“What were you doing there?” he asked.
“My girlfriend and I went for a drink,” I said. “As I said, we’re not from here, so we didn’t realize until we sat down to our table that the place was filled with undesirables.”
“Did one of those undesirables look like this?” the guard said, handing me a patch of parchment with a drawing of Blade on it.
“Mean eyes, sour face, unkempt. They all looked like this,” I said.
“Bring Sally forth,” the man said, waving a hand toward the other guards. A woman walked over to join us while I waited for the shop keeper to keep filling our cart. Soon, we could high tail it out of here.
“What do we have,” the woman asked. She wore a pointy hat with a wide brim, but she had all the terseness of a detective.
“Grippersnout last night,” the guard said. “Let’s see what he knows.”
The woman’s eyes glazed over until her irises and her pupils were lost in solid whiteness.
“Tell me everything that happened last night, starting with the Grippersnout,” Sally said.
I didn’t want to. I really didn’t want to. But she had some kind of power over me. I was magically compelled to tell her the truth.
“Cindra — she’s made of slime — came with me inside and we went looking for Blade specifically. I wanted to offload some jewels, he called them energems, but I don’t have papers for them. Not because they’re stolen! I didn’t steal anything. I just wanted money. So Cindra offered to sleep with him, and he liked that idea, but I said no. Cindra’s too beautiful to have sex with that monster, and to be honest, I’d have been a little jealous.”
My face was red, my heart was beating a mile a minute, and it was only getting worse. “So instead I offered to use my skillmeister powers. Made him a lot stronger, like a whole lot, and improved a skill called Throatcut, which sounds awful. Did you know his real name is Percival Pimpleton? How cringeworthy is that? It’s like, the worst name for a human being ever.
“Then we went to the inn, and the woman at the front counter was a twat, which is a terrible thing to say, and not a word I’d use at all, except I can’t help speak my mind right now, it’s the strangest thing. Anyway, then Cindra offered to keep me warm at night – if you catch my drift – and I should have said yes, because, I mean, have you seen her? She’s smoking hot, and her skin is all soft like flower petals, and I really wanted to do it but I didn’t, but next time I will. Then I fell asleep and didn’t kill anyone, I promise.”
The woman’s eyes went back to normal and a wave of relief washed on top of the embarrassment I was already drenched with. Cindra rubbed my back while the guard and the woman talked to each other.
“You,” the guard said, “are under arrest for unsanctioned skillmeistering, leading to the murder of a Valleyvale citizen by Throatcutting.”
Strike three.
“Cindra,” I said. “Stay with the donkey.”
+14
The guards cuffed my hands behind my back and pushed me through the town. I walked past the shops I had just spent a ton of gold coins in. The proprietors stood in their doorways, shaking their heads at me.
The temple was just ahead. The head priest stood outside, then came running when she saw my face.
“Guards!” Eranza yelled. “There may have been a mistake.”
“No mistake,” one of the guards said. “We brought in a truth witch. He sang like a bird.”
“He’s a head priest,” she said.
“So what?” the lead guard asked.
“So,” she said, “you can’t throw a head priest in jail. It would cause a diplomatic nightmare because it would break the Free City Pact that affords all head priests safe passage through the human lands. You’ll need to talk this over with the Mayor.”
The guards let go of my arms, which were still shackled together. “Why does shit like this always happen on a Monday?” the guard asked.
A man with a very formal-looking shirt walked out of the temple. It was buttoned from his neck down to three inches below the waistline where it hung untucked by design. Pink, purple, and gold tassels hung from his shoulders.
“Can I not say a single prayer without this city devolving into emergency?” he asked. Two women stood just behind him wearing tall pointy hats like the truth witch’s. One hat was light blue, while the other was deep red. The women wore robes to match, and their faces were nearly identicaclass="underline" large, dark eyes framed by pretty, slender faces. The main difference was their expression. The girl in the red hat scowled while the blue-hatted one was all smiles.
“We’re sorry, Mayor,” the guard said. “We have a skillmeister here who used his ability making Blade more dangerous.”
“Is that who killed Scar this morning?” he asked.
These gangsters needed to hire someone to come up with better names for them.
“Yes, sir.”
“Did us all a favor then,” the Mayor said. “One less gang leader to contend with. How much did Blade pay you to increase his skills? Whatever it was, Scar was probably on his way to kill you and steal it all.”
“I didn’t know he was going to kill anyone,” I said. “I’m new at this. I just became a head priest two days ago.”
“And how, pray tell, did you manage that?” the Mayor asked.
“Meadowdale was attacked,” I said. “I escaped and found a goddess in trouble, so I helped her.”
“You escaped Meadowdale?” he asked. “No one escaped Meadowdale. We’ve been dying to know what happened.”
“Maybe you could un-cuff me?” I asked. The Mayor waved at the guards and they released my hands from the iron shackles.
“Duul, the god of war, has an army of dark soldiers. Their bodies and eyes are pitch black, like they’re made from evil itself, or maybe vegemite. Anyway, their weapons can kill the gods, and he’s going to conscript all of the world’s men into his ranks, and keep the women hostage, until he slays the Great Mother.”
The Mayor and guards laughed at me. The head priest, however, did not. “He’s telling the truth,” she said. “At least, one version of it. As Gowes has reassured me, Duul isn’t coming here. Valleyvale is safe and always will be. Our walls are strong.”
“Your walls are better than ours were,” I said, “but that’s not enough to stop this army. They’re strong, and cutthroat.”
“Too soon,” the Mayor said. “We’re a little sensitive to that word today.”
“We should listen to this man,” the blue clad witch said. “It wouldn’t hurt to prepare just in case, and the training exercises would be fun. Er, good for moral I mean.”
The other girl simply said, “Yes.”
“Lily, Ambry, we’re not buying into this nonsense,” the Mayor said. “And as for you, whatever your name is—”
“Arden,” I said.
“Arden. Get out of my city and never come back. I can’t arrest a head priest without causing a stir, but I can banish you. Now get.”
The girl with the blue hat looked disheartened by that. I shrugged and turned around, making the long walk back to the provisioner’s shop. Cindra sat on the low fence just outside the store with her legs crossed. Her new dress stopped just above the knee. She was smoothing it out along her leg when I approached.
“We’re all set,” I said. “I’ve only been banished, so I guess I got off easy.”
“That’s a relief,” Cindra said. “Let’s go home.”
Home. It was nice to think of it that way after spending so many years without one.
We climbed into the cart and steered our donkey through the city’s massive front gates and into the forest beyond.
“I killed that man,” I said.