Chapter Fifty-Nine - LORD ABRAHAM BRISTLECONE!

I was super curious about what was happening with the Mathy lady and Amaryllis and Gabriel, but it seemed as if I wasn’t wanted, and snooping was so far from polite that I didn’t give the idea more than a passing thought. Instead I just stood in the middle of the lounge room and shifted my weight from foot to foot, uncertain as to what to do next.

Then Abraham saved me.

“Oi, girlie, come on and sit with us old timers. You’ll pretty up our corner of the room just by being here and you won’t wear a hole in the floor, haha!”

I smiled, my reservations melting as Abraham’s gregarious voice boomed across the room. He gestured to an unoccupied seat made of dark wood with big fluffy cushions. It was quite similar to his own throne-like seat, though with fewer stuffed animals surrounding it.

“Now, what brings a young lass like you to this backwards port?”

“Um,” I said. “Adventure, mostly.”

“Haha!” Abraham roared. “A girl after my own heart. Oh, I do love a spot of adventure in the morning, then a bit of exploration in the afternoon and maybe a bit of a tussle with some big beastie in the evening. That’s the true man’s life! Isn’t that right boys?”

The other men sitting around the hearth weren’t all so... Abraham-like, but they looked wiry and dangerous in their own ways. All of them were older, and all of them had a scar or two on their hands or faces. The nearest, a grenoil with a wrinkly nose, shook his head in exasperation.

Abraham himself looked like... well he looked like Santa Clause if Santa hit the gym six days a week and spent the last day prowling around in the savannah looking for a lion to wrestle. He even had a pith helmet!

“I overheard a little about your adventure with those deer lads from out East. Oh, that reminds me of that time the princess of Manamere got her grubby hands on an ancient Crys statuette and I was tasked to fetch it. I spent a whole week crawling on my hands and knees across the Trenten Flats themselves, then I snuck in through the royal privy pipes until I was in the castle proper. Found the princess too. Poor lass got quite the fright when I stuck my head out in her private toiletry room. Haha!”

I held back a giggle and sat on the edge of the seat. “Then what happened?” I asked.

There was a chorus of ‘oh no’ from the old men around us, but they were wearing secretive little smiles of their own, especially when Abraham lit up as if I had just announced that it was his birthday.

“And then, lass, I climbed out of the bowl, quite the stench on me, let me tell you. Cervid sewers make the ol’ Port Royal perfume smell like fresh roses. The princess beat me on the head a few times. Sollid whaps of her little princess-y make up kit. Haha! It didn’t help the smell any!”

“Oh no!”

“Oh yes indeed little miss. But no fear! It takes more than some perfume flung into his face to take out the great Abraham Bristlecone!” He tugged his big manly mustache, the sort I would no doubt have if I were a cool old man instead of the exact opposite. “I ran out of the little princess’s room, without harming one hair on her furry little hide of course, I’m a gentleman, not some lowlife ruffian! Then I was accosted by the royal guard and we had ourselves a bit of a scrap! Tough fight too, all I could carry with me in the sewers were my knickers and a spoon!”

I slapped my hands over my mouth. “Were you caught?” I gasped.

“Haha! No one catches Abraham, not unless he wants it!” he declared before giving me a wink. “I ran off the guard, defeated Folsom the Spear Champion himself and left the boy covered in spoon wounds. Then I raced off into the princess’ quarters and found the Crys statuette. Then it was up to the roof where Raynald here was pissing his britches.”

The old grenoil snorted. “No sane man would execute a plan that involved skimming over an enemy’s castle roof with a ship as clunky as your Shady Lady,” he said.

“It was a perfect plan!” Abraham said.

“You exited right next to all of their anti-dragon siege equipment!” Raynold shot right back.

I had the impression the fight was rehashed a few times already. “How did you guys make it out if there was a bunch of anti-dragon stuff around?” I asked.

Raynold stopped and, when Abraham went to talk, flung a wooden cigar box at the man’s head to shush him up. It bounced off without so much as making Abraham flinch. “Ah, let me explain this one, Abe, the little miss might actually learn something, unlike with most of your sordid tales.”

“Hah!” Abraham said. “You’re merely envious that my life was a little exciting, you damned paper-pusher!”

Raynold shook his head. “You see Miss...”

“Broccoli, Broccoli Bunch,” I said.

“Miss Bunch. Most cities that install the kind of weapons needed to fight off threats in the air expect them to come from the air. But I, being both brighter and less keen on suicide than Abe here, calculated their firing arcs and discovered that the primitive canons the cervids use couldn’t depress low enough... that is, they couldn’t fire downwards. I merely needed to guide our air skimmer through the widest roads in the city and over some of the walls.”

“You tore off half the rudder,” Abraham complained.

“That chimney moved!”

The two started to bicker back and forth over which one of them was the greater fool. I didn’t like seeing friends argue, even if it didn’t seem like it was in bad faith. “Did you accomplish your mission?” I asked.

“Oh-hoh!” Abraham said as he cut himself off halfway through the act of flinging the cigar box back at Raynold “Did we ever! Have you seen the Screaming Mountains, little Bunch?”

“No, what are they?” I asked.

“They’re these mountains, far off to the Southeast and just off the continent. The people there are made of crystal and when the sun rises they begin to hum. By the time midday hits a man can hardly hear himself think!”

