“It can take many forms, this monster,” the Envoy explains. “It is devious. Cunning.”
The Hero smiles to himself. He doesn’t care what form it takes, or if it’s devious, cunning, or smells like a poopy diaper and can sing five-part madrigals with itself. He’s never met a monster he couldn’t kill. He’ll kill this one, too. And then he will claim his reward and be done with heroics for good.
The Envoy communicates this to the King, prettying up the sentiment, of course. They agree he will go monster hunting in the morning. Even if they don’t actually find it then, he can get the lay of the land, and show off a little to give them confidence.
The Hero doesn’t care that the palace is small, or the country clearly not rich. As long as the bed is soft, he’ll be happy.
It is.
THE HERO WAKES in the soft bed to utter darkness and the susurrus of movement. Slowly he moves his hand, touches the warm steel that lies by his left side. He’d gone to sleep with the curled bulk of Reynard pressed against his right side. That pressure is now gone, but not surprisingly. At night, Reynard has a tendency to wander. He listens to the darkness, hears nothing more. But he knows he is not alone. He waits for the danger to declare itself, and declare it does, with the strike of a flint. A spark leaps, and then lights a small oil lamp, flaring green eyes.
“By the spotted god, I almost killed you,” the Hero complains. “Why did you not declare yourself?”
“I found the Princess,” the jongleur says, instead of answering.
The Hero sits up in astonishment.
“What do you mean?”
“The Princess. They’ve got her locked up in a storeroom. Not the girl from the feast. The real Princess.”
“That wasn’t the real Princess?”
“No. I’m sure of it. I recognized her feet.”
“Why is she locked up in a storeroom?”
“I don’t know. I think we should leave. Get out of here while we can. I don’t like the smell of any of this.”
The Hero is painfully aware that when Reynard doesn’t like the smell of something, it’s usually because that something stinks. But the soft bed… and the comfortable manor house... and his retirement. They are hundreds of leagues away from Asteria, and he has exactly three hundred dromas in his purse, five hundred more buried in a cave in the Pachego Mountains, and seventy-nine the Lord of Ravensgill owes him from a long night of euchre. That’s not enough to retire on.
And how can he return to the Elector, and tell her it did not work out? That he ran?
Plus he’d really like to know why the real Princess is tied up in the cellar, and a false princess was presented to him.
THE HERO’S DIM light plays off the storeroom’s crock-lined walls. A ham hanging from the ceiling almost cracks him in the head. If you can say nothing else about the King, he is well prepared for winter. Or a long siege. Reynard trots before him, leading the way. He would prefer to run, but he understands that a hero has his honor.
They come to a halt in front of a brass-bound door.
Reynard pauses to sniff the crack at the bottom appreciatively. “The stillroom,” he explains. “They’ve got a great vinegar mother starter. Pickles must be amazing.”
Reynard will have been in the room already, to bring back word of the Princess’s feet; but now he just stands there. It is the Hero’s place to open the door to the Rescue.
Still, a hero knows better than to rush into what could be a trap. On the other side of the stillroom door, the Hero holds the light low, not to reveal himself. In the corner, propped up against a giant clay pickle jar, is a sad tangle of clothes from which stick out two very dirty bare feet. The Hero recognizes them instantly. He has looked at their portrait a hundred times. He is wearing it around his neck now.
Still, he approaches the bundle slowly, with his sword drawn.
Reynard shows no such caution. He trots right over to the Princess’s bare foot and nudges it with his nose. She comes awake quickly, flipping and flapping like a fish, for the ropes that bind her allow no better movement.
“Have you come to kill me?” she spits. Unlike the people upstairs, she speaks a kind of basic form of Middle Standard. Curious.
“Is there a reason I should?” the Hero asks.
“Monsters need no reason!”
Reynard noses the girl’s foot again, and she tries to jerk it away.
“I’m not a monster!” the Hero protests.
“Untie me then, and prove it.”
“Tell me why I should first. Then I will be more comfortable untying you.”
“My feet are numb. Numb and grimsome. It is a disgrace. You must not look at them.”
Politely, he looks over at a shelf full of preserved fruit of some kind. It is impossible to tell, in this light, what kind it is.
She follows his gaze. “And they do not feed me.”
A slash of the Hero’s sword and a dried sausage falls into his grasp.
The girl glares at him. “Most heroic. I see now. Yes, you are the Hero, with my portrait on your neck. My father sent you, to slay monsters and marry me. Are you done with the slaying? It matters not; I shall not marry you!”
“The feeling may be mutual, madam. But we get nowhere if you are not forthcoming with the reason you are in this situation.”
“Give me some meat and I will tell you.”
So the Hero cuts off a couple slices and offers them to Reynard, who takes them delicately, and carries them over to the Princess. Still bound, she takes the slices from his muzzle to her lips, and gobbles them down.
“Now,” she says imperiously, somewhat spoiling the effect by trying to wipe grease off her chin with her shoulder, “are you going to release me or not?”
One of her pretty feet, which she’d tucked up demurely under the edge of her grubby gown, peeks out a little. Good gods, the Hero thinks; is she flirting with me?
If she is, he knows this game.
“It depends,” he says. He slouches elegantly, one hand negligently on his pommel. “If you refuse to wed your rescuer, then what’s in it for me?”
“Ah,” she snaps back; “but I think you do not yet do the slaying. A braggart is no hero.”
“But a hero can still be a braggart. What have you got against heroes, anyway?”
She draws her feet back in. “In the general, nothing. But to be forced to marry the one, just because he knows how to make the Monster go SPLAT with his sword... How is this for me the what’s in it?”
The Hero’s just a sucker for girls trying out slang. He crouches, loosens the ropes. As soon as she is free, the girl clambers unsteadily to her feet, grabs the nearest jar and pops the lid. She doesn’t bother with a spoon.
“Ah!” she sighs happily, licking her lips. “This was the worst! To be looking always, and never tasting.” She runs her finger around the bottom of the jar. “This is really quite good. Pumpkin. I like the spice. When I home, these I take.”
“Home...? But surely you live here?”
The Princess gapes at him. Her teeth, like her toes, are little pearls. “But surely I do not! You think this—this?—is the house of my father?!”
The Hero sits down on a barrel. Between the long journey, the feast, the ale, and the tiny bit of sleep he’s gotten, this whole thing is beginning to feel like a dream to him. It has a certain dream logic. If he had to slay something now, he could probably do it on sheer nerve, but untangling riddles he prefers to do by day and well-rested. He pops open another jar of pumpkin jam. It is good.
“You may,” he says wearily, “remember a certain bargain we made over sausage? I have yet to see your end of it fulfilled. Why. Are. You. Here?”
She sits forward, her posture much improved by food and blood circulation. Oh, he thinks; to be so young as to bounce back that quickly from being tied up!