Four Beheadings and a Funeral Read online

  “Sounds like a perfect vacation destination.”

  “I could see a man like you doing well there,” she said. “Or going insane and killing yourself. Tough call.”

  “I’m still curious about the place.”

  “I could show you, if you’d like.”

  “Gloomguard?”

  “At least as it was some time ago.”

  “Wait — do you mean your father’s memories?”

  She nodded while sipping her drink. “I have the memories in my possession.”

  “Have you ever looked at them?”

  “Never,” she replied quickly. “I only know how to share them, not get them back out. Once they are in, they are in.”

  “And your dad kind of went nuts for a while...”

  “He lived between a bottle and madness.”

  “I think I might have to pass. For now.”

  “You know where to find me if you gain interest.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Thank you for coming to check on us. And do not use a magic item on our account. Our needs are few, Lord Coggeshall. Shelter and freedom to practice our art is all we ask.”

  “And it is what you shall receive,” I replied.

  Chapter Eleven

  I wouldn’t say I was annoyed, because that wasn’t quite the right emotion to cover how I felt.

  People were trying to help me, and I was trying to be smart about things, but there just wasn’t a good answer to the question of the damn magic building. I was starting to worry I wasn’t going to be able to come up with an idea, and then the council members would devolve into infighting and backstabbing to get the building they most wanted. Most of the people around me were treating this as a Big Deal, and maybe it was.

  It was certainly cool, and an opportunity I didn’t want to fuck up. But that said, I didn’t think it was something that would make or break Coggeshall. I’m pretty sure I was what was going to make or break Coggeshall. So as I walked through the greens, watching the clouds dance across the sky, I started to wonder if the the better idea was to focus on myself. What would be the best building for me? For my growth?

  But that didn’t go far. I’ve never really been that into myself, and picking something just for me seemed ridiculous. I already had enough people afraid of me — I didn’t need to make them think I was a selfish dick at the same time. Plus, what more could I want? I had a hot shower at my disposal and unlimited pizza and root beer. I was set.

  I found myself standing in front of the brownie tree. Hints of vanilla and other delightful odors wafted around me. I smiled in spite of myself.

  “My lord,” a soft voice called down to me from the branches above.

  I looked up to see a brownie sitting at a fork between two small branches, swinging her feet back and forth. She seemed small, even for a brownie, and had blonde curly hair. Like the others of her kind, she wore leather clothing and had a cherubic little face.

  “Hello there,” I said.

  “You seem troubled,” she replied.

  “Deep in thought,” I said, “but not troubled.”

  “Do you want to talk with someone?”

  “I suppose,” I said. “Are things going well here?”

  She shrugged her tiny shoulders. “I think so?”

  “Okay, then.”

  “Would you prefer to speak to the chief?”

  “I mean, if you think that’s—”

  She smiled, hopped up and then basically vanished. A moment later, the bark in front of me opened up like a door. A ring of wood rippled out of the tree forming something like a balcony, right around eye level with me. A male brownie walked out, wearing brownie-sized chainmail, and sat down on a chair I swore hadn’t been there a second ago. Then he pulled a pipe out of thin air, drew in a big gulp of air, and let it out in a green glut of smoke that turned into a deer before running away into the leaves above.

  “A good evening to you,” he said.

  “Neat trick,” I said.

  He gave me a smile and a nod. “Need to keep the big folk off their feet. You are the duke of Coggeshall and I am the chief of the Coggeshall brownies. I am at your service.”

  “It is nice to meet you. Is there, I mean, should we trade names?”

  “I know of your name, Montana of Coggeshall. I am Flint Frostycliff.”

  “Well met.”

  “You have an issue?”

  “No, I was more checking to see if you had an issue.”

  “Not me.”

  “What about the other brownies?”

  “We are quite content here, Lord Montana of Coggeshall. It has been a long time since we have not been fearing for our lives, since we have not been fighting each and every day just for survival.” He took a few puffs of his pipe before continuing. “I’m sure issues will creep up as we forget how bad it was, and how good it is. But for the moment, each and every brownie here is desperate to offer you all the thanks you will take. So, if you have an issue, or need an ear, I am at your service.”

  “I’m glad I could help.”

  “Now, what vexes you?”

  “You’ve been around a while?”

  “Aye.”

  “Have you—”

  “Before you ask about the Feedoheem, I have never set foot inside those lands. I was born here, and I chose to stay here because this is my home. There are others among us who have been to that world. And others.” He stood up from his chair, “I can get them if you like, but—”

  “I wasn’t going to ask about that, but, no, I don’t have time for that right now. Later.”

  He nodded and plopped back down.

  “I have the ability to create a building, a magical building. It can be anything,” I said. “I think that’s the problem. It can be anything, so I can’t decide what it should be.”

  “Paradox of choice.”

  “I feel like I’ve heard that before.”

  “A common theory because it’s a truth. It’s hard to know what to pick if you have endless choices. But a building. For here?”

  I nodded.

  “Simple,” he said, nodding and puffing on his pipe. “Brewery.”

