A Drink in Toulon - Part 6 - (A Kip the Quick Adventure)
A thrilling romp with theft, magic, and humor.
Kip the Quick is a thief and a rogue, but he wants to go legit. Really, he does. So, when he meets with a nobleman to talk trade, all is fine and dandy until someone comes knocking. Loudly. And violently. Where’s a good spot of the Essence, when you really need some?
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Part 6
“YOU ARE WITHOUT HONOR, GAGNE!” shouted Lord Tyren. There was a following crunch. “A trickster!” The dining room wall exploded. “Using your daughter. Using me!”
The Drinker-guard rose from the floor, plaster dust falling to the floor.
“She was my promised!” And Tyren kicked the guard into the ceiling.
Hmm. Destroy the house and threaten Gagne’s life? Way to improve his chances.
The guard landed on his feet, shaking his head. “Lady Bellerose was never yours.”
“In all but name!”
“You are mistaken.”
Tyren growled. “She might have been Gagne’s tool. Pulling from his bag of tricks to blind me and tie me to his foul trade terms. But her feelings were genuine!”
Or so he thought.
The guard said nothing to this claim of Bellerose’s character. But he looked like he wanted to.
Gripping the bag tighter, I crept to the other door as lord Tyren gnashed his teeth. My hand was on the handle, the power of the Essence urging me to rip the door from its hinges.
“I am no fool!”
Then a thud, whistling air, and the guard smashed into my back, sending me sprawling, my bag opening, and the silver contents clattering away. I jumped up and gathered what I could, just as Tyren flung the guard out the window, soaring through the air and onto the front lawn with a distant crash.
I was frozen in place with a silver platter in hand, Tyren turned to me, his eyes mad. “Who are you?”
“Plate handler?” The Essence might have filled me with some overwhelming sense of bravado, but face to face with Tyren, that sense fled as fast as the guard had flown through the air.
“Gagne sends another? A waif of a man? So be it.”
Oh no.
I ran like the wind, bag bouncing behind me, as I careened off a wall, cracking the plaster.
“Come back here!”
“Not gonna!” Then I reached the end of the hall, an open window looking down upon a neighboring estate of three stories with white trim. Instead of slowing, I put a burst of speed on, leapt through the window, flew through the air over some fish-shaped topiary, and crashed through the plaster wall of the other manse, landing in a bathtub with a great splash.
Brushing dust from my clothes, chunks of plaster and wood fouling the warm bath, water soaking my trousers. “Hmm. Smells like peaches.”
The lord of the manor glared down at me with a massive mustache, and not a stitch of clothes on. “Oh, pardon me,” I said. “Bath’s just a bit tepid.”
Leaping from the tub, I gathered the silver back up and bolted down the hall, two women screaming at me from behind. “Yes, yes! I’m leaving already!” Then another crash as something, or someone else, landed in the bathroom above.
“I say!” shouted the lord.
Leaping down the stairs one landing at a time, knocking off portraits, I dashed down a hall, water still dripping behind. I leapt out another window, the shutters slapping the exterior wall as I landed, then jumped again, back toward Gagne’s estate, arcing over the property wall and running for cover in the yard.
Holding my breath, my heart hammering in my chest like some frantic miner seeking gold, I waited in utter silence, the irate Lord Tyren stomping through the other home like some raging bull.
“I smell it!” he boomed, emerging from the house, startling a dozen birds into flight. Wind whistled as he leapt into the air, crashing through a wall in Gagne’s estate, dust and mortar shaking from the exterior. A piece of masonry fell, landing next to me.
I should run, I should fly. I should do something!
But my head was foggy, my throat dry. The grass felt soft; soft like a bed.
What was wrong with me?
“You will tell me where the coward fled. Where is Gagne!” The window next to me shattered into a thousand pieces, the Drinker peering out and looking down, at…me!
“Hi.” I couldn’t breathe, and the Drinker’s face contorted. This was really one of those times I wished I had listened better to Mistress Filelle; kept to the right side of the law—utterly poor, and entirely, absolutely unremarkable.
“You know, if you are to be promised to the Lady Bellerose, isn’t it a bit impolite to go storming the house? Not the best way to fraternize with your future father-in-law.”
Tyren didn’t seem to care. “Tell me where he is, and I let you die quickly.”
I guess I could tell him, but since the options of dying in pain and dying quick were all that was on the table, I didn’t feel much like opening my mouth. Even if my moniker was “the Quick.”
This grand plan had turned to disaster. I was wretched with self-loathing. I may have had the best of intentions, really intended to turn over a new leaf and end my thieving ways, but if there was no chance to celebrate, then what was the point? If I were to never see little Kay again; never show off a stack of goods transported under my own trade deal to her; prove that I had gone legit; then why had I gone through any of this?
My end, at the hands of a Drinker-lord, drunk on Essence, and drunk on the injury of his pride…
Not how I had expected to go. And as I lay there staring up the hairy nostrils of this stomping troll, my fear faded away, replaced by a burning anger that started deep in my belly and spread like wildfire.
I would not die today.
Locking eyes with my would-be killer, his face frenzied and mad, I declared, “You. Will. Not!”
Not the most eloquent speech. But it’s what I had, and I drilled my will into his, wishing—no—demanding that his limbs freeze up, that he become utterly incapable of movement.
Somehow it felt as if I were reaching without moving, and his blazing red thoughts became visible as a swirling putrid mass. Grabbing them with ethereal hands I squeezed them into a ball, vibrating with my intent.
I blinked away this madness, my temples pounding, and looked up at my last moments of life.
Try as I might to understand, Tyren stood frozen, his fist raised with violent intent, his face set in a rictus snarl.
“Hello?”
The man could have been turned to stone for all I could tell.
“Had I…?” No, that was impossible.
And then the fates smiled, interrupting my confusion: With a roar like a cannon, the Drinker was knocked from the window, flying through the air, tearing across lawn and bush; ripping up flagstone paving. Through the cloud of dust from the ragged hole above me that had once been a fine garden window, another figure appeared.
It was the Drinker-guard…returned.
Never had I been more happy to see an absolute stranger.
Perhaps I should have said thanks, but I just went staggering away as fast as I could, barely thinking on what had just happened. I fled back into the house through an actual door, my silver prize nearly slipping from my shaking grasp.
Thanks for reading Part 6 of A Drink in Toulon. Part 7, the final part, is coming tomorrow! Click Subscribe to get an email as soon as it comes out. Share this post and leave a comment below.
Have you read the first book, Kip the Quick? The sequel is coming soon. Read the book that started it all here.
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