Fool's Birthright

Adanriendwyr Oblienvionetter eased himself onto a low taboret across from the shaman, sighing.

“It won’t let me sleep,” Adan said, voice husky. He squinted at his village’s shaman. “I cannot go on like this. I must discover what it wants.”

The shaman nodded, making the animal teeth hanging from the elaborate headdress along his browline clatter like windchimes. Candlelight-hued eyes crinkled at the outer edges in an empathetic look—his gaze meeting Adan’s one organic eyeball and one artificial eyeball. “The espas are not so different from the living,” the shaman said. He paused, nudging an incense-stick on the low table between them with his forefinger, making fine ash crumble from the end and fall to the carved bone holder. He cleared his throat. “What the espas need from us,” the shaman continued, “is often what we need for ourselves as well. And with the cults bleeding our kind of our best and brightest, the espas are starving for true servants. Perhaps it has seen a sincerity in you which the cultists lack. Perhaps it recognizes a metal in you which refuses to tarnish.”

Adan shook his head, tresses as pale blonde as wheat grown from tired soil swishing at either side of his dark olive face. “I came to you with this puzzle because I want a solution, not because I want more puzzles.”

The shaman smirked. “An espa with something to teach,” he began, “will speak with those who are alive through dreams; so if this espa will not let you sleep, then it clearly does not wish to teach you anything. It wishes you to do something.”

Adan focused on the shaman, mouth twitching into a frown. “What is it, then? I will do anything.”

The shaman shrugged. “As to what this espa has in mind for you, I cannot say much—except that you are what it is not anymore: Alive. Incarnate. You can act, so you can be its instrument. For whatever reason, it has chosen you for this. If you crave sleep, you must resist this path no longer. You must go where it leads you, do what it wants you to, and only when it’s done will you have rest.”

Adan rose from the upholstered stool, brow drawn, hand resting on the hilt of a scimitar suspended at his hip in a scabbard. “So be it.”

•••

Breakaleg lifted his hands, blowing warm breath on his fingers as the evening deepened and the sky darkened. Without blast-furnace sun spilling into the city, making every surface lukewarm to the touch long into the afternoon, leaving every inch of Breakaleg’s skin prickling and clammy, the convection of cool air from beyond the Sunwaki mountains had become noticeable; and it felt more like a warning than a relief. The marching clouds moved in array from the north, acting as the unmistakable vanguard of worse weather farther off. A wordless, ineffable feeling rose from a buried source in Breakaleg’s Dwarven instincts, like a tuning fork struck and, automatically, humming in a tone which was intrinsic to itself. Breakaleg felt the storm stomping a horizon somewhere with legs of lightning, marauding like a fanged beast which cannot be denied. Thankfully, it was wheeling well clear of Kingsholm, its huge swirling mantle touching the city with nothing but the barest fringe of dark clouds.

Breakaleg stole glances over his shoulder, anxiously aware of every building window as it came alight, and the cold sky staring at his neck. He glanced again along the cobbled street, frowning impatiently. Where is Barbosa? He should have found her by now and come back. He flexed his fingers, kneading the chilly air, then occupied his restless hands by grabbing his dark cable-knit cap and pulling it tighter onto his head, covering his ears. A carriage rattled past. The emblem blazoned on the side-panel identified it as a Watch unit. Breakaleg kept his eyes from following as it passed, his face averted and studiedly blank. Abruptly, some final shafts of afternoon sun broke through clouds and gilt the leaves of oak trees along the avenue. The sudden brightness made Breakaleg raise his gaze; he saw Barbosa approaching down the sidewalk, arms crossed, his hands buried in his own armpits. At his side, a second figure walked, head inclined; long hair as white as the heart of milk thistle flashed in the sun. Barbosa apparently noticed Breakaleg waiting against a wall ahead and recognized him—despite the storm-colored clothes and cap which had replaced his usual cleric’s robes. Too far away for Breakaleg to hear, Barbosa said something to his companion, then waved at Breakaleg. The figure beside Barbosa raised their head—Breakaleg saw mint-green eyes as clear as drops of summer rain, and a brow with the gloss of chestnuts; then the clouds folded in, the wind blew gray, and the sun dimmed. Breakaleg shook himself from the spell as the sunbeams vanished. The two figures moved towards Breakaleg steeped in twilight, while cold breeze brushed the deserted cobbles. The gas-lamps lining the street came on, flaxen light pushing against a darkness which was advesperating like discoloration that would soon be a bruise.

