quickly, “until it becomes ours.”

Garth stared at her with his moonbeam eyes, expressionless features, and that unreadable stoicism on his face. Except that Ladrian could read it. “Goodnight, deputy,” she said abruptly. She took off her hat and rubbed at her forehead and temples, alternating between the two. “Garth,” she said with a frown he couldn’t see, “take tomorrow off. I’ll handle the day myself.”

At this Garth’s brow finally lowered. He looked wounded, and made to speak, but Ladrian turned away before the young man could say anything more. He could wonder on it tonight. Taking a forced leave of absence, even just for a day, would be a more effective punctuation on the limits of questioning her authority than arguing about jurisdiction. Also, it would be torture for Garth.

“Sir, I don’t think that–”

Ladrian threw up one hand in a curt wave as she strolled away and walked into the deep shadows of the lane, ignoring the rest of Garth’s objection.

“Sir?!”

There were no lanterns lit, and the blue light of the moon seemed to make the dark corners of the town even darker by contrast. Ladrian listened for the sound of the crickets, wanting to time their chirping rhythm to the pace of her own step while enjoying the buzz of the ale a few moments longer. Tonight, though, there was no chirping of the crickets, nor purr of insects, so she simply matched her gait to the beat of her own heart as she hummed under her breath. As she did so, she reached into her coat and placed her hand onto her breast, waiting ’til she felt the slow, steady beat of her own heart. She sang quietly:

Other men thou hast ensnared
Who wandered near thy shadows.
Some there were of lowly birth,
And knights, and lords, and outlaws.

With her left hand she snapped out the rhythm, keeping in time with the beat of her heart. It was an old custom – one that she’d picked up from the locals who frequented the tavern. The pulse, they called it – the simplest metre available when singing from the saddle of a horse or around a campfire. Ladrian had spent many an evening in the tavern, watching from the corner of her eye as the old-timers invoked it to chant their crude little frontier poems. She’d pretend to be oblivious to them as she stared into her drink, but over the long years she had picked up enough to learn most of their songs. They were a fascinating people, even if they weren’t hers. There were always rotten ones – men like Brock Rodes and his brood of sons who owned half the property in town and used it to dominate everything from local politics to the price of grain. For the most part, though, the people here grew up honest, lived simple lives, and died quietly in their old age. Over the many years she’d spent in Rainsreach, Ladrian had bid farewell to more than a few of them.

They professed to you their love,
Their senses fast departing.

Ladrian sang a little louder now. The streets were dark and empty, and her words carried crisp and clear in the stillness of the night.

So you’ll not know when I depart,
Until you miss …

She snapped more rapidly with her left hand as her pulse sped up.

My heartbeat.

It made her heart race to hear her own voice so wantonly on display, and she wondered not for the first time if she was supposed to increase the tempo of the verse accordingly. Maybe the songs moved faster as they became more exciting. Maybe the point was to keep your heart from racing at all.

Then Ladrian froze. She stood now in front of the constabulary, the tall timbers of its edifice looming up higher than the surrounding shops and hovels. There was a light from a lantern in the upper window. It was faint, but Ladrian spotted it at once. She seldom locked the offices during the day; there was little need in a town like Rainsreach. That room, though, she kept locked. Double locked and bolted. Always. Her heart began to race and for a moment she could feel her pulse again, this time pounding out the rhythm in her ears. She silently moved her right hand from the skin of her chest down to the holster at her side before remembering she hadn’t bothered to wear it to the tavern. Her fingers twitched as she thought of it sitting useless, flintlock and all, in the drawer of the desk just inside the entryway of the constabulary.

She stood there for a long moment in front of the entrance, the night still and quiet and blue. Then her hand darted out and with one motion she opened the door and gave it a little push so that it swung slowly inward on its hinges.

DING!

Her scalp tingled as she remembered too late the bell that announced the arrival of visitors; over the years she’d heard it so many times that she’d stopped hearing it. She heard it now, though, and chances were that anyone inside had heard it as well.

“You deserve whatever you’re about to get, Lad,” she cursed quietly at herself.

“What did you want me to do? Bring a loaded pistol along for a nightcap?” The night air seemed now suddenly tepid and stale.

“How about next time you just don’t go for a drink?” she whispered.

“Not bloody likely.” She gave the door another push and let it glide open slowly, framing the shadows inside with what scant moonlight made its way down to the earth.

She surveyed the room a moment before backing away from the door and out of sight of anyone waiting within. From what she could tell in the low light, everything was still in order. Her dining table, her chaise lounge, even her breakfast nook – nothing appeared to have been disturbed. With a practiced motion, she dug the toe of one boot into the heel of the other, stepping out of it silently and leaving it behind on the wooden planks of the porch. She did the same with the other boot, nearly losing a toenail in the process. Then she slid out of her coat and let it fall carefully to the ground, before padding noiselessly back to the door and into the darkness of the entryway.

She reached her desk quickly without so much as a creak from the floorboards, an act that would have made her fàder beam with pride. Opening the drawer, she lifted the holster and felt the firm carved handle of the flintlock as she drew it. She ran her hands over it carefully in the dark, checking to see that the weapon was loaded and primed to fire. In all her years as constable, she’d only fired the thing once on the job, but depending on what the intruder had seen upstairs, she may need to use it tonight. She took a deep, deliberate breath and waited as the thrumming of the blood in her veins began to settle. Then she noticed the skull.

It wasn’t human, or bovine, or equine … it wasn’t any of those things at all. It was a bird’s skull: large and cavernous, bigger than her own head. It was there on her desk, bleached white and waiting for her next to her vase of wildflowers. She’d just been too blind to see it. Realization dawned on her in an instant and she turned to run, but as she did, the sound of heavy footsteps came thundering from the shadows across the room. She actually smelled the bear before she saw it, not that it mattered. Bringing the flintlock up, she aimed at the creature’s face and fired.