  “A what? Wait, it’s a magical building that can be anything in the world, and—”

  “All the better. Magic ale.”

  “I don’t know—”

  “Listen,” he said, leaning forward on his chair. It brought him all of an inch or two closer to my ear, but I appreciated the gesture, “people, your kind, my kind, all kinds, we all need a home. We need a place to belong, to just be. Maybe that home moves, maybe it’s where it is. But one thing, it’s got to be a home. There is one thing that makes a home more a home than any other...”

  “Booze?”

  “I was going to say having something to rally around. A product from home. You’ll never find a dwarf who isn’t proud of the metal of their mountain. Or an elf who won’t brag about everything his ancestors have touched. But if a brewery stands within these walls, the people of Coggeshall will not only claim it as their own, but also claim it is better than any other. It will bring your community together.”

  “I think that’s asking an awful lot of a beer.”

  “You are clearly not a connoisseur of beer.”

  “You’ve got me dead to rights on that one. My beer days were all about quantity over quality.”

  “You’ll want to stress quality on this one.”

  “But what about a garden? Like, some magical garden that has every plant.”

  “That would be useful, but would it make community?”

  “Would a brewery?”

  “Yes.”

  “You are very confident about this.”

  “I am. I know beer.”

  “Are you a brewer?”

  “I am not. In the past, before being a chieftain, I was an apiarist.”

  “You took care of monkeys?”

  His brow furrowed, and he tilted his head as he looked at me.

  “Bees,” he s
aid. “I kept bees.”

  “Oh,” I said. I thought about trying to play it off as a joke, but decided it would be better to accept being seen as stupid.

  “You have an apiary already?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “I don’t think.”

  “Then, might I ask you to consider putting one into the construction queue.”

  “Sure.”

  “MEAD!” He said, getting to his feet.

  A number of ‘huzzahs’ came from the tree, and I looked up to see countless little faces smiling down at me.

  “Mead is popular amongst your folk?” I asked.

  “Immensely,” Flint replied.

  “I’ll give the brewery a thought. I still think a garden might be more useful, but—”

  “More useful, sure, but not quite as good at making a city.”

  “Yeah, I get that. Thanks for listening.”

  “Any time, Duke Montana of Coggeshall.”

  I smiled, still damn confused about what I should be doing, and wandered off.

  Chapter Twelve

  Next I went to the treasury, because I knew it was a place where I could be alone. Only five people had access to it, and I knew that Skeld and Ragnar were out in the field with Lee, and Nikolai was probably in his office raging at paper or small shiny rocks. For good measure, I summoned another score of prinkies, and gave them their marching orders.

  Not only did I get a bit of solitude, but I also got to be surrounded by treasure and wonder. More treasure than wonder these days, but I’d take what I could get. We were starting to run out of room already, to the point where we’d need an expansion soon. But it was a lot of useless coinage, material that needed to be melted down and then, well I didn’t really know. I doubted we could get our own mint going. Although that was also a potential idea for the magical building. It’d definitely be useful to have a magical mint.

  All the shelves in the existing treasury were filled, some overflowing. Sacks of treasure lined the floor, making it a bit hard to walk around. I needed to start Marie Kondo-ing all this stuff. Like the skill books and potions were doing no good just taking up space in the treasury. But what was I supposed to do with them?

  There were large stacks of metal, crates full of the stuff from the castle in the middle of WarWaters. I chose to sit down there. I leaned back against the wall and stared up at the carved stone ceiling, trying to come to grips with the need to actually make a decision. It wasn’t in my nature. I could pass it off on Nikolai, or any of my other so-called advisors, but that seemed like a cop-out. And I didn’t want to cop-out. I actually wanted to take this on, to make the choice and be the leader everyone was counting on. I mean, at least I thought people were counting on me to be a leader. There was the nagging thought in the back of my mind that I’d been placed on this pseudo-throne for nefarious purposes, and that people out there in the Mister Paul-level of the world were counting on me to fuck things up. Still could be the case. But wouldn’t it be great to fuck them over by being actually decent at what they thought I’d fuck up?

  It’s also very possible that I was in the midst of overthinking this whole thing. That is part of the problem when you aren’t used to thinking — it starts to crop up that maybe you are thinking too much. People used to tell me I’d have been good at golf, because I had no thought process to get in the way of my swing. Probably why I was good at beating the shit out people too. Of course, in that respect, a slice could be a good thing. Or a shank for that matter.

  Just then, I had a moment of genius. I realized there was something I could do. I could stop thinking about the damn magical building, and instead, take some mystery metals down to Zoey and the smiths, and figure out what kind of magical metals we had.

  Also, Zoey and the Smiths is an excellent indie band name. Up for grabs.

  I piled the ten ingots I got from the “nice” ladies in Rumib Pass into my bag, and then picked up a crate of the WarWaters metal. For good measure, I grabbed a sack of mithril. Because we had a lot of mithril. It was really weird stuff. Super light, like lighter than aluminum. But supposedly some of the hardest stuff out there.

  I knew Mister Paul had given me a bunch, I just wish I remembered why. I still wanted to keep the quantity of the metal a secret, so I figured bringing down one sack now would be the best way to get things going without raising suspicions.