“I found her,” Barbosa said, pointing at the figure beside him as they drew up to Breakaleg.

“So I see,” Breakaleg said, nodding to the figure. He stared at her for an extra instant, too fascinated by the unusual person to look at her in a strictly polite way. Her body, though rangier than a Dwarf, was still distinctly Dwarven: with a broadness of her shoulders and length of her arms, relative to her legs, which was slightly outside of average Human or Elven proportions. And yet she did not have the thick, wiry black hair of a Dwarf, nor the ruddy complexion—she had the brownish-olive skin of an Elf, and the white hair; and the slender, pointed ears and delicate facial features. Her eyes were neither the extremely dark brown, verging on black, of a Dwarf, nor anywhere in the range of ambers and yellows common amongst Elves: they were mint, rock-crystal green, and even as they gazed at Breakaleg, they seemed fixed at some distant, unknowable point inside themselves. Anyone who didn’t know any better would say she was half Dwarf and half Elf; anyone who knew such a thing was impossible, and Dwarves and Elves couldn’t be crossed, would throw up their hands and decide that what exactly she was, like everything else about her, was a total mystery. Breakaleg’s business interest was such that a skillful, sticky-fingered urchin could not have come up on the streets or in the slums of Kingsholm without him knowing. This girl had appeared as if she sprang onto the scene fully-formed, a capable and promising thief, seemingly a bit older than Barbosa, wrapped in an enigma which defied every effort to learn where she had come from.

The girl, Myna, nodded at Breakaleg in return. “So,” she said, “you have a job offer to make?”

Breakaleg gave her a tight-lipped smile. “Yes,” he said. “What my employee told you is true.”

Putting a blade of dry grass in his casual mouth, Barbosa crossed his arms and leaned against a brick wall.

“What your employee told me,” Myna said, “was much too little. Start explaining what this is actually about, or I’m leaving.” Myna fixed Breakaleg in an unexpectedly hard gaze, letting the air out of his tactical withholding of information, putting him squarely on the back foot—precisely where he had meant to keep her.

“I can’t tell you everything,” Breakaleg said, “until you have agreed to the job and we have left Kingsholm. The information is too valuable. You understand. But I can tell you this job promises to be as lucrative as it is easy. And I can tell you I intend to depart from Kingsholm tonight under cover of darkness—directly from here, in fact. I don’t want the Watch seeing us decamp city limits and wondering where we’re going.”

Myna’s green eyes got big, and then narrow. “You don’t want the Watch to see us leave the city? That’s a new one. And why send your employee to fetch an outsider for this job, rather than simply take him with you?”

“Someone has to run my operations here,” Breakaleg said. “So Barbosa and myself both being out of Kingsholm at the same time would be disadvantageous.”

“No, it doesn't smell right,” Myna said. She shook her head briskly, as if she had decided something. “Good luck with whatever this is,” she said. “You understand.” She gave Barbosa a jaunty wave, and turned away. The blade of grass sagged in Barbosa’s lips.

“Wait!” Breakaleg said, more of an undertone of pleading in his voice than he liked. “I’ll be forthright with you.”

Myna paused at the edge of a pool of lamplight, her back to Barbosa and Breakaleg. 

“This job,” Breakaleg said, “will bring us northeast, as far as the foothills of the Sunwaki Mountains. Barbosa is Human, as you’ve probably noticed.”

