The final months of our duty in Stonekeep’s militia went by very quickly from my perspective. Piloting a ship on the Deepflow River was easy work. We had four people who were entrusted to pilot the Unseen Blade, and the rest of the talon, including Sergeant Porter, spent most of their time lazing about the ship either above or below deck as they wished. There wasn’t much for them to do, either. Sergeant Porter accepted Mira as the captain of the vessel since that was the cover story she had come up with and it was reinforced by the prince’s orders. The sergeant really wasn’t a thinking man, so the arrangement worked out well.

  I’d been keeping an eye on Kromwell through the Amber Throne’s scrying magic. What I would do was teleport to the roof of the keep from wherever the Unseen Blade happened to be, then use the throne to find out what he was up to. When I was done doing things in the castle, I had to find the Unseen Blade, which was easier said than done. Since it was warded against scrying and teleportation magic, I had to start from a reference point on the banks of the Deepflow River, then go along the river until I saw it in the distance. I couldn’t see inside it, but I could see the exterior. Once I found the ship, I’d then open a portal back to the observation deck of the ship. I’d have to be quick in getting through the portal, or the ship would leave the stationary portal behind. All in all, it was a lot of trouble to go through for nothing, at least until Kromwell got closer to Fellton or Grunbar, or wherever he was going.

  Eventually, Kromwell had marched as far as Fellton with his army, then stayed there with the last dozen or so of his human soldiers when the remaining ogres and goblins had continued back to Grunbar. After he entered Fell Keep, I wasn’t able to scry upon him anymore. (Not with what I knew at the time, anyway.) I still tried every day but got no results. It was frustrating, but that still told me something. The King of Fellton not only had the intelligence to recognize magical surveillance as a threat, but he also had the means to protect himself and his court from it. It took extraordinary resources to be able to ward a castle in this way, I assumed. I didn’t know anything for sure, but I could make a guess. I could also guess that King Karnas was behind the attack on Stonekeep, and that he was not happy with his general. Maybe Kromwell was imprisoned within Fell Keep. After reporting his miserable failure, I very much doubted King Karnas would leave such an affront unpunished. I had the feeling that I hadn’t seen the last of either King Karnas or Kromwell, and the lack of knowledge of their doings made me very uneasy.

  We had a total of seven of the golems aboard the ship. The Seeker designed golems were ten-foot-tall, magically animated statues made of solid steel that the Pirate King and his apprentices had fashioned nearly a thousand years ago. Three of them were T.U.R.D.s, Terrifying Unmanned Reapers of Destruction, and they were made for violence. They had four legs and four arms. The two upper arms held scimitars, and the two lower arms held rotating circular saw blades with wicked serrated edges. From our conflicts with ogrish slave galleys, I’d seen firsthand that they were very good at their primary function.

  The other four golems were called B.U.M.M.s, which stood for Benevolent Unmanned Maintenance Mechanicals. Seekers loved their acronyms. The B.U.M.M.s were the golems that would load and unload cargo. They could also repair the other golems if needed, and they had a variety of arms with different tools on the ends to help them with their tasks.

  We made quite a few trips up and down the river to Mithram taking farm goods back to Stonekeep’s market. With the influx of more food and the fact that people could see the constant improvement of the fields surrounding the lower city, the prices of foodstuff dropped to a normal level again after a few weeks. Fajen had the fields repaired in a week, then he was growing crops in the farmers’ original plots with the seeds that must have still been in the ground. The farmers had their jobs back, their crops were back on schedule to harvest again by the next Harvest Day, and life went on almost like no invading army had ever been there.

  Although Mira was more than a little bit scared of me right after my attunement, she settled down when I told her what it was that she could sense about me. She told me that she wasn’t sure if I had been replaced by a doppelganger or something at first. She could actually feel the magical power I had at my command now and it scared her. Truth be told, it scared me a little, too. Eventually she got back to her old self, kidding around and flirting a bit with me now and then. I could tell she cared about me even though we couldn’t really court yet. We usually paired up to arm ourselves, and she’d stopped playing pranks on me. Even Bandit left me alone, which I really appreciated. There was a time when I routinely checked every chair before I used it and smelled my drink before taking a sip. The anxiety of random practical jokes being played on me, coupled with the stress of trying to keep my secret from getting out had really taken a toll on me over the years.