  Going through the fortress from the treasury to the smithy made it clear that keeping all our metals in the treasury would make using them difficult. It was a pain in the ass weaving through the crowded hallways carrying what was probably several hundred pounds of material in one rather old wooden crate. Especially when a horde of little ones raced through the hall and I had to dodge them without crushing anyone. Which I did, thank you very much. But there was definitely more sweat involved in the process than anything I’d done recently.

  Once at the smithy, I set the metal down with a clang. The shop came to a halt. Everyone stopped to see what I’d dropped on the floor. Which wasn’t fair because I didn’t drop it, I set that shit down. Maybe a bit quickly, but still.

  “What’s that?” Zoey asked. She walked over in her leather apron, wiping her hands on a towel that was already black. It didn’t seem to do anything to clean her hands.

  “Metal,” I said. “I don’t know what’s in the crate, and the bag has a little surprise. And,” I pulled out the other ten ingots, and I set them down on the ground, “a few more mystery metals here.”

  “Mystery metals, huh?” she said, peeking in the bag first. “I mean, looks like mithril, but—”

  “It is.”

  “That’s mithril? And you just happen to have a tater sack full of it?”

  “Something along those lines.”

  She picked up one of the ingots. Even though I knew how light it was, it struck me how genuinely careful she was being.

  “I might be, uh,” I started, “how valuable is this stuff?”

  One of the dwarves lifted the sack up and peered inside. His eyes went wide, and he fell back on his butt.

  “Gods,” he said softly.

  “So, a lot,” I answered for myself.

  Zoey just nodded, eyes captivated by the mithril.

  Another dwarf picked an ingot up, held it for a minute, then set it down.

  “This is an incredible bounty,” he said. “I’ve never seen ingots like this before. They’re always, well, smaller. And there’s no mark. What mine did they come from?”

  “They, uh — well, it’s kind of a secret,” I said, not exactly knowing how to tell them about the godly gift.

  “I don’t care where it’s from,” Zoey said. “What can I make with this?”

  “I don’t know, I mean, armor? Swords? Plowshares?”

  She shook her head, eyes not leaving the metal.

  “You have no idea what this is, do you?” she asked.

  “Mithril?”

  “But that is merely a word for you, isn’t it?”

  “Honestly? Yes. I don’t know about metals. I know steel is pretty good, and this stuff is better—”

  “This stuff is beyond better than steel. Harder, yet more malleable under heat. You can weave mithril strands together—”

  “The dwemer-weave,” one of the dwarves piped up. “I’ve seen a hauberk of the stuff. It hangs in the Grand Mountain Hall.”

  “Aye,” another dwarf said. “I’ve seen it. Me da touched it once. Said it was softer than silk, but it can stop the hardest of arrows.”

  “You can make plate armor from this an infant could still crawl in,” Zoey said.

  “I think I’d like to see that,” I said.

  All eyes were on me.

  “Really?” Zoey asked.

  “No,” I lied. “Just a joke. Have you worked with mithril before?”

  “How would someone like me have a chance to work with this?” she replied, a haughty look on her face.

  “I don’t know, just a question.”

  “I’ve never seen mithr
il in this form. I’ve seen blades twice, and a hauberk once.”

  “Then I guess the best thing to do would be to learn how to use it.”

  She nodded.

  “There’s also this stuff,” I said, pointing at the other two mystery metals.

  “Won’t be as interesting as this stuff,” she hefted the ingot in her hand.

  “What is it?”

  She sighed as she knelt down and picked up one of the Rumib Pass ingots.

  After a bit of a heft, she clanked it against the stone floor, listening to the resonance, I guess.

  “I don’t know,” she said, “but I’m curious.” She looked at the dwarves gathered around her. “Anyone have an ability to identify this?”

  “Talmer would,” one of the dwarves at the back said.

  “Who’s Talmer?” I asked.

  “Old-timer,” the dwarf replied. “He was a forgemaster back, uh, before.”

  “Is there a reason he’s not down here?”

  “He’s pushing seven centuries. Not one for doing much beyond drinking tea and shouting at kids who make too much noise in the halls.”

  I grabbed an ingot of mithril, and one each of the mystery metals. “Who wants to go on a little walk to talk to this Talmer?”

  No hands went up.

  “You,” I said, pointing to the one who’d told me about Talmer. “Winner. Let’s go.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  There wasn’t much talk as we walked through the MountainHome. The young dwarf, who turned out to be called Kjall Bloodrock, was rather sullen. We went up, and then down and around until we got to one of the hallways of rooms.

  At the end of the hall was a trio of doors.

  Kjall stopped and gestured at the middle door.

  “That’s him?” I asked.

  Kjall nodded.

  I knocked.

  There was an immediate grumble, and then silence.

  I looked over at Kjall, who just shrugged. But I noticed he took a big step back from the door, making sure I was the one in view. I knocked a second time.

  “Do you think the lack of me comin’ the first time will be changed by you knocking a second time?” came a gruff roar from inside.