“Ah,” Myna murmured, while Breakaleg stared at the back of her head. “That’s a better reason for reaching out to me than I’ve heard so far. You think we’re going to be so close to the Sunwaki Mountains, there’s a chance storm-effects could bleed past the barrier of the peaks. For sentimental reasons, you don’t want Barbosa’s blood to be magnetized inside his skull and shred his brain before he’s so much as felt a change in the wind.”

Barbosa mumbled to himself, voice too low to follow, though his expression seemed to show he appreciated the imagery on some level.

“Yes,” Breakaleg said, voice flat. He crossed his arms slightly petulantly, all too aware that his high-and-mighty offer of employment had devolved into something like begging for help. “I assume you’ve got enough Dwarf in you to be immune to the worst effects of the storms. That’s why I thought of you for this job.”

Myna turned, again facing Barbosa and Breakaleg—with a slight smile, eyes twinkling, face streaked by highlights and shadow. “Alright. I’ll accept this weird offer. But don’t think I won’t abandon you in the Seven Hills if it turns out to be some trick.”

Breakaleg smirked. “I would expect nothing less.”

•••

Above the Sunwaki Mountains and below the Amsard Sea, storms endlessly prowled desolate skies like sizzling cats. Humans and Elves dared not cross the imaginary boundary lines into the true North or South, wincing away from the revolving, unpredictable arms of chaotic manifestations: purple clouds porcupine-bristled with crimson lightning were the least horrible of their charms. Elves and Humans perforce laid their societies only on the equator—where those swirling tempests perennially hovering at the top and bottom of the world rarely strayed. So a great belt of civilization girded the whole world of Ceros, hardly looking up or down, only thinking, expanding, and developing sideways, crossing and recrossing itself until a bare patch of ground could no longer be found. Dwarves alone, with their inborn proof against the more devastating effects of the storms, had the potential to be masters of four directions—and that potential had long since fizzled. They already had, as it were, their time in the sun. Allwither the Ixian empire spread, once, opulent in grain and metal, and every revenue of Ceros. In centuries past, though, the Empire of Ix was forced to contract as Human ascendency pushed against it, whittling away at its borders, until it was fatally shorn in half. As is the nature of massive, world-shattering things, the collapse of Ix was slow to build momentum, and then came all at once.

Shrouded in shadows, with rolling clouds obscuring the stars and the waxing gibbous moon, Myna and Breakaleg easily left Kingsholm without anyone seeing them. (The city gates were all closed for the night, but Kingsholm’s wall was not impermeable, especially not in the Outer Boroughs; someone with local knowledge who wanted to avoid Watch checkpoints only needed to be minimally enterprising to do so.) The pair hiked in the dark far enough from the city to be sure they would not be seen by patrols the following day, then halted to make camp and grab a few hours of rest before sunup.

“So,” Myna began, after swallowing a bite of charred mutton cooked over their tiny campfire, “we certainly won’t be followed. But what are we going after that justifies all this secrecy? Or are you just naturally paranoid?”

Breakaleg daintily pulled a morsel of mutton off the bone he held, considering the question. “I did say I would tell you where we were going after we left the city, didn’t I?”

Myna nodded. “And I said I would abandon you in the hills if I don’t like what you tell me.”

Breakaleg chuckled. “Alright. We’re in this now.” He leaned towards Myna, voice falling to a stage-whisper, as if despite all his precautions, the stones and trees might still have ears. “I believe Goblins living in an Ixian mine in the Sunwaki foothills have discovered a new vein of gold there. We are going to see for ourselves if that’s true. If it is, I mean to gain access to that gold.” He sketched the events leading to this point—the Goblins buying bronze tools and weapons, the pickpocket seeing it happen; the Church Of Alithia hoping to free the Goblins from material temptation by unburdening them of what they had stumbled upon.

