Michael Williams - Weasel's Luck

It started on the night of the banquet I did not attend.

While the others were celebrating, I was cleaning my eldest brother Alfric’s chambers, sweeping away the daily confusion of soiled clothes, of bones, of melon rinds. It was like a midden in there, like an ogre’s den. Surely the missing servants were only hiding from Alfric somewhere in the moat house, and would turn up shortly.

Don’t misunderstand me. It would be wrong, then or now, to compare my brother to an ogre. An ogre is larger, more lethal. Probably brighter.

Yet Alfric was bright enough to have me sweeping his quarters, soaping his windows, while he and the rest of the family sat down to supper with an honorable guest. For eight years running he had blackmailed me for the smallest of misdeeds, so that while the sons of other Solamnic Knights had spent their teens in horsemanship and falconry, I had spent mine in sweeping and dread, for reasons . . . well, the reasons come later. Let it just be said that at seventeen I was feeling too old to be my brother’s keeper. While I stirred the dust in his quarters, Alfric sat in the great hall, at the table where Father entertained Sir Bayard Brightblade of Vingaard, a Solamnic Knight who had ridden up to our backwater estate in the glittering armor that was already the subject of song and a legend or two. To top it off, Sir Bayard was supposedly the best swordsman in northern Solamnia.

Not that I cared.

What was especially galling about our visitor was his redemption of Alfric. For it seems that Bayard Brightblade was on his way to vie for the hand of some southern nobleman’s daughter in some glorified tournament, and had stopped in our rice paddy of a county as a favor to our once famous father. Bayard was taking my brother on as a squire at the advanced age of twenty-one, where half a dozen Knights had balked and refused. He would take Alfric with him, whip him into shape, and return him to Father as a man with knightly prospects.

Hearing of these prospects, Alfric had decided to celebrate: another horse had been found dead of exhaustion in the stables this morning, and once again, our tutor Gilean-dos had been set on fire. Arson was a hobby both Alfric and I pursued, but as usual, I had been blamed, dismissed from the hall without ceremony and supper, while a celebrity dined in our midst.

Laughter and the clatter of crockery arose from downstairs as I dusted my brother’s nightstand, passing the cloth over the freshly carved “Alfric was here” on its surface. No doubt they Were talking about me over wine and venison downstairs, hoping I would soon grow out of whatever I was supposed to grow out of. Brithelm, my middle and spiritual brother, had been excused from supper once again that evening for the gods knew what ancient and honorable fast, and Alfric was no doubt seated at the right hand of my father, nodding in agreement with the old man who had done his best by all of us, while Sir Bayard looked on in solemn and knightly approval.

I stewed over the festivities as I swept cinders, more bones, more feathers. But the stewing—not to mention my story—had only begun.

As I crawled beneath the bed to finish the sweeping before turning to the window I had to scrub daily, I heard a noise behind me in the doorway of the chamber. My first thought was that Alfric had enjoyed scarcely enough bullying for the evening, and had excused himself politely from the table in order to sprint upstairs and whale the daylights out of me for the sheer joy of daylights-whaling. I paused amidst broken pottery, empty wine bottles, several spent oil lamps, and more bones, and crouched beneath the bed.

A voice—honeyed and musical and deep—flowed out of the doorway.

“Where is everyone, little one beneath the bed? You needn’t hide, for I can see through the dark, through time and stone and metal, and I know where you are. Where is everyone? I have business in this house.”

Within that voice was also steel and danger. I thought of assassins, of the hired killer who speaks with a voice as sweet as a choir’s, as the soft sound of the cello, even while he draws the dagger or pours the poison. What was more, in the presence of the visitor, I swear that the lights dimmed in the chamber, that a low mist rose from the floor. The temperature dropped until the rising mist was laced with a white and bitter ice. More frightened than when I had thought it was only my brother intending to batter me senseless, I answered in the way I thought safest, to render the least harm to the most dear.

“Look, I don’t know who you are, but don’t hurt me. I’m way down the line to inherit the fortune of this place, so I’m not even worth a well-planned kidnap. If you’re looking for Father, he’s downstairs at a banquet, but you’d probably have an excellent shot at him coming up the stairs in the wee hours of the morning. By the way, he had a hunting accident six months back, still favors his left leg, so aim toward the right.” I began to weep, blubber, and expand on the subject.

“Or if it’s my brother Brithelm you’re after, he’s probably meditating in his room—some kind of religious holiday. Down the hall, third door on the left.”

Brithelm was harmless, good-natured, and of all the family and guests I liked him the best. But not enough to place myself in the way of a would-be murderer. Quickly I continued the list.

“The only other soul on the floor is our tutor Gileandos, who won’t hear a thing, since he’s recovering from burns and probably from brandy by this time of night.”

Through these betrayals, I stayed beneath the bed, from where I could see the intruder from the knees down, first standing in the doorway, then entering the room and seating himself in a chair by the window. His legs seemed large through the bend of the glass globe of the discarded lamp, and he wore black boots tooled with silver scorpions, as though black boots alone were not sinister enough. I raked a fortress of bones and crockery and lint about me, sliding closer and closer to the wall against which the far side of Alfric’s bed rested.

“Of course, you’re aware I have an older brother Alfric, too. If you’d like his entire schedule for the next several days, and a list of his favorite foods . . .”

“But, little one,” interrupted the stranger, his singer’s voice a lullaby, a drug. “I intend no harm to you or your family. Not unless it is necessary, of course. For it is another I am searching for . . .”

“Oh, you mean Sir Bayard. Well, if you are after his life it would be better if you came back later, after we’re all asleep, after even the servants have gone to bed. That way the whole business would be cleaner, more private. You wouldn’t have to kill anyone else to do whatever it is you want to do.”

“Don’t you listen, child?” The voice grew lower still, almost a whisper, and the air turned even colder. Outside, the nightingales ceased their singing, as though the moat house and everything surrounding it lay hush to catch the murmured words of the visitor. “Are you that in love with the sound of your own voice? I tell you that I seek no man’s life.”

I raised myself onto my elbows, stirring up a cloud of dust beneath the bed, which I dearly hoped would hide my thoughts and trembling as well as my whereabouts.