I wanted to ask Abraham for some more tales, because his stories so far had been wonderful, but Amaryllis and the others chose that moment to walk back into the lounge area. Amaryllis was wearing a smug grin, Gabriel looked like he needed a stiffer drink than usual, and the Mathy lady looked like she was a step away from tearing someone’s head off.

Then she locked eyes on me. “You’re still here?” she asked.

“Yes ma’am,” I said as I got back onto my feet.

“Hmm, good. Gabriel, get the girl a coin-purse. Standard mission pay, then show her out.”

It took a moment for the words, and their meaning, to register. Was I being kicked out of the guild? “Is this because I haven’t paid yet? Mister Rainnewt implied it was okay to pay when I returned.”

“No, it’s because you’re a liability. You should never have been allowed to join anyway,” the woman said.

“What are you talking about?” Amaryllis said. “She’s perfect for this guild. She even saved my life.”

“Be that as it may,” she continued, “Her level is far too low, her class doesn’t seem suitable to the work, and with the amount of suspicion going around it’s wiser to show her out than to keep a possible snake amongst the tadpoles.”

Amaryllis squawked. “Fine! If Broccoli can’t join your guild, then I’m heading out too!”

The grenoil woman stood a little taller at that. “I’m afraid I can’t let you do that. Your parents--”

“Will hear all about your incompetence,” Amaryllis interrupted. “The only one here that managed to actually help me was her,” she said while pointing right at me. “I’m not going to let you just... get rid of her.”

The woman’s eyes narrowed. “You’re making a spectacle of this.”

“And yet the only clown here is you,” Amaryllis shot back.

Mathy looked ready to tear Amaryllis’ head off when Abraham cleared his throat. “Care to share with the rest of us, Mathy?”

“My name is Mathide, Abraham,” the woman said. Abraham’s mustache twitched and I suspected he was trying not to smile. “And I suspect we have... had a spy in our midst. Has anyone seen Rainnewt?”

There was a long moment of silence that seemed to say ‘no.’

“World damn us all,” she muttered.

“So, because of that skinny little snake you’re going to punish poor Broccoli here?” Abraham asked.

I took a small step back as Mathide looked my way. The woman was downright terrifying. “It’s okay?” I said. I couldn’t just let everyone else speak over me. “I really wanted to join your guild, but if you won’t have me, I can just... go?”

“No, you can’t,” Amaryllis said. She was glaring at the back of Mathilde’s head as if she could set it on fire with her eyes alone.

“How about a compromise then?” Abraham asked. He pulled the cigar box--now resting on his lap-- open and took out a cigar. A snap of his fingers had a small flame dancing on his index which he used to slowly light the cigar. “If the girls need to be safe... well, I happen to be heading out west, to Greenshade. I can take them with me and drop them off at the guild there. It’s about as far from Trenten as you can get without running through the desert or swimming the sea.”

Mathilde frowned at that before she turned to Amaryllis. “Would that be acceptable? The Exploration Guild branch there is smaller, but there’s plenty of work to be had. I’ll even let you bring your human friend here if you trust her so much.”

“I do, and it is,” Amaryllis said.

“Hoh-ho! Abraham Bristlecone, saving the day once more! And I didn’t even need to stand up for it. Raynold, fetch me a glass of that scotch you’ve been hiding away!”

“Jump off a cliff,” Raynold said.

I raised a hand, just like I had been taught to do in class and waited for Mathilde and Amaryllis to both look my way. “Um, I’m sorry, but what exactly is going on?”

Amaryllis was the first to answer. “Rainnewt has gone missing. He accepted you as a member without going through the proper channels and is the one who arranged all the missions. Mathilde here thinks he’s some sort of troublemaker. I think he ought to be hanged for trying to have me kidnapped. This so-called leader here thinks the solution is to kick you out of the Guild even though you’ve done more work to stop their own mistakes than anyone else. I, as a person that isn’t an idiot, am keen on pointing out how utterly devoid of sense that is.”

Mathide croaked and it didn’t sound all that happy. “We’ll get to the bottom of it, Miss Albatross. If the Exploration Guild is good at one thing it’s discovering things.” she looked my way. “Miss Bunch... I wish we had met under better circumstances.”

I smiled right back. “It’s never too late to become friends, and I think I understand why you, um, tried to kick me out. It’s okay.”

“Too damned nice,” Amaryllis muttered.

“Right-oh!” Abraham said as he jumped to his feet with surprising spryness. “The Shady Lady will be ready to depart first thing in the morning. You ladies just need to ask around to find it. It’s like a small adventure!”

Things were moving a little fast, but I nodded anyway and tried on an even bigger smile for size.

From what I could tell the business with Mister Rainnewt was suspect. He had seemed nice, but nice people didn’t kidnap girls, to say the least. It kind of soured my impressions of the guild a little bit, but going on an adventure of sorts with Mister Bristlecone sounded like a jolly good time. That, and Amaryllis had stepped up to defend me, which.. Well, I had happy little butterflies fluttering in my tummy at the thought.

“That doesn’t leave us much time,” Amaryllis said. “Come on Broccoli, let’s go. We have things that need doing before we set off.”

“Oh, um, right. See you tomorrow then, Mister Bristlecone?” I asked.

“Sure thing, young Miss!”

***