Myna sat with her mutton halfway to her lips, staring at Breakaleg, the food forgotten. Lit by fire, Breakaleg saw levity pass through her eyes, as if she might laugh in his face; then solemnity crept in, as though she reconsidered while she listened. “There was a tremor in the ground northeast of the city,” Myna said finally. “A week ago. I happened to be out of Kingsholm at the time and felt it under my boots.”

“What?” Breakaleg arched his brow.

“A tremor,” Myna repeated. “It could have shifted something in the mine, and revealed a section the Goblins had never before been able to access. It’s not hard to imagine that happening.”

Breakaleg smiled, suddenly feeling less anxious about their undertaking; the chances they would find nothing in the end diminished significantly in his approximation.

“We should catnap,” Breakaleg said, nodding, as if he had already known what Myna had told him. “We continue northeast to the Seven Hills at sunrise. I’ll take the first watch.”

“Alright,” Myna said. She wrapped the flaps of her threadbare cloak around herself against the chilly breeze. She carried a thin bag tucked in the sash around her waist, the shape inscrutable, making Breakaleg curious about the contents. Erstwhile, Breakaleg was almost certain her “cloak” was nothing but a woolen blanket, clasped near her collarbone to secure fabric over her head like a hood, with a sash to bunch fabric at her waist and keep the tattered length from hanging too far down her legs. Breakaleg frowned. Myna’s obvious penury was unpleasant to see. Though the cleric would not call the thief’s manner “effusive” by any means, or even “familiar,” there was an undercurrent of charisma and likability in her that had already made him, after the mere hours they had traveled together, feel as if there was some kind of closeness between them. Breakaleg didn’t go for people of the female persuasion, and certainly not anyone so Elfy, but even he had to admit that “majestic” was the only adequate word for her face. Her long, lustrous hair, when it wasn’t covered by her raggedy hood, shone like molten palladium. In the firelight, seeing her mint green eyes put one in a pensive, admiring mood the way staring at a pair of emeralds set on an exquisite mahogany table would.

Myna got to her feet and moved away from the fireside. “Wake me when it’s time for the second watch,” she said, then vanished around the edge of a large rock.

•••

Adanriendwyr Oblienvionetter plodded through kneehigh grass, his exhausted gaze trained on the cloudy horizon. Huge clouds shifted in steady wind; the moon emerged into view as if between the slopes of mountain peaks, spilling cool, white-gray light onto the valley below. A spray of stars revealed themselves through the cleft, twinkling in deep black. Adan halted, bloodshot eye wide. Silhouetted against the stars, a figure stood on the crest of a blue hill.

“It’s you!” Adan cried, voice hoarse. “Why have you led me here? What is the meaning of all this?”

The espa turned, looking down from the highground at Adan. The clouds continued to slide across the sky, closing the rift, hiding the moon.

“What do you want from me?” Adan demanded, breaking into a trot towards the espa on the hill. He craned his neck, trudging up the declivity and staring at the figure above him. The espa did not respond, watching Adan approach, face impassive, revealing nothing.

“Why will you not let me sleep?” Adan shouted, tiredness fraying his nerves, making him steadily more angry with the espa’s taciturnity as he drew nearer the crest of the hill. The espa reached forward, spectral hand splayed towards Adan’s face, wavering slightly like an image in the surface of a windswept pond. The Elf swayed on his feet. Deep, tranquil slumber descended on him fast enough that he did not know it had happened.

Dropping senselessly to the ground, Adan began to roll down the hill. 

•••

“Is he dead?” Myna asked, squinting at the dawnlit body in the grass as Breakaleg crouched beside it, ready to root through the Elf’s cloak and satchel.

“No,” Breakaleg said with some disappointment, withdrawing his hand. “He’s alive—just deeply asleep.” He put the knuckle of his forefinger to his lip thoughtfully, considering checking the body for anything valuable regardless. 