Kill shots only.

Ladrian had no idea if she’d even hit the animal, but unless she’d managed to put a ball through its eye, it wouldn’t matter. As it happened … it didn’t matter.

The bear lunged at her with its forefeet, catching her near the small of her back as she turned to run and knocking over both her and her desk. She fell with all the grace of a wiredancer, one that had been knocked from her perch. Unexpectedly. By a large bear. As her body hit the floor, the flintlock skidded away and she found herself pinned under the beast with the air fast exiting her lungs. “Gllrrrkkk,” was all she managed, even as the bear’s mouth closed around the back of her neck. Her bare feet scraped on the wood and she pushed with all her might to try and raise up enough to make a lunge for the flintlock. There was nothing for it, though; she may as well have been trying to move the earth itself. All things died. This was how she died. Here was one elf that would not live to inherit the Laughing God’s kingdom. She’d have screamed if she had the air for it.

“He’s going to let you up,” came a small voice. “The bear was guarding the door and knows that he’s not to kill intruders, but not much else I’m afraid.” The words were quiet, spoken slowly and deliberately. Each had an edge to them. Each hit Ladrian like a gut-shot. Her arms were pinned tight to her body trying to buy respite for her airway, but for the briefest of moments she considered that this might not be the worst way to die, especially when compared to the alternatives. It wouldn’t take much. If she just relaxed the muscles in her neck and back, she was fairly sure the pressure from the bear’s jaws would snap her spine, regardless of what the creature was purported to know. But in the end she did what she always did, and kept on living like a coward.

Lantern light brightened the area around Ladrian, framing the wood floor in dark bordered lines. “I’m not … an … intruder,” she wheezed.

“No,” came the voice. “You aren’t.” With a snort, the bear let go of her neck and stepped off of her, punctuating their brief dance with a crunching stomp on her shoulder. Ladrian didn’t move right away, just lay on the ground wheezing. “You are Constable Beremonte de Jonquille Ladrian?”

She nodded to the empty holster that bore her name burnt into the leather in the high tongue. “Out here it’s just Ladrian, she stammered. “They don’t know the difference.”

“I was reviewing your files, constable,” came the voice again. Ladrian considered making a lunge for the flintlock, but she was mostly dead and knew she’d never get it loaded and aimed before the bear would be back on her. She forced herself to sit up, taking big panting breaths and looking up to meet her visitor. The figure bore dark traveling clothes and gloves, and a dimly lit lantern. Over its head it now wore the large bird skull that Ladrian had seen on her desk. The skull looked down at her with empty, dispassionate eyes sockets, and when the figure’s voice came again, it sounded tinny and distant. “I have some concerns.”

Ladrian forced herself to stare back. Forced herself to look into the face of annihilation and not blink. She’d met members of the Priori years before, and she knew that fear and pleading wouldn’t help her one bit. “Well, that makes sense,” she barely managed to gasp. “My handwriting’s for shit.”

The figure looked back unmoving, frozen while it considered her words. For a second, Ladrian thought it might laugh, like it was considering the punchline of a joke. “Penmanship makes the man,” it said at last. Looking down, Ladrian saw that she was covered in blood, but still felt too numb to feel the source of the wound. “It's not your blood,” came the hollow voice of the Priori. Ladrian dropped her hands and looked back confusedly at the empty eyes of the skull. Then she let her gaze move over to the bear a few paces away, and in the orange light of the lantern she could see that it was bleeding profusely from an open wound in its eye.

“I’ll be damned,” she said, surprised by the accuracy of her own aim. “I guess it really didn’t matter.”

The Priori didn’t respond, not at first anyway. Reaching into the folds of its clothes it produced a roll of sheep-gut scrolls and opened them slowly, the soft paper making a whooshing sound against the surface of its leather gloves. “For some time,” it said at last, “there has been a highwayman of some reputation in this region. This bandit’s name is Athradian Jaims. Are you familiar?”

Ladrian was familiar. Anyone and everyone in every home, in every village of Highland, was familiar. She nodded slowly, tentative relief and realization washing over her. She was not about to be arrested, tortured, and killed. “I may have heard the name,” she said weakly.

Something about the shape of the skull and the way the figure paused made it seem again as though it was on the verge of laughter. “These are posters calling for his arrest. I would like you to post them about your town,” it said, “on every building.” It didn’t say, “Under authority from King Ayovance Garamond himself,” but only because it didn’t have to. As priests of the Laughing God, the actions of the Priori carried the full weight of the crown. In many cases, dealing with the judgment of the king might actually be preferable, and more merciful.

Ladrian’s breathing had slowed considerably. She rose carefully to her feet and made her best efforts to smooth out her clothes. The bear was making rough choking noises and moaning between breaths. Ladrian put out a hand to take the posters, not bothering to look at them. She nodded, glancing away from the Priori at nothing in particular. She wanted to say, “We already have wanted posters, and they do about as much good as a wire fence around a henhouse.” She wanted to tell the Priori to go back to whatever portion of the void had spawned it and leave her town in peace. She kept quiet.

Without waiting for further discussion, the Priori walked from the room but turned to speak when it reached the open doorway leading outside. “I’ll need offices from which to conduct my investigation into the surrounding areas.” Its voice sounded small and far away – a lifetime away. “I trust the use of your constabulary is amenable?” Ladrian took two more breaths before nodding, not bothering to even look back over her shoulder. And with that, the Priori was gone.

“You forgot your bear,” said Ladrian, as though calling after it. But even as she did so the massive creature collapsed to the planks of the wood floor and gave its last shuddering breath.

All Ladrian could do was laugh.

You wouldn’t like The Mischief of Magpies. It’s too low brow.