  There was something that Mira had told me while we were on the quest in the Sunset Isles that still bothered me, though. It was about her father, who she’d never really gotten along well with, because Myhan Porter was someone who used people. The only people he liked were those who could do things for him. He treated his sons well because they were strong like him and helped him with his porting business. He treated his wife Maureen like a servant, and he usually ignored Mira completely because she was just a waifish little girl. When Mira got older, he indentured her out to a real slime ball named Lorond Washman to be one of his wash maids, and Lorond didn’t treat his maids well. Mira had worked for that man for a couple of years before she reached her breaking point and ended that arrangement with Operation Chamber Pot, as it came to be called. When she did that, she was in effect breaking things off with her father, as well, and she hadn’t seen him since.

  Mira told me that her father was the sort of guy who would arrange a marriage for his daughter based solely on the amount of money he could get for her. Mira hated the thought of that for obvious reasons. In Stonekeep it was customary for the patriarch of the family to have complete control over their children. When the kids were conscripted for two years into military service, that control was passed to the army, but for a year after that, until a person turned twenty-one, the patriarch had complete control over marriages to their children. Mira feared that her father would show up at the keep’s gates with a magistrate and marry her off to the highest bidder on the day she left military service when he still knew how to find her. The more I thought about it, the more likely that scenario seemed.

  I’d been waiting for a chance to get away and visit with Mr. Porter to ask for Mira’s hand in marriage, but with all the travelling, I hadn’t found the opportunity yet. I hadn’t told Mira that, of course. She may have shot me. I thought that if I could get to Mr. Porter before he arranged a marriage for Mira, that maybe I could pay him off or at least keep Mira out of a legally binding engagement until she decided she wanted to be with me on her own. Marriage was a big deal, after all, and with a girl like Mira, there was no forcing her to do anything she didn’t want to do. Not if you enjoyed living, that is.

  I wrestled with this for what seemed to be an eternity. I settled on a plan on Sevenday, the week before the fourth Harvest Day of the year, New Year’s Day, when we would be released from service. Yesterday we’d gotten back into port from the last voyage of our military careers since there wasn’t enough time to go to Mithram and back before we were discharged. In the small hours of the morning, I snuck away so I could grab the gold I’d secreted in the suite I planned to appropriate for myself in the upper levels of the keep. I put the coins in individual bags with one hundred coins in each one for ease in conducting our transaction. I even put a few extra coins in each bag just in case. I put the rest of my money that I earned from the shipping business in the chest for now, then returned.

  The others were a little suspicious of me that morning as we were discharged since I had a backpack on me, and that obviously heavy backpack jingled from time to time. They were too polite to ask me what I was up to, though. I made my excuses and split off from Bran, Elle and Mira, who were going to the house for brunch, as was our custom. As the others went a couple of blocks to the smithy, I turned and walked down the street going through the gate to the lower city. I had a bit of business to conduct, and I had a feeling I needed my gold to get it done. With luck, I could be back at the house in time to scrounge up some leftovers. Of course, I knew our meals never had any leftovers, but I was still hopeful. I could always get a honey bun from the Bakers and tough it out till suppertime, though. That would be the more likely scenario. In my mind, I went over the things I would say to Mr. Porter as I walked.

  -----

  Mira watched me go down the street and was overcome with curiosity. She wasn’t the only one. Bandit was in her natural pixie form and was invisibly riding on Mira’s shoulder. When she wasn’t invisible or pretending to be a raccoon, Bandit was about a foot tall and had translucent butterfly wings that shimmered with every color of the rainbow. She had long, curly, red hair, fair skin, petite features, and wore a dress made of tulip petals that was orange at the top but gradually shifted to a purple color at the bottom.

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  Bandit whispered in Mira’s ear. “I wonder what Jeron’s up to. Curious?”

  Mira nodded her head slightly in agreement, and Bandit stretched her little wings and sped off after me. Bandit loved chaos. She was a lot older than she looked, and like all pixies, she liked to cause trouble to keep life from getting too monotonous. Keeping company with a Mordonian Sorcerer was sure to bring some excitement, and Bandit didn’t want to miss any of it.

  Bandit fluttered about close to the roofline of the houses lining the street as she followed me. I had already passed the marketplace, which was where Bandit expected me to go to spend my money. She knew I had an awful lot of gold in my backpack, and she was dying to know what it was for. Her curiosity redoubled when I passed the last of the shops near the marketplace and headed into a more residential area. Bandit knew this neighborhood well even though it was a place that Mira avoided. Mira’s family lived around here somewhere. Then it hit her. Mira’s family lived around here! To Bandit’s eye, I didn’t seem to know exactly where I was going either, so she watched as I stopped to ask a neighbor for directions to the Porter’s house.