“If somebody had murdered him,” Myna began, “this would make more sense—but why is an Elf sleeping here?”

“I don’t know,” Breakaleg said, shrugging. He narrowed his eyes, resolving to check the Elf’s pockets—if he was so completely senseless that he could sleep soundly in the dewy grass, he might not be awakened by Breakaleg’s stealthy search, either. The cleric touched the Elf’s cloak, and the sleeper grumbled. Breakaleg cursed under his breath.

The Elf, supine on his bed of turf, opened his eyes, blinking in the sun on his cheek and brow. His right eye—a solid ball leafed with silver—glittered enticingly. Breakaleg rocked back on his heels and stood, folding his hands behind himself and making his face uninvolved.

“Who are you? Where is…” the Elf sneered, gaze tightening on Breakaleg. He turned his head, saw Myna, and fell silent—awaiting a response to his first question rather than finishing the second.

“We are but humble travelers,” Breakaleg said, raising his hand. “I am a modest cleric of the glorious and heavenly Alithia, and this is my companion, Myna. And you, good sir?”

The Elf suddenly moved in a lithe way that caught Breakaleg and Myna entirely off guard, getting his feet beneath himself, and rising smoothly from the ground without using his arms. Myna shrank back a step, eyes widening subtly, the impressive display of strength and physical coordination not lost on her; nor the imposing height of the Elf looming over her, and even more so over her Dwarf colleague. Breakaleg frowned. So he’s a fighter, and a skilled one. The cleric began calculating the feasibility of knocking Myna to the ground to serve as a stumbling block behind him, while he ran for the nearby bend in the trail, perhaps getting the bulk of a hillside between himself and the angry Elf.

“Where did the espa go?” the Elf demanded, ignoring Breakaleg’s polite query. “I think it was about to reveal my purpose to me, finally, in my dreams. Why did you interfere?” His hand drifted slightly towards the hilt of a scimitar on his hip.

“An espa?” Breakaleg echoed. 

“The espa is my familiar,” Myna blurted. The Elf’s gaze snapped to her—as did Breakaleg’s. Myna nodded hastily. “I am the Oracle of Magic. The Spirit world bends to my will. Do not cross me.”

The Elf’s eyes widened—the one showing whites, the other showing more monochrome silver. “You sent the espa? It was bringing me to you all along?”

“Yes?” Myna said, the rising inflection undermining the declaration. She shook herself. “Yes.”

The Elf withdrew his hand from the hilt of his sword, bowing his head. “I apologize for my outburst, Oracle. What is it you desire from me?”

Myna shot Breakaleg a chary glance, mouth tight. Breakaleg frowned slightly, brow wrinkled as he waited for Myna to continue speaking—torn between the opposing impulses to add something himself, and to let her continue on her own, weaving a story which seemed to be delicately hanging together in a way Breakaleg was afraid to meddle with.

“Go ahead, Oracle,” Breakaleg said. “Tell this Elf why we are in the Seven Hills.”

“Uh,” Myna said, “we are on a perilous quest, and we require a skilled warrior to aid and protect us. Yes, that’s it. I used my espa servant to reach out to you.”

The Elf stared at Myna, mouth working silently. He cleared his throat. “After this is done,” he started, “you will release me from your hex, and allow me to sleep?”

“I will,” Myna said, brow inclined somberly. “What is your name, warrior?”

“I am Adanriendwyr Oblienvionetter,” he said in his barely-intelligible Elven accent.

“Adan Reindeer Oblivion-eater?” Breakaleg asked.

Adan nodded. “That’s close enough,” he said.

