What Xnauth Missed

What Xnauth Missed (March 26, 2011)

There’s no cowhide for this one. Xnauth wasn’t there, and he only heard about it afterward, from the others’ mouths and in far too many words. Here’s what stuck in his skull.

I’m not carving this one. I won’t sacrifice a cow for an evening I wasn’t even there for. I’m telling it because otherwise the others will think I don’t know. I know. They’ve told me often enough.

It started with cards. Each of them got one, a colorful card with pictures, like the ones Varisians lay out at markets. On it was an invitation to a house in the city. I didn’t get a card that day. Maybe a cow ate it. Maybe someone thought I was too loud. They told me that later too.

They all went. The gnome with the blond helmet, who counts his god in coins. The tall drunk with the beer mug. The madman with the brand on his forehead and the purple critter that doesn’t know whether it wants to be a cat or a dragon. And the Varisian with the hat. Five strangers at a set table. There was bread and wine. The bread was stale, the wine was flat, everything tasted like it had been sitting there for a few days. Nobody found that strange. I would have found it strange. But then, I wasn’t invited.

The fortune-teller’s name was Zellara. She read their cards and said they were all looking for the same man. Gaedren Lamm. Old Lamm, who makes children steal for him and sends innocent people to the gallows. Each of them had a score to settle with him. So did I. Only I wasn’t sitting at the table. Zellara knew where he was hiding: in an old fishery down at the docks, where it stinks so bad even the gulls give it a wide berth.

So off they went. The Varisian crept ahead over the rooftops and had a look from above. He’s good at that. He’s quick as a weasel, as my own skull found out later. Then they spread out like people who’d stormed a house before. The gnome and the drunk took the front entrance, the Varisian took the back, the madman came in from the side. A solid plan. I’d have kicked the door in. That’s quicker.

The first thing waiting inside was a shark. That’s what they say, anyway. A shark in a fishery. I say it was a big fish, and with every cup of wine it got a little bigger in the telling. They killed it, or it nearly killed them. To this day they can’t agree on that.

Then came Gaedren himself, with his thugs. And with a dog. They mention the dog every time, chests puffed out. They sent it running. A dog. Glorious, they say. I’ve sent dogs running in my time, but I’ve never sung a song about it. The thugs ended up on the floor, and the old man was tied up like a pig on its way to market. He was still alive. They should have left that to me.

They found all sorts of junk in his hideout. A wand, the fortune-teller’s deck of cards, a piece of jewelry too fine for someone like Gaedren, and more stuff the gnome has surely counted by now. And they found a head. Zellara’s head. The woman who’d invited them to her table that evening was already dead when she read the cards. I don’t know anything about ghosts. But I know bread doesn’t go stale in an hour.

There was a kid there too. One of the ones the old man made work for him. The others wanted to take the kid to an orphanage. I’d have let the kid go. A kid who survived Gaedren can make it alone.

They took the bound Lamm, the head, and all the junk back to the fortune-teller’s house. And it wasn’t the same house anymore. Dust on the table, on the chairs, on the floor. No bread, no wine. Only their own footprints in the dust, nothing else. As if nobody had lived there for weeks. Weird, they said. Weird. The hair on the back of my neck still stands up when I think about it, and I wasn’t even there.

They’d saved a chair for me. They only told me that the next day, when I found the card on my club. What happened then is on the first hide. That one I carve myself.