  Bandit knew that Mira was going to want to see this for herself. She zipped to the Smith’s house as quickly as her little wings would take her, then straight through the open living room window. Mira was there talking with Samirah about something, and Bandit flew right onto Mira’s shoulder.

  “Jeron’s going to your family’s house!” Bandit whispered urgently directly into Mira’s ear, leaving Samirah none the wiser.

  “You know, I just remembered something I have to take care of right now. Don’t hold breakfast for me,” Mira said, already on the move.

  “All right, but don’t expect any leftovers,” Samirah called over her shoulder.

  Mira hurried down the stairs and out the smithy door, then around the corner into the closest alley that she could find. Bandit leapt off of her shoulder, still invisible, and flew up to the rooftop to get a head start as Mira took a small piece of a veil out of her pants pocket and spoke some mystical words. She silently thanked the Pirate King for the books of magical theory he had accumulated and given the four of them when they had saved him from a death curse a few months ago. The spell complete, Mira suddenly faded into invisibility, then invoked the power of a gold necklace she had worn wrapped up in a sheath of cords around her neck to make it look worthless. Her mentor, a Seeker nicknamed Whizzbang, had called it a G.A.S.P., which stood for Gravity Adjusting Survival Pendant. It had saved his life many times, he claimed. She stepped onto the exterior wall of the house next to her and walked up the side like she was striding down a street. Mira hurried across the rooftops of the city, leaping across streets easily thanks to the power of the G.A.S.P., invisible and barely making a sound.

  Mira was out of breath when she came into view of her family’s house. She didn’t see me on the outside from her rooftop perch, so she assumed I was inside already. She paused to get her breathing under control, then leapt across the street to the roof of her old house. She walked down the exterior wall in the front, checking the windows as she went. She found me speaking with her father already and put her ear next to the window to hear what we were saying.

  “For five hundred royals, I’d even dance a jig for you,” her father said with a smirk.

  “Well, then, Mr. Porter. I’m confident that by the end of the day we’ll have a deal. Five hundred gold royals for Mira’s hand in marriage,” I said.

  “I like your confidence, boy. I like your money better, though. I’ll be here all day,” Myhan said as he sat down on their sofa.

  She watched as I turned to leave. “Mrs. Porter, I hope you have a nice day,” I said, then walked out.

  Mira couldn’t believe what she had just heard. I could imagine her thoughts. How could I do that to her? That jerk had just bought her like a piece of meat! She hadn’t even agreed to marry me, nor had I even had the courage to ask! That gutter slug! Her feelings hurt badly and her eyes full of tears, Mira walked back up the side of her old house and sat on the roof.

  “Mira, I’m so sorry,” she heard Bandit say in her little voice.

  I was the last person in the world she would have thought would treat her like a possession. The magnitude of this betrayal made her cry. She hadn’t cried in years, but she just couldn’t help herself. She and Bandit were on that rooftop for a long time that day, unable to face anyone.

  -----

  I made my way to the lower city to the house of Myhan Porter. I didn’t know exactly where it was, but I was able to get some help from neighbors eventually. I knocked on the door. A few seconds later it opened to reveal a woman who looked strikingly like Mira except for the longer, graying hair. I knew I was in the right place.

  “Mrs. Porter?” I asked.

  “Yes. May I help you?” Maureen Porter replied.

  “I hope so. My name’s Jeron Smith.” I decided to get right to the point. “I’m in love with your daughter, Mira, and I’m here to ask for her hand in marriage.”

  “Oh! Well, please come in.”

  Mrs. Porter held the door open for me and I walked into the house. It was a well-ordered place with a homey feel to it. The floor we were on had a living area and kitchen with a staircase going up, presumably to bedrooms. Mrs. Porter wrung her hands and wore a very uneasy smile. Mr. Porter and two of his sons were relaxing in the living room, and they didn’t look to be in a very friendly mood. Myhan stood up and looked me up and down shrewdly.

  “Looking for Mira’s hand in marriage, are you?” he asked with a bit of menace in his tone.

  “Yes, sir, and with your blessing, if you’d be so kind,” I replied politely.

  Myhan was about my height, about six feet tall, and was a man obviously accustomed to hard work. He had a tanned, leathery neck and strong shoulders to prove it. His back was still unbent, too. He was getting a lot of silver in his brown hair, though.

  A bit roughly, he said, “Well, you’re a bit late to the party, boy. Mira’s marriage has already been arranged.”

  My heart fluttered for a second. I was not as surprised as I could have been, but I was still pretty upset to hear this. It must have shown in my face. “May I ask what arrangements those are, Mr. Porter?”