•••

Juniper Silva hunched over a wrinkled map of Kingsholm, staunchly ignoring the noisy patrons of the tavern around her. The other chair at her table was empty, except for her cloak draped over the back—the interior of the Wobbly Raven being much too warm from all the bodies crowded within to need the street-garment. Bare arms propped on the table, she stared at the 1, 2, and 3 done in black ink on various points of the parchment, scattered without apparent organization—in an Inner City alley, at the base of a fire-escape ladder accessing some rooftops, and near an inn located in the Outer Boroughs. The 2 and 3 represented strange, inexplicable iron objects which had been found in the city very recently (a coin and a brooch.) The 1 represented another iron coin which had been found several years earlier, before Juniper was a member of the Watch—which she had learned about secondhand, but believed was connected to the other things. She squinted at the map, trying to imagine some coherent scheme to the placements. Do they suggest a route somewhere? she thought, tracing her finger over alleyways and streets, attempting to create a single throughline which linked the numbers in any order. She could not, try as she might. Every time, her finger either bumped into the dividing line of the Coral River through the middle of Kingsholm, or created a believable route through obscure byways and over river-crossings but missed one of the numbers in the process. She frowned, averting her eyes from the map, looking at the scrap of paper beside it. A charcoal rubbing of the iron coin stared back at her, lit by the single guttering candle on her lonely table at the back of the tavern. 

Pure chance had brought her onto the scene when the coin was discovered two days earlier; she managed to swoop in and insert herself into the proceedings as her fellow Watchmembers secured the small street, clearing gawkers away, preparing to dissolve the iron in hydrochloric acid as was procedurally correct to do. She blustered and cajoled her way close to the coin, helped considerably by the fact that the Watchmen on the scene were mere peace officers and didn’t know anything about her, except that the silver pips on the collar of her uniform showed she outranked them. They were disinclined to question what she was doing. Armed with a scrap of paper and a nub of charcoal, she took a rubbing of the coin before she allowed the confused peace officers to grab it with tongs and drop it into a glass beaker of acid nested inside a copper shell. She hurried away without allowing the officers to realize they ought to ask her name for inclusion in their report of the incident. 

Bringing the rubbing to a friend of hers at the University, she had learned that the unfamiliar runic language on the perimeter of the hexagon was Ixian. It said, “From Our Order Comes Our Progress.” Someone had convincingly imitated antique imperial coinage, and, for some reason, done it in a dangerous, illegal type of metal. She frowned again, frustrated by her own inability to put the pieces together, and cursed to herself in the little Dwarven she knew. In that moment, Dwarven sounded far more like she felt than Common did. Hairs suddenly rising on the back of her neck, she tucked the rubbing underneath the map before any patron in the busy tavern saw it and wondered what it was. She had become aware of someone walking in her direction.

“Nice evening to be alone with your thoughts, isn’t it?” a low voice said. Juniper lifted her eyes, looking at a tall, black-haired man with no sense of irony standing before her table, backlit by the tallow-candles mounted on wooden walls of the busy tavern.

“Yes,” Juniper said, and dropped her eyes to her map.

“It’s a fool’s birthright,” the man grumbled, “to go blindly after what she thinks the world owes her and get herself destroyed in whatever way she chooses. Perhaps you’re thinking like a fool, Corporal?”

Juniper pursed her lips, feeling the man’s stare bore into the top of her head. She decided responding aloud was less urgent than moving.  

A dagger stabbed into the parchment directly where her shadow had been; Juniper sprang to her feet, knocking her chair skittering across the floorboards, whipping her gaze to the dark-haired man—who was now grinning icily at her, his hand clasping the handle of the dagger with its tip sunk in the grainy tabletop. Behind him, Juniper saw a few seedy figures fanning across the tavern, corralling Dwarf and Human patrons out of The Wobbly Raven. The figures were bundled in cloaks, but tall enough that they seemed Human themselves. A few patrons shouted angrily as they were steered towards the door, but the cloaked people flashed knives and hand-axes—the satiny straw-yellow of bronze by candlelight turning belligerent drunks meek and obsequious as if by magic.

