“You were in Astros?” said Amelia. “I came from Astros myself. I was raised there and trained as a scholar in the library.”
“Oh really?” said Jacques with a crooked smile. “So, you’ll know the tower in the east wing of the Great Library? Where they keep the messenger birds?”
“Yes,” said Amelia, frowning. “It’s one of the highest towers in the whole library complex, and its base forms one of the great corner buttresses.” I kept quiet, wondering what on earth Jacques was leading up to.
“That’s right,” said Jacques. “And do you know the narrow stairway that runs down through the outer wall from the privy chamber in the tower, down to a little hidden entrance behind a grog shop on the street far below?”
Amelia shook her head, confused. “No, I didn’t know about that.”
Jacques sat back in his chair, chuckling. “Neither did anybody else! I discovered it all by myself, I did. That’s the advantage of an observant eye. The little entrance hadn’t been used for decades, but I took a lantern and made my way up, and found myself in the Great Library one night, and no one was any the wiser! I count that as the first real manifestation of Loku’s luck!”
“What did you do with the knowledge?” asked Amelia suspiciously.
“Made a living,” Jacques replied, off-handedly. “There are supposed to be over a million volumes in the Great Library. I figured nobody would miss, say two per week, for a year or so.”
“You stole books from the library?” Amelia was outraged but seemed unable to keep from being impressed at his luck and ingenuity at the same time.
“A man has to make a living somehow,” he said.
She shook her head and laughed. “I suppose so,” she said. “And it’s true that nobody ever noticed! Nobody really knows how many books there are in the Great Library.”
“Well, I spent a year or more there, distributing valuable books and reinvesting my earnings until I was able to open up a little ale house of my own, where men could play cards and take their ease. All went well, but I got a bit too settled, and eventually Loku sent me a message.”
“And what form did the message take?” I asked.
He shook his head sadly. “It took the form of Lord Hay, the husband of one of my… patrons in Aranor. He had heard my name and came looking for me, seeking revenge for some imagined slight.”
“Imagined?” I laughed.
Jacques dismissed that with a wave of his hand. “Well, whatever. It was time to go anyway. Loku was clearly telling me that I’d gotten too comfortable, and I felt it was time for an adventure. I grabbed my few belongings and all the coin I could carry, borrowed a horse, and set off in the dead of night for Brightwater.”
“Why Brightwater?”
He shrugged. “A rough trading town is a good place for a man like me. Plenty to do. Coin to be earned, adventures to be had. And as far from the city life of Astros as it’s possible to be in the Kingdom.”
“And as far from any jealous husbands,” added Veronica.
“Wait a minute,” said Amelia, who had been sitting thinking. “I remember a scandal that happened in Astros not long before I left. Lord Hay, I remember his name, he was arrested.”
“Arrested?” said Jacques, “what for?”
“He and his men set fire to a tavern one night. He said he was looking for the owner. I remember something else, too, it was strange—on the same night he burned the tavern down, someone broke into the main city stables and stole his horse. It was one of the best horses in the Kingdom, and it was never seen again…”
Jacques sat silent, listening serenely, a look of polite interest on his face. After a moment, Amelia, Veronica, and I all burst into laughter.
“Shall we have another drink?” said Jacques, standing. “My round this time.”
Jacques went back to the bar. My friend was not patient enough to wait for barmaids to serve us. Not long after, he came back with another round of drinks. Jacques raised another toast to our little party and the bright future ahead of us. We set our mugs down after a large swallow of beer.
Just then, the door beside the bar banged open, and out burst the crowd of sappers we’d fought earlier. Wounds were healed, bruises barely showed anymore, and burns were nothing more than scarred skin. Each one of the sappers had been completely repaired by the Mistress’s magic. Except for Mohawk. He hadn’t fared quite so well. His mohawk was nothing more than wispy tufts of scorched hair.
The Mistress seemed quite capable of healing all kinds of wounds, so I wondered whether she’d left Mohawk’s hair like that on purpose. I would have to ask her more about her abilities; she seemed to possess incredible power.
The Mistress appeared behind them. “Out, all of you.” She began shooing them out from behind.
Mohawk stuck his hand to his head. “You didn’t fix my hair!”
Mistress Blossom shrugged. “Fixing your hair was never in the agreement; it’s not a service this tavern offers. Now out, I don’t want to say it again.”
She stuck her heeled boot out and shoved Mohawk in the ass, making him stumble forward. “And don’t come back. Well, not until tomorrow evening, anyway.”
With a series of grumbles and sour looks, the sappers all made their way out the front door. Mistress Blossom dusted her hands off and turned back toward the bar.
As she walked back, she turned her head and spied our booth. “Sophie, dear,” she called out. “Would you be a darling and keep looking after the bar for me? I have some other business