  “No harm in asking. Mira will be wed to Lorond Washman on New Year’s Day, next week.”

  This was a nightmare come to life for Mira. She hated Lorond Washman for the way he had treated her when she was indentured to him, and she would sooner die than be married to him. Most likely, she would shoot him in the face the second she saw him, then spend a very short time in prison until she was hung. I took a deep breath to steady myself. I couldn’t stand the thought of Mira being sold to someone like Lorond Washman, one of the more odious people in the city.

  “Is that your final word on the matter, sir?”

  “I’m afraid it is. Mr. Washman’s already paid me a hundred gold royals for her hand, and I rather like the idea.” His smile was a nasty one.

  Mrs. Porter had the grace to stare at the floor, ashamed. Mr. Porter, on the other hand, looked very pleased with himself. It may have been due to the change I’d gone through in my attunement, but I wasn’t as angry with Myhan as I think I would have been before my change. I was definitely upset, but I wasn’t ready to incinerate him on the spot.

  “What if I could offer you more? Say, five hundred gold royals?” I asked.

  “I would take that deal for the brat in a heartbeat,” Myhan said. “You’d be getting the worst of that deal, you would, but I’ve already given the engagement’s promissory letter to Mr. Washman. Quite unbreakable, that contract is. A deal’s a deal.” He smiled widely.

  “What if I could get Mr. Washman to change his mind?” I asked.

  “I doubt he would. He’s been looking forward to this for years. If you could convince him to return the promissory letter with his signature on it cancelling the deal, then you’d be able to make a new deal with me. For five hundred royals, I’d even dance a jig for you.”

  “Well, then, Mr. Porter. I’m confident that by the end of the day we’ll have a deal. Five hundred gold royals for Mira’s hand in marriage.”

  “I like your confidence, boy. I like your money better, though. I’ll be here all day,” he said.

  Inwardly seething, I turned to leave. “Mrs. Porter, I hope you have a nice day.”

  With that I was out the door and walking down the street to Lorond Washman’s home above his shop. I knew exactly where that place was. I thought for a second that I felt some sort of magic in use behind me, and I glanced over my shoulder, but I saw nothing beyond the normal pedestrian traffic. I was upset, so I thought maybe I’d just imagined it. I tried to calm myself a bit as I walked, but there was no way I’d let this stand, and scenario after scenario went through my mind. All of them ended in blood.

  Before long I was at Lorond Washman’s place of business. I walked into the small front lobby and found him to be sitting behind the counter on a worn stool that looked like it was about to collapse. Lorond was a pig of a man in his forties and resembled that animal in more than one way. His sparse hair was slicked back with some type of oil. Maybe it was just sweat. He wore a very clean, white apron over a white shirt and pants. He smiled pleasantly at me as I walked up to his counter.

  “Good day, sir! Welcome to my humble establishment. How may I help you today?”

  “Hello, Mr. Washman. My name’s Jeron. I have something that I’d like to discuss with you. Is this a good time?” I asked more politely than I wanted to.

  “What’s this about?” he asked. “I already have a supplier of soap that I’ve done business with for years now.”

  “This is about your upcoming wedding, sir.”

  His eyes narrowed. “How’d you know about that? What’s your interest in it?” he demanded.

  “I went to ask Mr. Porter for Mira’s hand in marriage today. He said he’d made a deal with you already. Because I love her, I’ve come here to ask you to change your mind. I can refund the entire one hundred gold royals you gave to Mr. Porter plus pay you an extra one hundred royals if you were to sign the promissory letter to cancel it.”

  As he thought for a moment, he got a nasty little smile on his face, then stood to raise his eye level closer to mine. “I wouldn’t cancel this wedding for any amount of gold. The answer’s no.”

  “Mira and I care for each other very much, Mr. Washman. Would you please reconsider?”

  “Not a chance, kid. This isn’t about love. I’ve suffered no end to the humiliation she gave me, and I’m really going to enjoy this. In more ways than one.” Lorond had a very determined and unfriendly look on his face.

  “Mr. Washman, I’ll pay you an extra two hundred gold royals plus what you gave Mr. Porter.”

  “I’ll tell you what, Jermaine,” he said with a sneer, and poked a finger into my chest. “The only way I’ll accept your deal is if you can bring me a purple Arborean silk robe from Havanalil by sundown. Now piss off.” He waved his hand at me in a dismissive gesture and went into the back room, leaving me standing there by myself.

  It was an impossible task, and he knew it well.