The man let go of the dagger, moving his hand to brush his cloak aside and reveal a flintlock pistol and a hand-axe of his own tucked in his sash around his waist. He gripped the axe below the head and tugged it free; he flinched his hand down the shaft of the weapon, repositioning his grip with showman-like ease.

Juniper darted her eyes around the other figures who were converging on her table, noting the weapons in their hands. “You’re the Hatchet Gang,” Juniper said, forcing her voice to remain steady. “You can’t possibly believe coming after a member of the Watch is a good idea. You’ll all get yourselves hanged. Why are you doing this?”

The dark-haired man shook his head, grinning wider. “You are too optimistic about your standing inside the Watch, Corporal Silva.” He raised his hatchet, leaning over the table separating them. Juniper kneed the near edge of the table. 

The heavy wooden thing toppled away from her, the rim dropping like a guillotine onto the toe of the man’s boot. He howled in pain, as Juniper dodged sideways and grabbed her cloak from the back of the other chair. Adroitly wrapping the fabric once over her forearm with a jerk of her wrist, she held it out as she struck a fighting stance, letting the cloak hang as low as her forward knee, and drew a slender knife from a sheath on her opposite thigh. The next Hatchet Gangster to reach her lunged, his hatchet descending in a diagonal attack at Juniper’s head. She flicked her cloak, the scratchy fabric scourging the man’s eyes and blinding him. Rocked off course, the gangster’s hack missed its mark by a mile; Juniper moved, skimming through his orbit as he staggered, snapping her knife-hand out at his forearm. He screamed, dropping his hatchet as tendons were severed and his grip failed.

Another brute closed in; Juniper sprang aside, leaping onto a tabletop. Candles and wooden flagons clattered, knocked from the table to crash onto the earth floor. The gangster shouted, swinging her hatchet at Juniper. Juniper vaulted for the next table, knocking more beverages and food debris to the floor as she escaped envelopment and got herself out of her bad position in the rear of the room. She leapt for a chair, one foot landing on the seat, the other on the back, and rode it as it tipped; returning her to floor-level behind the gang. They wheeled around; Juniper had created enough space to appreciate the number of her attackers, hastily counting a half-dozen.

The leader with the flattened toes reset himself, and drew his pistol. Face contorted in rage, he came bounding towards Juniper ahead of the rest—intent on firing at close enough range that he could not miss. Juniper drew a grounding breath. 

She waited a beat, then tossed her cloak into the bull-rushing man’s face. His furious roar turned into a startled yelp as the fabric wrapped around his eyes and mouth; she closed the small remaining distance, grabbing his sash with one hand, the other punching him in the swaddled face with the pommel of the knife she held. He dropped his pistol as his head hinged back; she felt his backbone turn to a cooked noodle, and, closing her fist on his sash, pivoted on her back foot and swung him towards the ground. Exactly as hard as he had charged at her, he slammed to the floor, rolling under some tables. He seemed to be finished making voluntary noises for the evening. Juniper kicked the pistol, sending it sliding away into a corner.

The next gangster followed hard on the foreman’s heels, shouting furiously as she watched overturned flagons spill mead onto him. She threw a wild hack at Juniper; the Corporal flinched, an instant too slow to avoid the hatchet entirely, gasping in surprise and pain as the horn of the blade nicked the skin of her shoulder while it arced past. Still, the Corporal plowed in undaunted, catching her opponent in an overcommitted moment, blocking her arm before the backswing. Stretching like a spring, Juniper drove the crown of her skull into her opponent’s face; the gangster flopped onto a table with a crash, her feet skidding out from underneath her. 

Juniper raised her chin, surveying the shambles. The brute with the wounded arm squatted near the overturned table at the back of the room, clutching his bleeding appendage—face pale enough that it was obvious his morale had been wounded much more deeply than his body. The leader, moaning under the detritus of a broken chair, had not moved an inch. The gangster sprawled on a tabletop was clearly unconscious. Juniper chewed her lip, eyes scanning over her three opponents still on their feet, who were then coordinating themselves across the room to encircle her as well as they could. Juniper noted the Dwarven landlord cowering under a chair in a corner. She cautiously moved farther away from him, so the fight, when it picked up again after the natural lull, would not be too close to an innocent bystander.

She noticed a broom leaning against a wall. She looked around the room. High ceilings, she thought. How long have I been coming to this tavern, and I’d never before noticed there’s room to swing a modest polearm? I’m surprised at myself. Sheathing her knife and breaking into a fast stride towards the broom, she provoked the encircling thugs to charge—but reached her goal ahead of them. Her hand closed on the wooden rod.

The initial swing carried with it filth and dust, whisked from the floor in the broom’s bristles; the flecks caught the nearest gangster full in the face, making him squint his eyes shut at the absolute worst moment for him to do so. Juniper swung the opposite end of the broom forward, reversing the shaft in her grip and spearing the endgrain into the man’s brow. He collapsed, a hatchet falling to the floor from each hand. Taking a step, Juniper crossed her legs, winding herself up as the next incoming gangster tried to stop his own momentum. He failed—blundering exactly into Juniper’s reach. She unwound; the broom shaft whistled through the air before connecting with the man’s cheek. He dropped to the ground beside his friend. 

The last man standing looked around the tavern, eyes wide.

He craned his neck, focusing on the man with the injured arm. “Help me, Hakkob, ya snivelin’ coward!”

The squatting man, Hakkob, shook his head violently. “I can’t use me hand!” he barked, seeming to feel that fact excused him from the fight entirely.

The standing man spat. “So what? You have another one—” Juniper, with a single quick jab, interrupted the man while he was looking the wrong way—as good as offering the side of his head to her broom. He dropped to the floor, senseless even before he landed.

Juniper stepped over the fallen brute, moving towards Hakkob. “What was this about?” Corporal Silva asked. “I’ll only ask so nicely one time.”

Hakkob winced, sweat glistening on his damp forehead in the candlelight. “It wasn’t my idea!” he cried. “I said we shouldn’t accept this job!”

Juniper tilted her head, staring down at the man. “Accept it from whom?”

“From the Watch,” Hakkob blurted, raising his hands. “You know our leader Heitor Moraes was arrested, and is gonna be hanged.”

“Yes,” Juniper breathed, barely aware of her own voice, mentally reeling from what the man had just said. The Watch? This attempt on my life was orchestrated by my own side?

“Well, someone who said he spoke for the Watch came to us, telling us they would release Moraes if we did this for them and kept the Watch’s fingerprints off of it. I never agreed we should take him up on this. I was goaded into it! I was—”

“Wait, shut up,” Juniper said, holding out her palm. “Help me.” She began quickly piling the unconscious gang-members in the middle of the room. She called out to the landlord, for the first time openly acknowledging that she was aware of him in the place where he believed he had concealed himself. “Do you have rope?”

The Dwarf left his hidey-hole beneath the chair to scurry into a backroom, while Juniper and the shaken, wide-eyed man stacked senseless bodies on the earth floor like cordwood.

When the Dwarf returned to give Juniper the rope, she passed it immediately to Hakkob. “Bind their wrists, and then your own.”

The thug hurried to comply, as Juniper waited casually behind him, checking her pockets for her leather blackjack. The moment Hakkob had finished the knot on his wrists, pulling the rope with his teeth, Juniper slapped the blackjack against the back of his skull. He fell neatly into the pile.

“What should I do with these, now?” the landlord asked, gesturing at the bound gang.

Corporal Silva stared at the Dwarf expressionlessly, weighing the question in her mind—when, one minute earlier, calling the Watch for help would have been an easy decision to make. “Drag them to the sidewalk and let someone else figure it out,” she said finally.

She gathered her papers from the floor near the overturned table, grabbed the Ganger’s dropped flintlock, then hurried out of The Wobbly Raven.